Meanwhile events in France were leading up to a war which would involve most of the countries of western Europe and pose the very real threat of an invasion of England. The Paris mob had became so threatening that in June 1791 King Louis XVI attempted to escape and go into exile but the coach in which he was travelling was stopped and he was sent back to Paris, a virtual prisoner. Concerned for the safety of Marie Antoinette, the king's Austrian wife, and under pressure from French emigres to provide support for royal government in France, the Emperor of Austria entered into an alliance with the King of Prussia. This was seen by the revolutionaries in Paris as a threat against the people of France. In February 1792 the National Assembly declared war on Austria and Prussia. The French army was under-financed and most of its aristocratic officers had emigrated so it was no surprise that it was defeated in its first clash with the Austrian army. However the revolutionary ardour and patriotism of the people's army proved an overwhelming force and on 20 September 1792 the French defeated a Prussian army at Valmy, pushed them back across the Rhine and occupied Brussels.
Britain watched the movements of the French army with growing concern but it was the execution of the French king which led politicians and political commentators to realise that war with France was inevitable. Louis XVI was executed on the morning of Monday 21 January 1793 but it was four days before the news reached London. On 25 January The Times printed a detailed report describing the King's last hours. He had taken an affectionate farewell of his family at 6 am and had been driven through the hushed streets of Paris in the mayor's carriage to La Place de Révolution. The guillotine had been set up beside the pedestal which had formerly supported the statue of his grandfather. Dressed in a brown greatcoat, white waist-coat and black breeches, he mounted the scaffold with composure, attended by an Irish priest as his confessor. His attempt to address the crowds was drowned by the beating of hundreds of drums from the massed ranks of the soldiers surrounding the guillotine. The executioner laid hold of him and at a quarter past ten the blade came down. When his severed head was held up by the executioner the people threw their hats in the air and let out a great shout of 'Vive la Nation!'
Fanny Burney was living at Norbury Park, near Box Hill, when she heard the news. She was so devastated that for some days she lost any desire to read, write or even go walking. 'The dreadful tragedy in France has entirely absorbed me,' she told her father, 'Except the period of the illness of our own inestimable King, I have never been so overcome with grief and dismay for any but personal and family calamities. O what a tragedy! how implacable its villany, and how severe its sorrows!'
Within two days of receiving the news in London the French ambassador was ordered to 'quit this kingdom before the first of February next, on account of the atrocious act lately perpetrated at Paris.' And by the end of the first week of February the British government was informed that France had declared war on England and Holland. The Nootka Sound crisis and the threat of war with Spain had served as a useful dress-rehearsal for the Royal Navy, and the preparations for war against France followed similar lines. The Board of Admiralty sent off press warrants to the mayors and chief magistrates of the cities, boroughs and towns of England and Wales. Once again the press gangs went into action on the Thames and on the night of 4 March all homeward- and outward-bound merchant ships were stripped of their crews. Within a few days three tenders full of men were despatched from the rendezvous on Tower Hill to HMS. Sandwich, the guardship at the Nore. Similar operations took place in Portsmouth and Plymouth. But the forcible recruitment of seamen did not go smoothly everywhere. In Newcastle and Sunderland the sailors kept together in large groups, and successfully beat off the press gangs. They made it clear that they were refusing to enter His Majesty's service without an increase in the current rate of pay. The scandalously low pay of seamen was a source of much resentment in the navy and would eventually lead to mutinies throughout the fleet in 1797.
Along with the recruitment of seamen the Admiralty issued orders for ships in ordinary to be put back into commission. On 16 March, barely two weeks after the declaration of war, Captain Pasley climbed aboard the Bellerophon and commissioned the ship. It was a crisp spring day with a fresh breeze blowing across the river. There were some workmen from the dockyard on board and by the end of the day they were joined by a handful of seamen and several officers. More men continued to arrive during the next few days, some of them pressed men, some of them volunteers, and they were all set to work cleaning the ship and putting her back into working order.
On 25 March the ship was hauled alongside one of the two sheer hulks permanently stationed at Chatham. These were old warships which had been converted into floating cranes. With the aid of a capstan on the deck of the sheer hulk, and the combined muscle power of two or three dozen seamen and dockworkers, the three great masts and the bowsprit were lifted aboard and lowered into place. Over the next few days a team of riggers from the dockyard set up the standing rigging for the lower masts, and then helped the crew to raise the topmasts. Nearly 300 tons of iron and shingle ballast was heaved aboard, followed by a constant stream of provisions. On 26 April the Bellerophon sailed down the river to Blackstakes where the seventy-four guns were swung aboard, and secured on their carriages. The ship then sailed downstream to the anchorage at the Nore where she stayed for the next month. She was now ready for sea but was still short of seamen. Twenty-three of the pressed men rounded up on the Thames and held aboard HMS. Sandwich joined the crew on 14 May and, in an effort to get hold of more sailors, Pasley sent out the Bellerophon's boats with an officer and a gang of sailors to round up a few more men. At last on 13 June she left the mouth of the Medway and sailed around the North Foreland and down the Channel to Portsmouth where she joined a great gathering of warships.
The fleet gathered in the anchorage at Spithead that summer was formidable and included the combined might of Britain's navy. Many of the ships present would become household names in the coming conflict. The first to depart were the ships of the Mediterranean fleet, under the command of Vice-Admiral Lord Hood in the Victory, which set sail down the Channel heading for Gibraltar and Toulon. They were followed a few days later by a squadron of seven warships which headed out across the Atlantic with orders to safeguard British possessions in the West Indies. And on 14 July the Channel fleet, under the command of Admiral Lord Howe, weighed anchor and set sail. There were fifteen ships of the line, including the Bellerophon, seven frigates and a fireship. Their orders were to destroy the French fleet from Brest which had left harbour and was believed to be cruising off Belle Isle.
On this, her first cruise outside home waters, the Bellerophon got no further than the seas to the south-west of the Scilly Isles. On 18 July the fleet was sailing in line ahead when the wind suddenly shifted and rose to gale force. The Majestic, which was sailing immediately ahead of the Bellerophon, with sails flapping and thundering in the wind, was driven across the bows of the Bellerophon. Captain Pasley described what happened next: