“ ... This is to acquaint you with the death of Lieut. John Dalbos of Colonel Pujola’s Company who died last night of a tedious and lingering disorder attended with the gout, but in my opinion rather by old age being 75 years....”
The gem of the collection, however, is contained in a letter of introduction given by Major-General Armstrong to Major Gillman, in favour of a young officer just posted to the regiment.
“London, 13th June 1737.
“Sir,—The bearer hereof Ensign Stanhope, son of the Right Hon. the Lord Harrington, Principal Secretary of State, a younger brother and very hopeful gentleman, and ambitious to push his fortune in the Military Way, and moreover being desirous of qualifying himself for that purpose, has tendered to do his duty with the regiment. Therefore I earnestly desire you will encourage him in everything that may conduce to his improvement in this way of life.
“As the first thing a youth should learn at his launching out into the World is to know how to live in it, a spirit of economy should be cultivated in him, for which purpose he should be induced to keep a pocket memorandum book wherein he may with other occurrences set down his daily expenses, by perusing of which in his leisure hours he may see how the money goes out and be thereby enabled to proportion his disbursement to his cash, keep out of debt, and thereby avoid the many inconveniences the want of due care draws young men into such in the whole course of their lives they may not without great difficulty be able to extricate themselves.
“And in order thereto as youth is oftentimes moved by the company they keep I must earnestly desire you will introduce him to that of the most discreet and sober gentlemen, and particularly that you will have a watchful eye he keeps company with no sharpers at play, nor with any persons that may induce him to vices destructive of his health. Your due regard to what is above written will very much oblige
“Your most obedt.
“most humble servant,
“J. Armstrong.”
“P.S.—Care must be taken on his arrival to board him with some officer who has a family which I earnestly request you to see done, for much depends on a right beginning.”
Armstrong died in 1742, and was succeeded as colonel of the regiment by Colonel Sir John Mordaunt, K.B. On its return home in 1742 the regiment was quartered in the West of England until the spring of 1744, when it was sent to Fareham to guard prisoners taken in the wars we were then waging with the Spanish and the French. In 1739 a trade dispute with Spain had produced a conflict memorable only for our miserable and costly failure to take Cartagena, a flourishing settlement on the Caribbean Sea, in the part of South America then belonging to Spain, and now the Republic of Columbia. Soon afterwards a great war broke out on the Continent of Europe between France and Spain on the one side and Austria on the other. Various German States joined the Franco-Spanish alliance, while England, Hanover, and Holland sent contingents to the help of Austria. At Dettingen George II. gained a victory over the French in 1743, but two years later his son, the Duke of Cumberland, was defeated at Fontenoy,[73] where the magnificent courage and brilliant local success of the British and Hanoverians were nullified by the apathy, cowardice, or jealousy of the Austrians and the Dutch, who after Cumberland had actually forced his way into the French camp sullenly refused to advance and support his column at the moment when victory was within his grasp. Before the news of this glorious, though disastrous day reached England, the Royal Irish had been warned for service abroad, and formed part of a small column which reached Cumberland in the middle of May. Welcome as this reinforcement was, it did not nearly fill the gaps caused by the slaughter at Fontenoy, where the casualties among the British and Hanoverian infantry amounted to 32 per cent, the former losing 3662, the latter 1410 officers and men. With his weakened force Cumberland could not stand up against the French, and as far as most of the English regiments were concerned, the rest of the campaign of 1745 was spent in entrenching defensive positions, and then, under the pressure of the enemy’s manœuvres, abandoning them, only to repeat the experience farther to the rear, while the French, in greatly superior numbers, gradually reduced the fortified towns of Flanders. Some of these places Marshal Saxe, the French Commander-in-Chief, took by force of arms; others capitulated without resistance, and in August he was able to detach a considerable body of troops to attack Ostend, a vital point in Cumberland’s lines of communication with England. The garrison was hastily reinforced, the last corps to arrive being the Royal Irish, who on the 9th of August embarked at Antwerp on “billanders,” as the boats used for inland navigation were called, and dropping down the Scheldt to Flushing transhipped into sea-going vessels for Ostend. The town was in a wretched condition and quite unfit to stand a siege; the Austrians, to whom it then belonged, had allowed the fortifications to fall into disrepair; the artillery was deficient in guns and stores of every kind, and the three thousand infantry, insufficient for the perimeter they had to guard, were not soldiers of the same nation commanded by generals of their own army, but detachments of British, of Austrians, and of Dutch—men with no common language and dissimilar in discipline, habits, and sentiment. These differences, sufficiently serious in themselves, were accentuated by the undisguised contempt of the English for the Allies who had left them in the lurch at Fontenoy. Nor were these the only difficulties. An essential part in the scheme of defence was the flooding of a large tract of country round the town, but this measure had not been carried into effect, for the Austrians, unwilling to ruin the peasants by inundating the villages and farms, were so slow in issuing the necessary orders that when at length labourers were sent to open the sluices, the French were close at hand and prevented the working parties from accomplishing their task. To have defended Ostend successfully would have taxed the powers of a great leader of men, and none arose to snatch the reins of office from the hands of the governor, a veteran grown old and decrepit in the Austrian service. The General appointed to command the British arrived after the town was invested, and was unable to make his way into Ostend; an Austrian officer of the same rank, de Chanclos, was more fortunate, but though he acted as confidential adviser to the Governor he had not the time, even if he possessed the capacity, to weld the heterogeneous garrison into a good fighting force.