It was very singular that though our armament had been visible off the coasts of Normandy and Brittany for four days, no preparations were made anywhere to oppose us. A strong French fleet lay in the harbour of Brest, but was there blocked up by the squadrons of Lord Anson and Sir E. Hawke, so it might as well have been in the Yellow Sea.
Just as the commodore's last signal concerning the boats was hoisted, two troops of French cavalry, and a regiment of infantry, appeared on the heights above the Bay of Cancalle, where we saw their appointments and weapons glittering; but after a time they fell back and disappeared inland.
The flat-bottomed boats were soon launched, and the grenadier companies of eleven regiments rendezvoused on board of them, around the Essex, the headquarter ship.
The commodore now shifted his broad pennant on board the Success, a frigate of twenty-two guns, which got under weigh, and stood close inshore to silence a battery of only three guns, which had begun to fire across the bay.
These were the first hostile shots I had heard; and I must own that they caused my pulses to quicken, and created an undefined anxiety in my heart; yet I had already stood fire, when so narrowly escaping Abraham Clod's gun on the roof of old Wylie's stable, and that adventure made me smile when I thought of it then.
Those three cannons—two 24's and one 12-pounder—were all we had as yet to oppose, and they were in position at the landing-place of the fisher-town or village of Cancalle, which consisted of a group of picturesque little houses, situated at the base of a green hill that overhangs the sea.
The French cannoniers who handled them were brave fellows, for they killed several men on board the Success, nor were they silenced, and the beach swept of the inhabitants, till the commodore's ship, together with the Rose, Flamborough, and Diligence, opened their broadsides to the land, and filled the whole bay with smoke, making every rock and mountain echo to the reverberations of a cannonade that lasted till seven in the evening, for we had a dread of masked batteries among the shrubberies and hedgerows near the shore.
Under cover of this fire, the flat-bottomed boats, with three battalions of the Guards, and eleven grenadier companies of the Line, commanded by Lord George Sackville (son of Lionel, Duke of Dorset) and General Dury, rowed inwards, and landed on the beach in safety.
Those ships which contained the cavalry and artillery were now ordered to draw closer inshore. Our horses were slung over into the flat-bottomed boats alongside—each trooper, fully accoutred, standing in the wooden stall by his charger's head. It was about eleven at night before the light troop of the Greys, in four large flat barges, put off for the harbour, towards which we were slowly towed by the boats of the Brilliant.
The night was a lovely one. High sailed the moon in heaven, with clouds of fleecy whiteness flying past her silver disc. The beach and the blue sea were light as if at noonday, and on the far expanse of yellow sand, in that secluded cove, where the aged oak and lime trees spread their summer foliage on the ripples—sand so soft, so smooth and golden that one could only think of nymphs or fairies disporting in fantastic dances there—we were disembarking Horse, Foot, and Artillery, with loaded arms and lighted matches, in all the grim array of war.