Sick, ill, without a horse or accoutrements, I was now little better than a non-effective, and thus happily, was only a spectator of the destruction of Cherbourg. I say happily, for France was the land of Jacqueline, and I had not heart for the work of pillage and destruction that ensued around me.
Lieutenant-General Bligh, an old and experienced officer, having succeeded to the command of the troops, the squadron had sailed from St. Helen's as before, under the pennant of Commodore Howe, who had on board the Essex his Royal Highness Prince Edward (afterwards Duke of York and Albany) who was serving as a midshipman to learn the rudiments of the sea-service for which he was destined, and in which he died at an early age, with the rank of Rear Admiral.
On the 7th August, the squadron, consisting of five line-of-battle ships, nine frigates, and ninety-eight transports, with other craft, came to anchor in the bay of Cherbourg, which is one of the five great ports militaires of France, as the general had special orders to destroy the whole place.
By this time a body of French troops of the line, in bright blue uniforms, with some companies of the Irish Brigade clad in scarlet, had intrenched themselves in a line which extended for four miles along the coast, from Fort Ecourdeville to two miles beyond Cherbourg, and these hasty defences they strengthened by redoubts mounted with cannon, most of which were twenty-four pounders.
In rear of this line were some corps of cavalry.
While Commodore Howe sent a bomb-ketch to anchor close off the town, with orders to pitch a few shells into it from time to time, and thus amuse or decoy the officer in command there, the British forces landed three miles westward of Querqueville, the most western fort of the bay. During the disembarkation several other bomb-ketches shelled the line of intrenchments not only with explosives of the usual kind, but from mortars loaded with musket balls, thus making great slaughter with little or no risk to us.
As on the former occasion the flat-bottomed boats were hoisted out, and the three regiments of guards, with the grenadier company of every battalion on board the fleet, were first rowed ashore, and formed in line upon a portion of the beach that was flat and open. Each boat contained eighteen seamen and fifty grenadiers, and had a red flag displayed at its stern.
Beyond the landing place opened a grassy hollow, with a pretty village that crowned a steep eminence on the right flank; on the left were thick green hedges enclosing orchards laden with fruit of the most brilliant yellow and crimson colours, and amid these were seen the serried files and glittering bayonets of the enemy.
This was a beautiful evening, when the summer sun of Normandy covered all the fertile land and rippling sea with warm light, and bathed in purple tints the undulating ridges of the Mont-du-Roule and of the Boc-au-chat, while the waves that washed the sloping bastions of Cherbourg, of Fort Royal, and those on the Isle Pelee, or those that broke in foam on the rocks of St. Anne, seemed billows of liquid gold.
Puff—puff—puff—came the white smoke out from the green hedgerows and glowing orchards, as the foe opened a running fire of musketry, under which our grenadiers and Guards formed line, and rushing forward with fixed bayonets and a hearty hurrah, drove in the French out-pickets and stormed a breast-work that lay across the hollow way beyond the beach.