Resolved, we mingle in the tide
Where charging squadrons furious ride,
To conquer or to die!’
“Sheridan said, that the first vision of Buonaparte in the morning, was the destruction of England, and that his last prayer at night, whether he addressed it to Jupiter, or to Mahomet, to the goddess of battle, or the goddess of reason, was to bring about the same end.”
“It was a good thing the French gave it up. There would have been sad work of it. Do you think they would have conquered us?”
“Conquered us! no, boys. Thousands, and tens of thousands might have been slain, but they could never have crushed the spirit of liberty out of British hearts. If Englishmen can fight as they do out of their country, what would they not do in it rather than be conquered. It was, as you say, a good thing that the invasion was given up; but, if the French had persevered, our blue-jackets in the British Channel, and our red-coats on the coasts, would have found them enough to do both by water and land. The one and the other would have joined in the chorus,
‘Rule, Britannia!
Britannia rules the waves!
Britons never shall be slaves!’
“But we are forgetting Buonaparte. He styled a part of his troops the Invincibles; but they were no more invincible than the Spanish Armada, which had the same name. British soldiers, under General Abercrombie in Egypt, first defeated the French Invincibles, and Wellington afterwards, scattered them like a flock of sheep.”