April.
So Captain Popham argued; and his arguments were held to be good. Accordingly the whole plan of operation was entrusted to him; and preparations for the little expedition went forward with the utmost secrecy all through the month of April. By the second week in May everything was ready, and on the 13th the troops were embarked at Margate on seven transports. The force consisted of four companies of the 1st Guards, the flank companies of the Coldstream Guards, 3rd Guards, 23rd, and 49th Foot; the 11th Foot, artillerymen with six guns, and, lastly, one sergeant and eight men of the 17th Light Dragoons, the only mounted men of the expedition. 16th May. On the morning of the 16th May the little fleet got a fair wind and sailed away, arriving, without further mishap than leaving the 1st Guards hopelessly astern, in Ostend at 1 A.M. on the 19th. 19th May. For a time everything went like clockwork. Sir Eyre Coote, who commanded the expedition, summoned the French commander at Ostend to surrender, as a feint, to make him believe the town was the object of attack. Then having received a high-flown reply, and seen all the French troops drawn into Ostend, he quietly landed his men on the opposite side of the river, and blew up the lock-gates with the greatest success. By 11 A.M. Coote was back on the beach and anxious to re-embark, having accomplished his object with the trifling loss of five men killed and wounded. But meanwhile a gale had sprung up, and the surf was so great that re-embarkation was impossible. After several futile attempts, in which boats were swamped and the men nearly drowned, Coote decided to entrench himself where he lay and wait for better weather.
20th May.
At four o’clock next morning, when the wind and surf had considerably increased, the enemy was seen advancing in two columns, with far superior numbers, against Coote’s position. Outnumbered and outflanked the British force fought for two hours against hopeless odds, until Coote was wounded while rallying the 11th Foot. 1798. Then General Burrard, the second in command, seeing the front broken and both flanks turned, was compelled to surrender. Of the 1100 men landed, 163 were killed and wounded, and the rest of course taken prisoners. Of the nine men of the Seventeenth, one was wounded. So exemplary had been their behaviour, we are told, that when, shortly after, they were exchanged and returned to the regiment, 1799. every man of them was promoted to be a non-commissioned officer, while the sergeant, William Brown, was given a commission, first in the waggon train and latterly in the regiment. As usual the non-commissioned officer of the Seventeenth, when in independent command, brings credit to his corps.
In this same year two squadrons of the regiment were ordered to Portsmouth to embark for Egypt, but, the order having been countermanded, the whole regiment joined a large cavalry camp then formed at Swinley. 1800. In the following year another camp of 30,000 men was formed on Bagshot Heath under the command of the Duke of York, of which the regiment again formed part. In September it was employed in suppressing riots which had arisen in consequence of the high price of provisions. While engaged in this service many men were badly knocked about, and Captain Werge, who had escaped without injury from such deadly marksmen as the Maroons, narrowly escaped death at the hands of his own countrymen, receiving a shot through his helmet. 1801.Two troops having been added to the establishment, the regiment paraded in its greatest recorded strength at Manchester in the following year—upwards of 1000 non-commissioned officers and men, and nearly 1000 horses, being present. Colonel Grey was the fortunate officer who held command, and we must hope that Major-General Oliver Delancey, the Colonel-in-Chief, who alone could remember the regiment before it went to the American War, went up to inspect so fine a corps. Unfortunately this magnificent strength did not last long. 1802. In May 1802, England and France, being both of them exhausted after nine years’ fighting, agreed to the peace of Amiens. Thereupon, with the usual blindness, the army was reduced, and two troops of the Seventeenth were disbanded. Their horses were valued by a dealer at forty guineas apiece, a larger price in those days than in these, which shows that the regiment must have been superbly mounted.[10]
1803.
Peace lasted for just fourteen months; and then in May 1803 England took the initiative and declared war against France. On the 1st of that month the Seventeenth embarked from Liverpool for Ireland. It met with its usual luck at sea on the passage, the transports being dispersed by a gale which drove them into various ports on the East Coast, and permitted but one immediately to reach its destination at Dublin. 1804. In the course of the following year the establishment was again augmented to ten troops, four of which joined the camp at the Curragh, where a large force was assembled under the command of Lord Cathcart. This Lord Cathcart, let us remember, was an officer of the Seventeenth during the American War; he is the same man who commanded the expedition against Copenhagen in 1807, when Sir Arthur Wellesley himself served under him. 1805. The following year is memorable for the formation of Napoleon’s camp of invasion at Boulogne. Napoleon’s hopes having been shattered by Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar (12th October), he broke up the camp and marched away to the campaign of Ulm and Austerlitz. Previous to these two great disasters there had been some idea of a diversion to be made by an English army on the Continent; and in September the Seventeenth received orders to prepare for foreign service as part of this force. But Austerlitz effectually smothered this design. In December the regiment was moved back to England, and spent Christmas day on the passage, the first of four successive Christmas days that it was destined to celebrate on the sea.
1806.
The year 1806 opened gloomily with the death of William Pitt, the great man whose indomitable spirit had carried England through the first and worse half of the tremendous contest against France. The want of his guiding hand was soon to be badly felt.
The month of March brought a nearer occasion of mourning to the Seventeenth. On the 20th there died at the Plantation, Guisbrough, in Yorkshire, General John Hale, the father of the regiment. He had been promoted Major-General in 1772, Lieutenant-General in 1777, and General in 1793, and, it seems, had settled down to end his days among his wife’s people. In his long life of seventy-eight years he had seen the rise of William Pitt, “the terrible cornet of horse,” and the death of his son William Pitt, “the pilot who weathered the storm.” He left behind him seventeen children and the Seventeenth Light Dragoons.