Sept. 9.
The army set out on the morning of the 7th of September, and after some trouble with small parties of French on the march encamped on the same evening near the river Equernon, intending to ford it next morning. It speaks volumes for the incapacity of Bligh and of his staff that the passage of the river was actually fixed for six o'clock in the morning, though that was the hour of high water. It was of course necessary to wait for the ebb-tide; so it was not until three in the afternoon that the troops forded the river, even then waist-deep, under a brisk fire from small parties of French peasants and regular troops. Owing to the lateness of the hour further advance on that day was impossible; and on resuming the march on the following morning the advanced guard encountered a body of about five hundred French troops. The enemy were driven back with considerable loss, but their prisoners gave information of the advance of at least ten thousand French from Brest. Arrived at Matignon Bligh encamped and sent his engineers to reconnoitre the beach at St. Cast in case he should be compelled to retreat. Deserters who came in during the night reported that the French were gathering additional forces from the adjacent garrisons; and in the morning Bligh sent word to Howe that he intended to embark on the following day.
Sept. 11.
Constant alarms during the night showed that the enemy was near at hand; and it would have been thought that Bligh, having made up his mind to retreat, would in so critical a position have retired as swiftly and silently as possible. On the contrary, at three o'clock on the morning of the 11th the drums beat the assembly as usual, to give the French all the information that they desired; while the troops moved off in a single column so as to consume the longest possible time on the march. It was nine o'clock before the embarkation began, and at eleven, when two-thirds of the force had been shipped, the enemy appeared in force on the hills above the beach. For some time the French were kept at a distance by the guns of the fleet, but after an hour they found shelter and opened a sharp and destructive fire. General Drury, who commanded the rear-guard, consisting of fourteen hundred men of the Guards and the grenadiers, was obliged to form his men across the beach to cover the embarkation. Twice he drove back the enemy, but, ammunition failing, he was forced back in turn, and there was nothing left but a rush for the boats. The French bringing up their artillery opened a furious fire; and all was confusion. So many of the boats were destroyed that the sailors shrank from approaching the shore and were only kept to their work by the personal example of Howe. In all seven hundred and fifty officers and men were killed and wounded, General Drury being among the slain, and the rest of the rear-guard were taken prisoners. The fleet and transports made their way back to England in no comfortable frame of mind, for the French naturally magnified their success to the utmost; and so ended Pitt's third venture against the coast of France.
There can be little doubt but that Bligh must be held responsible for the failure. It should seem indeed that he was ignorant of the elements of his duty, even to the enforcing of discipline among the troops, who at the first landing near Cherbourg behaved disgracefully. The Duke of Marlborough had met with the same trouble at Cancalle Bay, but had had at least the strength to hang a marauding soldier on the first day and so to restore order. But after all Pitt was presumably responsible for the selection of Bligh; or, if he was aware that he could not appoint the right man for such a service, he would have done better to abandon these raids on the French coast altogether. The conduct of Marlborough and Sackville in shirking the duty because it was distasteful to them does not appear commendable; but Sackville at any rate was no fool, and Pitt might at least have recognised the military objections that were raised against his plans. The truth of the matter is, as Lord Cochrane was to prove fifty years later, that sporadic attacks on the French coast are best left to the Navy; for a single frigate under a daring and resolute officer can paralyse more troops than an expedition of ten or fifteen thousand men, with infinitely less risk and expense. Pitt had not yet done with his favourite descents, but his next venture of the kind was to be directed against an island instead of the mainland, when the British fleet could interpose between his handful of battalions and the whole population of France. Meanwhile Cherbourg had at any rate been destroyed, so like a wise man the minister made the most of this success, by sending some of the captured guns with great parade through Hyde Park to the Tower.
April 30.
Oct. 26.
Dec. 29.
The operations already narrated of the year 1758 were of considerable scope, embracing as they did the advance of three separate armies in America, two raids on the French coast, and the despatch of British troops to Germany; but these by no means exhaust the tale. There were few quarters of the globe in which the British had not to complain of French encroachment, and to this insidious hostility Pitt had resolved to put a stop once for all. Five years before, the merchants of Africa had denounced the unfriendliness of the French on the Gambia, who were building forts and stirring up the natives against them. The Royal African Company also, with its monopoly of the slave-trade, was anxious for its line of fortified depôts on the West Coast, and prayed to be delivered from its troublesome neighbours at Senegal and in the island of Goree.[300] One of Pitt's first actions in 1758 was to order an expedition to be prepared against Senegal, a duty for which two hundred marines and twenty-five gunners were deemed a sufficient force. On the 23rd of April Captain Marsh of the Royal Navy sailed into the Senegal river, and by the 30th Fort Louis had surrendered and was flying the British flag. Two hundred men of Talbot's regiment[301] were at once sent to garrison the new possession, and then for some months there was a pause, while the troops for Germany and Cherbourg were embarking for their destinations. But no sooner was Bligh's expedition returned than a new enterprise was set on foot, and Captain Keppel of the Royal Navy received secret instructions to convoy Lieutenant-Colonel Worge with Forbes's regiment[302] and two companies of the Sixty-sixth to the West Coast.[303] Within three weeks the troops were embarked at Kinsale, and by the 28th of December Keppel's squadron was lying off Goree. On the following day the ships opened fire on the French batteries, and at nightfall the island surrendered, yielding up over three hundred prisoners and nearly an hundred guns. So with little trouble were gained the West African settlements of the French.
1759.
Jan. 13.
Jan. 15.
But even before Keppel had received his instructions six more battalions[304] were under orders for foreign service; and his squadron had hardly sailed before another fleet of transports was gathering at Portsmouth. Major-General Peregrine Hopson, who had been Governor at Nova Scotia in the difficult years that preceded the outbreak of war, was appointed to the chief command, and Colonel Barrington, a junior officer, was, despite the honourable protests of his brother, the Secretary-at-War, selected to be his second. The expedition was delayed beyond the date fixed for its departure by bad weather, but at length on the 12th of November the transports, escorted by eight ships of the line under Commodore Hughes, got under way and sailed with a fair wind to the west. On the 3rd of January 1759 they reached Barbados, the time-honoured base of all British operations in the West Indies, and there was Commodore Moore waiting with two more ships of the line to join them and to take command of the fleet. After ten days' stay they again sailed away north-westward before the trade-wind. Astern of them the mountains of St. Vincent hung distant like a faint blue cloud; ahead of them two tall peaks, shaped like gigantic sugar-loaves, rose higher and higher from the sea, and marked the southern end of St. Lucia. Then St. Lucia came abeam, a rugged mass of volcanic mountains shrouded heavily in tropical forest, and another island rose up broad and blue not many leagues ahead, an island which the men crowded forward to see, for they were told that it was Martinique. Still the fleet held on; St. Lucia was left astern and Martinique loomed up larger and bolder ahead; then an islet like a pyramid was passed on the starboard hand, the Diamond Rock, not yet His Majesty's Ship; a little farther and the fleet was under the lee of the island; yet a little farther and the land shrank back to eastward into a deep inlet ringed about by lofty volcanic hills, and a few useless cannon-shot from a rocky islet near the entrance proclaimed that the French were ready for them in the Bay of Fort Royal.[305]
Jan. 16.
Jan. 17.