1718-1793.
THE SECOND SIEGE OF GIBRALTAR--THE SIEGE OF
OSTEND--LEXINGTON--BUNKER’S HILL.
Less than three years after the Royal Irish returned from the Low
Countries they found themselves again on foreign service, this time
in the south of Europe. During the war of the Spanish Succession
there had been much fighting in the Mediterranean, where Gibraltar,
and Port Mahon in Minorca, one of the Balearic Islands, had been
captured by England, whose possession of these two fortresses was
confirmed by the Peace of Utrecht. When this peace was signed every
nation hoped that for many years there would be no more wars on the
Continent; but very soon relations between Spain and Austria became
so strained that the British Government decided to send a squadron to
the Mediterranean, to support Austria if Spain attacked her Italian
possessions, and to reinforce the garrison of Minorca. Among these
reinforcements were the Royal Irish, who, less fortunate than some of
the regiments in Minorca, were not selected to serve as marines in
our short but successful campaign off the coast of Sicily.
In 1727, the little world of Port Mahon was startled by grave news
from the mainland. Spain still smarted under the loss of Gibraltar:
every Spaniard looked upon the presence of the red-coats on the Rock
as an affront not only to his nation but to himself, and was prepared
to risk much to recover the fortress. For the second time since the
XVIIIth had been quartered in Minorca, Spain, regardless of the fact
that she was not at war with England, was making preparations to
recapture Gibraltar. On the first occasion, in 1720, though peace
had been restored between the Courts of Madrid and of St James, the
Spaniards, under the pretext of reinforcing their garrison at Ceuta,
assembled a large number of troops near the fortress, laid violent
hands upon a hundred British merchant ships then lying in the ports
of southern Spain, and forced their crews to carry warlike stores to
the bay of Algeçiras. Gibraltar at that moment was in a deplorable
condition--the regiments were weak; there were only two officers
of field rank in the garrison, as the seniors were at home, many of
them without leave; the guns were few in number and bad in quality,
and there was only fourteen days’ supply of food in store. The place
was in such imminent danger that Colonel Kane, then Governor of
Minorca, was ordered to come to the rescue with every man who could
be spared from his command. When he and his reinforcement of five
hundred men[68] arrived off the Rock, he found it threatened by three
hundred Spanish transports, escorted by six galleys, each manned
by 500 slaves, and three 60-gun Maltese war vessels, hired to take
part in the attack. The appearance of the four or five men-of-war
with the Minorca contingent frightened away the Maltese, and the
Spaniards returned to Ceuta without firing a shot. Now, seven years
later, great preparations for war were again on foot--a fleet of
trading vessels was employed in transporting guns, ammunition, and
stores from Cadiz to Algeçiras, where as many as forty ships arrived
in a day; large numbers of troops were assembled, and the peasants
of Southern Andalusia were swept together to serve as labourers in
the siege. Our Government, however, was under the impression that
the Spaniards meditated not a siege but a _coup de main_, and in
December, 1726, warned the authorities at Gibraltar to be prepared
for “a sudden push on the sea line by scaling ladders, encouraged by
the weakness of the garrison.” The bearer of this important message
was not sent from England by a swift frigate, but was left to make
his way to Spain as best he could; landing at Malaga, he chartered a
ship to take him to Gibraltar, but was captured on the voyage by a
Spanish man-of-war and thrown into prison. The despatches, however,
were saved and duly reached their destination; Kane was once more
summoned from Minorca, and with a regiment on the point of returning
to England reached Gibraltar in February, 1727. Doubtless the XVIIIth
was deeply disgusted at being left behind, but in a few weeks came
the turn, not indeed of the whole regiment, but of a portion of it,
to share in the honours of the defence.
According to the memoirs of Marshal Keith, a Scottish soldier of
fortune, who before he rose to eminence in the service of Russia
held a commission in the Spanish army, Kane did not arrive a moment
too soon, for there was but a slender guard at the landward gate,
and the Spanish soldiers were allowed to come into the town without
being searched for arms. A surprise would have been easy, but the
fortress was saved by a strange exhibition of pride. Count de las
Torres, who commanded the Spaniards, haughtily said that “would
the English give him the town, he would not enter it but by the
breach.” In the middle of February his troops, 20,000 strong, took up
positions at San Roque, and in order to provoke hostilities began to
throw up a battery on the western beach. General Clayton, who was
acting Governor at the time, thereupon wrote to de las Torres in the
following terms:--
“Having observed this morning that your Excellency has opened
a trench in order to attack this fortress, which act I hold to
be contrary to the treaties existing between our sovereigns, no
declaration of war yet having reached my knowledge, I therefore
inform your Excellency, that if you do not forthwith order the
works to cease I shall be obliged to take necessary measures in
consequence. I transmit this to your Excellency by my secretary,
to whom I beg a reply may be delivered.
“JASPER CLAYTON.
“GIBRALTAR, _February 22nd 1727_.”
To this letter the Spaniard replied--
“SIR,--I received your Excellency’s letter of to-day’s date, and
regarding the trench which has been opened as you say to attack
the city of Gibraltar, I hereby answer, that what has been done
has been on our own ground, to fortify those places where our
batteries might be of good service, and as there belongs nothing
to that fortress beyond its fortifications, as appears by the
very treaties your Excellency alludes to; and your Excellency
having taken possession of the towers within our jurisdiction,
your Excellency may be fully assured that unless they are
immediately abandoned I will act in the manner your Excellency
insinuates to _me_, acquainting you at the same time that for
besieging the fortress works less distant will be constructed, as
you will learn in due time.
“COUNT DAS TORRES.
“CAMPO DE GIBRALTAR, _February 22nd 1727_.”
This truculent answer clearly meant war, and so Clayton understood
it; but anxious to do nothing to precipitate hostilities, he
contented himself for the moment with firing one shot over the
battery as an intimation that work must cease. For an hour he held
his hand: then, as the Spaniards wholly disregarded the warning, his
guns opened upon them. Thus commenced the second of the series of
sieges in which British troops have successfully defended Gibraltar
against heavy, sometimes well-nigh overwhelming odds. The first,
begun a few months after our capture of the Rock, lasted from
October, 1704, to April, 1705; the second continued from the 22nd
of February till the 23rd of June, 1727; the third, or Great Siege,
lasted nearly four years, from the 16th of July, 1779, to the 5th of
February, 1783.
In 1727, the Spaniards attacked from the land side only; their navy
took no part in the operations, which were exclusively directed
against the North Front and the defences of the Rock from the
extremity of the old Mole to Willis’s Battery. At the beginning of
the siege the garrison had only sixty guns in position, the heaviest
being 32-prs., and as “most of the ordnance was old and worn out,
more casualties occurred from the bursting of guns than from the
enemy’s fire.”[69] The Spaniards, on the other hand, brought into
action ninety-two guns and seventy-two mortars, many of them the best
and most modern of their day. De las Torres lost no time in opening
his trenches. During the night of February 22nd-23rd five battalions
of infantry, a brigade of engineers, and a thousand peasants started
work on the first parallel, which ran from the Devil’s Tower on the
eastern beach along the base of the Rock to the inundation. Next
night two thousand of the enemy were moved northwards into ground
dead to the guns of the batteries, but not to those of two British
men-of-war which, under cover of the darkness, had anchored off the
east of the isthmus connecting the fortress with the mainland, or, in
other words, the neutral ground. As soon as it was light the sailors
brought their guns to bear upon these troops, raking their ranks
from end to end, while from the top of the Rock the soldiers hurled
down upon the Spaniards live shell, hand-grenades, and stones. The
enemy retreated in confusion and with great loss, but de las Torres,
after driving away the men-of-war by an overwhelming artillery fire,
threw up batteries so completely commanding the anchorage on the east
of the isthmus that further flanking attacks of this nature became
impossible. Under a heavy cannonade from the garrison, the Spaniards
worked without intermission, and in spite of heavy and continuous
rain which flooded their trenches and produced much sickness
among their men, gradually completed and unmasked many formidable
batteries, some of which were within a hundred yards of the Rock.
Throughout the month of March, before further reinforcements began to
arrive from England and Minorca, the British troops suffered greatly
from fatigue. The guards and piquets were very heavy, absorbing
a daily average of 1200 rank and file, and a thousand men were
constantly occupied in mounting guns and strengthening the defences.
These working parties were commanded by officers of the line, who
were struck off all other duty and received half a crown a-day extra
pay. The men also drew sixpence a-day extra, and “were assisted by
the Jews, who were employed in taking ammunition to the batteries and
clearing the ditch of the rubbish beaten down from the upper works
by the enemy’s shot; these unfortunate Israelites received no pay,
and for some time were utterly useless, being paralysed with terror
when under fire.”[70] Some of them, perhaps to revenge themselves for
this forced labour, joined in a conspiracy among the “undesirable”
element in the civil population to open the gates to the enemy. The
plot was discovered, and punished in the rigorous fashion of the
day--two Moors, the chief agents of the Spaniards, were put to death,
and after their bodies had been flayed the skins were nailed to
the gates of the fortress as an object lesson on the penalties of
unsuccessful treachery.
The elements during the siege were strongly in favour of the British,
for such deluges of rain fell in April that the Spaniards’ trenches
again became untenable and their cover was destroyed. Until the
damage could be made good the opening of the great bombardment was
necessarily postponed, and during the respite two battalions arrived
from home on the 7th of April, and a fortnight later four transports,
escorted by the _Sole Bay_, brought five hundred troops, detachments
from the corps stationed in Minorca. How many men the Royal Irish
contributed is not known; but as Cosby, their colonel, was in command
of the whole contingent, it is natural to suppose that the regiment
was largely represented. England’s command of the sea enabled her to
reinforce at will, and in the beginning of May two more battalions
reached Gibraltar from home, raising the strength of the garrison to
about 5500 non-commissioned officers and men. With them came Lord
Portmore, the Governor, who was on leave when the siege began: though
quite an old man he had refused to plead his age and infirmities as
an excuse for evading his duty, and now returned to take his share in
the defence. As soon as the Spaniards had finished their batteries
and mounted their guns, they opened a tremendous artillery fire,
which was kept up for fourteen days without intermission. During
every hour of this time seven hundred projectiles were hurled against
our works, and to use the words of an eyewitness, “we seemed to
live in flames.... Attempts feeble in comparison to the resistless
storm of shot and shell that tore over the walls of the fortress,
were made to check this murderous fire in vain, guns were everywhere
dismounted, and as quickly as they were replaced were again
destroyed. In vain the men with dauntless courage threw themselves
upon the ramparts and worked to repair the shattered parapets, the
heavy shot tore away whole tons of earth and buried the guns beneath
the ruins. Butts filled with sand and bound with fascines were heaped
together as some covering from the artillery, but they were no sooner
in position than they were swept away.”[71]
The strain of this bombardment, said to have been greater than any
recorded in the previous history of artillery, proved more than the
Spanish ordnance could stand. By the 20th of May the brass guns began
to droop at the muzzle, the iron guns to burst, and ammunition to
run short. Gradually the enemy’s fire died down, and when there were
but nineteen pieces left in action against them the British restored
their shattered works, and mounting thirteen new guns and more than
a hundred mortars poured upon the Spaniards a storm of projectiles
almost equalling that which had scourged the defenders of the Rock.
By dint of tremendous exertions a hundred guns were placed in
position at the beginning of June, and then the tables were turned,
for this mass of ordnance opened upon the Spaniards with such a crash
that not a single gun was able to reply; the trenches became a heap
of ruins; the parapets of the batteries took fire, and the magazines
blew up. The first day’s cannonade drove the enemy from their
forts, and gradually the whole line of works was completely knocked
to pieces. On the 23rd of June the news reached Gibraltar that a
suspension of hostilities had been arranged between the Governments
of England and Spain: all fighting then ceased; the soldiers had
played their part, and it was now for the diplomatists to settle the
differences between their respective countries. The British losses
were remarkably small. Five officers were killed or wounded; in the
other ranks 69 were killed; 49 died from wounds or disease, and 207
were wounded. It is not known how many of the XVIIIth were injured,
as the casualties of the Minorca contingent are given as a whole. To
the Spanish army, on the other hand, the siege proved very costly.
Fifteen officers were killed, 42 wounded: of the other ranks 346
were killed, 1119 were wounded, and more than 5000 died of sickness
or were permanently invalided by the hardships they had undergone.
No less than 875 Spaniards deserted during the siege, some of whom
surrendered to our piquets and brought much useful information to the
Intelligence officers of the garrison.
When the siege was over, the detachment of the XVIIIth rejoined
headquarters at Minorca, where the regiment remained until 1742.
Nothing would have been known of the life of the Royal Irish during
this period had not copies been preserved of a curious correspondence
between Major Gillman, who was in command, and Major-General
Armstrong, the Colonel of the regiment.[72] The officers were greatly
disturbed at the quality of the recruits received from home, and
Gillman in 1729 thus reports on a recently joined draft of sixteen
men. “They are the worst I ever saw; two of them the officers would
not draw for: one of them wanting above half of his right foot, the
other having his backbone and ribs of both sides distorted in a
prodigious manner, by which means he is an object of compassion, both
of which are to be sent back to England at the expense of the person
that recruited them.”
Two years later Gillman again entreats that recruiting should be
properly conducted.
“I beg leave to assure you that you have a corps of captains
that has the credit of the Regiment entirely at heart and will
begrudge no expense in supporting it on all occasions therefore
I am thoroughly convinced you will give such necessary orders
to the person or persons that are to recruit the regt, that
they receive no bad or old men upon any account whatever. The
standard of the regt, is 5′ 7″ without shoes.... I entreat your
further assistance by getting a few fine fellows at home proper
for the Grenadier Company let the expense be ever so great which
I’ll pay with pleasure, and if two or three beautiful men fit
for sergeants _to_ said Company could be sent over I’ll pay them
sergeants’ pay until they are provided for because two of the
sergeants and the three Corporals are the bane of the Company and
not in the least fit to appear under arms but with disgrace.”
The next letter (November 20, 1736) recommends that a commission
should be granted to Sergeant John Millner, the author of the history
of the war in the Low Countries to which frequent reference has been
made in Chapter II.
“I beg leave to recommend to your favour on this occasion Sergt.
Millner and if it meets with your condescension I am ready to
pay down the money for him. I am thoroughly convinced that when
so good a man has the honour of being known to you you’ll not in
the least begrudge any favours that you may be pleased to lay
upon him which he will always own in the most grateful manner
imaginable.
“As I have mentioned to you in mine of 30th August of the
absolute necessity the regiment lies under that it is high time
that a Proper Person should be thought of to discharge the duty
of Adjutant for the reasons therein mentioned. I assure you I
know of no person so proper in the regiment to discharge that
duty as Sergeant Millner, who is very willing to do it _gratis_,
provided it is for your advantage or any other commands you
should be pleased to lay upon him, as you may judge by his
journal he wrote of the late war in Flanders to which I find you
were pleased to be one of the generous subscribers.
“I should not take the liberty of recommending this poor man to
you if I had not sufficient reasons to be thoroughly sensible
he is capable of discharging any duty that his superiors are
willing to employ him on, and has on all occasions in a very
particular manner merited the esteem of all the officers he
has had the honour of serving under, as you may see by the
generous subscription in his favour, a copy of which I send you
enclosed, by which you will plainly see good generous Kane has
not forgotten the (illegible? regiment) always desiring to be a
subscriber on the like occasion.”
Inclosure--
“We whose names are hereunder written officers of the Royal
regiment of Ireland in consideration of the long and faithful
service of Sergeant John Millner do hereby desire and empower
the agent or paymaster of the said regiment for the time being
to stop or cause to be stopped out of respective subsistence or
arrears the sum set against our names whenever the colonel of the
regiment shall be pleased to recommend the said Millner to his
Majesty for a commission in the said regiment.”
Anthony Pujola, £10 0 0
Stephen Gilman, 10 0 0
Charles Hutchinson, 5 0 0
W^m. Sharman, 5 0 0
Anthony (illegible), 5 0 0
Thomas Borrett, 5 0 0
Thomas Dunbar, 5 0 0
Rob Pearson, 5 0 0
James La Tour, 2 10 0
Henry Barrett, 2 10 0
John Coningham, 2 10 0
---- Cotter, 2 10 0
Jonathan Elder, 2 10 0
George Martin, 5 0 0
E. du Conseille, 2 10 0
---------
£70 0 0
Governor Kane, 10 0 0
---------
In January, 1737, Gillman reports the loss of a subaltern, who can
hardly be said to have been cut off in the flower of his youth.
“ ... This is to acquaint you with the death of Lieut. John
Dalbos of Colonel Pujola’s Company who died last night of a
tedious and lingering disorder attended with the gout, but in my
opinion rather by old age being 75 years....”
The gem of the collection, however, is contained in a letter of
introduction given by Major-General Armstrong to Major Gillman, in
favour of a young officer just posted to the regiment.
“LONDON, _13th June 1737_.
“SIR,--The bearer hereof Ensign Stanhope, son of the Right Hon.
the Lord Harrington, Principal Secretary of State, a younger
brother and very hopeful gentleman, and ambitious to push his
fortune in the Military Way, and moreover being desirous of
qualifying himself for that purpose, has tendered to do his
duty with the regiment. Therefore I earnestly desire you will
encourage him in everything that may conduce to his improvement
in this way of life.
“As the first thing a youth should learn at his launching out
into the World is to know how to live in it, a spirit of economy
should be cultivated in him, for which purpose he should be
induced to keep a pocket memorandum book wherein he may with
other occurrences set down his daily expenses, by perusing of
which in his leisure hours he may see how the money goes out and
be thereby enabled to proportion his disbursement to his cash,
keep out of debt, and thereby avoid the many inconveniences the
want of due care draws young men into such in the whole course
of their lives they may not without great difficulty be able to
extricate themselves.
“And in order thereto as youth is oftentimes moved by the company
they keep I must earnestly desire you will introduce him to that
of the most discreet and sober gentlemen, and particularly that
you will have a watchful eye he keeps company with no sharpers
at play, nor with any persons that may induce him to vices
destructive of his health. Your due regard to what is above
written will very much oblige
“Your most obed^t.
“most humble servant,
“J. ARMSTRONG.”
“_P.S._--Care must be taken on his arrival to board him with some
officer who has a family which I earnestly request you to see
done, for much depends on a right beginning.”
Armstrong died in 1742, and was succeeded as colonel of the regiment
by Colonel Sir John Mordaunt, K.B. On its return home in 1742 the
regiment was quartered in the West of England until the spring of
1744, when it was sent to Fareham to guard prisoners taken in the
wars we were then waging with the Spanish and the French. In 1739 a
trade dispute with Spain had produced a conflict memorable only for
our miserable and costly failure to take Cartagena, a flourishing
settlement on the Caribbean Sea, in the part of South America then
belonging to Spain, and now the Republic of Columbia. Soon afterwards
a great war broke out on the Continent of Europe between France and
Spain on the one side and Austria on the other. Various German States
joined the Franco-Spanish alliance, while England, Hanover, and
Holland sent contingents to the help of Austria. At Dettingen George
II. gained a victory over the French in 1743, but two years later his
son, the Duke of Cumberland, was defeated at Fontenoy,[73] where the
magnificent courage and brilliant local success of the British and
Hanoverians were nullified by the apathy, cowardice, or jealousy of
the Austrians and the Dutch, who after Cumberland had actually forced
his way into the French camp sullenly refused to advance and support
his column at the moment when victory was within his grasp. Before
the news of this glorious, though disastrous day reached England, the
Royal Irish had been warned for service abroad, and formed part of a
small column which reached Cumberland in the middle of May. Welcome
as this reinforcement was, it did not nearly fill the gaps caused by
the slaughter at Fontenoy, where the casualties among the British and
Hanoverian infantry amounted to 32 per cent, the former losing 3662,
the latter 1410 officers and men. With his weakened force Cumberland
could not stand up against the French, and as far as most of the
English regiments were concerned, the rest of the campaign of 1745
was spent in entrenching defensive positions, and then, under the
pressure of the enemy’s manœuvres, abandoning them, only to repeat
the experience farther to the rear, while the French, in greatly
superior numbers, gradually reduced the fortified towns of Flanders.
Some of these places Marshal Saxe, the French Commander-in-Chief,
took by force of arms; others capitulated without resistance, and
in August he was able to detach a considerable body of troops to
attack Ostend, a vital point in Cumberland’s lines of communication
with England. The garrison was hastily reinforced, the last corps to
arrive being the Royal Irish, who on the 9th of August embarked at
Antwerp on “billanders,” as the boats used for inland navigation were
called, and dropping down the Scheldt to Flushing transhipped into
sea-going vessels for Ostend. The town was in a wretched condition
and quite unfit to stand a siege; the Austrians, to whom it then
belonged, had allowed the fortifications to fall into disrepair; the
artillery was deficient in guns and stores of every kind, and the
three thousand infantry, insufficient for the perimeter they had to
guard, were not soldiers of the same nation commanded by generals
of their own army, but detachments of British, of Austrians, and of
Dutch--men with no common language and dissimilar in discipline,
habits, and sentiment. These differences, sufficiently serious in
themselves, were accentuated by the undisguised contempt of the
English for the Allies who had left them in the lurch at Fontenoy.
Nor were these the only difficulties. An essential part in the scheme
of defence was the flooding of a large tract of country round the
town, but this measure had not been carried into effect, for the
Austrians, unwilling to ruin the peasants by inundating the villages
and farms, were so slow in issuing the necessary orders that when
at length labourers were sent to open the sluices, the French were
close at hand and prevented the working parties from accomplishing
their task. To have defended Ostend successfully would have taxed the
powers of a great leader of men, and none arose to snatch the reins
of office from the hands of the governor, a veteran grown old and
decrepit in the Austrian service. The General appointed to command
the British arrived after the town was invested, and was unable to
make his way into Ostend; an Austrian officer of the same rank, de
Chanclos, was more fortunate, but though he acted as confidential
adviser to the Governor he had not the time, even if he possessed the
capacity, to weld the heterogeneous garrison into a good fighting
force.
On the same day that the Royal Irish left Antwerp a French General,
Löwendahl, appeared before Ostend with 21,000 good troops, a numerous
artillery, and 5000 pack horses, laden with fascines for the siege;
he finished his first parallel on the 14th of August, and next day
threw up batteries on the shore to enfilade the harbour and to keep
at a distance the British frigates which hovered about the port.
After thus cutting off Ostend from communication with England he
pushed on his works with vigour, and on the 18th twenty pieces of
artillery and ten or twelve mortars opened a violent cannonade which
lasted for four days almost without intermission. The defending
troops were greatly overworked; half of them were constantly at
the batteries or in the covered way; the remainder had to be ready
to turn out at a moment’s notice, and as there were no casemates
or bomb-proofs, the only shelter for the men when off duty was
in barracks and private houses, which rapidly crumbled under the
French projectiles. The officers were rather better off, for they
shared with the sick and wounded the cellars of the town-hall, made
shell-proof with walls of sandbags. All ranks were vilely fed; the
officer of the XVIIIth who wrote the anonymous ‘Continuation of
Stearne’s Journal’ says “the beef stank, the biscuits were full of
maggots.” There were not enough artillerymen to man the guns; when
the gun carriages were knocked to pieces by round shot there were
none in reserve to replace them, and by the end of the siege only
seven pieces of ordnance remained fit for use. Three days after the
bombardment began de Chanclos wrote gloomily to Cumberland--
“This town is a heap of ruins ... the great fatigue, and entire
absence of quiet, night or day, owing to bomb-shells and
cannon-balls, put the garrison into very bad humour, and it is
really not saying too much to call it bad. I might even add that
one must be an Englishman to put up with what we are suffering
here! The enemy is sapping up to the covered way and is attacking
on our weakest side. Nearly all our cannon have been dismounted,
many artillerymen have been killed and the survivors decline to
work the guns.”
He thus reported the loss of the town:
“_August 24._
“On the night of the 22nd a general assault was made on our
covered way by fifteen companies of Grenadiers, supported by two
battalions. The point chosen was the sea front at low water. We
repulsed the enemy more than once, killing and wounding 500 men,
and making prisoners of 2 captains, a lieutenant, and 30 odd
grenadiers. At day break I assembled my commanding officers to
obtain their opinion as to our situation. Everyone agreed that we
could not hope to hold out for more than a few days.”
As soon as this informal Council of War was over de Chanclos ordered
his drummers to beat the _Chamade_; and after obtaining a truce for
the burial of his dead he offered to capitulate on condition that
the garrison should be allowed to march out of Ostend with all the
honours of war, and be escorted safely to Austrian territory.[74] In
proposing these terms he forgot to specify the Austrian fortress to
which his troops were to be conveyed, the route by which they were
to travel, and the date on which they were to arrive. The French
General, however, noticed these omissions, and with suspicious
alacrity agreed to Chanclos’s terms: the garrison marched out with
all due pomp, fully expecting to be escorted at once to the nearest
Austrian town; but soon the troops learned to their deep disgust that
the French had discovered the flaws in the articles of capitulation,
and were about to send them by a devious route to Mons. This was
considered very sharp practice, not at all worthy of an honourable
enemy; but the King of France had every reason for wishing to
deprive England as long as possible of the services of the defenders
of Ostend, for the young Pretender, Charles Edward, had landed in
Scotland; the rebellion, known in history as “the ’45,” was rapidly
gaining strength; and Government was clamouring for the return from
Belgium of the British troops. After a short halt at Ghent, they were
crowded into canal boats for an involuntary “personally conducted”
tour through Belgium, and from the description left by an officer of
the regiment it is clear that the most ardent sight-seers could have
extracted no pleasure from this journey.
“We were escorted by a party of Horse, and constantly attended by
agents of theirs (the French) whose business it was to inveigle
away our men, and by large promises (of which these rascals
were not sparing) induce them to desert; as our progress was
rendered designedly slow we were only drawn by the boors of the
country a very few miles a day. A French trooper with his carbine
was placed at the head of each billander, who did not fail to
threaten the poor wretches with firing at them whenever they did
not pull to please them. We continued on board this incommodious
embarcation seventeen days, when we arrived in Tournai, where we
disembarked.”
As Tournai is about thirty-two miles from Mons, the column should
have begun its march very early in the morning to have covered the
distance in one day, but the escort refused to move till 8 A.M.,
and consequently it was 7 o’clock in the evening before the British
arrived at St Gillain, a fortified village held by the Austrians
as an outpost to Mons, a few miles farther on. Alleging that in
bringing the garrison of Ostend to this outpost they had fulfilled
their undertaking, the French halted, ceremoniously saluted the
Colours of each regiment, and then retired. The British officers
were at a loss to understand why the French had left the column at
St Gillain instead of escorting it to Mons, but in a few minutes
they learned the reason from an Austrian general whom Cumberland
had sent to meet them. A large body of the enemy’s troops were
lurking in the neighbourhood, with orders to attack St Gillain if
the regiments from Ostend remained there, and if they attempted to
reach Mons to capture or exterminate them on the march; the only
hope of escape, therefore, was to start at once on the chance that
the intercepting force had not already taken up its position. Without
a moment’s delay the ranks were re-formed, the pans of the muskets
re-primed and the bayonets fixed; then in profound silence the weary
troops plodded along the causeway leading towards Mons. “As it was
a moonlight night we could command a view of the country about us,
and as we every moment expected the enemy we continued our march in
the greatest order; not a whisper was to be heard; the officers who
were present will always remember with pleasure the discipline and
good disposition every regiment showed on that occasion. At eleven
we arrived at Mons, where owing to some mismanagement we waited
two hours before we got admittance.”[75] This delay was obviously
caused by bad staff work, but the arrangements of the French were
no better. The enemy, confident that the Ostend troops would be too
tired to push on that night, left no patrols to watch the exits
from the village, with the result that 20,000 Frenchmen took up a
position astride the causeway an hour after the refugees had found
safety within the walls of Mons. For three weeks the Royal Irish
were blockaded in this fortress; then thanks to the manœuvres of a
relieving force they “slipped out” at dead of night, and in a few
days reached the neighbourhood of Brussels.
Affairs in Scotland were now going so badly that nearly every English
soldier was recalled from the Continent to defend England against the
Jacobite invasion. The XVIIIth landed at Gravesend early in November,
and after various changes of quarters embarked for the seat of war in
Scotland in the spring of 1746. On the voyage a vexatious incident
occurred by which the regiment was prevented from taking any active
part in the Scotch campaign. While off the coast of Yorkshire the
transports, containing the 12th, 16th, XVIIIth, and 24th regiments,
were warned that three French men-of-war were cruising in the
neighbourhood; the ships ran for safety into the Humber, where they
remained until the report was proved to have no foundation; and owing
to this delay the Royal Irish did not reach Leith until the day
after the rebels had been finally crushed at the battle of Culloden.
For two years the regiment was stationed in Scotland, in the summer
making military roads in the Highlands, in the winter quartered at
various towns, and when the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle put an end to
the war the XVIIIth was ordered to Ireland, after it had been placed
on a peace footing by reductions so sweeping that the establishment
of each company was fixed at two sergeants, two corporals, one
drummer, and twenty-nine private soldiers.
In 1755, our relations with France were again strained to breaking
point: in America the French garrison of Canada and the British
garrison of the colonies on the Atlantic coast were waging fierce,
though unofficial war in the forests south of the river St Lawrence;
and as the conflict seemed likely to spread to Europe, troops
were withdrawn from Ireland to Great Britain. Among the regiments
hurriedly brought across St George’s Channel was the XVIIIth, rapidly
recruited up to a strength of seventy-eight men per company. But
the “Seven Years’ War” brought no laurels to the Royal Irish, who
were condemned to inactivity in the United Kingdom, while other
corps were winning fame on the Continent and in the West Indies, in
Canada and the Philippine Islands. In 1767, four years after peace
was declared, the regiment was ordered to Philadelphia, the capital
of Pennsylvania, one of the oldest of our American colonies. The
beginning of the lamentable quarrel between the mother-country and
her English-speaking over-sea provinces found the Royal Irish still
quartered at Philadelphia, but in 1774, Boston, the chief town of
the colony of Massachusetts, became such a hotbed of disaffection
that General Gage, who commanded the troops in British North America,
reinforced its garrison with troops drawn from less disloyal centres
of population. Among the regiments ordered to Boston was the
XVIIIth, at that time very weak in numbers, for hardly any recruits
had arrived from home, and those enlisted at Philadelphia were
“bounty-jumpers,” who deserted at every opportunity.
The causes of the breach between England and the provincials, as
the colonists were then called, have been discussed in innumerable
histories, and are far too complex to be dealt with in the chronicles
of a regiment. It is enough to say here that the dispute began about
questions of taxation and trade; the home Government was stupid,
slow, and overbearing in its dealings with the provincials, who on
their side were petulant, aggressive, and impatient of control. Many
of the young Americans believed that as all danger of an attack by
France had been removed by the British conquest of Canada, they would
be better off as citizens of a republic than as subjects of King
George. Both sides were unable to regard the matters at issue from
a point of view other than their own: the English Government failed
to appreciate the restlessness and desire for expansion natural to
young and growing communities of British stock; the provincials were
equally unable to realise how slowly new ideas penetrated into the
brains of the governing classes at home.
[Illustration: MAP N^o. 2.
SKETCH MAP
OF
THE LOW COUNTRIES
1692. 1694-7. 1701-14. 1745
W. & A.K. Johnston Limited, Edinburgh & London.]
At the beginning of 1775 the whole of Massachusetts was seething
with scarcely veiled rebellion, and though the inhabitants of Boston
itself were overawed by the presence of Gage’s troops, the rural
population was so hostile that it was unsafe for officers to go any
distance into the country without a strong and well-armed escort. The
excitement was increased by the action of the provincial Parliament,
which, issuing a proclamation urging all able-bodied men to arm
themselves and join the militia, began to collect warlike stores at
various places in the colony. One of these depôts was at Concord,
a village twenty miles from Boston; Gage determined to burn its
contents, and on the night of the 18th of April sent a raiding party
of eighteen hundred men upon this errand of destruction. Under
command of Lieutenant-Colonel Smith the flank companies--_i.e._
the grenadiers and light infantry[76]--of the 5th, 10th, XVIIIth,
23rd, 38th, 43rd, 52nd, and 59th regiments started from Boston
before midnight, followed a few hours later by Lord Percy with a
supporting body composed of the whole of the 4th and 47th regiments,
the battalion companies of the 23rd, and ten companies of marines.
As it was known that the provincials’ intelligence department was
well organised, every precaution was taken to keep the expedition
secret; but though the gates of the town had been closed early in the
evening and the troops assembled silently at dead of night, their
movements were reported by the anti-British faction in Boston, and
as they marched through the darkness the ringing of bells and firing
of guns warned them that the alarm had been given throughout the
countryside. At daybreak the advance-guard ran into a small body of
militia at Lexington: there was a parley, followed by a skirmish in
which several provincials were hit and the remainder retreated in
disorder. Smith lost no time in pushing on to Concord, and while his
grenadiers began to demolish the stores some of the light companies
guarded the approaches to the village.
So far the raid had been successful, but before describing how
rapidly the tables were turned against the troops, the reader must
realise with what manner of men Smith’s detachment was about to
try conclusions. The original settlers in Massachusetts were of
picked British stock; the large majority had left the old country
to escape from the restraints imposed by the Stuarts upon liberty
of conscience, while others had sought in the New World a freer
and more adventurous life than England could afford. The mere fact
that these men and women had the courage to leave their homes and
friends to face the horrors of the unknown, proved them to be above
the average in courage and steadfastness of purpose; and the hard
life of pioneers; the incessant struggle with nature in a rude
climate; fierce fights with the Red Indian savages, who tortured
their captives before killing them; long hunting expeditions in
vast and trackless forests; life on lonely farms where every man
was thrown on his own resources--all had contributed to develop a
race of over-sea Britons as formidable to their enemies as they
would have been valuable to the Empire if they had been treated with
tact, consideration, and justice. It was not in pioneering alone
that the New Englanders had found vent for their restless energy;
they had taken part in many of our expeditions during the first half
of the eighteenth century. In the disastrous failure at Cartagena
a considerable number of New Englanders shared in our defeat, and
carried home with them a sorry report of the conduct of the army;
a contingent of colonists with justice claimed a large share in
the glory of the capture of Louisburg, the French Gibraltar at the
mouth of the St Lawrence; and in all the interesting, though now
forgotten fights between the English and the French in the country
round Lake Champlain American volunteers fought side by side with
the regular troops. Thus when the provincials determined to take up
arms against England, many of the men who later became generals of
note in the republican army had served their apprenticeship to war
under the Colours of the mother-country. They had studied our drill;
they understood our tactics; they knew the merits and demerits of
our soldiers, and very soon learned how best to meet our slow and
cumbrous movements with their imperfectly trained volunteers, who at
the beginning of the War of Independence had many points in common
with the Boers of 1899. Both were ardently patriotic; self-reliant
to a fault; wholly undisciplined and obeying no order that did not
appeal to them as individuals; both fought in bands of friends and
neighbours, not infrequently commanded by the local preacher. In
one respect, however, the Boers and the American colonists differed
widely. In none of their encounters with the British did the burghers
ever hold their ground with determination when things had begun to
go badly with them, while at Bunker’s Hill, the first real battle
of the revolutionary war, the provincials “fought to a finish” with
such grim tenacity that, had our army been engaged, not with a raw
militia, but with European regular troops, its dearly bought success
would have been extolled as a feat of arms equal to any in the annals
of England.
While Smith’s grenadiers were looking for the warlike stores, the
light infantry outposts were attacked and driven back into Concord
by a very superior force of provincials, who from far and wide had
collected to do battle with the red-coats. Boys, full-grown men,
greybeards almost tottering to the grave, turned out with splendid
enthusiasm from the hamlets of Lincoln, Bedford, Carlisle, and
Chelmsford, and surrounding the village like a swarm of bees, set
themselves to sting the intruders to death with musketry. Smith
determined to retire, and as his column filed out of Concord it
became the target of sharpshooters lurking behind houses and log
fences and in the woods bordering the rough track that led to
Boston. In vain were flanking parties thrown out to keep the enemy
at a distance from the main body; the provincials disappeared among
the trees and then reappeared farther down the road, using their
firearms with deadly effect. The soldiers replied so vigorously that
ammunition began to fail them, and as it was impossible to charge a
foe who had no formation and whose position was only indicated by
isolated puffs of smoke on every side of the column, Smith retreated
as fast as possible towards Lexington, losing men at every step. His
troops straggled into the village so worn out by hunger and thirst,
so demoralised by the biting fire of an almost invisible enemy, that
when they saw Lord Percy’s detachment drawn up to protect them they
flung themselves on the ground, so badly shaken that the supporting
troops had to form square round them. For a time there was a lull in
the firing; but when more contingents joined the provincials they
re-opened such a vigorous fusilade that Percy decided to lose no time
in retiring to Boston, fifteen miles away. He handled with much skill
the regiments which had accompanied him, falling back from position
to position so steadily as to keep his pursuers in some check;
and notwithstanding the ever-increasing volume of fire with which
reinforcements from Cambridge and Dorchester enabled the colonists
to torment him, by nightfall he succeeded in bringing the shattered
column safely into Boston. When the casualty returns were prepared,
it was found that this disastrous little expedition had cost us in
killed, wounded, and prisoners, nineteen officers and two hundred
and fifty of the other ranks--a total to which the flank companies
of the XVIIIth contributed two private soldiers killed and four
wounded,[77] while the losses of the provincials were rather less
than a hundred fighting men. The news of the American success spread
like wildfire throughout New England; colony after colony threw in
its lot with Massachusetts, and in a few days between sixteen and
twenty thousand provincials had assembled for the blockade of Boston,
then garrisoned by eleven battalions, all under strength, the weakest
of all being the Royal Irish, who on the 25th of June could only
muster two hundred and fifty-seven of all ranks. Although there was
a British fleet at anchor in the bay, Gage could do nothing until
more soldiers arrived from England, and by the time the long-expected
reinforcements reached him Boston was closely invested by the
Americans.
When the first emigrants to Massachusetts decided on the site of
their principal town they selected an almost land-locked bay of
the Atlantic, where there was good anchorage and shelter from the
winter gales. This bay was almost bridged by two peninsulas, which
from opposite shores jutted so far towards each other that at the
nearest point they were only five hundred yards apart. Boston was
built on the southern of these headlands; on the northern, the
village of Charlestown nestled at the foot of an underfeature of the
semicircle of low hills enveloping the bay. From Bunker’s Hill, as
the southern end of this underfeature was called, Boston lay within
cannon-shot; but neither side attempted to occupy this important
position until Gage’s reinforcements arrived. Then the British
General determined to seize it, but the Americans, acting either by
intuition or on information from their spies in Boston, forestalled
him. On the evening of the 16th of June twelve hundred men paraded
on the common at Cambridge, attended a prayer-meeting, and then
started on an enterprise the object of which was known only to the
most senior of their officers. The column was commanded by Colonel
Prescott, who had so greatly distinguished himself at the capture of
Louisburg from the French during the Seven Years’ war that the home
Government had offered him a commission in the regular army. Many of
the men in his ranks had seen powder burned in earnest, and though
their muskets were heavy and unwieldy, they had learned to use them
in the pursuit of big game, where an ill-aimed bullet may cost the
hunter his life. By the glimmer of dark lanterns Prescott led his
men across the isthmus connecting the Charlestown peninsula with the
mainland, then crossed Bunker’s Hill and halted on a lower ridge,
Breed’s Hill, where he quickly traced the lines of a redoubt. To the
provincials digging was no novelty, and they plied pick and shovel so
silently and so assiduously that when the day broke the sailors on
board the nearest man-of-war saw to their amazement an entrenchment,
six feet high, standing where overnight there had been nothing
but smooth pasture land. The ships lost no time in opening fire,
and the colonists, unable to reply to our big guns, were growing
unsteady when Prescott hoisted himself on to the parapet where,
under a heavy but ill-directed cannonade he sauntered up and down,
giving directions to his working parties and encouraging those men
whose courage was not as steadfast as his own. With such an example
before them none of the militia flinched; the redoubt grew apace,
and was practically finished before the troops in Boston were ready
to attack it. But though Prescott had every reason to be satisfied
with the temper and industry of his detachment, his situation was a
desperate one, and had Gage availed himself of all the resources at
his command, not one of the twelve hundred adventurers would have
made his way back to the provincial camps. The British had command
of the bay; vessels of light draught could sail close to any part of
the peninsula; the isthmus, the only possible line of retreat for the
Americans, was low, sandy, and less than two hundred yards in width.
Gage could have landed behind the entrenchments, and have attacked
the Americans simultaneously in front and rear; he could have cut off
their retreat and starved them into surrender by fortifying himself
upon the isthmus, or by stationing gunboats on either side of it, he
could have made it absolutely impassable by cross fire. These schemes
were suggested to him, but neither he nor any of the British army
were in the mood for scientific fighting, and he decided to regain
the prestige lost at Concord and Lexington by a direct frontal attack
upon Breed’s Hill.[78] Four complete battalions and twenty flank
companies, including the grenadiers and light infantry of the Royal
Irish, were rowed across to the Charlestown peninsula--the right wing
under General Pigot was composed of the provisional battalion of
light infantry, the 38th and 43rd regiments; in the left wing were
the provisional battalion of grenadiers, the 5th and 52nd regiments,
commanded by General Howe. While the troops were landing on ground
well out of range of the Americans the officers had time to study the
position they were to carry. It was a strong one: a gentle slope,
covered with long grass and cut up by a series of fences calculated
to throw advancing troops into disorder, led up to the redoubt and to
a breastwork, which ran for a hundred yards towards the enemy’s left.
Between the end of this breastwork and the sea was a gap, held by a
detachment posted at the foot of Bunker’s Hill, where the only cover
was a low stone wall, on which hay was piled to give it additional
height. The total frontage occupied was about six hundred yards,
defended when the fight began by fifteen hundred men and six pieces
of artillery.[79] The British brought between two thousand and two
thousand five hundred troops into the field, for in addition to the
units already mentioned the 47th regiment and a battalion of Marines
came into action during the fight.
At three o’clock in the afternoon Howe, who was the senior officer
on the Charlestown peninsula, gave the order to advance. At first
the movement was covered by the fire of eight pieces--field-guns
and howitzers, which had been ferried across from Boston, but soon
the supply of cannon-balls ran out, and as the officer in charge
of the artillery reported that a marsh prevented his pushing on to
within grape-shot range of the enemy, the infantry for a long time
were unsupported by the guns. After the regiments had deployed, the
light infantry was directed against the enemy’s left, while the
grenadiers, 5th and 52nd, with the 38th and 43rd in second line,
were to storm the breastwork and the redoubt. The day was intensely
hot, and the soldiers, burdened with heavy knapsacks, three days’
rations, cartouche-boxes, ammunition, bayonets, and muskets weighing
fifteen pounds, mounted the hill slowly though in good order. They
were allowed to open fire too soon, and their volleys, delivered with
perfect precision, were almost ineffective. The provincials wished
to reply while their enemies were a long way off, but their leaders
knew better than to allow such a waste of ammunition, and while some
threatened to cut down the first man who discharged his firelock
without orders, others ran along the top of the parapet kicking the
muzzles into the air. It was not until the red-coats were within
fifty or sixty yards that the Americans were allowed to shoot, and
then their well-aimed musketry was so terrible that the whole British
line recoiled before it to the bottom of the hill. Howe re-formed his
troops, and again led them up the slope, only to be hurled backwards
once more with a loss so heavy that the glacis of Breed’s Hill looked
more like the breach of a fortress after an assault than an ordinary
battlefield. But though they had twice failed to reach the works of
the Americans neither Howe nor his men were beaten, and the General
had the moral courage to order a third attack, while the soldiers
“had that in them which raised them to the level of a feat of
arms to which it is not easy, and perhaps not even possible, to
recall a parallel. Awful as was the slaughter of Albuera, the
contest was eventually decided by a body, however scanty, of
fresh troops. The cavalry which pierced the French centre at
Blenheim had been hotly engaged but, for the most part, had not
been worsted. But at Bunker’s Hill every corps had been broken;
every corps had been decimated several times over; and yet the
same battalions, or what was left of them, a third time mounted
that fatal slope with the intention of staying on the summit.
Howe had learned his lesson, and perceived that he was dealing
with adversaries whom it required something besides the manœuvres
of the parade ground to conquer. And to conquer, then and there,
he was steadfastly resolved, in spite of the opposition which
respectfully indeed, but quite openly, made itself heard around
him. He ordered the men to unbuckle and lay down their knapsacks,
to press forward without shooting, and to rely on the bayonet
alone until they were on the inner side of the wall.... The
officers who had remonstrated with him for proposing to send the
troops to what they described as downright butchery, when they
were informed of his decision, returned quietly to their posts,
and showed by their behaviour that in protesting against any
further bloodshed they had been speaking for the sake of their
soldiers and not of themselves.”[80]
Prescott had begun to ask for reinforcements of men and ammunition
early in the day, but, as was to be expected in a volunteer army
chiefly officered by amateurs, the staff arrangements were so bad
that very few troops and no ammunition reached him during the action.
Thus when Howe for the third time hurled himself at the redoubt, none
of its defenders had more than two rounds left. These last shots were
not wasted, for as the troops rushed with fixed bayonets towards
the work a venomous fire brought nearly every man in the front rank
headlong to the ground; but without a check the ranks in rear surged
over the parapet, and falling-to with the cold steel drove the
provincials in confusion out of the redoubt. With empty muskets and
with few bayonets the Americans could do little at close quarters,
but many fought stubbornly as they retreated, admirably covered by
the men on Bunker’s Hill, who, though heavily cannonaded by the
fleet, held their ground until their comrades from Breed’s Hill had
shaken off pursuit. This engagement cost our provincial kinsmen 115
killed and 300 wounded, while of the old-country men 19 officers were
killed and 70 wounded; in the other ranks 207 were killed and 758
wounded--a total of 1054 casualties.[81] The enormous proportion of
losses among the commissioned ranks was due to the good shooting of
picked marksmen, who were kept supplied with loaded weapons by their
neighbours. These sharpshooters devoted themselves to picking off
the officers, whose glittering gorgets not only revealed their rank,
but gave an excellent target at which to aim. Of the part played in
the action by the grenadier and light companies of the Royal Irish
no particulars have been preserved; nothing is known beyond the
fact that three privates were killed and an officer, Lieutenant W.
Richardson, and seven privates wounded.[82] Compared to the carnage
in some of the flank companies, the losses of the XVIIIth were
insignificant, yet the actual percentage was high, for in June,
1775,[83] the companies of the regiment only averaged twenty-six of
all ranks, and though the grenadiers and light infantry were usually
a little stronger than the battalion companies, it is doubtful
whether between them they brought more than sixty-five or seventy men
into the field.
Although Gage’s dearly-won victory secured to the British the
possession of the Charlestown peninsula, and thus guaranteed them
against bombardment from Bunker’s Hill, it did not improve the
situation in other respects. Soon after the battle Washington was
elected to the command of the provincial army, and so closely
invested Boston that the garrison began to suffer from the want of
fresh food. At first the daily ration of salt pork and peas was
occasionally varied by fish, but this source of supply was cut
off by the American general, who dragged a number of whale-boats
overland from the neighbourhood of Cape Cod to the head-waters of
one of the rivers flowing into the bay, and manned the flotilla with
sailors, of whom there were many in his ranks. With this mosquito
fleet he effectually stopped all fishing operations, and under the
very guns of our warships captured small craft, and seized the
sheep and cattle grazing on the islands in the bay. That such things
were possible shows the depths of inefficiency to which our fleet
on the American station had sunk in 1775; supine and stupid as were
the generals, they seemed models of talent and energy when compared
with the admirals with whom they were expected to co-operate. The
want of proper food produced much illness, especially among the
wounded, whose diet in hospital was the same as that of the men at
duty; and the mortality was great. Coal ran so short that wooden
houses and churches were pulled down for firewood. Small-pox broke
out and claimed many victims. The duties, heavy everywhere, proved
particularly trying at the outposts, for the provincials, ignoring
the rule of war that piquets are not to be fired upon wantonly,
used to amuse themselves by forming parties to stalk and shoot down
the sentries as they paced their beats. Beyond these occasional
skirmishes there was no fighting; at first the gunners cannonaded
the enemy’s position, but with so little success that the general
decided to waste no more powder in teaching the Americans how to
stand fire. As month after month passed in misery and inaction, the
soldiers, badly fed, thoroughly dispirited and profoundly bored, grew
moody, dirty, careless about their dress, while discipline was only
maintained by the stern sentences of the courts-martial which awarded
punishments of four hundred, six hundred, and even a thousand lashes.
When the Cabinet realised that Boston was in great want of food
they sent out many ships filled with stores of every kind. But
the ill-luck which dogged the British throughout the American war
prevented the arrival of these vessels. Some were lost at sea; others
were blown by a tempest to the West Indies; while others again,
laden with cannon and mortars, muskets, flints, and much powder and
shot fell into the hands of the Americans, who under Washington’s
fostering care were rapidly forming a national fleet. These munitions
of war were not the only provincial spoils: a daring raid against
isolated forts on the Canadian frontier secured a large number of
guns, and early in March, 1776, Washington began to bombard Boston
with British ordnance, and took possession of high ground to the
south of the town, which from want of men neither Gage nor his
successor Howe had been able to include within their lines. This
position commanded the harbour, and the Admiral warned the General
plainly that unless the soldiers could recapture it the men-of-war
and transports would be obliged to put to sea. Thereupon Howe, who
had long realised that it was impossible to maintain himself in
Boston, ordered its evacuation, and on the 17th of March, with the
nine thousand troops remaining to him and eleven hundred loyalists
who refused to remain behind, he set sail for Halifax in Nova
Scotia, in ships so overcrowded that many valuable stores had to be
left to fall into Washington’s hands, while much of the officers’
heavy baggage shared the same fate. The Americans did not hinder
the embarkation, for Howe had given out that if the bombardment was
resumed he would set fire to the town, and Washington, to whom the
threat was reported by his spies, allowed him to depart in peace. The
men-of-war, after seeing the troopships safely out to sea, hung about
the coast of Massachusetts for a time, but effected nothing, and then
were ordered to other parts of the theatre of war.
The XVIIIth had been so worn down by privations and misery at Boston,
that it was ordered home to recruit. The men still fit for active
service were drafted into other regiments, while the officers,
non-commissioned officers, and invalids of the Royal Irish returned
to England in the course of the summer of 1776. The XVIIIth was not
actively employed during the remainder of this war, which, beginning
with our attempt to suppress the rebellion in North America,
developed into a struggle for existence against the combined forces
of France, Holland, and Spain; for these countries, seeing that our
resources were heavily taxed by the struggle in America, and desirous
to pay off old scores, took up arms against us. For a time we lost
the command of the sea, and could not reinforce Cornwallis when
he was besieged at Yorktown by Washington’s provincial troops and
a large body of French regular soldiers. After a gallant defence,
Yorktown fell, and with the lowering of Cornwallis’s flag passed away
Britain’s last hope of reconquering her rebellious provinces. By the
peace of 1783, England was compelled to recognise the independence of
the United States, as her revolted colonies now styled themselves; to
restore Florida and Minorca to Spain, and to cede to France the West
Indian islands of St Lucia and Tobago.
From 1776 to 1783, the Royal Irish were stationed in England and in
the Channel Islands, where their officers drilled and disciplined
the recruits to such purpose that when the young soldiers were
suddenly called upon to perform a most unpleasant duty they were
thoroughly equal to the occasion. Early in 1783 the XVIIIth was in
Guernsey, where one of the regiments of the garrison had acquired
an evil reputation for insubordination. This corps (long since
disbanded) suddenly broke out into open mutiny, and after coercing
its colonel into promising them privileges entirely subversive of
all discipline, apparently settled down; the officers, thinking the
trouble was over for the moment, went to their mess-room and sat
down to dinner, when a shower of bullets came rattling about their
ears. They took cover under the table, but the would-be murderers
mounted to windows from which they could pour plunging fire into the
mess-room, and were shooting vigorously when a sergeant advised the
officers to make a dash for the gate of the fort. They did so, and by
great luck escaping unhurt by the volley with which their appearance
in the barrack-square was greeted, hurried into the town to give
the alarm. Two of their number, however, could not run, and found
shelter in a coal cellar! As soon as this outbreak was reported,
the local militia was turned out, and the XVIIIth ordered to parade
forthwith; the fort was surrounded; the drums sounded a “parley”;
but the mutineers at first declined to treat, and then demanded
that they should be disbanded and sent back to their homes at once.
When the Lieutenant-Governor attempted to reason with them, these
madmen fired at him and next turned their muskets on the troops.
Then more infantry came up, followed by some guns; and there seemed
every prospect of a sharp fight, when the mutineers suddenly lost
heart, piled arms, and marching quietly out of the fort, surrendered.
Happily none of the bullets found its billet among the Royal Irish,
who were greatly praised by the military authorities for their
good behaviour, and the States (the local parliament) of Guernsey
presented a hundred guineas to the non-commissioned officers and
privates of the XVIIIth as a tangible proof of gratitude for their
services on this occasion.
In the summer of 1783 the regiment sailed for Gibraltar, where it was
stationed for the next ten years.