CHAPTER IV.

1793-1817.

THE WAR WITH THE FRENCH REPUBLIC: TOULON--CORSICA--EGYPT. THE

NAPOLEONIC WAR: THE WEST INDIES.

During the early phases of the French Revolution the British

Government assumed an attitude of strict neutrality in the internal

affairs of France, and to this policy it adhered until January,

1793, when the excesses of the Jacobins, culminating in the judicial

murder of Louis XVI., compelled England to join the coalition of

Continental Powers which had taken up arms to restore order in

France, and to safeguard their own dominions, threatened, and in

some cases actually invaded by the troops of the Republic. The

outbreak of war found the British army in a deplorable condition;

it had in no way recovered from its disasters in America, and was

“lax in its discipline, entirely without system and very weak in

numbers. Each colonel of a regiment managed it according to his

notions or neglected it altogether. There was no uniformity of drill

or movement; professional pride was rare, professional knowledge

still more so.... Every department was more or less inefficient.

The regimental officers, as well as their men, were hard drinkers,

the latter, under a loose discipline were addicted to marauding and

to acts of licentious violence.”[84] The _physique_ was often as

defective as the _morale_; some regiments were composed of lads too

young to march, while in others the majority of the rank and file

were old and worn-out men. A few thousand troops were hurried off

to join the forces of the Allies who faced the French in Holland,

and a fleet was sent to the Mediterranean under Lord Hood, with

orders to co-operate with the adherents of the Monarchy, who were

still numerous in the south of France. After Hood passed Gibraltar

he bore up for Toulon, then as now one of the principal French naval

ports.[85] In its harbour and dockyard lay many warships, commanded

by Royalists who hated the Revolution and all its works, and manned

by sailors many of whom agreed with the political opinions of their

officers. As large numbers of the civilian population in the town

shared his views, the Royalist admiral, in the hope of rescuing his

country from the anarchy into which it was plunged, took the extreme

step of entering into negotiations with Hood for the occupation

of the port by the British. The horror inspired by the Revolution

must have been deep indeed to induce an officer of high rank and

unblemished reputation to think of such an arrangement with a nation

regarded by every Frenchman as the hereditary enemy of his race.

Since the Normans after conquering France had overrun and subdued

England, hostilities between the two countries had been frequent,

almost incessant; we had often raided the French coasts, and for a

long time our kings held as their own the western half of France.

In the hundred years immediately preceding the outbreak of the

Revolution the divergent policy of their rulers had plunged the two

countries into a series of five wars: their armies had encountered

each other on innumerable battlefields in Germany and the Low

Countries, in Spain, Canada and the West Indies: their fleets had met

not only in the Mediterranean, the Bay of Biscay, and the Channel,

but in parts of the ocean as remote as the Gulf of Bengal and the

Caribbean Sea; and bands of French adventurers in the service of the

native princes of India had fought with the troops of the East India

Company on the plains of Hindustan. Very bitter must have been the

feelings of the Royalist officers when they agreed to make over to

Hood the forts, the arsenal, the shipping, the docks, and the town of

Toulon itself, on the understanding that this national property was

to be held in trust for the son of Louis XVI., to whom it was duly to

be restored when he ascended the throne. The French men-of-war were

to be dismantled, but as a concession to sentiment, and to show that

Toulon was not a conquered town but still formed part of the Kingdom

of France, the white flag of the Bourbons was to float over its walls.

On August 27, 1793, Hood, who had been joined by a Spanish squadron,

took possession of the forts. The landing party consisted of from

twelve to fifteen hundred marines and soldiers who were serving on

board the ships. There was no officer among them of rank higher than

a captain; they had no tents, or stores, or field-guns, and even had

they possessed the latter, there were no engineers or artillerymen

to plan a battery or to lay a gun. Though the troops met with no

active opposition, the attitude of many of the French sailors was so

threatening that Hood decided to get rid of as many of them as he

could, and selecting four of the least serviceable French vessels,

he unshipped their guns and ammunition, and packed into them five

thousand of the most troublesome republican seamen, with “safe

conducts” for the French ports on the Atlantic seaboard. Having

thus disposed of these “undesirables,” Hood applied to those of the

Allied Powers whose territories lay in the basin of the Mediterranean

for help to hold Toulon against the Republicans who were gathering

against him, and by the beginning of November he had collected a very

heterogeneous force of about 16,000 men. When our Ministers learned

that Toulon was in the hands of the Allies they promised to send

Hood large reinforcements; but neither the importance of the place

as a base of operations against the Republicans, nor the difficulty

of holding its land-locked harbour were adequately appreciated at

home; and when more troops were required for our contingent in the

Low Countries, for an expedition against the coast of Brittany,

and for a raid upon the French islands in the West Indies, the

expected reinforcements dwindled to seven hundred and fifty men

from Gibraltar, who reached Toulon on the 27th of October. At the

beginning of the war the regiments were so weak that this handful of

troops included the XVIIIth Royal Irish,[86] the second battalion of

the Royals, and detachments of Royal Engineers and Royal Artillery.

The exact strength of the XVIIIth is not known, but as on the 25th

of June, 1793, there were only two hundred and eighty-three officers

and men at the Rock, and as a certain number of sick were left in

hospital when the Royal Irish went on active service, the captains

must have commanded companies no larger than the sections of the

present day. The reinforcements from Gibraltar raised the strength

of the British to about 2000 of all ranks; their allies consisted of

6500 Spaniards, 4700 Neapolitans, 1500 Piedmontese, and about the

same number of French Royalists.

An army made up of contingents from several nations is necessarily

less effective than one formed of soldiers of the same race.

Hereditary ill-feeling, professional jealousy, and the want of a

common language combine to lessen its value as a fighting machine,

unless the General-in-Chief possesses a personality as commanding

as that of Marlborough or Wellington. At Toulon none of the senior

officers of the Allies were men of genius, and it is doubtful whether

even a great soldier, with so curiously composed a force, could have

withstood the savage energy that Napoleon, then a young officer of

artillery on his first campaign, infused into the Generals commanding

the besieging troops. The contingents of the Allies were of very

uneven value. The British were excellent, though their courage was

not yet thoroughly disciplined; the Piedmontese were very good; the

French Royalists, though brave, naturally disliked to fight their

republican fellow-countrymen, much as they loathed their political

principles; the Spaniards frequently deserted their posts when

threatened by a vigorous attack, and the Neapolitans were cowards of

the deepest dye. Sir Gilbert Elliot, the diplomatic representative

of Britain in the Mediterranean expedition, describes how a party of

Neapolitans behaved on outpost. After four of them had been killed

in a skirmish, the remainder sent to the officer in charge of the

section “to beg to be relieved as they were all _sick_!” With such

allies it is not surprising to learn that “no post was considered

safe without a proportion of British troops, and they were obliged

to be divided and thin-sowed accordingly.”[87] Whether from genuine

illness, from unfitness for the hardships of active service, or

from overwork, the sick list was enormous, and the Generals could

never count on more than 11,000 or 12,000 effectives--far too few

for the heavy duty they had to perform. To prevent the enemy from

planting batteries on the hills commanding the harbour, the Allies

were forced to hold a perimeter of fifteen miles, guarded by eight

main works with a number of subsidiary connecting posts; and nine

thousand men were constantly employed at the outposts, with a reserve

of three thousand in the town, to overawe the disaffected part of the

population and to reinforce any threatened point.

Up to the time of the arrival of the XVIIIth there had not been much

fighting, for the French were engaged in mounting guns, and were not

yet in strength to attempt a _coup-de-main_. When the Royal Irish

landed they were marched up to the front, but were engaged in no

affair of importance until the 30th of November, when they took part

in a sortie against a large battery placed by Napoleon himself on the

Aresnes heights, from which one of our principal works was commanded.

The assaulting column, formed of 400 British, 300 Piedmontese, 600

Neapolitans, 600 Spaniards, and 400 French Royalists, was commanded

by General O’Hara, one of the staff at Gibraltar, who had landed at

Toulon with the XVIIIth. The instructions he issued were explicit.

When the troops reached the plain at the foot of the heights, the

column was to break into four detachments, the British on the left,

and on reaching the summit they were to capture the battery, occupy

the heights, and then stand fast; on no account whatever were they to

follow the enemy in pursuit. After making their way, first through a

belt of olive-trees intersected by stone walls, and then up a steep

mountain cut into terraces of vineyards, the Allies gained the crest,

surprised the French, and drove them headlong out of the battery. Had

they remembered their orders the success would have been complete,

for the guns could have been rolled down the height and carried back

to Toulon; but unfortunately the men got out of hand, and dashed

madly after the retreating French down a valley and up a hill on

the other side, scattering in all directions as they pursued their

flying foes. They had lost all vestige of cohesion when they were

charged by formed bodies of the enemy, whose counter-stroke changed

our victory into a defeat. General O’Hara was wounded and captured;

and of the four hundred British engaged, twelve officers and about

two hundred other ranks were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.

The survivors fell back to the battery and attempted to hold it,

but being unsupported by their Continental comrades had finally to

retreat into Toulon, though not before they had spiked six guns.

During the next fortnight the volume of the enemy’s fire increased

daily; fresh batteries were unmasked in various directions, and

everything tended to confirm the reports of spies and deserters that

the French, now about 40,000 strong, were preparing for an attack

in force. The preliminary bombardment began at 2 A.M. on the 16th

of December, when Napoleon concentrated the fire of five batteries

upon Fort Mulgrave, one of the most important of the western series

of redoubts. It was held by a mixed force: a body of Spaniards

occupied the northern half of the work; the southern was in charge

of a detachment of British, under Captain W. Conolly, Royal Irish

Regiment. By the end of the day the redoubt was in ruins, with half

its garrison of seven hundred men disabled; at two o’clock in the

morning of the 17th the French advanced against it, but though in

overpowering force, for half an hour they made no progress till

the Spaniards were seized with panic and left the British in the

lurch. The enemy had begun to occupy the northern end of the work,

when Conolly, though himself hard pressed, sent a subaltern and

thirty-six men to retake it. With splendid courage this handful of

soldiers drove back the Republicans, and for a time kept them at bay;

but soon the weight of numbers began to tell, the survivors of the

detachment were forced backwards, and at four o’clock the “remnants

of the XVIIIth” were ousted from Fort Mulgrave. An hour or two later

the French, breaking through the line of fortifications at a second

point, carried Mont Faron, a hill 1800 feet high, which from the

north partly commands the harbour and the town. On the enemy’s side

of this mountain the slopes are steep and rocky; and as much labour

had been expended in increasing their natural difficulties, Faron

was considered so impregnable that only four hundred and fifty men

were employed to guard its two miles of frontage. At daylight every

work upon this hill was attacked and, though none of the British

posts were driven in, the French poured through the gaps left by

the Spaniards and Neapolitans, and established themselves upon the

shoulder of Mont Faron from which Toulon is overlooked.

A disaster such as this had long been foreseen by the senior officers

of the British land forces. General O’Hara, and his successor

General David Dundas, had frequently represented to Lord Hood the

impossibility of making a prolonged defence with so inadequate and

so inefficient a garrison as that at his disposal; they had pointed

out that if one of the main works should be lost there were no

fresh troops with which to recapture it, and that once any part of

the line was pierced the harbour and the fleet would be exposed to

the enemy’s artillery; and they therefore urged that arrangements

should be made beforehand for the orderly and systematic evacuation

of the place when it became untenable. But Lord Hood was strongly

prejudiced against soldiers: throughout his career he had slighted

their advice, and he took no steps to prepare for the retreat which

the Generals warned him was inevitable, with the result that when all

hope of holding the place was gone nothing was in readiness for the

retirement, and nearly the whole of the 17th was spent in settling

details with the naval and military officers of the different

nations. To organise the evacuation was no easy task; not only

were there four thousand sick and wounded to be embarked, but room

had to be found on the transports or the men-of-war for thousands

of Royalists whom it was impossible to abandon to the vengeance

of their republican fellow-countrymen; the French ships had to be

burned or towed out of harbour, and the arsenal and dockyard to be

destroyed. After many hours of weary discussion it was agreed that

the embarkation of the troops should begin at 11 P.M. on the 18th;

the least important posts were to be withdrawn early, others were

to be held to the last moment. The scheme, which required absolute

obedience to orders, was nearly wrecked by the Neapolitans, whose

misconduct Elliot thus described in a despatch to Government--

“ ... These arrangements were made on the 17th before dinner.

Without notice to any person concerned the Neapolitan officers

packed up their baggage, and crowded the streets and quays with

their preparations for departing on the evening of the 17th.

Their baggage was actually sent on board, their general actually

embarked that evening, and the troops, quitting every post where

they were stationed, continued their embarcation publicly from

the quays of the town, from the evening of the 17th to the middle

of the next day. Their eagerness, impatience and panic were so

great on the 18th, in the forenoon, that the embarcation of the

inhabitants was rendered not only difficult but dangerous, the

Neapolitan soldiers firing on those boats which they could not

get admission to. Many of themselves were drowned in attempting

to crowd into the boats, and there was a temporary appearance of

confusion and insurrection in the town. The Neapolitan Admiral

seems to have been in as great haste as the military. He sailed

long before either the British or Spanish squadrons and, without

waiting to make any arrangement about either troops or refugees,

pushed off for Naples, leaving a good number of Neapolitan

troops on board our fleet to find their way home as well as they

can.”[88]

Until nearly all the allied troops were embarked the British and

Piedmontese remained resolutely at their posts, which they did

not quit until recalled into the town to cover the operations of

the sailors, who were burning the arsenal and setting fire to the

French ships. When the outposts were withdrawn the French crowded

into Toulon, and by the light of the flames shot heavily at the

blue-jackets, busy at the work of devastation, in which they were

helped by a party of the XVIIIth, commanded by Ensign W. Iremonger,

one of the two land officers employed on this dangerous duty. For a

time a musketry fight raged; then at the appointed hour the soldiers

gradually withdrew to their boats, gained their ships, and in two

or three hours the whole of the allied fleet was safely out to sea.

Though Hood’s operations on land utterly failed to advance the

cause of the Royalists, and though he did not succeed in destroying

the arsenal completely, or in burning all the enemy’s ships, he

undoubtedly inflicted a serious, though not a crushing blow to the

naval power of France in the Mediterranean by his operations at

Toulon. When he took possession of the town he found floating in

its harbour or building in its dockyard fifty-eight men-of-war of

various sizes: thirty-three he annexed or burned to the water’s

edge, the remaining twenty-five he was obliged to leave behind him,

to become the nucleus of a new fleet. The price paid in human flesh

and blood for this success cannot be stated, for the losses of the

Allies are not to be traced, and the British returns, as far as

they were published in despatches, are incomplete, and in the case

of the Royal Irish do not agree with the muster-roll made a week

after the evacuation. In it appear the names of three sergeants, one

corporal, and thirty-four privates who were killed or died during the

siege; and one officer, Lieutenant George Minchin, two sergeants,

two drummers, one corporal, and thirty-two privates missing.[89] In

the unsuccessful sortie of the 30th of November twenty-four rank and

file of the regiment were wounded; how many were injured in the daily

fighting at the outposts and in the defence of Fort Mulgrave and Mont

Faron cannot be ascertained, but it is clear that the Royal Irish

played a distinguished part in the operations, and in proportion to

their numbers lost very heavily.

As soon as the allied fleet was clear of the harbour of Toulon it

dispersed: the Spaniards and the Neapolitans made sail respectively

for the Balearic Isles and Naples, while Hood put into the bay of

Hyères, a few miles east of Toulon, where he tried to evolve order

out of the chaos produced by the hurried embarkation of the troops,

and to obtain fresh provisions of which he was in great need.

Unwilling to weaken himself by sending British vessels to buy food in

the ports of Italy and Spain, he employed upon this service several

of the French ships, which, in theory at least, were still under the

orders of the Royalist admiral. British infantry were sent on board

them as marines, the XVIIIth furnishing a strong detachment under

Lieutenant Mawby, who on going on board the _Pompée_ found that she

was still flying the Royalist flag, and was commanded by French

naval officers. The duty was heavy, and the cruise must have been

a very unpleasant one, for guards had to be mounted in every part

of the vessel to keep her crew from breaking into open mutiny. In

one respect, however, Mawby and his companions were better off than

their comrades at headquarters, for they escaped the overcrowding

caused by the presence of thousands of Royalists in the ships at

Hyères. Sir Gilbert Elliot mentions that in the cabin he shared

with several naval officers, twenty luckless French refugees, men,

women, and children slept huddled together on the floor; and if no

better quarters could be provided for the diplomatic representative

of England, it is easy to imagine that regimental officers must have

been hideously uncomfortable.

At this time England had no possessions in the Mediterranean east

of Gibraltar, for Minorca, lost to her in 1782, was not recovered

till some years later. Yet to watch Toulon and the southern coast

of France, and to encourage the various Italian States to fight for

their independence which was already threatened by the armies of the

Republic, it was essential that England should possess an advanced

naval and military base in the Mediterranean. Such a post awaited us

in Corsica, where the inhabitants had profited by the turmoil of the

Revolution to rise against their French masters, whom they had driven

into the north of the island. The garrison had flung themselves into

the fortified coast towns of Bastia and Calvi, and the works fringing

the bay of S. Fiorenzo, and the Corsicans soon realised that without

professional soldiers, cannon, and munitions of war, they could not

hope to take these places, while without a fleet it was impossible to

prevent reinforcements from the mainland reaching their enemy. When

both parties to a bargain are eager to come to terms negotiations

are easy, and the islanders willingly agreed to become subjects of

George III., provided that a constitution framed on that of England

was granted to them. As soon as the arrangements for the annexation

of the island were completed Hood left his anchorage at Hyères, where

for five weeks the French had allowed him to remain unmolested, and

made for the bay of S. Fiorenzo, at the western base of the great

northern promontory of Corsica.[90] Driving the French from their

defences, he forced them to fall back on Bastia, their foothold on

the eastern coast; then leaving some of the troops at S. Fiorenzo,

he sailed for Bastia, already closely blockaded by Nelson’s frigates

and cut off from communication with the interior by the Corsicans,

who excelled in all kinds of partisan warfare. Neither Hood’s ships

nor the troops accompanying them were at this time in a satisfactory

condition: his crews were so weak that he had tried to borrow sailors

from the Neapolitan fleet, but without success; and the soldiers

numbered little more than two thousand men, who were very ill

provided for a campaign, as most of their camp equipage, baggage, and

knapsacks had been left behind at Toulon. A board sat in Corsica to

investigate the circumstances in which this loss--a very heavy one to

the men--had been incurred, and recommended that £2 should be paid

to each sergeant and £1 to each private soldier, adding that though

this would not compensate the men for their kit, it was as much as

Government could be reasonably expected to give.

Though Hood, as a sailor, was unversed in the military branches of

the art of war, he decided after a reconnaissance of Bastia that it

would be possible for the troops to carry the defences by a sudden

assault from the land side of the town. Dundas, who though cautious

by temperament was an educated soldier of much experience, condemned

the project as beyond the powers of his small and ill-equipped force,

and this difference of opinion at once intensified the friction

already existing between the Admiral and the General. Unable to

agree on a plan of operations, Hood and Dundas summoned conferences

and councils of war, at which no decision was reached; and their

relations became so strained that they ceased to meet, transacting

business by means of formal and acrimonious correspondence.

Throughout the army the question was hotly debated, and Bastia was

reconnoitred by many officers, the large majority of whom became

converts to Dundas’s opinions. Lieutenant-Colonel Wemyss, who

commanded the XVIIIth, was one of the few in favour of an attack,

but his views do not appear to have been supported by convincing

arguments, for Sir John Moore (then Lieutenant-Colonel Moore, 51st

regiment) recorded in his diary that “Wemyss conceives it would be

mighty easy to take them” (_i.e._, the heights commanding the land

fortifications), “but cannot explain how, and talks so like a boy

that little weight can be given to his opinion.”[91] Hood’s conduct

towards the General and the troops became so intolerable that Dundas

took the unjustifiable step of resigning his command and returning

to England. Not long after his departure reinforcements reached the

officer in temporary command of the army, whose offer to co-operate

in the operations was contemptuously rejected by Lord Hood; and

thus, when on May 24th the garrison of 4500 men surrendered, the

success was due to the Navy, whose blockading vessels had fairly

starved the French into submission, while, with the exception of some

artillerymen and the troops serving on the warships as marines, the

land forces were hardly employed in the reduction of Bastia.

The only place in Corsica now remaining in the occupation of the

French was Calvi, a well-fortified town on the western coast.

Lieutenant-General the Hon. Charles Stuart, who on the day of the

surrender of Bastia had arrived from England to replace Dundas, lost

no time in reorganising his command, and then reconnoitred Calvi,

where he was followed by Moore, who had been placed in command of a

corps termed “the reserve,” and formed of the flank companies of the

Royal Irish, the 50th, 51st, and the remains of the 2nd battalion

of the Royals. Calvi was by no means an easy place to besiege, for

it was surrounded on three sides by the sea and had good interior

fortifications, with outer works of considerable strength. About

eight hundred yards west of the town stood the Mozello, a bomb-proof,

star-shaped fort, built of solid masonry and mounting ten guns; north

of this fort was a smaller battery, flanked by an entrenchment,

and to the east rose another battery of three guns. Two thousand

yards south-west of the town the fort of Monteciesco commanded the

approaches from the southward, which were also swept by the guns of

two French frigates anchored in the bay. But though these works were

formidable, Stuart considered that the “real strength of the defence

lay in the height of the mountains and the rugged, rocky country over

which it was necessary to penetrate. It was necessary to abandon

regular approaches and to adopt rapid and forward movements.” He

accordingly decided to bombard Fort Monteciesco with three 26-prs.,

and under cover of their fire to throw up a heavier battery at night

within seven hundred and fifty yards of the Mozello. The labour of

moving the guns, ammunition, and stores was immense, for roads had to

be cut up the sides of steep hills nine hundred feet in height, and

the cannon to be dragged by hand over the cliffs that overhang the

landing-place. At the end of June more troops were brought round from

Bastia; among them were the Royal Irish, recently reinforced by the

return of the _Pompée_ detachment, which rejoined in time to share in

the fatigues and dangers of the siege.

On the evening of the 6th of July,[92] the Royal Irish were ordered

to make a feigned attack on Monteciesco to draw the attention of

the enemy from Moore’s column, which was preparing to throw up the

battery against the Mozello. The ruse was successful; the XVIIIth

showed themselves so ostentatiously that the French not only turned

all their fire upon them, but reinforced Monteciesco with a body

of men who had been posted on the very spot where Moore proposed

to place his guns. By dint of great efforts the last of Moore’s

26-prs. was dragged into position just before daybreak, thus raising

the number of ordnance playing upon Calvi to eleven guns and three

mortars, whose fire forced the French to evacuate Monteciesco and

move their warships out of range. Stuart then bombarded Mozello

assiduously; the French replied with equal vigour; for some days our

shot appeared to make little impression on the fort, but on the 18th

of July the breach was reported to be practicable, and orders were

issued for its assault that night. To conceal the real object of

his movements, he arranged that an advance battery should be built

in the night in order that the French might think the concentration

of troops was merely for the protection of the working party. The

task was entrusted to the 50th, who, undiscovered by the enemy,

threw up the battery, and then, to quote the words of the despatch,

“the Grenadiers, Light Infantry and 2nd Battalion Royals under

Lieutenant-Colonel Moore of the 51st Regiment and Major Brereton

of the 30th Regiment proceeded with a cool steady confidence and

unloaded arms towards the enemy, forced their way through a smart

fire of musketry, and regardless of live shells flung from the

breach or the additional defence of pikes, stormed the Mozello” ...

while “Lieutenant-Colonel Wemyss, equally regardless of opposition

carried the enemy’s battery on the left without firing a shot.” In

Sir John Moore’s diary fuller details of this spirited affair are

to be found. The various corps assembled at their rendezvous at

1 A.M. on the 19th: the Royal Irish were to attack the half moon

(or Fountain) battery on the left, while “the reserve” stormed the

Mozello. In ground dead to the fort, though only two or three hundred

yards distant from it, Moore formed the grenadiers and light infantry

(among whom, it will be remembered, were the flank companies of the

XVIIIth) into a column of companies.

“Each grenadier carried a sandbag, and we had a sufficient number

of ladders (about fourteen in all). Here we waited for the signal

which was to be a gun from the new battery. The General came to

me about half-past three. About this time some of the enemy’s

sentries or piquets fired upon the XVIIIth upon our left, and

soon after the signal to advance was given. The General kept for

some time at the head of the Grenadiers. A party of artificers a

little in our front began to cut the palisades, but we were upon

them before they could effect it. Captain McDonald, who commanded

the Royal Grenadiers,[93] and I got through the palisades first

at an opening made by our shot. The men instantly followed, and

giving a cheer, ran up to the bottom of the breach. We were

annoyed both by shot, hand-grenades, and live shells, which the

enemy had placed on the parapet and rolled over upon us. Luckily

neither sand-bags nor ladders were necessary. The Grenadiers

advanced with their bayonets with such intrepidity that the

French gave way and ran out of the fort--and in a moment the

place was filled with the five companies of Grenadiers. Two

companies of Light Infantry had been ordered to move quickly

round the foot of the fort and get between the enemy and the

town, but the Grenadiers stormed so briskly that the Light

Infantry could not arrive in time: by this means most of them

escaped.”

The Royal Irish lost no time in entrenching themselves in the

Fountain battery, and worked so well that when at daybreak the enemy

opened with grape and round shot the cannonade did them little harm.

Stuart had every reason for wishing to bring the operations to a

close, for though his casualties were small, bad food, excessive

fatigue, and a pestilential climate had so devastated the camp that

by the middle of July two-thirds of his men were in hospital, and the

remainder were breaking down at an alarming rate. The large number

of sailors who were serving on shore under Nelson were in equally

bad case, and the necessity of watching the French at Toulon made

it impossible to replace them from the fleet. In the hope that the

loss of their principal outworks had shaken the spirit of the French,

General Stuart sent word to the garrison that he was prepared to

offer them favourable terms; but when Casabianca, their commander,

refused to negotiate, he pressed forward his siege-works so fast that

on July 31, thirteen heavy guns, four mortars, and three howitzers

were in position within six hundred yards of the walls of the town.

So effective was their fire that on the 1st of August Casabianca

asked for a suspension of hostilities, undertaking to yield in nine

days if during that time he was not relieved from France, and as no

help arrived the nine hundred men of the garrison surrendered on

the 10th. In recognition of their spirited defence of Calvi, which

had lasted for fifty-one days, they were granted excellent terms;

they marched out with all the honours of war; they retained their

side-arms; and they were sent back to France, free to serve against

us again as soon as they pleased. The capture of Calvi only cost the

British ninety killed and wounded, and the losses of the XVIIIth were

proportionately small. Lieutenant W. Byron, whose death assured to

his young relative, the future poet, the succession to the peerage,

was killed; Lieutenant-Colonel D. D. Wemyss and Lieutenant W.

Johnston were wounded; five rank and file were killed, one sergeant

and seven rank and file wounded.[94] Yet so greatly had the regiment

suffered during the siege from exposure and malarial fever, that when

it marched into Calvi its effectives consisted of two officers, four

sergeants, and seventy-one rank and file, and though the capitulation

brought active operations to an end the losses by disease did not

cease. Malaria had taken so firm a hold of the Royal Irish that

including those who were killed or died of wounds or sickness during

the siege, four officers, nine sergeants, six corporals, and a

hundred and fifty-five private soldiers perished during the first

nine months the regiment was in Corsica.[95] The mortality was at

its height during the month of August, when seventy non-commissioned

officers and men died.

Nothing is known of the doings of the XVIIIth during the remainder

of our short occupation of Corsica, except that several of the

officers were employed on the staff: one of them, Major (afterwards

Lieutenant-General Sir H. T.) Montresor, after acting as Governor

of Calvi, was placed in command of a battalion of islanders, one

of the corps raised for local defence by Sir Gilbert Elliot, who

had been appointed Viceroy of Corsica by the Government at home.

The lives of the officers left at regimental duty must have been

singularly dull, as there was so little communication with England

that letters or papers rarely reached the island, and even the

Ministry, apparently forgetful of the existence of their new

possession, often allowed months to pass without communicating with

Elliot. Some amount of cynical amusement, however, was to be derived

from studying the mental attitude of the population, who, at first

delighted to find themselves British subjects, soon grew weary of the

restraints of law and order enforced upon them by their new rulers.

The Corsicans watched with ever increasing pride the victories in

Italy of their young compatriot, Napoleon Bonaparte; they realised

that the English and their Allies made no headway against France

on land, and they appreciated the importance of Spain’s change of

policy, when after deserting the coalition against the Republic she

placed her Mediterranean fleet at the disposal of our enemy. They

gradually came to the conclusion that in annexing themselves to the

British they had joined the losing side, and when the French troops

overran Tuscany and seized upon Leghorn, the Corsicans began to give

Elliot broad hints that they wished to see the last of him and his

garrison of red-coats. The presence of the French in Leghorn, the

principal port of Tuscany, was a direct menace to us in Corsica;

and as a counterstroke Elliot threw troops into Porto Ferraio, the

capital of the little island of Elba, half way between Bastia and

Leghorn. To the Duke of Tuscany, part of whose dominions Elliot had

thus occupied, the Viceroy justified himself by pointing out that as

Tuscany had been unable to defend her territory on the mainland she

would have been equally impotent to keep the French out of Elba.

In the autumn of 1796, the British Government, alarmed at the

combination of the French and Spanish fleets, determined to

recall their forces from the Mediterranean, and the order for the

evacuation of Corsica was conveyed to Elliot by a despatch, wherein

the abandonment of the island was described in the stilted language

of the period as “the withdrawal of the blessing of the British

Constitution from the people of Corsica.” As a preliminary to the

general retirement the troops had to be concentrated at Elba; and the

embarkation of the garrison of Bastia, which included some, if not

all, of the Royal Irish, was effected in very dramatic circumstances.

When Nelson arrived off the port on October 14, he found the town

in wild confusion: a committee of virulent Anglophobists had seized

the reins of power, and their adherents were virtually masters of

the place; British property had been confiscated; British merchant

ships were forcibly detained in harbour; a plot was on foot to make

the Viceroy a prisoner, and the General, de Burgh, had withdrawn the

garrison into the citadel, where they had been followed by large

numbers of armed men who insisted on falling in with the guards and

sentries at every post. By threatening to blow the town to pieces,

Nelson succeeded in releasing the captured shipping and in saving

public and private property valued at two hundred thousand pounds;

but though the soldiers and sailors slaved night and day their

work was by no means finished when, on the night of the 18th, news

arrived that French troops had landed and were marching rapidly on

Bastia, while the Spanish fleet was reported to be only sixty miles

distant. Even Nelson realised that nothing more could be done: the

troops began to move down to the boats, while the guns were spiked

by Mawby, an officer of the XVIIIth, who with the grenadier company

of the regiment had just been brought back from detachment on the

neighbouring islet of Capreja. Though a heavy gale of wind was

blowing and the sea was very high every soldier was safely embarked;

and not too soon, for as the last boat pushed off from the shore the

French advance-guard began to enter the citadel.

The resources of Elba were insufficient to meet the requirements of

her suddenly increased population, and at first she drew largely

from Piombino, the port of the district known as the Maremma of

Tuscany. By garrisoning the town of Piombino and the villages in

its neighbourhood, the French so effectually cut off this source

of supply that at the beginning of November Elliot and de Burgh

determined to make an effort to reopen communication with the

mainland of Italy, and sent a column, chiefly composed of the

Royal Irish, to drive the enemy from Piombino and the surrounding

country.[96] The expedition is briefly mentioned by the Viceroy in

a letter of November 6, 1796, where he says, “We take Piombino this

evening. This will be the last act of my reign, and in truth the

measure of Porto Ferraio was not complete without it. I shall then

feel very happy about our supplies.”[97] No account of the operations

is to be found in the printed bulletins or among the documents at the

Record Office; but fortunately some details have been preserved in

the Royal Military Calendar, in a précis of the services of General

Montresor. Brevet-Colonel D. D. Wemyss, XVIIIth, was in command

of the column which was composed of the Royal Irish,[98] under

Montresor, then a lieutenant-colonel; two companies of de Roll’s

Swiss regiment, one of the many corps of continental mercenaries

raised at that time by Great Britain, and a detachment of artillery.

These troops were embarked on three frigates, which anchored off

Piombino early on November 7; Montresor was at once sent on shore to

summon the Governor, who after some hesitation agreed to surrender,

and without loss of time the soldiers landed. While Wemyss was

taking measures to secure Piombino and to improvise transport for

his men his heart must have sunk within him. Outside the walls of

the town there were hardly any signs of life; autumnal rains had

flooded the country in every direction; a few stone buildings, half

farm, half fortress, rose like islands out of the water; thick

woods concealed the villages on the neighbouring hills, whither for

centuries the inhabitants of the Maremma have betaken themselves at

night to avoid sleeping on the fever-stricken plain. After a few

hours’ hard work Montresor, with a detachment of five hundred men

and three field-guns, marched to attack the garrison of Campiglia, a

village ten miles off. The country was inundated for three miles, but

“the hedges and trees on either side of the road being their

guide the British waded through, though the buffalos attached

to their guns had twice knocked up. On approaching the town the

Lieutenant-Colonel sent his light company under Captain Dunlop

by another road to cut off the enemy’s picquets from the town,

and to enter it by the Leghorn road, both of which were executed;

after exchanging a few shots with the enemy’s outposts, finding

the British in their rear, they were compelled to disperse

in the woods, which left the town open to complete surprise,

inasmuch, that in front of his advance guard, at one o’clock

after midnight, Lieut.-Colonel Montresor got into the town with

a confidential servant unperceived, and personally seized an

orderly French dragoon going with despatches to the garrison of

Castiglione from the Commandant of Campiglia to announce the

British having landed at Piombino: the entrance to the town was

conducted with so much silence and arrangement that the Royal

Irish Grenadiers reached the French main guard just as the enemy

were turning out under arms, and rushing on them compelled them

to lay down their arms, while the Commandant, (whose quarters

were over the main guard), escaped by dropping out of his window

over the town walls, leaving his supper, (which he had deferred

to this late hour) on the table, and which was finished by the

British officers when the prisoners were secured and the British

patrols and picquets had been placed.

“Colonel Wemyss having proceeded to attack Castiglione,

Lieut.-Colonel Montresor secured his post so effectually that

during three months the strong garrison of Leghorn never molested

them. This little expedition being effectually accomplished, and

the troops of Elba having formed their depôts, the British force

was ordered back to Elba.”

Much had happened while the Royal Irish were on the mainland of

Italy. In November the fleet had been obliged to go to Gibraltar for

stores, and at the end of the year Nelson had reappeared at Elba

with orders from the Admiral, Sir John Jervis (afterwards Lord St

Vincent), to embark the naval establishment and rejoin him in the

Straits of Gibraltar. Nelson, however, brought no instructions for

de Burgh, and when he suggested that as the Navy had abandoned the

Mediterranean it was useless for the troops to remain in Elba, the

brave old general, though much perplexed at the situation, decided

not to quit his post without orders from his military superiors.

Nelson therefore had no option but to abandon de Burgh and his

three thousand troops to their fate, and leaving transports enough

for the whole of the garrison, and a few vessels with which to

keep up communication with the mainland, he rejoined Jervis early

in February, 1797. But neither Jervis nor Nelson forgot that a

detachment of the British army was marooned in a little island off

the coast of Tuscany in imminent danger of capture by the French, and

soon after the great naval victory of Cape St Vincent, Nelson dashed

back into the Mediterranean, ascertained that de Burgh and his troops

were safe, and convoyed them safely to Gibraltar. The Royal Irish

landed at the end of April or the beginning of May,[99] and formed

part of the garrison of the Rock until, two years later, they again

were embarked for active service.

Though the failure of the expedition to Holland in the winter of

1799 had added one more to the list of our unsuccessful enterprises

against the French on the continent of Europe, the spring of 1800

found preparations on foot in England for another effort on land

against the Republic. Lieutenant-General Sir Ralph Abercromby,

with twenty thousand men, was to disembark on the coast of Italy

near Genoa, occupy the maritime Alps, and by cutting the lines of

communication between Italy and France relieve the pressure on the

Austrians, who faced the French on the plains of Lombardy. Owing,

however, to the fear of a Franco-Spanish invasion of Portugal

and the consequent loss of the Tagus as a friendly port, a large

proportion of Abercromby’s force was kept back to defend Lisbon in

case of need, and when Sir Ralph reached Port Mahon, the capital of

Minorca, which since its recapture in 1798 had become our advanced

post in the Mediterranean, he had only six thousand men available

for active operations. He found despatches awaiting him from General

Melas, the Austrian Commander-in-Chief in Italy, begging that British

troops might be sent to Genoa, which, after a heroic defence by the

French under Massena, had recently surrendered to the Austrians.

Melas himself was unable to garrison it adequately: would Abercromby

therefore do so? Ordering four thousand men, among whom were the

XVIIIth Royal Irish, 571 strong, to follow him, Abercromby sailed

at once, but on the voyage learned that at Marengo Napoleon had

defeated the Austrians, who were retreating all along their line, and

had evacuated Genoa. After definitely ascertaining that co-operation

with Melas had become impossible, he returned to Minorca, where for

many weeks the expedition awaited fresh orders from home. During

the halt Abercromby, with the help of Moore who commanded one of

his brigades, devoted himself to the improvement of the troops. He

strengthened their discipline, made their equipment suitable for

active service, and cut down the personal baggage of officers and

men to the articles absolutely necessary for a campaign. While he

was at Minorca reinforcements gradually reached him, including a

body of three thousand eight hundred men who had been on the point

of attacking Belle Isle, off the western coast of France, when they

were hurriedly diverted to the Mediterranean. Thus, when at the end

of August instructions reached him to make a raid against the Spanish

port of Cadiz, Abercromby, after providing an adequate garrison for

Minorca, was able to embark between ten and eleven thousand men.

A fortnight was spent on the voyage to Gibraltar, where on

September 19, he was joined by a large number of troops under

Lieutenant-General Sir James Pulteney, the Colonel of the Royal

Irish regiment.[100] Pulteney had been sent from England to destroy

Ferrol, a naval station on the north-west coast of Spain. He had

landed, driven the Spaniards back to the shelter of their works, and

then discovered that the Government had sent him on a fool’s errand.

Ferrol was well armed and fortified, and as he was not nearly strong

enough to attack it, he wisely abandoned the enterprise, re-embarked

his men, and made sail for the Rock of Gibraltar.[101] Thanks to

Pulteney’s arrival, Abercromby’s command now consisted of about

twenty thousand infantry and a thousand cavalry and artillerymen,

and in a few days a fleet of a hundred and thirty British men-of-war

and troop-ships appeared before Cadiz, the most important naval

harbour in the south of Spain. In the conduct of this expedition

the General had by no means a free hand, for the Ministry, while

ordering him to attack Cadiz, seize the arsenal, and destroy its

docks and shipping, emphatically enjoined upon him not to run much

risk, and not to land his troops unless he was confident that he

could re-embark them safely. Operations conducted on such lines were

doomed to failure. After much discussion with the naval authorities,

a few thousand troops, including the XVIIIth, were crowded into boats

and started for the shore, only to be recalled in a few minutes

to their respective vessels, for the Admiral finally declined to

guarantee their safe return to the ships if once they landed. After

a fruitless paper war between Abercromby and his naval colleague

the whole fleet made sail, successful only in having covered itself

with ridicule. In a few hours a great storm arose: the ships were

driven in every direction along the coast of Morocco, where for many

days they tossed and rolled in a tempestuous sea until the weather

moderated and they reached Gibraltar.

During this storm, and indeed during the whole of the many months

that Abercromby’s command spent on board ship, the sufferings of the

troops were great. The transports were so leaky that when it rained

the men were constantly wet; so crowded that there was often not room

on the decks for all to lie down at the same time; so ill-provided

that the soldiers had no bedding, no covering other than their

regimental blankets if, indeed, they were lucky enough to possess

such articles. The food was not only indifferent, but inadequate, for

an idea prevailed that the ration issued on shore was enough for a

man who was taking hard exercise, and therefore on board ship, where

the soldier theoretically was a passenger with nothing to do, he

required less to eat than on land. In practice the soldier on board

a transport had to work as hard as a sailor, and consequently was

underfed. His diet of salt pork and biscuit, his ration of water,

often scanty and generally tasting strongly of the barrels in which

it was stored, and the absence of vegetables all combined to reduce

his strength, and he often fell a prey to the scurvy which in those

days devastated the fleet.

While the soldiers were still in the Straits of Gibraltar, where,

as a sea-sick officer wrote, “the tossing of the ship rendered

our situation as landsmen at once inconvenient and ridiculous,”

Abercromby received despatches of great importance. Dundas, the

War Minister of England, had become inspired with a great idea--to

abandon the “policy of pin-pricks” by which the conduct of our

campaigns in Europe had been hitherto regulated, and strike a

blow in defence of the Empire as a whole. The year after we had

abandoned Elba Napoleon had embarked in the south of France with

forty thousand men, and after seizing Malta made himself master of

Egypt and sent emissaries to India, whose intrigues among the native

princes complicated our situation in the East.[102] When he returned

to France in 1799 he left behind him an army of occupation, whose

presence was a continual danger to our power in Hindustan. This army

Dundas determined to drive out, and with the reluctant assent of the

other members of the Cabinet he now ordered Abercromby to prepare for

a campaign in Lower Egypt, while a column, formed of a regiment from

Cape Colony[103] and of British and native troops from India, was to

land at Kosseir on the Red Sea, strike across the desert to Upper

Egypt, descend the Nile, and fall upon the enemy from the rear.[104]

The surrender of the French garrison in Malta on September 5, 1800,

placed the island at our disposal, and this, our latest conquest,

was fixed as the rendezvous of the fleet, which arrived there in

detachments from Gibraltar throughout November. While his troops

rested the General strove, though with poor results, to supplement

the scanty information about the topography and resources of Egypt

vouchsafed to him by Dundas, who had provided him with nothing but

an indifferent map of the country and copies of correspondence of

doubtful value, intercepted between the French generals at Cairo

and their official superiors in Paris. Abercromby, however, learned

enough to convince him that without plenty of small craft of light

draught he could not land anywhere in Egypt, and on the 20th of

December he weighed anchor for the Bay of Marmorice--a deep inlet on

the coast of Caramania, one of the provinces of Asia Minor belonging

to the Sultan, who was co-operating with England in the Egyptian

expedition. Here the General expected to obtain shipping, and the

horses with which his cavalry and artillery were still unprovided,

but when after a tempestuous voyage he reached his destination on

January 2, 1801, he found the Turkish officials so dilatory that

he was forced to spend six weeks at Marmorice. Never was time more

usefully employed, however, than during this long halt. The troops

landed, drilled, collected a great store of firewood for use in

Egypt, and prepared gabions and fascines for siege operations.

The ships’ carpenters were occupied in making small water-kegs

and canteens, and light wooden sleighs to be drawn by hand across

the desert. Both services were constantly practised in the art of

disembarkation, and before the fleet again put to sea the soldiers

could swarm down the sides of the transports and take their places in

the boats without confusion; while the sailors who rowed the flotilla

had learned to keep station and to reach the shore in the prescribed

order.

In conceiving the idea of the expedition to Egypt Dundas apparently

thought he had done all that could be expected from him, and took

no trouble about details. He failed to comply with Abercromby’s

requisitions for stores and _matériel_. He did not even send him the

bullion for which Sir Ralph frequently petitioned, and left him so

short of actual cash that for three months the army was unpaid, and

the only way by which cavalry horses could be bought at Marmorice was

with specie produced by well-to-do officers. It is not surprising,

therefore, that Abercromby wrote, “We are now on the point of sailing

for the coast of Egypt with very slender means for executing the

orders we have received. I never went on any service entertaining

greater doubt of success, at the same time with more determination

to encounter difficulties.... The Dutch expedition was walking on

velvet compared to this.”[105] On February 22, he put to sea, and

after a stormy passage of eight days reached Aboukir Bay--a wide

indentation on the western coast of the delta of the Nile, where

in August, 1798, Nelson had destroyed the fleet which had convoyed

Napoleon’s army to Egypt. Though for several days the waves were too

high to admit of disembarkation, small ships were able to reconnoitre

the coast closely, and their reports determined Abercromby to land

on a narrow promontory which, running north-east from Alexandria for

eight or nine miles, separates the waters of the Mediterranean from

those of Lake Aboukir, or Lake Madie as it is sometimes called.[106]

Sir Ralph’s effective strength consisted of about 16,000 men,[107]

including the live hundred cavalry for whom horses had been obtained,

and the gunners with sixteen field-pieces. The infantry were formed

into six brigades and a reserve; the latter, a unit double the

strength of any of the other brigades, was commanded by Major-General

(afterwards Sir John) Moore. The XVIIIth doubtless wished to serve

under the orders of Moore, whose worth they had learned at Calvi,

but, with the 8th, 13th, and 90th regiments, found themselves under

Major-General Cradock, whose brigade (the second) was composed of

battalions of very unequal strength; the 90th had 850 officers and

men; the 13th were weaker by a hundred; the 8th had 538 of all

ranks, while the roll of the XVIIIth only bore 523 names.[108] Not

all the men in Abercromby’s little army were British born. About

2700 were foreigners: Stuart’s Minorca regiment was a collection of

ne’er-do-weels from every country in Europe; De Roll’s was composed

of Swiss; Dillon’s of French Royalists; Hompesch’s dragoons were

Germans, while the Corsican Rangers probably contained some of the

men first raised and disciplined by Montresor of the XVIIIth. To meet

this expedition Menou, the French Commander-in-Chief, had under his

orders about 21,500 combatants; his cavalry was superb; he possessed

sixty-six field-guns; many of his infantry were veterans whom

Napoleon had led from victory to victory in the plains of Lombardy.

Eleven thousand troops were concentrated at Cairo, 6000 were allotted

to the defence of Alexandria and of the coast from that city to

Rosetta; 1800 held the country round Damietta; 1000 were absorbed

by the garrisons of Suez, Balbeis, and Salalieh; the remainder were

stationed in Upper Egypt. The news of Abercromby’s appearance off the

Delta reached Cairo about the same time as a report that a Turkish

force was advancing slowly through Syria upon Egypt. Menou, puzzled

by the situation, frittered away his strength by sending detachments

to unimportant points; he did not at once reinforce Alexandria, and

thus when Abercromby disembarked he was met by only two thousand men

with fifteen pieces of field artillery.

Until March 7, no landing was possible, but then the weather

moderated, and at 2 A.M. on the 8th, a rocket from the Admiral’s

ship gave the signal to put into execution the scheme which had been

repeatedly explained to the officers of both services. The boats

were to form up in three lines at a place of assembly, marked by

three small craft anchored out of gun-shot from the shore. The first

line consisted of large flat-bottom row-boats, each containing fifty

soldiers, and of launches carrying field-guns ready for instant use:

these boats and launches were to be fifty feet apart, and to keep

“interval” and “dressing” accurately. In second line were ships’

boats, to help the first line in case of need. Behind them followed

the third line--cutters towing launches, full of men of the same

regiment as that directly in front of them. These supporting troops

were to land in the fifty-feet interval between the boats of the

first line. The Reserve, the brigade of Guards, and part of the first

brigade were the units named in orders to lead the way, and by 3.30

A.M. they were in the boats; but owing to the extreme shallowness

of the water many of the transports were anchored so far from the

shore that it was not until 9 o’clock that the last of the troops

had reached the rendezvous. Then on the signal of the naval captain

in charge the sailors gave way, and in silence, only broken by the

regular dip of hundreds of oars into the water, rowed steadily

towards the yellow sandhills where the soldiers were to land. Until

the first line was well within their range, the French gave no sign

of life; then they poured a perfect hurricane of round-shot, grape,

and musketry upon the leading boats, several of which were sunk. As

soon as the first shot came whistling round their ears, the sailors

rowed harder than ever; the soldiers, packed like herrings in a tub,

could do nothing but cheer until the bluejackets ran into shallow

water, when their turn came; springing overboard, they waded to the

shore and fought hand to hand with the French, who lunged fiercely

at them with their bayonets as they struggled up the slippery beach.

After a short but sharp engagement the French fell back, but not

until they had inflicted upon us a loss heavy in comparison to

the number of men actually engaged. Among the sailors there were

ninety-seven casualties; of the soldiers a hundred and two were

killed, five hundred and fifteen wounded, and thirty-five missing,

or a total in the two services of seven hundred and forty-nine.

The Royal Irish and the remainder of the second brigade had been

transferred to small Greek ships of light draft, which moved close

inshore to support the advance-guard, but before Cradock could land

his troops, the French were in retreat, and thus on this memorable

day the XVIIIth did not come into action.[109]

Thanks to the success of this thoughtfully planned, carefully

rehearsed, and brilliantly executed stroke, the remainder of the

troops disembarked without difficulty, and began to move towards

Alexandria. Their progress, however, was very slow, for Abercromby

was crippled by want of land transport, and until, by a second

victory, he could win the Egyptians to his side and obtain from

them camels and oxen, he was forced to rely for his supplies on the

service of small craft by which the Navy landed food and stores on

the shores of Lake Aboukir, where his left flank rested. The army

halted on the 12th in front of a line of sandhills strongly held

by the enemy, against whose possible night attack were taken the

precautions thus described in Moore’s diary: “The 90th and 92nd were

put under my command. I divided these two regiments each into three

bodies, separated at such distances as to cover the front of the

army, and I ordered each body to throw forward one-third of their

numbers, with the officers belonging to it, as sentries in front.

This formed a strong chain, which was relieved every hour by one

of the thirds in reserve. The enemy was so close to us that it was

evident that neither army could move without bringing on an action.”

From this position Abercromby determined to drive the French by a

frontal attack combined with a turning movement on their right; and

early on the 13th he moved from his bivouac in three huge columns,

with the 90th regiment covering the front as advance-guard. The

undulations of the ground hid the centre column from the French

General, who, thinking that our right and left columns were too far

apart to be able to support each other, determined to crush them

in detail, and covering his advance by a vigorous and well-aimed

artillery fire descended into the plain. Cradock’s brigade deployed

into line “with great quickness and precision,” and pressed on to

meet the foe, whose cavalry, after a fruitless attack upon the

advance-guard, charged the main body with great determination, but

were so hotly received with well-aimed musketry that they were

driven back in confusion. Of the part played by the XVIIIth in this

episode the regimental record of service contains a spirited, though

somewhat breathless description.

“A strong body of cavalry having meanwhile charged the two

regiments supporting the left of the front line, but being

repulsed, rode in towards the 2nd brigade under cover of some

sand hills; and observing an interval between our regiment and

that on its left, immediately advanced to charge through it,

in which they must have succeeded had they not been checked

by a prompt and well-directed fire from our Light company,

for, unfortunately, the left battalion of the brigade having

mistaken them, from their green uniforms for Hompesch’s Hussars

(attached to our army) not only suffered them to ride quietly

along their front, but kept calling out to us not to fire upon

them; this error having, however, been fortunately discovered

when the cavalry were within a hundred paces of us, and in the

act of wheeling up to charge, the regiment halted, and opening a

steady and rapid platoon fire immediately after that of the Light

company, brought down a great number of men and horses, threw

them into complete disorder and compelled them to a precipitate

retreat, though many of them had even arrived within a few paces

of the interval on our left. Had not the Royal Irish so timely

opened its fire, the brigade must have been broken through, and

the enemy penetrated to the second line, which in firing on them

must at the same time have fired upon us. This cavalry, by a

strange coincidence, happened to be the 18th regiment of heavy

dragoons, and afterwards (when a troop of this corps was taken in

the desert) they said, pointing to us, ‘had it not been for that

regiment it was all over with your expedition.’”

The action raged along nearly the whole line till the French,

staggered by the warmth of their reception and overborne by superior

numbers, gave way, and retired to the works of Nicopolis, where a

series of redoubts stretching across the peninsula barred the way

to Alexandria. The enemy covered his retreat with sharpshooters,

supported by artillery so mobile and so well-handled that the British

were filled with admiration, contrasting its quick movements to those

of our field-guns which, from want of horses, had to be dragged

laboriously by hand. Abercromby hoped to carry the lines of Nicopolis

with a rush, and followed the French across the plain between their

first and second positions until he had to halt to make dispositions

for the assault. For several hours the troops remained stationary

under a murderous fire from the enemy’s batteries, waiting to be

let loose upon the French; but when a careful reconnaissance had

convinced Abercromby that the second position was too strong to be

carried until its defenders had been shaken by a heavy bombardment,

he reluctantly ordered his little army to retire, and in perfect

order it marched back to the ground from which the enemy had been

driven in the morning, and settled down into bivouac. The General

was not unmindful of the good work done by Cradock’s command; in

a general order thanking the troops for “their soldier-like and

intrepid conduct, he felt it incumbent on him particularly to express

his most perfect satisfaction with the steady and gallant conduct

of Major-General Cradock’s brigade;” and in his despatch to the

Secretary of State for War, when describing the events of the early

part of the battle, he stated: “Major-General Cradock immediately

formed his brigade to meet the attack made by the enemy; and the

troops[110] changed their position with a quickness and precision

which did them the greatest honour. The remainder of the army

followed so good an example, and immediately were in a situation not

only to face but to repel the enemy.”

This action cost the lives of six officers and a hundred and fifty

of the other ranks; sixty-seven officers and a thousand and two

non-commissioned officers and men were wounded; the sailors and

marines together lost eighty-four of all ranks; thus the casualties

in both services amounted to thirteen hundred and nine killed and

wounded. Though the regiments under Cradock’s command suffered more

than those in the other brigades, losing upwards of five hundred

officers and men, the XVIIIth escaped comparatively lightly. Captain

George Jones was killed, and three officers, whose names are not

mentioned in the despatch, were wounded; among the other ranks a

sergeant and forty-five rank and file were wounded.[111] The French

did not lose as heavily as we did--not more than five hundred of

their troops were put out of action; but they left in our hands four

guns and a large quantity of ammunition.

The position that Abercromby now held was about a mile and a half

long, stretching from the Mediterranean on the right to Lake

Aboukir on the left. In front of the right and centre rose a chain

of sandhills; on the left the ground was level. While the heavy

artillery and ordnance stores were being slowly moved over the nine

miles of sandy track between Aboukir Bay and the bivouac, the General

entrenched himself, posting Cradock’s brigade on the extreme left of

the front line. On the 19th the big guns began to arrive, accompanied

by a recently landed detachment of Turks, of such doubtful military

value that they were ordered to halt three miles in rear of the

British troops. Next day a friendly Arab chief sent word that

Alexandria had been largely reinforced, thus confirming the reports

from the men on outpost who, through the mists of early morning, had

seen long strings of camels moving towards the town. The Arab added

that the French proposed to attack us at dawn on the 21st. Though not

fully convinced of the truth of this intelligence, Abercromby pressed

on his field-works and ordered his troops to stand to arms before

dawn--a wise precaution, for the Arab’s information proved correct.

Menou had accompanied the reinforcements, and after providing an

adequate garrison for Alexandria, could dispose of 10,000 men with

whom he proposed to surprise the English before daybreak. A feint was

to be made against our left, our centre was to be vigorously engaged,

while the full force of the attack was to fall upon the right. As

soon as it was crumpled up a general movement along the line was

to drive us into the waters of the lake, where we should have to

surrender or to drown.

While it was still black night on the 21st, the French began the

action by demonstrating against our left, and though the false attack

was not pressed home, it was successful in so far that troops,

urgently required on other parts of the field, were diverted to the

help of Cradock’s brigade. In the centre the enemy made no headway

against the steady volleys of the regiments facing him; the danger

was in his onslaught on our right, where for a long time there raged

a series of fierce and confused fights. The piquets were driven in,

and the supports surprised by columns suddenly looming out of the

murky darkness; reinforcements on either side hurried up, guided by

the flash of the muskets and the shouts of the combatants--prisoners

and Colours were taken and recaptured, posts lost and regained. At

one moment the French slipped unperceived between two corps, which in

the very nick of time discovered and routed them with the bayonet: a

little later a regiment, while hotly engaged in front, was surrounded

by a body of the enemy whose presence was revealed by the sound of

a French word of command. The rear rank turned about, and fighting

back to back, drove off their foes. Episodes such as these marked

the progress of the action until the morning light showed Menou that

all his efforts had been unavailing, and that the British line,

shattered but unconquered, still held its ground. Mad with rage at

his want of success the French General, against the advice of his

subordinates, hurled his cavalry, 1200 strong, into the fray. They

crashed through a regiment whose formation they broke, though not

its spirit, and swept like a torrent over the battlefield until they

reached the camp, where the horses stumbled over the tent-ropes and

fell into the burrows, scratched in the sand as sleeping places

by a corps whose tents had not arrived. The confusion thus caused

was increased by the cross-fire of the infantry who had been left

in charge of the baggage, and the French cavalry wheeled about and

retired at full speed, leaving the ground behind them covered with

their dead. After several more desperate efforts, in which assailants

and assailed displayed equal courage, Menou realised that he was

defeated, and fell back slowly and in good order. His solid columns

offered a splendid target to our artillerymen; but the guns were

silent, to the intense surprise of the French who expected to be

pursued by a hail of projectiles, and to the mortification of the

British infantry, who looked to the gunners to avenge their losses.

But the gunners could not fire; they were as short of ammunition as

the foot soldiers themselves, many of whom had been forced to rely

exclusively on their bayonets in the later phases of the battle.

It was not that ammunition was lacking in the camp, but owing to a

staff blunder there was no means of getting it up to the fighting

line. Had our gunners been able to do their duty the French loss

would have been enormous, but they escaped with 2000 casualties.[112]

On our side the gallant Abercromby was mortally wounded; and of the

11,500 men engaged, 10 officers and 233 other ranks were killed; 60

officers and 1133 other ranks wounded; 3 officers and 29 men missing.

The Royal Irish, who were on the left flank of Cradock’s brigade,

and therefore far away from the scene of the serious fighting, were

almost untouched, only two private soldiers being wounded.

Some days were spent in the work of reorganisation. Stores and

ammunition had to be brought up from Aboukir, and arrangements

made with the natives for the hire of transport of various kinds.

Before the army was ready to move Sir Ralph Abercromby died, deeply

regretted by all who had been privileged to serve under him. He was

succeeded by a future Colonel of the XVIIIth, Major-General the Hon.

John Hely-Hutchinson,[113] who decided to leave Major-General Coote

to invest Alexandria with 6000 men, while he himself led the main

column to Cairo. As a first step he sent a mixed force of British and

Turks across the desert to seize Rosetta, a town important from its

position at the mouth of the western branch of the Nile, and a few

days later reinforced it with the XVIIIth and the 90th regiments.

Rosetta was occupied without trouble; our gunboats entered the

Nile; a large amount of river craft was collected, and on May 4,

9500 British and Turkish troops began to move upon Cairo.[114] The

march proved a very trying one, for the heat was great, the climate

exhausting, and as there were no roads and practically no land

transport, the army had to depend for its supplies on the flotilla of

boats which accompanied its progress towards the capital of Egypt.

Sending a strong detachment to the right bank of the river to connect

him with the Turkish contingent from Syria, Hely-Hutchinson worked

up the left bank with the main body, gradually capturing or driving

away the garrisons of the fortified posts along the Nile. In these

small affairs the Royal Irish had no opportunity of distinguishing

themselves.

After joining forces with the Turks, the General pushed on towards

Cairo, and halting on the 16th of June within a few miles of the

city, found the French much more disposed to treat for surrender than

to fight. The perimeter of the crumbling fortifications was far too

large to be adequately defended by the 9000 effective men to whom the

garrison was reduced; outside the walls was encamped an Anglo-Turkish

army of 30,000 men, and Baird’s contingent from India and the Cape

might any day bring an important accession to its strength; the civil

population was disaffected; the _morale_ of the soldiers was shaken

by the events of the campaign; all ranks were anxious to return to

France, and it was well known that the English were prepared to

give them very favourable terms. In such circumstances negotiations

proved swift and easy, and on June 27 a convention was signed, by

which Hely-Hutchinson undertook to escort the French garrison with

its baggage, field-guns and ammunition to Rosetta, and there embark

it for the French ports on the Mediterranean. The march from Cairo

to the sea, organised and commanded by Moore, was a very delicate

operation, brilliantly carried out. It began on July 15: the Turks

led the column; then, after a long interval, followed the French

infantry and guns, their cavalry abreast of them, but on the left

flank, farthest from the river; some distance behind came the British

column, with a detachment of dragoons and Turkish cavalry bringing up

the rear. Three hundred river craft, filled with sick and baggage,

slowly dropped down the Nile under the escort of our gunboats,

and kept up constant communication between the French and English

columns. The embarkation was completed on the 7th of August, when

13,672 soldiers and 82 civilians sailed for France, in transports

convoyed by British men-of-war. Everything passed off smoothly,

but of all the British officers at Rosetta none can have been more

heartily thankful when the last of our enemies was safely on board

ship than Colonel Montresor, who, as governor, was responsible for

the safety of the persons and the property of the inhabitants while

the French troops were marching through the town.

Hely-Hutchinson now turned his attention to Alexandria, which he

had left invested by General Coote when the main body advanced upon

Cairo. Thanks to the arrival of large reinforcements from England,

he was now able to besiege it in due form, and pushed on his works

so fast that on the 31st of August the garrison, 10,528 strong,

surrendered on terms identical with those granted at Cairo. The Royal

Irish were present at the operations, and with other picked troops

their grenadier company, with drums beating and Colours flying,

marched into Alexandria to take formal possession of the town.

Their triumphal entry marked the end of the Egyptian campaign, in

which 500 officers and men were killed and 3058 were wounded: how

many died from sickness is not known, but the mortality must have

been considerable. In the regiment Captain-Lieutenant G. Jones was

killed, and Captain W. Morgue, Ensign H. Bruley, Ensign W. Brand,

Quartermaster M. M‘Dermott, and fifty-six of the other ranks died

from wounds, accident, or disease.[115] During the summer the Royal

Irish suffered much from sickness, and in the month of July more than

two hundred men were in hospital, chiefly from ophthalmia, which was

then raging among the troops.

The thanks of Parliament were voted to both services; the XVIIIth

Royal Irish were authorised to carry on the Colours the emblem of a

Sphinx and the word “Egypt,” and gold medals were presented by the

Sultan to all the officers of the regiment. It was not until the year

1847 that a British medal was issued for this campaign, when only

three officers--Hill, Beavan, and Deane--were still alive to claim

the decoration.

As soon as the last of the French were shipped off to France,

Hely-Hutchinson’s army was broken up. Some of the troops remained to

share with Baird’s contingent the duty of holding Egypt for a few

months; the remainder returned to various parts of the Mediterranean

to await the results of the negotiations for peace then going on

between the Governments of England and France. The Royal Irish

were sent first to Malta, and then on to Elba, where Montresor was

appointed military governor of Porto Ferraio for the second time: and

when peace was declared the regiment was ordered home, and landed at

Cork at the end of August, 1802.

Though there were many signs that France looked upon the Peace of

Amiens more as a truce than as the end of her struggle with Britain,

our Government soon began to cut down all military expenditure with

unreasoning haste. Wholesale discharges from the army left only

40,000 regular troops in the United Kingdom; the militia, after an

embodiment of nine years, were sent to their homes; the “fencible”

regiments of horse and foot, raised for purposes of local defence,

were disbanded. Thus the renewal of the war in 1803 found us almost

disarmed; and when Napoleon collected an army for the invasion

of England the Government was hard pressed to raise a garrison

sufficient for the needs of the United Kingdom. By paying huge

bounties to recruits the numbers of the regular army were increased

to 12,000 cavalry and 75,000 infantry; bounties nearly as large

attracted 80,000 men to the militia; while to escape a mitigated

form of compulsory service, introduced to catch those who would not

serve of their own free will, 343,000 men joined corps of Yeomanry

or regiments of Volunteers. How far this mass of armed men would

have been able to face veterans who had won innumerable victories in

western and central Europe is a matter of speculation. Happily for

England at the beginning of the nineteenth century, though perhaps

unhappily for the British Empire of the present day, the threatened

invasion did not take place, and our race had no opportunity to

ascertain by practical experience whether Britons, very imperfectly

trained to war, are as good fighting men as foreigners who have

thoroughly mastered the soldier’s trade before they meet their enemy

on the battlefield.

[Illustration: MAP N^o. 3.

THE BASIN

of

THE MEDITERRANEAN

1727. 1793-1801

W. & A.K. Johnston Limited, Edinburgh & London.]

Among the steps taken to increase the regular army was the formation

of additional battalions of infantry, one or two of which were

allotted to existing regiments. The second battalion of the XVIIIth

was raised in Ireland in 1803, and, like the first, served in

Scotland until the summer of 1804, when both were sent to Barham

Downs, one of the many camps in the south of England where large

numbers of troops stood ready to march towards the coast. After

a few months the first battalion was ordered to the West Indies,

and sailing in January, 1805, with other corps, reached Jamaica at

the end of April, 935 strong.[116] The second battalion remained at

Barham Downs until the destruction of the Franco-Spanish fleet at

Trafalgar put an end to Napoleon’s hope of obtaining the temporary

command of the Channel necessary to pass his troops across the

Straits of Dover. As soon as all danger of invasion was over the

encampment was broken up, and the second battalion was sent to

garrison Jersey.

When the first battalion of the Royal Irish landed at Kingston,

the island was in a fever of anxiety, for the attitude of the

black population, who had been thoroughly unsettled by the French

Revolution, was disquieting not only in Jamaica but throughout

the British West Indies; the coasts were infested by privateers

who captured many trading ships; and a great fleet of the enemy’s

men-of-war was reported to be cruising among the neighbouring

islands. These French ships, however, were part of the squadrons

sent by Napoleon to decoy Nelson and his brother admirals from their

blockade of the seaports on the Mediterranean and the Bay of Biscay:

their business was to evade the British fleet, to return to Europe,

and joining forces with the remainder of the Franco-Spanish fleet,

to sweep all British men-of-war from the Channel before our admirals

had discovered that they had quitted the West Indies. Thus Jamaica

was not attacked; in a few months the excitement died down, and the

Royal Irish fell into the routine of the station where they were

destined to spend twelve long and dreary years. Once there seemed a

prospect of active service: in 1809 they were ordered to form part of

an expedition to the island of San Domingo,[117] where the Spaniards,

who had again become our allies, were waging war against the French

garrison. Major-General Sir Hugh Carmichael sailed from Jamaica on

the 7th of June, and landed three weeks later at Polingue, a port

thirty miles from the city of San Domingo, where the Spaniards were

besieging the common enemy. As soon as his troops were safe on shore

the General hurried up to the front, and after a reconnaissance

decided that, as the French had already held out for eight months,

the best way to deal with them would be by a sudden and vigorous

attack. At nightfall on the 1st of July his men struggled up from the

coast, tired out by heavy marches in pouring rain, over bad roads,

through unbridged rivers, and without horses for the guns, which

had to be dragged by hand. Next day the French opened negotiations

for surrender, but asked for such impossible terms that Carmichael

made his plans to storm the works, and allotted to the Royal Irish

an important part in the operations; but before the assault could be

delivered the garrison of the town capitulated. As the tricolor still

flew over an outlying fort, Major E. Walker, XVIIIth regiment, was

sent to reduce it with the Light companies of his own and two other

battalions: but on the approach of the little column, the officer in

command laid down his arms, and with the lowering of his flag passed

away the last chance of the Royal Irish of distinguishing themselves

in the second phase of the great war with France. The terms of the

capitulation were much the same as those granted in Corsica and

Egypt: the French were to be sent back to their own country, and

after the Royal Irish had seen their enemies safely embarked for

France, they returned to Jamaica. At the taking of San Domingo none

of the British were injured, while few if any died of sickness in the

island. In this respect they were infinitely more fortunate than the

troops who served in the campaign in San Domingo between 1793 and

1795, when in a few weeks whole regiments were virtually annihilated

by yellow fever, which in those three years claimed 40,000 victims

from the army and the fleet in West Indian waters.

As the news of Wellington’s successive victories in the Peninsula

slowly made its way to Jamaica the hearts of the Royal Irish must

have sunk very low, when they realised that they were stationed in

a part of the world where there was no prospect of adding to the

laurels of the regiment. Yet their lot was common to the greater part

of the British army, scattered over the whole face of the globe, in

places where the prospect of active service seemed most improbable.

In 1809, England had about 218,000 regular soldiers, of whom only

22,000 were fighting in the Peninsula. A hundred and eight thousand

were locked up in the United Kingdom, to give solidity to the 450,000

Militia and Volunteers then under arms; the Mediterranean fortresses

and Sicily absorbed 22,000; the West Indies nearly as many; 8000

guarded the Canadian frontier; the communication with the East was

kept open by 900 at Madeira, and nearly 6000 at the Cape; 4000 held

the Island of Ceylon; in India were 24,000 white troops, of whom

only 4000 were in the pay of the East India Company, while 1300 were

employed in keeping order in the penal settlement of New South Wales.

The corps of artillery and engineers and troops at sea accounted for

the remainder of the army.

The second battalion was no more fortunate than the first, for in

1807 it was ordered to a recently acquired British possession in the

West Indies, the island of Curaçoa. In December, 1806, a gallant

sailor, Captain Sir Charles Brisbane, was ordered to reconnoitre the

island, then belonging to Holland; converting his reconnaissance

into an attack, he led his four frigates into the harbour, and

boarded two Dutch men-of-war lying at anchor; then sending landing

parties on shore he captured the forts, and made himself master

of Curaçoa. The battalion arrived in June, 726 strong,[118] and

remained stationary until 1810, when, worn down to a mere skeleton

by sickness, and by large drafts to the sister battalion in Jamaica,

it was ordered home to recruit. Beyond the fact that in 1808 the

officers presented a handsome sword of honour to Brisbane, whom they

found installed at Curaçoa as Governor, nothing is known of the

doings of the second battalion during its short existence, which

ended in 1814, when, like nearly all the other second battalions of

the army, it was disbanded. The story of its resuscitation will be

found in Chapter IX.

Though neither battalion was on active service in the West Indies,

for the expedition to San Domingo cannot be counted as a campaign,

the regiment was exposed during this tour of duty in the colonies to

dangers greater and far more trying than those of pitched battles.

Tropical diseases played havoc among the Royal Irish: between the

arrival of the first battalion in the middle of 1805, and its return

to England in the spring of 1817, the loss of both battalions

from sickness was fifty-two officers and seventeen hundred and

seventy-seven non-commissioned officers and men.[119] The heaviest

mortality appears to have occurred during the two months ending

January 25, 1806, when a hundred and forty names were added to the

list of dead. Nor was disease the only peril to which the Royal Irish

were exposed. While they were stationed in Jamaica the island was

scourged by earthquakes and tidal waves, by fires that destroyed

flourishing towns, by floods that laid waste great tracts of

cultivated land. There were mutinies among the regiments raised from

the slaves; conspiracies among the negroes to murder the white men,

and widespread disaffection and unrest throughout all the coloured

population. After such grim experiences of West Indian life it was

with feelings of great joy that in January, 1817, the regiment bade

farewell to the land where so many hundreds of their comrades had

perished.