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.

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.