The following are exerpts from "A History of the British Army" Vol. 2 by Sir John Fortescue. The copyright has expired and this is a legal posting.
p.59
Elated by his good fortune, the Admiral three months later
made an attempt on Carthagena, but found that the capture of the port
was a task beyond the strength of his squadron, or
indeed of any squadron without the assistance of seven
or eight thousand troops. His report, however,
indicated the spot where a blow might be struck in
earnest at Spain, and to his influence must be ascribed
the choice of the field of operations.
The Government now girded itself for a serious
effort against New Spain, and decided, like Cromwell,
that New as well as Old England should take a share
in the conflict. Directions were accordingly issued for
the raising of four battalions of Americans under the
colonelcy of Deputy-Governor Spotswood of Virginia,
the recruiting sergeant was set to work on both sides of
the Atlantic ; and all through the summer preparations
went forward for a secret expedition. It was hoped
that it would sail for its destination at the end of June
or the beginning of July, that being declared by experts
to be the latest possible date at which operations could
be conducted with any hope of success.l In April the
regiments appointed for the service began to assemble
in the Isle of Wight, and all was bustle and activity.
There was not a little difficulty with these troops, for
the new regiments of marines were remarkable neither
for drill nor discipline ; but by the energy of Brigadier-
General Wentworth they were licked into shape with
creditable rapidity. Lord Cathcart, who had been
selected for the chief command, was indefatigably
vigilant, and indeed he had good cause, for the ignor-
ance and stupidity of the authorities with whom he had
to deal was almost incredible. Thus, for instance, the
War Office, having depleted regiments of the Line to
p.60
make up the new corps of marines, did not hesitate to
order one of the regiments so depleted upon activeservice ;
and that Cathcart, bound as he knew to a deadly climate in
the heart of the tropics, found that part of the force allotted
to him consisted of boys who had not strength to handle their
arms. Such were the first fruits of the cry of "No Standing Army."
By intense labour the military officers sifted out this ual and turned
the residue to the best account, struggling manfully and not unsucessfully to
have all ready for the expedition to start in July.
Moreover, on the death of Colonel Spotswood, the in-
tended second in command, Lord Cathcart begged that
his place might be filled by Brigadier Wentworth, as a
now late in July, the Admiral who was to escort his
transports had no orders to sail, while his fleet was not even so
much as manned.3 None the less he pushed his preparations
strenuously forward, and, choosing the anniversary of Blenheim
as a day of good omen for the embarkation, put eight regiments
of six thousand men on board ship.4 Then came vexatious delays,
due partly to foul winds, partly to official blundering. Three times
the ships got under way, the men cheering loudly at the prospect of
sailing at last, and three times the wind failed them or turned foul. Cathcart grew more and
1 Cathcart to Newcastle, 17th June 1740. The regiment was
the 27th Foot. Cathcart's description of the recruits is pithy:
" They may be useful a year hence, but at present they have not
strength to handle their arms." The fatuity of thc proceedings
cannot be appreciated unless it be remembered that the transfer of
every man from one reglment to another entailed also a transfer of
cash, and an adjustmcnt of regimental accounts (on an extremely
complicatcd system) between regiment and regimcnt, to say nothing
of the primary evils of drafting.
2 Cathcart to Newcastle, 25th July I740.
3 Ibid.
4 The six new regiments of marines, 15th and 24th of the Line.
p. 61
more anxious. The favourable season was slipping
away fast. The men had been cooped up in the trans-
ports for six weeks and had consumed most of the
victuals intended for the voyage. Scorbutic sickness
was seriously prevalent, and there had already been
sixty deaths. " Surely," wrote the General, " some fresh
meat might be given to the troops " ; but the authorities
had given no thought to such matters. August passed
away and September came, bringing with it the news
that a Spanish fleet had put to sea, and that a French
fleet also was about to sail from Brest. France had
already manifested sympathy with Spain, as was natural
from one Bourbon king to another, and the intentions
of the ships from Brest might well be hostile. Such a
contingency might have been foreseen, but it was not ;
so there was further delay while the British fleet was
reinforced. Then, when the ships were ready, men
could not be found to man them. Two old regiments
of the Line, the Thirty-fourth and Thirty-sixth, were
turned over to the fleet to make up its complement ;
but these were insufficient, and Cathcart was ordered to
send six hundred of his marines also to the men-of-war.
He obeyed, not without warning the Government that
an infectious fever, which had already proved terribly
fatal, was raging in the fleet ; but his warning was not
heeded, possibly in the pressure of business could not
be heeded. So the days dragged on; the transports
waited, and the men died. Cathcart's patience was
strained almost beyond endurance. Apart from the
trouble with army and fleet, an endless shower of vexa-
tions poured on him from Whitehall. His instructions
were constantly altered, and no effort was made to keep
his destination unknown. One statement which was
communicated to him as an important secret had been
the talk of all the coffee-houses in Portsmouth long
before it reached him. The newspapers published
details of every ship-load of arms and stores that was
sent to the West Indies, and as a climax printed in full
a proclamation which had been prepared for Cathcart to
p.64
there are two entrances, of which the eastern, known
from its narrowness as the Boca Chica or Little Mouth,
alone was practicable for line-of-battle ships. The
western side of the Boca Chica was defended by three
forts-St. Jago and San Felipe at the entrance from the
end. To force the Boca Chica so as to admit the fleet
to the harbour was the first task to be accomplished by
Wentworth and Vernon.
On the 20th of March a portion of the squadron,
under Admiral Sir Chaloner Ogle,bettered down the forts
of St. Jago and San Felipe ; three hundred grenadiers
were successfully landed on the western shore of the
Boca Chica ; and on the 22nd the whole of the landing
forces were disembarked excepting the Thirty-Fourth,
the Thirty-Sixth, and the Americans, of which last,
owing to their indiscipline, but three hundred were
trusted ashore. From the moment of disembarkation
Wentworth seems to have lost his head. He knew his
profession by book, but he was wholly without ex-
perience. Though encamped on an island surrounded
everywhere by at least a league of water, he lived in
mortal terror of a surprise, and posted guards so
numerous and so strong that he could hardly find men
to relieve them. Vernon and Ogle watched him with
amazement for two days, and then losing all patience
sent him a letter, the first of a very remarkable series
that was to pass between Admirals and General before
Carthagena. " Push forward part of your force to
Fort Boca Chica," they said in effect, "put the rest of your
men under canvas, hasten your engineers to the siege of the fort,
and choose a few picked men for your guards instead of
harrassing your whole army."1 It was excellent if elementary
advice, though hardly such as a General looks for from an Admiral.
p. 65
Wentworth, to do him justlce, seems to have taken
this counsel in good part, but the delay in opening the
siege of Fort Boca Chica was not altogether his fault.
There was but one engineer in the whole army who was
the least competent to carry on a siege, and there seems
to have been considerable difficulty, first in getting him
to the scene of action at all, and secondly in making
him work when he reached it.1 Ground was broken at
last on 23rd March, but when the batteries had been
built, there were so few efficient artillerymen with the
army that Vernon's seamen were perforce borrowed to
work the guns. Finally, on the 2nd of April Wentworth
opened fire ; and then it was discovered that by some
mistake the camp had been pitched directly in the same
straight line with the battery, so that every shot from
Fort Boca Chica that flew over the British guns fell
among the tents, killing and wounding over a hundred
men on the first day. Nevertheless, with the help of a
Furious cannonade from some of the men-of-war, the
guns of Fort Boca Chica were silenced, and then Vernon
and Ogle began again to stir up Wentworth to action.
"We hope," they wrote on the 3rd of April, " that you
will order your troops to make a lodgment under Boca
Chica to-night . . . the longer you delay, the harder
your work will be." Wentworth hesitated, and nothing
was done. "You ought to storm the fort to-night
Before the moon rises," they wrote again on the 4th.
Wentworth still hesitated, and another day was lost.
Then the naval officers became more peremptory.
"Diffidence of your troops," they wrote, "can only
discourage them. In our opinion you have quite men
enough for the attack of so paltry a fort. You should
have built another battery, for your men would be all
the healthier for more work. Knowing the climate, we
advise you to pursue more vigorous measures in order
to keep your men from sickness."
The tone of the two sailors towards the soldier was
rather that of a contemptuous nurse towards a timid
1 Wentworth to Newcastle. 31st March 1741.
p.66
child, but the last letter had the desired effect, for
Wentworth ordered the fort to be stormed on the very
same day. The English no sooner mounted the breach
than the Spaniards fled almost without firing a shot, and
the dreaded fort of Boca Chica fell into Wentworth's
hands at the cost of two men wounded. Moreover, the
Spaniards in the forts on the other side of the channel
also partook in the panic and abandoned them, leaving
the entrance to the harbour open to the British. The
operations so far had cost one hundred and thirty men
killed and wounded, but two hundred and fifty had
perished from sickness, and over six hundred were in
hospital. The rest of the work needed to be done
quickly if it were to be done at all.
It was however first necessary to re-embark all the
troops in order to carrythem to the head of the harbour
for the attack on the city of Cartegena. This process
occupied more than a week, and did not improve
relations between army and navy. Vernon had already
complained loudly, and probably with some justice, of
the laziness of the soldiers : the blue-jackets had done
all the hard work at the first landing of the regiment
and they were now called upon to do it again. At
length, however, the transports got under way and
proceeded towards the inner harbour, the entrance to
which, like that of the outer port, lay through a narrow
channel with a large fort, called the Castillo Grande, on
one side, and a small redoubt on the other. The
passage was more effectually blocked by a number of
sunken ships which the Spaniards had scuttled after the
forcing of Boca Chica. The fleet, however, quickly
disposed of all these obstacles. The Spaniards aban-
doned Castillo Grande, and the naval officers, with their
usual deftness, contrived to find a channel through the
sunken ships. A few broadsides cleared the beach for
the disembarkation, and on the 16th of April Wentworth
landed. He had begged hard for five thousand men,
but had been answered curtly, though not unjustly, by
the naval commanders that, while they were ready to
p. 67
land them if required, they thought fifteen hundred
men quite sufficient, since time above all things was
precious.1 So with fifteen hundred men Wentworth
proceeded to the further task before him. Then was
now but one outwork between him and Carthagena, a
fort standing on an eminence about seventy feet above
the plain, and called Fort St. Lazar. The approach to
it from the head of the harbour lay through a narrow
defile, at the mouth of which the Spaniards offered some
slight resistance. They soon gave way on the advance
of the British, but poor Wentworth, always a General by
book, with his head full of ambuscades and other traps
for the unwary, halted his men instead of pushing on
boldly, or he would almost certainly have carried Fort
St. Lazar then and there, and broken into Carthagena
itself on the backs of the fugitives. Vernon had urged
upon him on the day before that he had only to act
vigorously to ensure success, but Wentworth was far too
much oppressed by the responsibilities of command to
avail himself of such sound advice. He advanced no
further than to within a league of St. Lazar, encamped,
and pressed the Admiral to send him the remainder of
his men.
Vernon acceded to the request, but with no very
good grace. " I send the men," he wrote, " but I still
think such a number unnecessary. Delay is your worst
enemy ; their engineers are better than yours, and a
vigorous push is your best chance. No time should be
lost in cutting off the communication between the town
and the surrounding country. We hope that you will
be master of St. Lazar to-morrow." The advice was
sounder than ever, but Wentworth could not nerve
himself to act on it. Shielding himself behind the vote
of a council of war, he replied that the escalade of St.
Lazar was impossible ; the walls were too high and the
ditch too deep. Would it not be possible,he asked,
for the ships to batter the fort and sweep the isthmus
that divided the town from the surrounding country
1 Vernon to, Newcastle, 26th April 1741 (enclosures).
p.68
for him. This was too much. The fleet had borne
the brunt of the work so far, but it could not do everything
Vernon`s tone, always overbearing, now became
almost violent. "Pointis,1 who knew the climate, tried
the escalade and succeeded," he retorted, "the ships
can do no more. If you had advanced at once when
the Spaniards fled from you, we believe that you would
have taken St. Lazar on the spot."
After digesting this unpalatable document for a day
Wentworth decided after all for an escalade. Though
he lacked Vernon's experience of the tropics he had a
sufficient dread of the rainy season, which had already
sent sickness into his camp to herald its approach. By
some mischance, for which he disclaimed responsibility,
neither tents nor tools were landed with the men ;2 and
for three nights the troops, young, raw and shiftless,
were compelled to bivouac. On the third day they
began to fall down fast. A council of war was held,
and although General Blakeney, an excellent officer,
opposed the project to the last; it was decided to carry
St. Lazar by assault. The fort indeed was nothing
very formidable in itself, and could have been knocked
to pieces without difficulty from another eminence called
La Popa, about three hundred yards from it. The
only engineer, however, had been killed before Boca
Chica was taken, the artillerymen were wholly ignorant
of their duty, and the tools had not been landed ; so that
although a battery on La Popa would have served the
double purpose of destroying St. Lazar and battering
the walls of the city, no attempt was made to erect it.
And meanwhile the Spaniards had made use of their
respite to strengthen St. Lazar by new entrenchments
which were far from despicable, and had reinforced the
garrison from the town. There, however, the matter
was; and the problem, though it might be difficult in
itself, was so far simple in that it admitted of but one
solution. St- Lazar was practically inaccessible except
1 A French buccaneer who captured Carthagena in 1697
2 Wentworth to Newcastle, 26th April 1741
p.69
on the side of the town, where it was commanded by
the guns of Carthagena. The fort must, therefore, be
carried from that side before daylight, and carried as
quickly as possible.
Early in the morning of the 20th of April the
columns of attack were formed. First came an ad-
vanced party of fifty men backed by four hundred and
fifty grenadiers under Colonel Wynyard, then the two
old regiments, the Fifteenth and Twenty-fourth, jointly
one thousand strong ; after them a mixed company of
the Thirty-fourth and Thirty-sixth ; then the Americans
with woolpacks and scaling ladders, and finally a reserve
of five hundred of Wolfe's marines. The design was
to assault the north and south sides of St. Lazar
simultaneously, Wynyard taking the southern or weaker
Face, while Colonel Grant with the old regiments, on
which Wentworth principally relied, assaulted the
northern. A couple of Spanish deserters were at hand
to guide the columns to their respective positions.
At four o'clock the march began, the fireflies still
flickering overhead against the darkness, the air close
and still, and alive with the chirping, whistling, and
croaking of the noisy tropic night. Within the camp
men were lying in scores under the scourge of yellow
fever, some tossing and raving in delirium, some
gasping in the agonies of the last fatal symptom, some
prostrate in helpless and ghastly collapse, waiting only
for the dead hour before the dawn when they should
die. These were left behind, and the red columns
disappeared silently into the darkness. Before long
Wynyard's men reached the foot of the hill and began
the ascent. The ground before them was so steep that
they were forced to climb upon their hands and knees,
and the officers began to doubt whether their guides
might not have played them false. Still the grenadiers
scrambled on almost to the top of the hill, and then
suddenly, at a range of thirty yards, the Spaniards opened
a deadly fire. Now was the time for a rush, which
would have swept the Spaniards pell-mell from their
p. 70
entrenchments. One man with the traditions of Cutts
the Salamander would have carried the fort in two
minutes; a few score of undisciplined Highlanders
with naked broadswords would have mastered it even
without a leader; but the officers had no experience
except of the parade ground. They were conscious of
a heavy fire in front and flanks,so they wheeled their
platoons outwards to right and left for "street firing,"
as it was called, and advanced slowly in perfect order,
the men firing steadily at the flashes of cannon and
musketry that blazed before them over the parapet.
Raked through and through by grape and round shot,
the soldiers stood without flinching for a moment, and
loaded and fired as they had been taught, while the
grenadiers lit the fuses coolly and hurled their hand-
grenades into the belt of flame before them. They did
not know, poor fellows, that grenades provided for
them were so thick, owing to the negligence of the
authorities of the Ordnance, that not one in three of
them would burst. So Wynyard's column fired duti-
fully on, though the men that composed it were mown
down like grass.
On the northern face of the hill, where Grant's
column was engaged, a like tragedy was enacted.
Grant himself was shot down early, and after his fall no
man seemed to know what should be done. The men
faced the fire gallantly enough and returned it with
perfect order and steadiness, but without effect. There
were calls for the woolpacks and scaling-ladders, but
the undisciplined Americans had long since thrown
them down and fled ; and even had the ladders been
forthcoming they were too short by ten feet to be of
use. There were appeals for guns to silence the Spanish
artillery, but these had been placed in the rear of the
columns and were not to be brought forward. So for
more than an hour this tragical fight went on. Day
dawned at length, the light grew strong, and the guns
of Carthagena opened fire on Grant's column with
terrible effect. Still the English stood firm and fired
p.71
away their ammunition. It was all that they had been
bidden to do, and they did it. Wynyard, his grenadiers
once thrown into action, seemed incapable of bringing
up other troops to support them. General Guise, who
was in charge of the combined attack, showed magnifi-
cent courage and set a superb example, but it was some-
thing more than courage that was wanted. It was now
broad daylight, and the Spaniards began with unerring
aim to pick off the English officers. Finally, a column
of Spanish infantry issued from the gates of Carthagena
to cut off the English from their ships, and at last at
eight o'clock Wentworth gave the order to retire,
Wolfe's marines coming forward to cover the retreat.
The troops had been suffering massacre for close on
three hours, but until that moment not a man turned
his back. There was no pursuit and the retreat was
conducted in good order; but the troops, who had
borne up hitherto against hardship and sickness, were
thoroughly and hopelessly disheartened.
The losses in the assault were very heavy. Of the
fifteen hundred English engaged, forty-three officers
and over six hundred men were killed and wounded,
and the Fifteenth and Twenty-fourth both lost over a
fourth of their numbers. The treachery of the guides
was answerable for much, but the mismanagement of
the ofticers was responsible for more. Colonel Grant
was picked up alive, indeed, but desperately wounded.
" The General ought to hang the guides and the King
ought to hang the General," he gasped out in his agony ;
and a few hours later he was dead. Wentworth, striving
hard to put a good face on the disaster, ordered a
battery to be erected against Fort St. Lazar on that
same evening ; but by this time yellow fever had seized
hold of the army in good earnest, and it was a question
not of building batteries but of digging graves. On
the 21st the General called a council of war and an-
nounced to the Admiral its decision that the number of
men was insufficient for the work, and that the enter-
prise must be abandoned. "since the engineers or
p. 72
pretended engineers of the army declare that they do
not know how to raise a battery, we agree," answered
Vernon and Ogle, "though if our advice had been
taken we believe that the town might have fallen."
Then with studied insolence of tone they proceeded to
offer a few obvious suggestions for the withdrawal of
the troops. The military officers, not a little hurt,
remonstrated in mild terms against the taunt, and after
a short wrangle Wentworth requested a general council
of war, by which it was finally determined that the attack
on Carthagena must be given up as impracticable.
It was indeed high time. Between the morning of
Tuesday the 18th and the night of Friday the 21st of
April the troops had dwindled from sixty-six hundred
to thirty- two hundred effective men. The two old
regiments had been shattered in the attack of
St. Lazar, and the residue of the British force consisted
chiefly of young soldiers, while the twelve hundred
Americans who still survived were distrusted by the
whole army, and were in fact little better than an en-
cumbrance. On the 28th the troops were re-embarked,
poor Wentworth being careful to carry away every
scrap of material lest the Spaniards should boast of
trophies. The naval officers grudgingly consented to
blow up the defences of Boca Chica, and then for ten
terrible days the transports lay idle in the harbour of
Cartagena.
Men "were pent up between decks in smalI vessels
where they had not room to sit upright , they wallowed
in filth ; myriads of maggots were hatched in the putre-
faction of their sores, which had no other dressing than
that of being washed by themselves in their own allow-
ance of brandy ; and nothing was heard but groans and
lamentations and the language of despair invoking death
p. 73
to deliver them from their miseries." So these poor I
fellows lay in this sickly, stifling atmosphere, with the
raging thirst of fever upon them, while the tropical sun
burnt fiercely overhead or the tropical rain poured down
in a dense, gray stream, filling the air with that close
clammy heat which even by a healthy man is grievous
to be borne. The sailors also suffered much, though
less heavily, being many of them acclimatised; and
surgeons could have been spared from the men-of-war
for the transports could Wentworth have been brought
to ask them of Vernon, or Venon to offer them to
Wentworth. So while the commanders quarrelled the
soldiers perished. Officers died as fast as the men, all
discipline on the transports came to an end, and the
men gave themselves up to that abandoned listlessness
which was seen in Schomberg's camp in Ireland, when
the bodies of dead comrades were used to stop the
draughts in the tents. Day after day the sailors rowed
ashore to bury their boats' loads of corpses, for there
was always order and discipline in the ships of war ;
but the raw soldiers simply dragged their dead comrades
up on deck and dropped them overboard, without so
much as a shroud to their bodies or a shot to their
heels. Vernon railed furiously at this nastiness, as he
called it,1 not reflecting that men untrained to the sea
might know no better. So after a few hours the bodies
that had sunk beneath the water came up again to the
surface and floated, hideous and ghastly beyond de-
scription, about the transports, while schools of sharks
jostled each other in the scramble to tear them limb from
limb, and foul birds with ugly, ragged wings flapiped
heavily above them croaking for their share. Thus the
air was still further poisoned, sickness increased, and
the harbour became as a charnel-house. At length, on
the 5th of May, it was resolved to return to Jamaica ;
and two days later the fleet sailed away from the horrors
of Carthagena. By that time the men nominally fit for
service were reduced to seventeen hundred, of whom
not above a thousand were in condition to be landed
against an enemy.
The following is an exerpt from "A History of the British Army" Voo. 2 by Sir John Fortescue.
Fortescue p.291
Meanwhile the French had struck their first blow,
not on the shores of Britain, but at Minorca. As early
as in January the Minislry had received good intelligence
of the true destination of the enemy's armaments, but
had made no sufficient preparation to meet the danger ;
nor was it until the 7th of April that it sent a fleet of
ten ships, ill-manned and ill-found, under Admiral
Byng to the Mediterranean. On the day following
Byng's departure twelve ships of the line under M.
de la Galissoniere, with transports containing sixteen
p.292
thousand troops under the Duke of Richelieu, weighed
from Toulon, and on the 18th dropped anchor off the
port of Ciudadella, at the north-westen end of Minorca.
General Blakeney, the governor, had received warning
of the intended attack two days before, and had made
such preparations as he could for defence; but the
means at his disposal were but poor. He had four
regiments, the Fourth, Twenty-third, Twenty-fourth,
and Thirty-fourth of the Line ; to which Commodore
Edgcumbe, who was Iying off Mahon with a squadron
too weak to encounter the French, had added all the
marines that he could spare before sailing away to
Gibraltar. Even so, however, Blakeney could muster
little more than twenty-eight hundred men. But his
most serious difficulty was lack of officers. He himself
had won his ensigncy under Cutts the Salamander at
Venloo, and he had maintained his reputation for firmness
and courage at Stirling in 1745, but he was now past
eighty, crippled with gout and unfit to bear the incessant
labours of a siege. Nevertheless he was obliged to
take the burden upon him from sheer dearth of senior
officers. The lieutenant-governor of the Island, the
governor of its principal defence, Fort Philip, and the
colonels of all four regiments were absent ; nineteen
subalterns had never yet joined their respective corps,
and nine more officers were absent on recruiting duties.
In all five-and-thirty officers were wanting at their
posts. It was the old evil against which George the
First had struggled in vain, and it was now about to
bear bitter fruit.
Richelieu landed on the 18th. and Blakeney at once
withdrew the whole of his force to Fort St. Philip in
order to make his stand there. This fortress, which
commanded the town and harbour of Mahon, was
probably the most elaborate possessed by the British,
and was inferior in strength to few strongholds in
Europe. Apart from the ordinary elaborations of the
school oi Vauban, it was strengthened by countless
mines and galleries hewn out of the solid rock, which
p.293
afforded unusual protection to the defenders. Blakeney
had little time to break up the roads or otherwise to
hinder the French advance; and Richelieu, marching
into the town of Mahon on the 19th, was able a few
days later to begin the siege. His operations, however,
were unskilfully conducted, and the garrison defended
itselfwith great spirit. An officer of engineers, Major
Cunningham by name, while on his way to England
from Minorca on leave, had heard of the French deslgns
upon the Island and had instantly hurried back to his
old post to assist in the defence ; and his skill and
resource were of inestimable value. So clumsily in
fact did the French manage their operations that it was
nor until the 8th of May that their batteries began to
produce the slightest effect.
Byng meanwhile had arrived at Gibraltar and had
learned what was going forward. He carried the
Seventh Fusiliers on board his fleet for Minorca, and
had orders to embark yet another battalion from
Gibraltar as a further reinforcement. General Fowke,
however, who was in command at the Rock, urged that
his instructions on this latter point were discretionary
only and that he could not spare a battalion, having
barely sufficient men to furnish reliefs for the ordinary
guards. He therefore declined to grant more than two
hundred and fifty men, to replace the marines landed
from the fleet by Commodore Edgcumbe. It is
instructive to note the difficulties imposed upon
the commanders by the neglect of the Government.
Hitherto one of the first measures taken in prospect of
a war had been the reinforcement of the Mediterranean
garrisons. Now, after a full year of warning, they
were left unstrengthened and unsupported. Nay,
Richelieu had lain in front of Fort St. Philip for three
whole weeks before three battalions were at last ordered
to sail for Gibraltar.(The 53rd. 54th and 57th) Byng's fleet
was so slenderly manned that he required the Seventh Fusiliers for duty
p.294
on board ship. and therefore asked Fowke for a battalion
for Minorca ; Fowke's position was so weak that he:
dared not comply ; and Blakeney's force was so in-
adequate that, though he could indeed hold his own in
the fortress, he dared not venture his troops in a sortie.
At length on the 19th of May Byng came in sight
of Fort St. Philip, and on the following day fought
the indecisive action and made the unfortunate retreat
which became memorable through his subsequent fate.
The besieged, though greatly disappointed by his
withdrawal, still defended themselves stoutly and with
fine spirit. The fortress was well stored and the
batteries were well and effectively served. Six more
battalions were now sent to Richelieu, and the French
plan of attack was altered. New batteries were built,
which on the 6th of June, opened fire from over one
the injured works and stood to their guns as steadily
as ever ; but on the 9th the French fire reopened more
hotly than before and battered two new breaches.
Matters were now growing serious ; and on the 14th
a party of the garrison made a sally, drove the French
from several of their batteries and spiked the guns, but
pursuring their success too far were surrounded and
captured almost to a man. Still Richelieu hesitated to
storm ; nor was it until the night of the 27th that he
nerved himself for a final effort and made a grand
attack upon several quarters of the fortress simultane-
ously. The defence was of the stubbornest, and the
successful explosion of a mine sent three companies of
French grenadiers flying into the air ; but three of the
principal outworks were carried, and the ablest officer
of the garrison, Lieutenant-Colonel Jefferies, while
hurrying down to save one of them, was cut off and
made prisoner with a hundred of his men. Cunningham
also was severely wounded and rendered unfit for duty.
With hardly men enough left to him to man the guns,
Blakeney on the 28th capitulated with the honours of
p.295
war, and the garrison was embarked for Gibraltar.
The siege had lasted for seventy days and had cost the
French at the least two thousand men. The losses of
the garrison were relatively small, amounting to less
than four hundred killed and wounded, and the surrender
was no dishonour to the British Army ; but there was
no disguising the disgraceful fact that Minorca was
gone.
On the 14th of July the news reached England,
and the nation, frantic with rage and shame, looked
about savagely for a scapegoat. Bitter and cruel attacks
were made even upon poor old Blakeney, who for all
his fourscore years had never changed his clothes nor
gone to bed during the ten weeks of the siege. Fowke
was tried by court-martial for disobedience of orders
in refusing to send the battalion required of him from
Gibraitar, and though acquitted of all but an error in
judgment and sentenced to a year's suspension only,
was dismissed the service by the King. Finally, as is
known, the public indignation fastened itself upon
Byng ; and the unfortunate Admiral was shot because
Newcastle deserved to be hanged. Old Blakeney alone,
as was his desert, became a hero and was rewarded with
an Irish peerage. Amid all the disgrace of that miser-
able time men found leisure to chronicle with a sneer
that the veteran went to Court in a hackney coach with
a foot-soldier behind it. St. James's would not have
been the worse of a few more courtiers and lacqueys
of the same rugged stamp.
More disasters were at hand; but the general
paralysis in England continued. Such troops as the
country possessed were still distributed as though an
invasion were imminent.
The following is an exerpt from "A History of the British Army" Vol 2 by Sir John Fortescue.
CH. III HISTORY OF THE ARMY 301
Such were among the last legacies bequeathed by
Newcastle's feebleness; and meanwhile the King's
perversity in driving Pitt from office had brought speedy
judgment upon himself and upon Cumberland. The
Duke was defeated by the French at the battle of
Hastenbeck, and retreating upon Stade concluded, or
rather found concluded for him, the convention of
Klosterzeven, whereby he agreed to evacuate the country.
Such were the discouragements which confronted Pitt
on resuming oftice. It was hard to see how he could
initiate any operations of value at so late a period of
the year, but there was one species of diversion which,
though little recommended by experience of the past,
lay open to him still, namely a descent upon the French
coast. A young Scottish officer, who had travelled in
France, gave intelligence based on no very careful or
recent observation, that the fortifications of Rochefort
were easily assailable ; and Pitt on the receipt of this
intelligence at once conceived the design of surprising
Rochefort and burning the ships in the Charente below
it. Somewhat hastily it was determined to send ten of
the best battalions and a powerful fleet on this enter-
prise, and the military command was offered to Lord
George Sackville, who not relishing the task found an
excuse for declining. Pitt was then for entrusting it to
General Henry Conway, but the King objected to this
officer on the score of his youth, and insisted on setting
over him Sir John Mordaunt, a veteran who had showed
merit in the past, but had now lost his nerve and was
conscious that he had lost it. He and Conway alike
objected to the project as based on flimsy and insufficient
information, but both thought themselves bound in
honour to accept the trust confided to them.
Though the expedition had been decided upon in
July, it was not until two months later that it sailed
from England, and meanwhile the troops waited as
usual in the Isle of Wight.(The regiments were the
3rd, 5th, 8th, 15th, 20th, 24th, 25th, 30th, 50th, 51st)
There was much delay in
308 HISTORY OF THE ARMY Book IX
providing transports, and the embarkation was so ill-
managed that the troops were obliged to row a full mile
to their ships. On the 8th of September, however, the
vessels put to sea under convoy of sixteen sail of the
line under Sir Edward Hawke, and after much delay
from foul winds and calms anchored in Basque Roads,
the haven which was to become famous half a century
later for an attack of a very different kind. On the
23rd the fortifications of the Isle d'Aix were battered
down by the fleet and the island itself captured ; but
therewith the operations came abruptly to an end.
Fresh information revealed that the French were fully
prepared to meet an attack on Rochefort ; and a council
of war decided that any attempt to take it by escalade
would be hopeless. It was therefore decided to attack
operations were prosecuted forthwith he would return
with the fleet to England. The military commanders
thereupon decided that they would return with him,
which on the 1st of October they did, to the huge
indignation of both fleet and army. A court of inquiry
was held over this absurd issue to such extensive and
costly preparations, and Sir John Mordaunt was tried
by court-martial but honourably acquitted. The inci-
dent gave rise to a fierce war of pamphlets. It is certain
that Mordaunt showed remarkable supineness, and he
was suspected of a wish to injure the influence of Pitt
by turning the enterprise into ridicule ; but with such
men as Wolfe, Conway and Cornwallis among the senior
officers, the only conclusion is that, in the view of
military men, no object of the least value could have been
gained by any operations whatever. Military opinion
had been against the expedition from the first. Ligonier,
a daring officer but of ripe experience and sound judg-
ment, wrote of it in the most lukewarm terms as likely
to lead to nothing. On the whole it seems that the
troops were sent on a fool's errand, and that the blame
CH> III HISTORY OF THE ARMY 309
lay solely with Pitt. The nation was furious, and the
King showed marked coldness towards the generals
who had taken part in the failure ; but Pitt, who was
more hurt and disappointed than any one, took no step
except to promote Wolfe, who had advocated active
measures, over the heads of several other officers, and
thus in one way at least extracted good from evil.
So ended the campaigning season of 1757 with an
unbroken record of ill success in every quarter. But
the right man was now at the head of affairs and was
looking about him for the right instruments. The long
period of darkness had come to an end and the light
was about to break, at first in flickering broken rays,
but soon to shine out in one blaze of dazzling and
surpassing splendour.
The following is an exerpt from "A History of the British Army" Vol 2 by Sir John Fortescue.
340 HISTORY OF THE ARMY BOOK X
It is said that even before Ferdinand had achieved
this success Pitt had resolved to reinforce him with
British troops, but for the present the minister
reverted to his old plan of a descent on the French coast,
which might serve the purpose of diverting French
troops alike from America and from Germany.
The first sign of his intention was seen in April,
when the officers of sixteen battalions received orders
to repair to the Isleof Wight by the middle of May. Such
long notice was a strange preliminary for a secret expedition,
for the troops themselves did not receive their orders
until the 20th of May ; and it was the end of the month
before the whole of them, some thirteen thousand men
were encamped on the island.(The troops were, one
battalion from each regiment of Guards, the 5th, 8th,
20th, 23rd, 24th, 25th, 30th, 33rd, 34th, and 36th Foot ;
the light troops of nine dragoon reglments, three companies
of artillery and a large siege-train. The Duke of Marl
borough was selected for the command, and, since his
military talent was doubtful, Lord George Sackville
whose ability was unquestioned, was appointed as his
second, with the duty of organising the whole of the
operations. Two squadrons, comprising twenty-four
ships of the line under Lord Anson, Sir Edward Hawke
and Commodore Howe, were detailed to escort the
transports, and on the 1st of June the armament set
sail, arriving on the 5th at Cancalle Bay, about eight
miles from St. Malo. A French battery, erected for
the defence of the bay, was quickly silenced by the ships
and on the following day the entire army was landed.
One brigade was left to guard the landing-place, and
the remainder of the force marched to St. Malo, where
the light dragoons under cover of night slipped down
to the harbour and burned over a hundred privateer,
and merchant-vessels. The Duke of Marlborough then
made dispositions as if for the siege of St. Malo, but
hearing that a superior force was on the march to cut
off his retreat, retired to Cancalle Bay, re-embarked the
troops, and sailed against Granville, a petty town some
CH. II HISTORY OF THE ARMY 341
twenty miles to north-east of St. Malo. Foul weather
frustrated the intended operations ; and on the 27th
the expedition arrived off Havre de Grace. Prepara-
tions were made for landing, but after two days of
inactivity Marlborough decided against an attack,
and the fleet bore up for Cherbourg. There once
more all was made ready for disembarkation, but the
weather was adverse, forage and provisions began to
fail, and the entire enterprise against the coast was
abandoned. So the costly armament returned to Ports-
mouth, having effected absolutely nothing. It is, how-
ever, doubtful whether blame can be attached to the
officers, either naval or military, for the failure. Pitt
had procured no intelligence as to the dispositions of
the French for defence of the threatened ports ; so that
a General might well hesitate to run the risk of landing,
when he could not tell how soon he might find himself
cut off by a superior force from the sea.
The following is an exerpt from "A History of the British Army" Vol 2 by Sir John Fortescue.
342 HISTORY OF THE ARMY BOOK X
Even so, however, Pitt remained unsatisfied without
another stroke against the French coast. While the
troops were embarking for Germany he had formed a
new encampment on the Isle of Wight and was intent
upon a raid on Cherbourg. So intensely distasteful were
these expeditions to the officers of the Army that the
Duke of Marlborough and Lord George Sackville used
their interest to obtain appointment to the army in
Germany, so as to be quit of them once for all. The
result was that when Lieutenant-General Bligh, who had
been originally selected to serve under Prince Ferdinand,
arrived in London from Ireland to sail for Emden, he
found to his dismay that his destination was changed,
and that he must prepare to embark for France. He
accepted the command as in duty bound, the more so
since Prince Edward was to accompany the expedition,
but he was little fit for the service, having no qualifica-
tion except personal bravery and one great disqualifica-
tion in advanced age. Accordingly, obedient but
unwilling, he set sail on the 1st of August with twelve
battalions (Three battalions of Guards, the 5th, 24th,
30th, 33rd, 34th, 36th, 67th, 68th, and the Duke of
Richmond's Foot (then numbered 72nd) and nine troops
of light dragoons, escorted by a squadron under
Commodore Howe. Not yet had
the gallant sailor learned of his succession to the title
through the fall of his brother Lord Howe at the head
of Lake Champlain.
The expedition began prosperously enough. The
fleet arrived before Cherbourg on the 6th and at once
opened the bombardment of the town. Early next
morning it sailed to the bay of St. Marais, two leagues
from Cherbourg, where the Guards and the grenadier-
companies, having landed under the fire of the ships,
attacked and drove off a force of three thousand French
CH. II HISTORY OF THE ARMY 343
which had been drawn up to oppose them. The rest of
the troops disembarked without hindrance on the follow-
ing day and advanced on Cherbourg, which being unforti-
fied to landward surrendered at once. Bligh thereupon
proceeded to destroy the docks and the defences of the
harbour and to burn the shipping, while the light cavalry
scoured the surrounding country and levied contributions.
This done, the troops were re-embarked; and after
long delay owing to foul winds the fleet came to anchor
on the 3rd of September in the Bay of St. Lunaire, some
twelve miles east of St. Malo. There the troops were
again landed during the two following days, though not
without difficulty and the loss of several men drowned.
Bligh's instructions bade him carry on operations against
Morlaix or any other point on the coast that he might
prefer to it, and he had formed some vague design of
storming St. Malo from the landward side. This, how-
ever, was found to be impracticable with the force at
his disposal ; and now there ensued an awkward com-
plication. The weather grew steadily worse, and Howe
was obliged to warn the General that the fleet must
leave the dangerous anchorage at St. Lunaire, and that
it would be impossible for him to re-embark the troops
at any point nearer than the bay of St. Cast, a few
miles to westward. Accordingly he sailed for St. Cast,
while Bligh, now thrown absolutely on his own resources
ashore, marched for the same destination overland.
The army set out on the morning of the 7th of
September, and after some trouble with small parties of
French on the march encamped on the same evening
near the river Equernon, intending to ford it next
morning. It speaks volumes for the incapacity of Bligh
and of his staff that the passage of the river was actually
fixed for six o'clock in the morning, though that was
the hour of high water. It was of course necessary to
wait for the ebb-tide ; so it was not until three in the
afternoon that the troops forded the river, even then
waist-deep, under a brisk fire from small parties of
French peasants and regular troops. Owing to the
344 HISTORY OF THE ARMY Book X
lateness of the hour further advance on that day was
impossible ; and on resuming the march on the follow-
ing morning the advanced guard encountered a body of
about five hundred French troops. The enemy were
driven back with considerable loss, but their prisoners
gave information of the advance of at least ten thousand
French from Brest. Arrived at Matignon Bligh en-
camped and sent his engineers to reconnoitre the beach
at St. Cast in case he should be compelled to retreat.
Deserters who came in during the night reported that
the French were gathering additional forces from the
adjacent garrisons ; and in the morning Bligh sent word
to Howe that he intended to embark on the following
day.
Constant alarms during the night showed that the
enemy was near at hand ; and it would have been
thought that Bligh, having made up his mind to retreat,
would in so critical a position have retired as swiftly and
silently as possible. On the contrary, at three o'clock on
the morning of the 11th the drums beat the assembly as
usual, to give the French all the information that they
desired ; while the troops moved off in a single column
so as to consume the longest possible time on the march.
It was nine o'clock before the embarkation began, and
at eleven, when two-thirds of the force had been shipped,
the enemy appeared in force on the hills above the
beach. For some time the French were kept at a dis-
tance by the guns of the fleet, but after an hour they
found shelter and opened a sharp and destructive fire.
General Drury, who commanded the rear-guard, con-
sisting of fourteen hundred men of the Guards and the
grenadiers, was obliged to form his men across the
beach to cover the embarkation. Twice he drove back
the enemy, but, ammunition failing, he was forced back in
turn, and there was nothing left but a rush for the boats.
The French bringing up their artillery opened a furious
fire ; and all was confusion. So many of the boats
were destroyed that the sailors shrank from approach-
ing the shore and were only kept to their work by the
CH. II HISTORY OF THE ARMY 345
personal example of Howe. In all seven hundred and
fifty officers and men were killed and wounded, General
Drury being among the slain, and the rest of the rear-
guard were taken prisoners. The fleet and transports
made their way back to England in no comfortable
frame of mind, for the French naturally magnified their
success to the utmost ; and so ended Pitt's third venture
against the coast of France.
There can be little doubt but that Bligh must be
held responsible for the failure. It should seem indeed
that he was ignorant of the elements of his duty, even
to the enforcing of discipline among the troops, who
at the first landing near Cherbourg behaved disgrace-
fully. The Duke of Marlborough had met with the
same trouble at Cancalle Bay, but had had at least the
strength to hang a marauding soldier on the first day
and so to restore order. But after all Pitt was pre-
sumably responsible for the selection of Bligh ; or, if
he was aware that he could not appoint the right man
for such a service, he would have done best to
abandon these raids on the French coast altogether.
The conduct of Marlborough and Sackville in shirking
the duty because it was distasteful to them does not
appear commendable; but Sackville at any rate was
no fool, and Pitt might at least have recognised the
military objections that were raised against his plans.
The truth of the matter is, as Lord Cochrane was to
prove fifty years later, that sporadic attacks on the
French coast are best left to the Navy; for a single
frigate under a daring and resolute officer can paralyse
more troops than an expedition of ten or fifteen
thousand men, with infinitely less risk and expense.
Pitt had not yet done with his favourite descents, but
his next venture of the kind was to be directed against
an island instead of the mainland, when the British
fleet could interpose between his handful of battalions
and the whole population of France. Meanwhile
Cherbourg had at any rate been destroyed, so like a
wise man the mimster made the most of this success,
346 HISTORY OF THE ARMY BOOK X
by sending some of the captured guns with great
parade through Hyde Park to the Tower.
The operations already narrated of the year 1758
were of considerable scope, embracing as they did the
advance of three separate armies in America, two raids
on the French coast, and the despatch of British troops
to Germany ; but these by no means exhaust the tale.
There were few quarters of the globe in which the
British had not to complain of French encroachment,
and to this insidious hostility Pitt had resolved to put
a stop once for all. (Senegal exped.)
The following is an exerpt from "A History of the British Army" Vol 2 by Sir John Fortescue.
The operations already narrated of the year 1758
were of considerable scope, embracing as they did the
advance of three separate armies in America, two raids
on the French coast, and the despatch of British troops
to Germany ; but these by no means exhaust the tale.
There were few quarters of the globe in which the
British had not to complain of French encroachment,
and to this insidious hostility Pitt had resolved
a stop once for all. Five years before, the merchants
of Africa had denounced the unfriendliness of the
French on the Gambia, who were building forts and
stirring up the natives against them. The Royal
African Company also, with its monopoly of the slave-
trade, was anxious for its line of fortified depots on
troublesome neighbors at Senegal and In the Island
of Goree. One of Pitt's first actions in 1758 was to
order an expedition to be prepared against Senegal, a
duty for which two hundred marines and twenty-five
gunners were deemed a sufficient force. On the 23rd
of April Captain Marsh of the Royal Navy sailed into
the Senegal river, and by the 30th Fort Louis had
surrendered and was flying the British flag. Two
hundred men of Talbot's regiment (74th) were at once sent
to garrison the new possession, and then for some
months there was a pause, while the troops for Germany
and Cherbourg were embarking for their destinations.
But no sooner was Bligh's expedition returned than a
new enterprise was set on foot, and Captain Keppel of
the Royal Navy received secret instructions to convoy
Lieutenant-Colonel Worge with Forbes's regiment'
and two companies of the Sixty-sixth to the West
Coast. Within three weeks the troops were embarked
p.347
at Kinsale, and by the 28th of December Keppel's
squadron was lying off Goree. On the following day
the ships opened fire on the French batteries, and at
nightfall the island surrendered, yielding up over three
hundred prisoners and nearly an hundred guns. So
with little trouble were gained the West African
settlements of the French.
The following is an exerpt from "A History of the British Army" Vol 2 by Sir John Fortescue.
Fortescue Vol.II
p.339 CHAPTER II
The reader will probably have been struck during the
narrative of the American campaign of 1758 with the
inferiority of the French in numbers to the British at
every point. The French colonies were in fact allowed
to take their chance, while French soldiers were poured
by the hundred thousand into Germany to avenge King
Frederick's sarcasm against Madame de Pompadour.
A Pitt was hardly needed to perceive that the more
employment that could be found for French armies in
Europe, the fewer were the men which could be spared
for the service of France's possessions beyond sea ; and
Pitt resolved accordingly .to keep those armies fully
occupied. By the convention of Klosterzeven, as has
already been told, it was agreed that the Hanoverian
army should be broken up ; but even before Cumber-
land's return to England, the question of repudiating
that convention had been broached, and a fortnight
later a message was despatched to Frederick announcing
that the army would take the field again, and requesting
the services of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick as
General-in-Chief. Frederick assented; and on the 24th
of November Ferdinand arrived at Stade, fresh from
the victory of Rossbach in which he had taken part
three weeks before, to assume the command. The
whole aspect of affairs changed instantly, as if by
magic. Setting his force in motion at once Ferdinand
by the end of the year had driven the French back to
the Aller, and renewing operations after six weeks spent
in winter-quarters pressed the enemy still farther back,
even across the Rhine.
p.341
Meanwhile Ferdinand following up his success had
pursued the French over the Rhine and gained a signal
victory over them at Creveld. This action appears to
have hastened Pitt to a decision, for within four days he
announced to the British Commissary at Ferdinand's
headquarters the King's intention to reinforce the
Prince with two thousand British cavalry. The troops
were warned for service on the same day; but within
three days it was decided to increase the reinforcement
to six thousand troops, both horse and foot, and a week
later the force was further augmented by three battalions.
The first division of the troops was shipped off to Emden
on the 11th of July, and by the second week in August
the entire reinforcement had disembarked at the same
port under command of the Duke of Marlborough,
lomlng Prince Ferdinand's army at Coesfeld on the
21st. (The troops were, the Blues, 1st, and 3rd Dragoon
Guards, Greys, Inniskillings, 10th Dragoons (now hussars),
12th, 20th, 25th, 37th, 51st, Foot, with one battalion of
Invalids to garrison Emden.) There for the present we must leave them, till
p.475 CHAPTER VIII
In the earlier earlier stages of the war,
when England had not yet succeeded in obtaining for
herself the minister that she desired, it was possible and
in the fitness of narrative to turn from enterprise to
enterprise, fitfully undertaken, insufficiently provided
for, and committed to the wrong hands for execution ;
since all were symptoms of one organic disorder. While
the heart of England beat weak, palpitating and inter-
mittent, it could not but fail to drive the blood to the
extremities, and leave them cold and paralysed. But
when, under the treatment of Pitt. the heart revives and
throbs with strength and regularity, then we can watch
member after member tingling with new life and waking
to new power ; and the action of each may be traced in-
dependently, for while their energy continues, it is certain
that the heart must be vigorous and sound. Since, how-
ever, that work is now done, it behoves us to return, after
long digression, to England and to Pitt, and to take up
the study where it was laid down, in the spring of I759.
With the mighty enterprises, even now not yet
wholly told, of that year in memory, it is remarkable to
note that the estimates for 1759 showed little sign of
what was to come. The British Establishment was set
down at but eighty-five thousand men, or one thousand
more than in the previous year ; and the fact is the more
extraordinary in that, ever since the previous winter, the
French had been preparing for an invasion of Great
p.476
Britain at three different points with sixty-three thousand
men. Vast numbers of flat-bottomed boats had been
collected at Dunkirk, Brest and Havre de Grace ; and
the menace was serious, for the regular troops left in
England were but few, and the country was crowded
with French prisoners. Pitt, while reposing his chief
trust in the navy, was sufficiently disquieted In January
to offer special terms to recruits who would enlist for
short service, within the kingdom only ; and in May he
called out the newly-embodied militia. Yet only two
new regiments of regulars were raised during the first
half of the year. The first of these, Eyre Coote's, has
already been seen at Wandewash ; the second demands
lengthier notice since it signified a new departure.
Mention has already been made of the addition of light
troops to certain regiments of cavalry : it was now
determined to form a complete regiment of Light
Dragoons; which service was entrusted to Colonel
George Augustus Elliott, an officer who was to become
famous for his defence of Gibraltar, though not before
his regiment had already won fame both for him and for
itself its actions all come before us very soon. so
for the present it will suffice to say that Elliott's Light
Dragoons are still with us, retaining the original number
of their precedence, as the Fifteenth Hussars.
Such additions were training enough if in view of no
more than the danger of invasion, but, seeing that Pitt
abated not one jot of his aggressive designs, they were
of astonishing insignificance. With the nature and
extent of those designs the reader has already been
in great part acquainted ; but it will be convenient
to recall the military situation in all parts of the
world in the spring of 1759. Goree had already
surrendered and was occupied by a British garrison;
Barrington was busy over the conquest of Guadaloupe ;
in America Amherst was organising his expedition against
Ticonderoga and Crown Point, Forbes was struggling
with the first difficulties of his advance to Fort
p. 477
Duquesne, and Wolfe was on his way to Quebec ; in India
Lally had lately raised the siege of Madras and liberated
the garrison for work in the field, Forde had lately
fought Condore and was advancing on Masulipatam,
and Clive was at Moorshedabad securing the fruits of
his victory at Plassey. Lastly, ten thousand British
troops were about to enter on their first campaign
under Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. Yet it never
occurred to Pitt to recall one man of them, notwith-
standing the peril of invasion. It may be asked why
the ten thousand, being so near home, were not
summoned from Germany, and of what possible service
they could have on the Continent. The answer,
which has already been hinted at, will occur readily to
those who have had the patience to follow me so far,
who have seen Guadeloupe worried into submission
by a handful of sickly troops, and watched Montreal
and Pondicherry drop at last into British hands like fruit
ripe for the plucking. Pitt spoke but half the truth
when he spoke of conquering America in Germany ; it
was not only America, but the East and West Indies,
in a word the British Empire. The war in Germany
was in fact nothing more than a diversion on a
grand scale, and it is as such that it must now be
followed. The French likewise pursued their idea of a
diversion when they threatened a descent upon the
shores of Great Britain. It was a plan which they had
employed with some success in the days of King William
and of Queen Anne, but it had not saved them from
Marlborough at Oudenarde, and it was not to deliver
them from the busy designs of Pitt.
Before entering on the campaigns of Prince Ferdinand
it is indispensable to attempt to grasp the general
purpose of the operations on either side. The French
had invaded Germany primarily to take vengeance upon
Prussia for King Frederick's scornful treatment of
Madame de Pompadour. Frederick, being already
occupied with the Saxons and Austrians to the south
and with the Russians on his flank to the eastward, could
p.478
hardly have escaped disaster with the French pressing on
his other flank from the west. He had indeed, in 1757,
with the swiftness that characterised his operations,
made a dash upon the French and hurled them back at
Rossbach, and within a month dealt the Austrians as
severe a battle at Leuthen with the same army. But to
defeat two armies at two points over two hundred miles
apart within a few weeks, was a strain that could not
be repeated ; and it was primarily to guard Frederick's
right or western flank that Ferdinand's army was called
into being. So far as Frederick was concerned it quite
fulfilled its purpose ; but in the eyes of England its
mission was somewhat different. Under the Duke of
Cumberland the force had been called an army of
observation, to secure the frontiers of Hanover ; and
Cumberland, despite Frederick's warnings, had en-
deavoured to cover Hanover by holding the line of the
Weser, with results that were seen at Hastenbeck.
Under Ferdinand the army became an Allied Army for
active operations in concert with King Frederick ; but
none the less its chief function was to cover Hanover,
Hesse-Cassel, and Brunswick. For the French army,
being lax in discipline, behaved with shameful inhumanity
towards the inhabitants of German territory during this
war ; and there was always apprehension lest the rulers
of Hesse and Brunswick, from sheer compassion towards
their suffering people, should withdraw from the Alliance.
Throughout the operations about to come under
our notice the French acted with at least two armies,
jointly superior to Ferdinand's in numbers, along two
different lines. The northern army was known as the
army of the Rhine, its base being Wesel on the Lower
Rhine, an outlying possession of King Frederick's,
which had perforce been abandoned by him at the
opening of the war, and which despite Ferdinand's efforts
could never be recovered. This army was destined to
advance into Westphalia, and thence, if possible, into
Hanover ; and a glance at the map will show that its
p.479
simplest line of advance was by the river Lippe. The
second or southern army of the French was known as
the Army of the Main ; having provided itself with a
base on that river by the treacherous capture of Frank-
fort. This was one of the many unscrupulous actions
whereby the French made themselves loathed in Europe ;
for Frankfort being an Imperial Free Town was held
always to be neutral. Still the thing was done ; and
thereby was secured to the Army of the Main, which
had begun liie as the Army of the Upper Rhine, not
only an excellent base but a sure means of retreat. For
the Allies, even if they defeated it, could not bar its
way to the Rhine until Frankfort should be first
besieged and captured, which could not but be a very
arduous undertaking. The primary function of this
second army was the invasion of Hesse.
Ferdinand's task, with an inferior force, was in its
essence defensive. For him the supremely important
thing was to retain possession of the line of the Weser.
on which Ivatenay he depended for his supplies alike
from Germany and from England. Thus, roughly
speaking, the field of operations lay between the Rhine
on the one side and the Weser on the other, with the
sea and the Main for northern and southern boundaries ;
and the normal front of the French would be to the
east and of the Allies to the west. But it must be
remembered that in addition to the army operating
from Wesel against Ferdinand's front there was
another operating from Frankfort upon his left or
southern flank ; while there was always the further
danger that the Saxons might elude a Prussian corps
of observation, which was posted to check them, on the
south-east, and steal in upon Ferdinand's left rear. To
defeat these combinations it was of vital importance to
Ferdinand to hold in particular two fortresses Munster
in Westphalia, since the French, if they took it, could
push on unhindered to the Weser and cut off his
p.480
supplies ; and Lippstadt on the Upper Lippe, which
secured communications between Munster and Cassel,
or in other words between Westphalia and Hesse, and
contrariwise impeded thc joint action of the two French
armies. For the rest it will be useful to take note of
three rivers which barred the advance of the French
northward from Frankfort to Cassel and beyond:
namely, counting from south to north, the Ohm, the
Eder, and the Diemel. With the last in particular, as
the final barrier between Hesse and Westphalia, we shall
have much to do ; so the reader would do well to grasp
its position once for all, not neglecting its relation to
the neighbouring waters of the Lippe and the Weser.
At the close of the campaign of 1758 Ferdinand's
winter quarters extended from Coesfeld, a little to
westward of Munster, through Munster, Lippstadt and
Paderborn to the Diemel, his front facing thus
somewhat to south of south-east. The French army of the Rhine
under Marshal Contades was cantoned along that river
from Wesel southward almost to Coblentz ; while the
army of the Main, under the Prince of Soubise, the
defeated General of Rossbach, lay just to north of the
river about Frankfort. Ferdinand's first trouble was
with an advance of the Austrians upon his left flank by
the river Werra. This he headed back by a rapid
march to Fulda ; and, being freed from this danger, he
resolved to turn this enforced movement to southward
to account by making a bold stroke upon Frankfort, so
as, if possible, to paralyse the operations of the French
on that side by snatching from them their base. Un-
fortunately for him, the incapable Soubise had been re-
called to command the army for invasion of England,
and Marshal Broglie, who had succeeded him, had
entrenched himself in a strong position at Bergen, a
little to the north of Frankfort. There on the 13th
of April, just five days after the storm of Masulipatam,
Ferdinand boldly attacked him, but was repulsed with
p.481
a loss of over two thousand men, and compelled to
fall back to Ziegenhain, on the road to Cassel. His
audacious attempt to cripple one French army, before
the campaign had even been opened, had failed.
After this alarm the French employed themselves
busily in entrenching themselves on the Main. Prince
Henry of Prussia, by King Frederick's direction, marched
northward to relieve Ferdinand from further trouble
from the Austrians ; and the enemy made little move-
ment during the ensuing month. On the 25th of April
Contades arrived at Dusseldorf from Paris with an
approved plan of campaign in his pocket, and proceeded
to distribute the army of the Rhine into four corps,
two of them about Wesel, a third at Dusseldorf, and a
fourth about Cologne. This grouping, as Contades
intended, left Ferdinand in doubt whether his main
design was aimed at Westphalia or Hesse. The corps
which guarded Westphalia included the British con-
tingent under Lord George Sackville, who had been
appointed to the command on the death of the Duke of
Marlborough in the previous year, and it lay a little to
the west of Munster, under the orders of the Hanoverian
General von Sporcke. That officer growing uneasy
over Contades's movements, Ferdinand on the 16th of
May marched from Ziegenhain, leaving sixteen thousand
men under General von Imhoff to protect Hesse, and
on the 24th, having effected his junction with Sporcke,
cantoned his troops along the Lippe from Coesfeld to
Hamm. Meanwhile Contades, detached a corps of
fifteen thousand men under Count d'Armentieres to
threaten Munster, marched southward from Diisseldorf
upon Giessen, there to join Broglie and begin operations
against Hesse. Ferdinand, in the faint hope of re-
calling him to the Rhine, despatched a corps under the
Hereditary Prince of Brunswick, a most brilliant officer,
to alarm the French garrisons at Dusseldorf and other
points on the river; but Contades, adhering to his
purpose, pushed forward an advanced corps under M.
de Noailles from Giessen to Marburg, evidently intent
p.482
on prosecuting his march to the north. Contades was
in overwhelming force. Noailles's corps at Marburg
numbered twenty thousand men, his own at Giessen
close on sixty thousand, while Broglie's reserve-corps at
Friedberg, a little to the south of Giessen, included
close on twenty thousand more. He now sent Broglie
forward by Fritzlar upon Cassel, while he himself con-
tinued his march due north through Waldeck upon
Corbach. Imhoff, fearful of being cut off and unable
to defend Cassel, fell back towards Lippstadt; and
Broglie having left a force to occupy Cassel, turned
westward to rejoin Contades. On the 14th of June
the whole were again assembled together, Contades'
corps lying a little to the south of Paderborn, and
Broglie's at Stadtbergen.
These movements caused Ferdinand the deepest
anxiety. On the 11th of June he concentrated and
marched eastward to Buren, where he halted and picked
up Imhoff's corps ; but even so he was weaker than
the enemy, for though he had recalled the Heredi-
tary Prince from Dusseldorf, he had been obliged to
leave nine thousand men under General Wangenheim
at Dulmen, to watch d'Armentieres's designs against
Munster. But worse was to come; for on the 18th
Broglie's corps, moving up to the right of Contades's,
began to edge Ferdinand's left wing back to the west-
ward. Ferdinand, accepting the inevitable, fell back
on Lippstadt and crossed the Lippe to Rietberg. The
embarrassment was now extreme. He could not divine
whether the enemy designed to besiege Lippstadt or
Munster or both, or whether they meant to force a
battle upon him against greatly superior numbers. He
was inclined to risk a battle, seeing that, for all that
he could do to prevent it, both fortresses might be taken
before his eyes ; in which case he must needs cross to the
east side of the Weser. So critical did he consider the
position that he wrote to King George the Second for
instructions, and begged that ships might be ready to
transport the garrison in case it should be necessary
p.483
to evacuate Emden. The King's answer showed the
Guelphic loyalty and courage at its noblest. He said
that since Ferdinand was inclined to hazard an action
he also was ready to take the risk, but that he left his
General an absolutely free hand, only assuring him that
his confidence in him would be unabated, whatever the
result ; and, lest Ferdinand should be in any doubt, he
caused a second letter to be written to him to the same
effect, but in stronger terms even than the first.
Meanwhile Contades marched up to Paderborn and
halted for some days, keeping Ferdinand still in doubt
as to his intentions. At last on the 29th he moved
northward and pushed his light troops forward to
Bielefeld, showing plainly that his true aim was the
capture either of Hameln or of Minden on the Weser.
Ferdinand therefore recalled Wangenheim's corps from
Dulmen to the main army; whereupon, as he had
expected, d'Armentieres at once advanced to besiege
Munster. On the same day Ferdinand himself moved
northward and encamped parallel to Contades at Diessen,
comforting himself with the reflection that though his
enemies might be nearer to Minden than he, he at any
rate was nearer to his food-supplies than they. It was,
however, extremely difficult for him to obtain intelligence
of the French movements, since the two armies were
separated by a broad chain of wooded hills ; and he
consequently hesitated for some days before he decided,
on false information of a French advance, to move
towards Osnabruck. His intention was to turn eastward
from thence, and to take up a position which would
render it perilous for the French to attempt the siege
either of Wameln or Minden. He had made, however,
but one march from Osnabruck when he received the
news that Broglie had surprised Minden on the day
before, and that the French had thus secured a bridge
over the Weser and free access into Hanover. This
p.484
was a most unpleasant surprise for Ferdinand. For a
day he hesitated whether or not to return to Munster,
and then decided to fall back to the Lower Weser, so as
to save his magazine at Nienburg, and, since the French
had set the example of lawlessness at Frankfort, to
occupy the Imperial Free Town of Bremen. On the
14th of July accordingly his headquarters were fixed
at Stolzenau, between Nienburg and Minden on the
Weser, and a detachment was sent to Bremen.
Meanwhile Contades proceeded to reap the fruit of
his very successful movements. Part of his light troops
seized upon Osnabruck, and the rest were sent to levy
contributions in Hanover ; M. de Chevreuse was detached
with three thousand men to besiege Lippstadt ; d'Armen-
tieres continued to besiege Munster ; Broglie's corps
crossed the Weser on the 14th to invest Hameln ; and
on the 16th Contades with the main army debouched
into the basin of Minden, and pushed a part of his
army as far to the northward as Petershagen. Ferdi-
nand, though he could bring but forty-five thousand
men into the field against sixty thousand, advanced south-
ward next day to offer him battle ; but Contades retired
without awaiting his arrival and withdrew to an un-
assailable position immediately to south of Minden.
If he could hold Ferdinand inactive while his several
detachments did their work, it was of no profit to him
to hazard a general action.
So far Contades's operations had been masterly.
He had taken Cassel, the capital of Hesse, and had
invested both Lippstadt and Munster ; he had further
taken Minden and invested Hameln ; and thus he bade
fair to possess himself of the line of the Weser and
to carry the war straight into Hanover. Ferdinand`s
position was most critical, and was not rendered
more pleasant to him by a series of uncomplimentary
messages from Frederick the Great. But Contades,
from the moment that he declined battle, seems to have
taken leave, possibly from excessive confidence, of all
energy and ability. His position was, it is true,
p.485
impregnable. His army lay immediately to the south
of Minden, communicating by three bridges with
Broglie's corps on thc other side of the Weser. His
right rested on the town and the river, his left on a
mass of wooded hills-the end of the range that had
separated his army from Ferdinand`s-and the whole of
his front was covered by a wide morass, through which
ran a brook called the Bastau. But though unassailable
from any point, the position had conspicuous defects.
In the first place, it did not leave the army free to move
in all directions ; and in second, it necessitated the
detachment of troops to the south to maintain com-
munication through Gohfeld and Hervorden with the
French base at Cassel. It was for Ferdinand, by
skilful use of these defects, to entice Contades from
his pinfold to meet him in the open field.
Returning to camp at Petershagen after Contades's
withdrawl to Minden, Ferdinand's first step was to
push his picquets forward into a chain of villages that
lay in his front : Todtenhausen on the bank of the
Weser, Fredewald immediately to west of Todtenhausen.
Stemmern and Holthausen somewhat in advance of
Fredewald, and Nord Hemmern, Sud Hemmern, and
Hille still farther to south and west. The occupation of
Hille brought his advanced posts to the western edge
of the morass that covered Contades's front, and to
the head of the one causeway that led across it. On
the 22nd Wangenheim's corps, about ten thousand
strong, was pushed forward to Todtenhausen, where it
remained conspicuous, in advance of the army. In
the midst of these movements came the bad news of the
fall of Munster, which enabled d`Armentieres to march
from thence to besiege Lippstadt, and Chevreuse to
return with his detachment to Minden ; but this mis-
fortune only quickened Ferdinand to action. On the
27th the Hereditary Prince marched with six thousand
men south-westward towards Lubbecke, and on the
following day drove from it a body of French irregulars
which was stationed there for the protection of
p.486
Contades's left flank. Then turning eastward he
pursued his march against the French communica-
tions. Simultaneously, on the 28th, General Dreve led
the garrison of Bremen against Osnabruck, retook it,
and hastened eastward to join the Hereditary Prince.
The junction effected, the two pressed on towards
Hervorden, and on the 31st established themselves
astride of the road by which all Contades's supplies
must be brought up from the south.
Here, therefore, was a menace in his rear to make
the French General uneasy in his position behind the
morass ; and now Ferdinand added a temptation in his
front to induce him the more readily to quit it. On
the 29th the Prince, leaving Wangenheim's corps
isolated about Todtenhausen, led the whole of the rest
of the army a short march to the south-west, and en-
camped between Fredewald and Hille. Headquarters
were at Hille, under guard of the Twelfth and
Twentieth Regiments of the British Foot, for the
red-coats held the place of honour on the right of the
line ; and picquets were pushed on to Sud Hemmern,
Hartum, and Hahlen, villages on the eastern side of
Hille, by the border of the morass. Finally, from
two to three thousand men were ordered to Lubbecke
to maintain communication with the Hereditary Prince.
Such dispositions might well have appeared hazardous ;
but Ferdinand had thought them out in every detail.
Wangenheim's corps, though isolated, was strongly ea-
trenched, with several guns ; while his position covered
the only outlet by which the French could debouch
from behind the marsh. Thereby two important
objects were gained. First, the safe passage of convoys
from the Lower Weser was assured ; and secondly, it
was made certain that, before Contades could deploy to
attack Wangenheim in force, Ferdinand with the main
army would have time either to fall upon his flank or
simply to join his own left to Wangenheim's right. To
ensure the swift execution of this latter critical move-
ment, Ferdinand directed all Generals to acquaint them-
p.487
selves carefully with the ground, and in particular with
the outlets that led From his position to the open plain
before Minden.
Contades meanwhile reasoned, as Ferdinand had
hoped and intended, in a very different fashion. The
Allied army was, to his mind, dispersed in every direction.
Ten thousand men were with the Hereditary Prince
at Gohfeld ; at least two thousand more at Lubbecke ;
Ferdinand himself, with the greater portion of the army,
seemed so anxious to be within supporting distance of
the Prince that he had left Wangenhiem in the air;
while even Wangenhiem`s corps was not united, but had
detached a few battalions across the river to keep an
eye on Broglie. Still the interruption of his own com-
munications with Cassel was troublesome ; and it would
be well to put an end to that and to all other difficulties
by a decisive blow and a brilliant victory. He there-
fore despatched the Duke of Brissac with eight thousand
men to Gohfeld to hold the Hereditary Prince in check,
threw eight bridges over the Bastau for the passage of
his troops across it in as many columns, and ordered
Broglie to be ready to cross the Weser with his corps to
form a ninth column upon his right. The total force
which he could bring into the plain of Minden was
fifty-one thousand men with one hundred and sixty-two
guns. Against it, if all went well, Ferdinand could
oppose forty-one thousand men and one hundred and
seventy guns.
A fresh gale was blowing from the south-west
which drowned the stroke of the clocks of Minden, as
midnight closed the last day of July and ushered in the
first of August. Already the French camp was all alert
in the darkness, and the columns were moving off, not
without confusion, to the bridges of the Bastau. An
hour later two white-coated deserters were brought in
by a picquet to the Prince of Anhalt, General Officer
of the day in the Allied army, with the important
intelligence that the whole French army was in motion.
Ferdinand had seen signs of some stir on the previous
p.488
evening, and had directed that, on the observance of
the slightest movement at the advanced posts, informa-
tion should be brought to him at once. Yet two
o'clock came, and three o`clock, before a belated
messenger arrived at headquarters from Anhalt with
the news. Instantly Ferdinand called the whole of his
troops to arms, and ordered them to march to their
appointed positions. His orders had already been
issued, and were clear and precise enough. The
advance was to be in eight columns, and the formation
for battle, as usual, with infantry in the centre and
cavalry on each flank. The first or right-hand column
consisted of twenty-four squadrons of cavalry under
Lord George Sackville, fifteen of them being British
squadrons of the Blues, First and Third Dragoon
Guards, Scots Greys, and Tenth Dragoons. The
second was made up entirely of German artillery ; and
the third under Major-General von Sporcke comprised
the Twelfth, Twentieth, Twenty-third, Twenty-fifth,
Thirty-seventh, and Fifty-first regiments of the British
Line. Seven out of the eight columns were formed
and marched off with great promptitude ; but in Sack-
ville's column all was confusion and delay. Some of
the regiments were ready and others were not ; and
Sackville himself was not to be found. It was no
good beginning for the British cavalry.
Having given the alarm Ferdinand hastened, with
a single staff-officer accompanying him, to see for him-
self how matters stood. It is not difficult to conceive
of his anxiety. Owing to the unpardonable neglect of
Anhalt the French had gained two hours upon him ; and
now, when the army had been at last set in motion, the
cavalry of his right wing was not moving with the rest.
There was therefore every likelihood that the village
of Hahlen, on which he had intended to rest his right
flank, might be occupied by the French before Sackville
could be there to prevent them. Instantly galloping
away to Hartum he ordered the picquets stationed
therein to move at once to Hahlen, and then hurried
p.489
back with all speed to the latter village, only to learn
the bad news that it was already in possession of the
French. Meanwhile not a word had come from
Wangenheim, who, for all he knew, might be in
serious difficulties. Despatching his solitary aide-de-
camp to Todtenhausen to ascertain how matters were
going on the left, he galloped on alone with his groom
into the plain of Minden. The wind was blowing so
furiously that not a sound even of cannon could be
heard in the direction of the Weser ; but before long he
caught sight of the French advancing on Kuttenhausen,
and a dense cloud of smoke rising before Todten-
hausen. Evidently Wangenhiem was hotly engaged.
But meanwhile from windward there came the roar of a
furious cannonade about Hille, where the causeway
issued from the western end of the morass. This could
only be a diversion, for Ferdinand had already sealed
up the outlet of the causeway with five hundred men
and two guns ; but to make assurance still surer he now
ordered two more guns and the detachment from
Lubbecke to Hille, and sent information to the
Hereditary Prince of what was passing. Then, gallop
ing for a moment to the left, Ferdinand satisfied himself
that his columns were advancing, and turned back in
the teeth of the wind to Hahlen. There once again the
stupidity of the Prince of Anhalt had set matters wrong.
He had duly brought up the picquets from Hartum
before Hahlen, as directed, but had halted instead of
clearing the French out other village, and had thereby
delayed the deployment of the whole of Sparcke's
column. He was bidden to take the village at once,
which he did without difficulty ; but having done so
this hopeless officer proceeded to instal himself and his
picquets as if to stay there for ever.
After the occupation of Hahlen, however, matters
on the right began to adjust themselves. Ferdinand
ordered Captain Foy's battery to the front of the
p.490
village to cover the formation of the troops, and was
soon satisfied by the admirable working of these British
guns that all was safe in that quarter. Meanwhile his
aide-de-camp returned from Todtenhausen with intelli-
gence that Wangenheim was holding his own, though
the enemy had gained ground on his right, where his
flank was uncovered. Probably few commanders have
passed through two worse hours than did Ferdinand at
the opening of the battle of Minden.
Fortunately for him the French had not executed
their own maneuvers without confusion and delay.
It was one defect of Contades's position that he could
not debouch from behind the morass by daylight, since
he would have brought Ferdinand down instantly upon
his flank ; and the indiscipline of the French army
among both officers and men was not calculated to
favour orderly movement in the dark. Broglie, a
capable officer, had crossed the river, taken up his
appointed position on the right, and made his dispositions
to fall upon Wangenheim, punctually and in good
order ; but he dared not attack until the rest of the
army was formed, so contented himself with a simple
duel of artillery. The rest of the columns shuffled
here and there in helplessness and confusion ; and it was
not until Broglie had waited for two full hours that
most of them were at last deployed in some kind of
order. The French line-of-battle was convex in form,
following, as it were, the contour of the walls of Minden,
with the right resting on the Weser and the left on the
morass. Broglie's corps on the right was drawn up in
two lines, the first of infantry, the second of cavalry.
with two powerful batteries in advance. On his left
stood half of the infantry of Contades's army in two
lines, with thirty-four guns before them. Next to these,
in the centre, were fifty-five squadrons of cavalry in two
lines, with a third line of eighteen more in reserve ; and
next to this mass of horse stood the left wing, composed
of the rest of the infantry in two lines, with thirty
guns. Thus to all intent the French line-of-battle
p.491
consisted of a centre of cavalry with wings of infantry;
but the left wing of infantry was late in arriving at
position, and its tardiness was not without effect on the
issue of the action.
Observing the excellent practice of Foy's battery
before Hahlen, Ferdinand had already sent Macbean's
British battery to join it and ordered Hase's Hanoverian
brigade of heavy guns to the same position. Then
seeing Sporke`s column of British infantry in the act
of deployment, he sent orders that its advance, when
the time should come, should be made with drums
beating. The order was either misdelivered or mis-
understood, for to his suprise the leading British
brigade shook itself up and began to advance forthwith.
A flight of aides-de-camp galloped off to stop them ;
and the line of scarlet halted behind a belt of fir-wood
to await the formation of the rest of the army. In the
first line of Sporcke's division stood, counting from
right to left, the Twelfth, Thirty-seventh, and Twenty-
third, under Brigadier Waldegrave ; and in the second,
which extended beyond the first on each flank, the
Twentieth, Fifty-first, and Twenty-fifth, under Brigadier
Kingsley, Hardenberg's Hanoverian battalion, and two
battalions of Hanoverian guards. There then they
stood for a few minutes, while the second line, which
was only partially deployed, hastened to complete the
evolution ; when suddenly to the general amazement
the drums again began to roll, and the first line stepped
off once more, advancing rapidly but in perfect order,
straight upon the French horse. The second line,
though its formation was still incomplete, stepped off
likewise in rear of its comrades, deploying as it moved,
and therefore of necessity dropping somewhat in rear.
And so the nine battalions, with the leading brigade
far in advance, swung proudly forward into a crossfire
of more than sixty cannon, alone and unsupported from
the rest of the line.
No aide-de-camp, gallop though he might, could
stop them now ; and their majestic bearing showed that
p.492
they would not easily be stopped by an enemy. The
British, being on the right, were the more exposed to
destruction, for the French batteries on their left were
too remote to maintain a really deadly fire ; but what
signified a cross-fire and three lines of horse to regiments
that had fought at Dettingen and Fontenoy? For
nearly two hundred yards of the advance the French
guns tore great gaps in their ranks ; but they passed
through the tempest of shot unbroken and untamed,
and pressed on with the same majestic steadiness against
the huge motionless bank of the French horse. Then
at last the wall of men and horses started into life, and
eleven squadrons coming forward from the rest bore
straight down upon them. The scarlet battalions stood
firm until the enemy were within ten yards of them ;
then pouring in one volley which strewed the ground
with men and horses, they hurled the squadrons back in
confused fragments upon their comrades, and continued
their advance. Ferdinand, perceiving the disorder of
the French, sent an aide-de-camp at full speed to Lord
George Sackville to bring up the British cavalry and
complete the rout. Sackville disputed the meaning of
the order for a time, and then advancing his squadrons
for a short distance, as if to obey it, brought them
once more to a halt a second messenger came up in
hot haste to ask why the cavalry of the right did nor
come on, but Sackville remained stationary, and the
opportunity was lost.
Then shamed and indignant at their defeat the
French horse rallied. Four brigades of infantry and
thirty-two guns came forward from the French left to,
enfilade the audacious British foot ; and Ferdinand, since
Sackville would not move, advanced Phillips's brigade
of heavy guns in order to parry, if possible, this flanking
attack. Then the second line of the French horse
came thundering down, eager to retrieve their dead
upon the nine isolated battalions. For a moment the
lines of scarlet seemed to waver under this triple attack
but recovering themselves they closed up their ranks and
p.493
met the charging squadrons with a storm of musketry
which blasted them off the field. Then turning with
equal fierceness upon the French infantry they beat them
also back with terrible loss. Again an aide-de-camp
flew from Ferdinand's side to Sackville, adjuring him to
bring up the British squadrons only, If no more, to
make good the success ; but it was not jealousy of the
foreign squadrons under his command that kept Sackville
back. The messenger delivered his order ; but not a
sqadron moved. Meanwhile Ferdinand had hurried
forward fresh battalions on his right to save the British
from annihilation ; and now the third line of French
horse, the Gendarmerie and the Carbineers, essayed a
third attack upon the mne dauntless battalions and
actually broke through the first line ; but was shattered
to pieces by the second and sent the way of its fellows.
A fourth messenger was sent to Sackville, but with no
result. Ferdinand's impatience waxed hot. "When
is that cavalry coming " he kept exclaiming. "Has
no one seen that cavalry of the right wing ? " But no
cavalry came. "Good God! is there no means of
getting that cavalry to advance," he ejaculated in
desparation, and sent a fifth messenger to bring up
Lord Granby with the squadrons of Sackville's second
line only. Granby was about to execute the order,
when Sackville rode up and forbade him ; and then, as
if still in doubt as to these repeated orders, Sackville
trotted up to Ferdinand and asked what they might
mean. "My Lord," Ferdinand is said to have
answered, calmly, but with such contempt as may be
imagined, " the opportunity is not passed."
Nevertheless the astonishing attack of the British
infantry had virtually gained the day. Ferdinand's
line had gained time to form and to join with Wangen-
heim's ; and the guns of the Allies coming up gradually
in increasing force silenced the inferior artillery of
the French. Ferdinand`s left wing then took the
offensive, and the German cavalry by a brilliant charge
dispersed the whole of the infantry opposed to them.
p.494
Between nine and ten o'clock the struggle was practically
over. The French were completely beaten, and retreat-
ing rapidly under the guns of Minden to their pinfold
behind the marsh. Had Sackville's cavalry come forward
when it was bidden, it might have cut the flying French
squadrons to pieces, barred the retreat of most if not all
of the French left wing, and turned the victory into one
of thc greatest of all time. as things happened, it fell
to Foy and Macbean of the British artillery to gather
the laurels of the pursuit. Hard though they had
worked all day, these officers limbered up their guns and
moved with astonishing rapidity along the border of the
marsh, halting from time to time to pound the retreating
masses of the enemy; till at last they unlimbered for
good opposite the bridges of the Bastau and punished
the fugitives so heavily that they would not be rallied
until they had fled far beyond their camp.
Meanwhile the Hereditary Prince had engaged the
Duke of Brissac at Gohield and defeated him, so
that the French communications with Hervorden and
Paderborn were hopelessly severed. The news of this
misfortune seems to have smitten Contades almost
with panic. Had he chosen to fall back by the line of
his advance he could hardly have been stopped by the
inferior force of the Hereditary Prince, and he would
have found supplies and a good position at Hervorden.
But his defeat had crushed all spirit out of him.
abandoning his communications with Paderborn he
crossed the Weser in the night, broke down the bridge
of Minden, burned his bridges of boats, and retired
through a difficult and distressing country to Cassel,
with an army not only beaten but demoralised.
So ended the battle of Minden, a day at once of
pride and disgrace to the British. The losses of the
Allies amounted to twenty-six hundred killed and
wounded, of which the share of the British amounted to
close on fourteen hundred men. Of the six devoted
regiments who went into action four thousand four ;
p.495
hundred and thirty-four strong, seventy-eight officers
and twelve hundred and fifty-two men, or about thirty
per cent, were killed or wounded ; while the Hanoverian
battalions with them, being on the left or sheltered
flank, lost but twelve per cent. The heaviest sufferers
were the Twelfth, which lost three hundred and two, and
the Twentieth, which lost three hundred and twenty-
two of all ranks ; these regiments holding the place of
honour on the right of the first and second lines. The
official lists amount to seven thousand, though the
letters of Broglie and Contades state the numbers at
from ten to eleven thousand ; and the defeated army lost
in addition the greater part of its baggage, seventeen
standards and colours, and forty-three guns. From a
military standpoint the most remarkably feature in the
action was the skill with which Ferdinand contrived to
entice his adversary into the field, reflecting perhaps
even more credit on his judgment of men than on his
knowledge of his profession. Once drawn from behind
the morass into the plain, Contades made singularly
feeble and meaningless dispositions : and the formation
of his line with cavalry in the centre and infantry on
the flanks was, in the circumstances, simply grotesque.
He seems indeed to have had no very clear idea as to
what he really meant to do. If he had designed to
overwhelm Wangenheim's isolated corps-and no doubt
he had some vague notion of the kind-the obvious
course was to punch Broglie straight at him independ-
ently, and himself to protect Broglie's flank with the
main army. What he actually did was to turn Broglie's
corps into the right wing of an united army, and so
practically to fetter it for all decisive action. On the
other hand, all preconcerted arrangements on both sides
were upset by the extraordinary attack of the British
infantry, a feat of gallantry and endurance that stands,
so far as I know, absolutely without a parallel. "I
never thought," said Contades bitterly, " to see a single
line of infantry break through three lines of cavalry
p.496
ranked in order of battle, and tumble them to ruin.
"Never," grimly wrote Westphalen, the chief of
Ferdinand's staff, " were so many boots and saddles seen
on a battlefield as opposite to the English and the
Hanoverian Guards." Next to this attack the feature
that seems to have attracted most attention among both
contemporary and modern critics, was the remarkable
efficiency of the British artillery. The handling of the
artillery generally at Minden, which was entrusted to
the Count of Lippe-Biickeburg, was very greatly
admired : but Westphalen, who passed lightly over the
deeds of the infantry, went out of his way to write that
though every battery had done well, the English battery
had done wonders. And indeed some British guns which
were attached to Wangenheim's corps on the left earned
not less praise than those of Foy and Macbean on the
right. The palm of the cavalry fell to the Germans, and
in particular to a few squadrons of Prussian dragoons
lent by Frederick the Great, which earned it brilliantly.
It would have fallen to the British but for Sackville.
The part played by this deplorable man did not end
with the battle. Ferdinand in general orders made
scathing allusion to his conduct without mentioning his
name ; and Sackville was presently superseded and sent
home. There he was tried by court-martial and pro-
nounced unfit to serve the King in any military capacity
Whatever-a hard sentence but probably no more than
just. Sackville was admitted to be an extremely able
man ; and as he had passed through Fontenoy and been
wounded in that action, it is not easy to call him a
coward. But the courage of some men is not the same
on every day ; and the evidence produced at the court-
martial shows, I think, too plainly that on the day of
Minden Sackville's courage failed him. The King
published the sentence of his dismissal from the Army
in a special order, with very severe but not undeserved
comment ; and Lord George Sackville henceforth dis-
appears from British battlefields. But we shall meet
p.497
with him again as a Minister of War, and the meeting
will not be a pleasant one.
On the day following the battle the Hereditary
Prince crossed the Weser in pursuit of the French, and
overtaking their rear-guard at Einbeck captured many
prisoners and much spoil, but failed to arrest the retreat
of the main body. Contades, therefore, succeeded in
bringing his troops back to Cassel, half starved, worn
Bielefeld and Paderborn south-eastward upon Corbach,
so as to turn Contades's left flank. On the 18th Con-
tades, seeing his communications endangered, evacuated
Cassel and retired by forced marches to Marburg, where
he took up a strong position. Cassel capitulated to the
Allies on the following day ; and Ferdinand, while still
pursuing his march southsard, detached seven thousand
men to recapture Munster. Marshal d'Estries then
arrived to supersede Contades ; but little came of this
change of command. Renewed menace from the westward
upon the French communications forced him to with-
draw from the line of the Ohm and Lahn, and to fall
back to Giessen. Ferdinand at once laid siege to Mar-
burg, which fell within a week, and finally on the 19th
of September he encamped at Kroffdorf, a little to north-
west of Giessen, over against the French camp.
Meanwhile the siege of Munster had gone ill for the
Allies, and had been turned into a blockade. Ferdinand,
after sending additional troops thither, found himself
too weak to attempt further operations until the fall of
the town ; and during this interval Broglie, who had been
appointed to the supreme command, had received a
reinforcement of ten thousand Wurtembergers. Thus
strengthened he tried incessantly with a detached corps
of twenty thousand men to interrupt Ferdinand's com-
munications with Cassel, but in vain ; and finally the
p.498
Hereditary Prince attacked this corps at Fulda, defeated
it signally, and then turning upon Broglie's right flank
forced him to retire to Friedberg. Ferdinand then
blockaded Giessen ; but at this point further operations
were stayed. Ever since his disastrous defeat by the
Russians at Kunersdorf in August, Frederick the Great
had pressed Ferdinand for reinforcements; and the
detachment of twelve thousand troops to the King not
only rendered the Prince powerless for further aggres-
sion, but obliged him also to raise the blockade of
Giessen. In January 1760 both armies retired into
winter-quarters. The French occupied much the same
ground as at the beginning of the campaign ; and the
allies likewise were distributed into two divisions, the
army of Westphalia extending from Munster through
Paderborn to the Weser, the army of Hesse from Mar-
burg eastward to the Werra. Thus ended the campaign
of 1759, leaving both parties in occupation of the same
territory as at its beginning ; but it had branded the
French with the discredit of a great defeat, and had
heightened in the Allies their contempt for their enemy
and their confidence in their chief.
Martinique and Guadeloupe 1758-59
The following is an exerpt from "A History of the British Army" Vol 2 by Sir John Fortescue.
But even before Keppel had received his instructions
six more battalions (3rd, 4th, 61st, 64th, 65th) were
under orders for foreign service ; and his squadron had
hardly sailed before another fleet of transports was
gathering at Portsmouth. Major-General Peregrine Hopson, who had
been Governor at Nova Scotia in the difficult years
that preceded the outbreak of war, was appointed to
the chief command, and Colonel Barrington, a junior
officer, was, despite the honourable protests of his
brother, the Secretary-at-War, selected to be his
second. The expedition was delayed beyond the date
fixed for its departure by bad weather, but at length
on the 12th of November the transports, escorted
by eight ships of the line under Commodore Hughes,
got under way and sailed with a fair wind to the
west. On the 3rd of January 1759 they reached
Barbados, the time-honoured base of all British opera-
tions in the West Indies, and there was Commodore
Moore waiting with two more ships of the line to join
them and to take command of the fleet. After ten
days' stay they again sailed away north-westward before
the trade-wind. Astern of them the mountains of St.
Vincent hung distant like a faint blue cloud ; ahead of
them two tall peaks, shaped like gigantic sugar-loaves,
rose higher and higher from the sea, and embarked
the southern end of St. Lucia. Then St. Lucia came
abeam, a rugged mass of volcanic mountains shrouded
heavily in tropical forest, and another island rose up
broad and blue not many leagues ahead, an island
which the men crowded forward to see, for they were
told that it was Martinique. Still the fleet held on St.
Lucia was left astern and Martinique loomed up larger
and bolder ahead; then an islet like a pyramid was
passed on the starboard hand, the Diamond Rock, not
yet His Maesty's Ship ; a little farther and the fleet
was under the lee of the island; yet a little farther and
the land shrank back to eastward into a deep inlet
ringed about by lofty volcanic hills, and a few useless
cannon-shot from a rocky islet near the entrance
proclaimed that the French were ready for them in
the Bay of Fort Royal. (Now Fort de France.)
The ships lay off the bay until the next day, while
Hopson thought out his plan of operations. The town
and fortress of Fort Royal lies well within the bay on
the northern shore, so Negro Point, which marks the
entrance to the harbour to the north. was the spot
in and silence two small batterles mounted at the
Point, and in the afternoon the troops landed un-
opposed in a small bay adjacent to it. A camping
ground was chosen in the only open space that could be
found, between two ravines, and there the army passed
the night formed up in square, to be ready against any
sudden attack. At dawn of the next morning shots
were heard, and the outposts reported that the enemy
was advancing and entrenching a house close to the
British position. The grenadiers were sent forward to
dislodge them, and a smart skirmish ended in the re-
treat of the French. Hopson would fain have pushed
more of his men into action, but the jungle was so
dense that they could find no enemy. " Never was
such a country," wrote the General plaintively, " the
Highlands of Scotland for woods, mountains, and con-
tinued ravines are nothing to it." As it was plainly
out of the question to attempt to drag the heavy
artillery before Fort Royal over such a country, it was
decided to re-embark the troops forthwith. Nearly one
p.349
hundred men had been killed and wounded in the
morning's skirmish, but the embarkation was accom-
plished without further loss.
On the following day the fleet coasted the island
northward and by evening lay off St. Pierre, the second
town in Martinique, which stood nestling in a little
plain at the head of a shallow bay. The men-of-war
stood in on the next morning to observe the defences of
the place, and the fire of the French batteries from the
heights to right and left soon convinced the Commodore
that the town could not be taken without such damage
to his ships as would disable them for further service.
It was therefore resolved that Martinique should for the
present be left alone, and that the expedition should
proceed to Guadeloupe, which was not only the richest
of the French Islands but the principal nest of French
privateers in the West Indies. So the fleet steered
northward once more past Dominica, where the white
flag of the Bourbons yet floated over the fort of Roseau ;
while a single ship was sent forward with the chief
military engineer on board to reconnoiter the town of
Basseterre, which lies on the western or leeward coast a
few miles to north of the most southerly point of
Guadeloupe.
The engineer returned with no very encouraging
report. The town though lying on an open roadstead
was well fortified, and all the approaches to it along the
coast were well protected, while the fort of Basseterre,
situated on a lofty eminence at the southern end, was
declared to be impregnable by the attack of ships alone.
Moore, however, was resolute that the town could and
should be taken, and at ten o'clock on the morning of
the 23rd the ships of the line and bomb-ketches opened
a heavy fire on the fort and batteries. In a few hours
the town, crammed with the sugar and rum of the past
harvest, was burning furiously, and by nightfall every
battery was silenced and the town was a heap of
blackened ruins. At dawn of the morrow the troops
were landed, to find the elaborate lines of defence inland
p.350
deserted and every gun spiked, while desultory shots
from among the sugar-canes alone told of the presence
of the enemy. The army encamped in Basseterre, but
the firing from the cane-fields increased, and picquets
and advanced posts were harassed to death by incessant
alarms and petty attacks. Hopson sent a summons to
the French Governor to surrender, but received only an
answer of defiance. The Governor had in fact with-
drawn his force some six miles from Basseterre to an
impregnable position such as can be found only in a
rugged, mountainous and untamed country. Each flank
was covered by inaccessible hills clothed with impene-
trable forest ; in his front ran the river Galeon with
high and precipitous banks, and beyond the river a
gully so steep and sheer that the French themselves
used ladders to cross it. The position was further
access was by a narrow road which led through dense
forest upon one flank; and this was most carefully
guarded. Here therefore the French commander lay,
refusing to come to action but sending out small
parties to worry the British outposts, in the hope that
the climate would do the work of repelling his enemy
for him.
Nor was he without good ground for such hope ;
for Hopson was in great doubt whether it would not be
more expedient for him to re-embark. His own health
was failing rapidly, and the men were beginning to fall
down fast under the incessant work at the advanced
posts and the fatigue of carrying provisions to them.
From the day of landing it had been found necessary to
push these advanced posts farther and farther inland
and to make them stronger and stronger, until at last
they embraced a circuit of fully three miles. By the
end of January the men on the sick list numbered
fifteen hundred, or fully a quarter of the force. Hopson
sent six hundred invalids to Antigua in the hope of
saving at least some of them, but therewith his efforts
p.351
came to an end, nor could all the representations of,
Barrington stimulate him to further action. Yet new
operations were by no means difficult either of concep-
tion or of execution. Guadeloupe is in reality not one
island but two, being divided by a narrow strait known
as the Salt River. It is very much of the shape of
a butterfly with wings outspread, flying south; the
western wing being known as Guadeloupe proper and
the eastern as Grande Terre, while the Salt River runs
in the place of the butterfly's body. Grande Terre, the
most fertile part of the island, still lay open to attack,
with an excellent harbour at Point a Pitre, of which
the principal defence, Fort Louis, could be reached by
the cannon of ships. Moore being fortunately in-
dependent of Hopson in respect of naval operations,
sent ships round to Fort Louis, which speedily battered
it into surrender, and installed therein a garrison of
three hundred Highlanders and Marines. But even
with this new base secured to him Hopson declined to
move. He was indeed sick unto death, and on the
27th of February he died, leaving the command to
Devolve on Barrington.
His death came none too soon, for the force was on
the brink of destruction. The number of the dead
cannot be ascertained, but over and above the six
hundred invalids sent to Antigua there were more than
sixteen hundred men on the sick list, and the remainder
were succumbing so fast that sufficient men could hardly
be found to do the daily duty. Barrington resolved to
close this fatal period of inaction at once. The defences
of the fort of Basseterre had already been repaired and
rendered safe against attack, so the Sixty-third regiment
was left to hold it while the remainder of the troops
were embarked on board the transports. After five
days of weary beating against the trade-wind a portion
of the ships came to anchor before Fort Louis ; but
more than half of them had fallen to leeward. The
next day was spent by Barrington in an open boat
reconnoitring the coast, but on his return in the evening
p.352
he was met by the bad news that a French squadron had
been sighted to northward of Barbados and that Moore
felt bound to fall back with his own squadron to Prince
Rupert's Bay, Dominica, in order to cover Basseterre
and the British Leeward Islands. Finally, as sickness
had wrought little less havoc in the Fleet than in the
army, the Commodore begged for troops to make up
the complement of his crews.
Few situations could have been more embarrassing
than that in which Barrington now found himself. He
loyally gave Moore three hundred soldiers for his ships,
and watched the fleet on which his communications
depended vanish from sight. Nearly if not quite half
of his force had perished or was unfit for duty ; while
of the rest a part was isolated in Basseterre and fully
one moiety was at sea, striving to beat into Point a
Pitre. Fort Louis, the only strong position in which he
could hope to wait in safety, was found to be untenable;
and the French were already preparing to besiege it.
Yet with a resolution which stamps him as no common
man, he resolved despite all difficulties to begin
offensive operations at once. He had at any rate transports
though he had no men-of-war, and he resolved to use
them ; his plan being, if he failed to bring the enemy
to action, to ravage the whole island and reduce it by
starvation. The cultivated land in such a confusion of
mountains could lie only in the valleys, and the settle-
ments must needs lie at the mouths of those valleys
where there was communication with other parts of the
island by sea or by roads that followed the coast. The
French had raised abundance of batteries and entrench-
ments to protect these settlements, but such multiplicity
of defences necessarily implied dispersion of force.
Barrington's troops, few though they might be, were at
any rate to some extent concentrated ; and it was in his
power to embark men sufficient to overwhelm any one
of these isolated settlements, and so to break up the
defences in detail. The operations were not in fact
difficult when once a man had thought out the method
p.353
of conducting them, but it was precisely in this matter
of thought that Hopson had failed.
A fortnight was occupied in strengthening the
defences of Port Louis ; and on the 27th of March
six hundred men were embarked under command of
Colonel Crump and seat off to the south coast of Grande
Terre, with orders to land between the towns of St.
Anne and St. Francois, destroy both of them and ruin
the batteries erected for their protection. Crump, an
excellent officer, performed this duty punctually and
with little loss ; and on the 29th Barrington, guessing
that the French would certainly have detached some of
their troops from Gosier, a port a few miles to westward
of St. Anne, sailed with three hundred men against it,
and at dawn fell upon the enemy in their entrenchments.
The troops, eager for work after long inaction, attacked
with great spirit, drove the enemy out with little diffi-
culty and slight loss, and then prepared to force their
way back to Fort Louis by land. Barrington had
ordered two separate sallies to be made by the garrison
upon the lines erected by the French against the fort,
but owing to some mistake one only was delivered.
Nevertheless his own little detachment did the work un-
aided, captured a battery of twenty-four pounders which
had been planted by the enemy to open on the fort on
the next day, and returned to its quarters triumphant.
By this time the missing transports had succeeded
in working into Point a Pitre ; but to countervail this
advantage there came news from Basseterre that the
colonel in command, a valuable officer, had been killed,
together with one or two of his men, by an accidental
explosion, and that the French were constructing
batteries to bombard the fort. Barrington appointed a
new commander, with orders to sally forth and capture
these batteries without more ado ; and the task, since he
had chosen the right men to execute it, was performed
with little trouble or loss. Moreover, having now
ruined the most important settlements in Grande Terre
he resolved to apply the same principles of warfare to
p.354
Guadeloupe. Accordingly on the 12th of April Brigadier
Clavering, with thirteen hundred men and six guns,
was sent off to a bay close to Arnouville, where they
landed unopposed, the enemy retiring to a strong posi-
tion in rear of the river Licorne. This position was all-
important to the French since it covered Mahault Bay,
which was the port by which the Dutch supplied Guade-
loupe with provisions from the island of St. Eustatia. It
was so strong by nature that it needed little fortification
by art ; access to the river being barred by a mangrove
swamp, across which there were but two narrow ap-
proaches, both of them protected by redoubts, palisaded
entrenchments, and cannon. None the less Clavering
determined to attack. Covered by a heavy fire of
artillery the Fourth and Forty-second advanced against
the French left, firing by platoons as coolly as if on
parade, till the Highlanders drawing their claymores
made a rush, and the Fourth dashing forward with the
bayonet drove the French from the redoubt. Then
pushing round to the rear of the entrenchments on the
French right they forced the enemy to evacuate them
also, and captured seventy prisoners. The French then
retreated southward, setting fire to the cane-fields as
they passed in order to check the British pursuit, and
took post behind the river Lezarde, breaking down the
bridge behind them. It was too late for Clavering to
attack them on that day, for the only ford on the river
was protected by a redoubt and four guns ; but keeping
up a fire of artillery all night in order to distract the
enemy's attention, he passed a party in a canoe across
the river below the position of the French, who no
sooner saw their right flank turned than they retired
with precipitation, abandoning all their guns. Follow-
ing the coast southward to Petit Bourg, where they had
prepared fortified lines and armed redoubts, the French
again tried to make a stand ; but Barrington had sent a
1) Though I have searched multitudes of maps of all periods
I have been unable to discover Arnouville in any of them.
Its position, however, may be guessed by its relations to Mahault Bay.
p.355
bomb-vessel to await them off the coast, which opened
fire with shell and drove them back once more, before
they could withdraw their guns from the entrench-
ments.
Then and not till then did Clavering grant his men
a halt after their hard work under the tropical sun ; but
on the 15th he was in motion again, and a detachment
of a hundred men was sent to capture the next battery
to southward at the town of Gouyave. The French,
now thoroughly disheartened, waited only to fire one
shot and then fled, leaving seven guns behind them,
when the British having spiked the cannon retired to
Petit Bourg. On the same day Colonel Crump was
sent with seven hundred men to Mahault Bay, where
he found the French defences abandoned. Having
destroyed them, together with a vast quantity of stores,
he marched to join Clavering at Petit Bourg and to
help, in the work of desolating the country round it.
Heavy rain suspended operations during the two
following days; but on the 18th the entire force,
excepting a garrison of two hundred and fifty men
which was left at Petit Bourg, renewed the advance
southward upon St. Maries, where all the French troops
in the island were assembled to oppose it. The French
position was as usual strongly entrenched, but the paths
that led to rear of it, being judged impassable, were
left unguarded. A detachment was therefore sent to
turn the entrenchments by these paths, and the artillery
was hastened up to the front ; but the guns had hardly
opened fire when the French, perceiving the movement
in their rear, deserted their fortifications and fled to
another entrenched position on the heights beyond St.
Maries. The British pursued ; and, while the ground
was clearing for the artillery to come into action, part
of the infantry tried to force a way through the forest
and precipices on the flank of the earthworks. The
French, weary of finding position after position turned,
left their fortified lines to meet this attack, whereupon
Clavering instantly launched the remainder of his troops
p.356
straight at the lines, and despite a heavy fire of artillery
and musketry swept the enemy out of this last refuge.
On the morrow the army entered the district of Capes-
terre, reputed the richest in the whole of the West
Indies ; all of the inhabitants, dreading lest it should be
overtaken by the fate of the rest, came and begged for
terms. A capitulation was therefore granted on liberaI
conditions, and Guadeloupe, one of the wealthiest of
the Antilles, with a harbour large enough to shelter the
whole Navy of England from hurricanes, passed for the
present to tile Crown of Britain.
The surrender came in the nick of time, for the ink
of the signatures was hardly dry when news came of the
arrival of General Beauharnais from Martinique with
six hundred French regular troops and two thousand
buccaneers. A day earlier this reinforcement would
have saved Guadeloupe ; but on hearing of the capitula-
tion Beauharnais re-embarked his troops and sailed
away. Nothing therefore remained for Barrington but
to settle the administration, fortify the harbour, and
leave a sufficient garrison to hold it. The island of
Mariegalante, which had not been included in the
capitulation, made some show of defiance but surrendered
on the first display of force. Crump was installed as
Governor ; the Fourth, Sixty-third, and Sixty-fifth were
left with him; the Thirty-eighth returned to its old
quarters in the Leeward lslands, the Highlanders were
shipped off to America, and in June Barrington, with
the remnant of the Buffs, Sixty-first, and Sixty-fourth,
returned to England.
So ended the campaign of Guadeloupe. The story
is one which is little known, and the name of John
Barrington is one of which few have heard ; yet surely
the achievements of himself and of his troops are such
as should not be forgotten. Barrington took over
from Hopson an army weakened by sickness, worn to
death by defensive warfare of the most harassing kind,
and disheartened by the consciousness that it was
working to no purpose. He at once shifted his base
p.357
For more active operations, only to find, to his great
mortification, half of his force literally at sea, and the
fleet taken from him for other duty. Yet he went to
work at once ; and knowing that he could not take the
island by force reduced it to submission by cutting off
and destroying its supplies. I have not hesitated to
describe the petty engagements which followed, since
there was not one which did not show forethought in
the planning and skill in the execution. It is true that
the French regular troops- on the island were few, and
that the enemy which deserted its entrenchments so
readily was made up mainly of raw militia and armed
civilians; but they never fought except in a strong
position protected by artillery. It is true also that the
actual work in the field was done by Crump and
Clavering, two excellent officers, for Barrington was so
much crippled by gout that he could hardly leave Fort
Louis. Nevertheless the whole scheme of operations
was Barrington's, and no man more cordially acknow-
ledged the first than Clavering himself. The number
of the British killed and wounded in action is unfortu-
nately not to be ascertained, but judging by the casualties
of the officers, of whom eleven were killed and twenty-
one wounded, it was not very great. But it is not lead
and steel that are most fatal in a tropical expedition,
and it is not in killed and wounded that its cost must
be reckoned. The island had been conquered, but the
climate had not ; and the climate took its revenge. By
the close of the seven months that remained of the year
nearly eight hundred officers and men of the
garrison had found their graves in Guadeloupe.
AUTHORITIES.-For the expeditions to Cancalle Bay and Cher-
bourg, see Accounts by an officer of the late expedition. Entick also
gives details from the official documents. For the operations at Goree,
see State Papers (Record Office), C. 0., Col. Corres., Sierra Leone,
2, 3. For Guadeloupe, see State Papers, C. 0., America and West Indies,
100, 1O1 ; W. 0., Orig. Corres., 26. Entick again gives a confused statement.
The following is an exerpt from "A History of the British Army" Vol 2 by Sir John Fortescue.
CH. X HISTORY OF THE ARMY 521
A scheme of the kind had indeed been on the point
of execution in the autumn of 1760 ; and eight thousand men had
actually been embarked for a secret expedition under
General Kingsley, but had been returned to the shore on
receipt of the news of Kloster Kampen. In January,
however, the same regiments were again warned for
service under Major-General Hodgson, and on the
29th of March they sailed from Spithead under convoy
of ten ships of the line, besides smaller vessels, under
Admiral Keppel, for their unknown destination. (The troops
were the whole, or detachments, of the 9th, 19th, 30th,
34th, 36th, 67th, 69th, Morgan's (then the 94th), Stuart's
(then the 97th), Grey's (then the 98th) ; two troops of the
16th Light Dragoons, and three companies of Royal Artillery.
Detachments of the 3rd, 36th, Crawford's (then 85th)
and Boscawen(then 75th) also arrived in May and June.)
On the 7th of April the fleet anchored off the island
of Belleisle on the French coast, and on the following
day sailed round it looking for an undefended point.
Finally Port La Maria on the south-eastern side was
selected; the troops were shifted into flat-bottomed
boats, and an attempt was made to storm some French
entrenchments which covered the landing-place. But
the ground was so steep that only sixty men of the
1 Miscellaneous Orders, 3rd October, Iqth November 1760.
2 Ibid., 24th January 1761.
522 HISTORY OF THE ARMY BOOK X
Thirty-seventh succeeded in making their way to the
top of the heights above the sea, and these after a
gallant attempt to hold their ground were overpowered
by superior numbers. The attempt was therefore
abandoned, and the troops were re-embarked, having
lost about five hundred men, killed, wounded, and taken.
The island was in fact so strong by nature, and so
skilfully fortified by art, that Keppel despaired of a
successful descent.l The commanders, however, decided
that, if feint attacks were made on La Maria and Sauzon
some footing might be obtained by ascending the rocks
between them, which being judged inaccessible had
been left undefended. The attempt was accordingly
made on the 22nd and was brilliantly successful. The
grenadier-company of the Nineteenth contrived to
scramble up the rocks and to hold its own on the
summit until reinforced, when the men charged with
the bayonet, drove back the enemy and captured
three guns. The French then retired into the fortress of
Palais and proceeded to strengthen the defences ; while
Hodgson, to his infinite mortification, was obliged to lie
idle for a fortnight, being unable to land his heavy
artillery owing to continual gales. At length on the
2nd of May ground was broken, and on the 13th the
entrenchments were carried by storm. The French
thereupon retired into the citadel which after a most
gallant defence was compelled on the 7th of June to
surrender. The losses of the British throughout the
whole of the operations were about seven hundred
killed and wounded. Thus Belleisle was secured as a
place of refreshment for the fleet while engaged in the
weary work of blockading the French coast.
Any hopes that might have been built on the value
of this expedition as a help to Ferdinand were very
speedily dissipated.
1 Keppel to Admiralty.-, 18th April 1761.
The following is an exerpt from "A History of the British Army" Vol 2 by Sir John Fortescue.
p.537
The total number of men voted by Parliament for 1762
was little short of one hundred and fifty thousand men,
making with the German mercenaries a total of two hundred
and fifteen thousand men in British pay. There were thus men in
abundance for any enterprise ; and the sphere of opera-
tions had been marked out by Pitt. The conquest of
1761 Pitt had written to Amherst that some of them
would be required in the autumn for the conquest of
Dominica, St. Lucia, and Martinique. Amherst was
therefore instructed to send two thousand men forth-
with to Guadeloupe ; to concert with the Governor the
means of taking the first two of the islands mentioned ;
and to despatch six thousand more men rather later in
the year for the capture of Martinique. Accordingly
in the first days of June 1761 transports from America
began to drop singly into Guadeloupe, the fleet having
been dispersed by a storm. By the 3rd of June four
ships had arrived, together with Lord Rollo, who had
been appointed by Amherst to take the command ; and
on the following day the whole of these, together with
one ship more from Guadeloupe itself, made sail under
p.538
escort of Sir J. Douglas's squadron to beat back against
the trade wind to Dominica.(The force consisted of 300
of the garrison of Gaudeloupe, 400 Highlanders, the 22nd,
and Vaughn`s Foot-then the 94th) By noon of the 6th they
had arrived beiore Roseau, where the inhabitants were
summoned to surrender. The French replied by
manning their batteries and other defences, which
included four separate lines of entrenchments, ranged
one above another. Rollo landed his men and entered
the town ; when reflecting that the enemy might be
reinforced in the night he resolved, though it was
already late, to storm the entrenchments forthwith. He
attacked accordingly, and drove out the French in
confusion which trifling loss to himself. The French
commander and his second being half taken prisoners,
no further resistance was made ; and on the following
day Dominica swore allegiance to King George.
Martinique got wind of the intended attack on that
island, and took measures for their defence. Their
force was not wholly contemptible in so mountainous a
country, for it included twelve hundred regular troops,
seven thousand local militia, and four thousand hired
privateersmen. The neighbouring English islands did
what they could to help the mother-country. Antigua
sent negroes and part of her old garrison, the Thirty-
eighth Foot, which had never left her since Queen
Anne's day ; and Barbados raised five hundred negroes
and as many white men, which were the more acceptable
since that island was, as usual, the rendezvous for the
expedition. The first troops to arrive in Carlisle Bay
were a detachment from Belleisle (The 69th, Rufane`s,
Morgan`s, and Grey`s Foot), where, as well as
in America, regiments had been lying idle; and on
p. 539
Christmas Eve appeared the main army from America
under command of General Monckton. This was
made up of eleven different regiments,(15th, 17th, 27th,
28th, 35th, 40th, 42nd(2bns), 43rd, 46th, 3/60th) besides
a few companies of American rangers. In all, the force
entrusted to Monckton must have amounted to fully
eight thousand men.
On the 5th of January the transports weighed anchor
and sailed away to leeward, under escort of Admiral
Rodney's fleet, past the Pitons of St. Lucia,
past the port of Castries and the bay which Rodney was
twenty years later to make famous, and on the 7th
anchored in St. Ann`s Bay, just round the southern
extremity of Martinique, on the western side. Two
brigades were then landed in the Anse d'Arlet, a bay
farther up the western coast, from which they marched
to the south of the bay that forms the harbour of Fort
Royal, but, finding the road impracticable for transport
of cannon, were re-embarked. On the 16th the entire
army was landed without loss of a man at Case Navire,
a little to the north of Negro Point. This Point forms
the northern headland of the harbour, and had at its
foot a road leading due east over the mountains to the
capital town of Fort Royal, some three miles away.
The way was blocked by deep gullies and ravines ; while
the French had erected redoubts at every point of
vantage, as well as batteries on a hill beyond, named
Morne Tortenson. Monckton was thus compelled to
erect batteries to silence the French guns before he
could advance farther. By the 24th this work was
complete, and at daybreak a general attack was made
under the fire of the batteries upon the French defences
on Morne Tortenson, a party being at the same time
detached to turn the enemy's right flank. The turning
movement was completely successful ; and the redoubts
by the sea, on the enemy's left, having been carried,
the troops stormed post after post, until at nine o'clock
p.540
they were in possession not only of the detached re-
doubts but of the entire position of Morne Tortenson,
with its guns and entrenchments. The French retired
in great confusion, some to Fort Royal and some to
Morne Grenier, a still higher hill to the north of
Morne Tortenson. Simultaneously two brigades under
Brigadiers Haviland and Walsh attacked other French
posts to the north of Morne Tortenson and, after great
difficulty owing to the steepness of the ground,
succeded in driving them also back to Morne Grenier.
The losses of the British in this action amounted to
thirty-three officers and three hundred and fifty men
killed and wounded.
On the following day Monckton, being now within
range, began to throw up batteries against the citadel of
Fort Royal, but finding himself much annoyed by the
French batteries on Morne Grenier to his left, decided
that these must first be silenced. Fortunately the enemy
saved him from further trouble by taking the offensive.
On the afternoon of the 27th they suddenly debouched
in three columns from Morne Grenier upon Haviland`s
brigadier. and the Light Infantry of the army, on
Monckton's left, and with unexpected temerity ventured
to attack. Unhappily for them, one column exposed its
flank to the Highlanders and was almost instantly
routed. The two remaining columns thereupon gave
way, and the whole fled back to Morne Grenier with
the British in eager chase. Such was the impetuosity of
the pursuers that they plunged down into the interven-
ing ravlne after the French, and swarming up Morne
Grenier " by every path, road, and passage where men
could run, walk, or creep," hunted the fugitives head-
long before them. Night came on, but the British officers
would not stop until they had cleared every Frenchman
off the hill and captured all the works and cannon.
Monckton at once sent off more troops to support the
pursurers, and by one o'clock in the morning of the 28th
p.541
Morne Grenier was securely occupied, at a cost of little
more than one hundred British killed and wounded.
The batteries on Morne Tortenson were then completed,
new batteries were constructed within four
hundred yards of the citadel, and on the 3rd of
February Fort Royal surrendered. Nine days more
sufficed to reduce the rest of the Island, and by the 12th
of February Monckton's work was done. (The regiments
employed at Martinique, complete or in detachments, were
the 4th, 15th, 17th, 22nd, 27th, 28th, 35th, 38th, 40th,
42nd, 43rd, 48th, 3/60th, 65th, 69th, Rufane`s(2bns),
Montgomery`s Highlanders, Vaughn`s, Gray`s, Stuart`s,
Campbell`s, 2 coys of American Rangers, 10 coys of Barbadoes Volunteers)
He at once shipped off detachments to St. Lucia,
Grenada, and St. Vincent, which islands fell without
resistance, and had made his arrangements for the
capture of Tobago also, when he received orders
requiring the presence of hls-troops elsewhere.
The following is an exerpt from "A History of the British Army" Vol 2 by Sir John Fortescue.
War had been declared against Spain ; Lord Albemarle had
been appointed to command an expedition against
Havanna ; and Amherst had been directed not only to
embark four thousand men from America to join him,
but to collect eight thousand more for an attack on
Louisiana. The stroke meditated by Pitt three months
before was now about to fall. In February 1762 Albe-
marle's troops embarked ; and on the 5th of March he
sailed with four regiments only, (22nd, 34th, 56th,
Richmond`s Foot- then 72nd) under convoy of
Admiral Sir George Pocock, to pick up the remainder
of his forces in the West Indies. On the 20th of
April he arrived at Barbados, and on the 25th at Fort
Royal, Martinique, where he took over from Monckton
what he termed "the remains of a very fine army,"
much reduced by sickness, which brought his force to a
strength of twelve thousand men of all ranks. Thence
continuing his voyage he came on the 6th of June
into sight of Havanna. Twelve sail of the line were
p.542
detached to the mouth of the harbour to block in the
Spanish Fleet, and on the following day the troops were
landed safely a little to the northward of the city.
On the 8th the army advanced westward, brushing
away a force of militia that stood in its path, and on
the same day arrived heiore the principal defences of
Havanna.
The entrance to the harbour of Havanna lies through
a channel about two hundred yards wide, which was
defended by two forts at its mouth, Fort Moro on the
northern shore, and Fort Puntal opposite to it, the
town also being situated on the southern shore. On
the north side the ground rises rather abruptly from the
harbour into a ridge known as the Cavannos, at the end
of which stands Fort Moro, abutting on the open sea.
A detached redoubt on these heights was carried with-
out difficulty on the 11th of June, and, Fort Moro
being found after reconnnaissance to be surrounded with
impenetrable brushwood, the construction of a battery
was brgun under cover of the trees. The work pro-
gressed slowly, for the soil was thin, while the Spanish
ships in the harbour caused the besiegers no slight
annoyance ; so on the 13th a part of the British force
was landed at Chorera, on the other side of the harbour.
It was not until July that the British batteries could
open a really effective fire, but by the 15th, with the
help of the fleet, the enemy's guns were for the time
silenced ; and since trenches were impossible in ground
so rocky, approaches to Fort Moro were made of
gabions and cotton-bales. Still the work made little
progress, for the climate had begun to tell on the troops,
and little more than half of the men were fit for duty.
Meanwhile the ,garrison of Port Moro continued to
defend itself with the greatest obstinacy, due in part to
its confidence in the strength of the fort. The ditch
at the point of attack was seventy feet deep from the
edge of the counterscarp, except in one place, where a
narrow ridge of rock made it possible to reach the wall
of the fort without scaling-ladders. The only way to
p.543
surmount such an obstacle was to sink a shaft and blow
the counterscarp into the ditch, but powder was dead:
running short ; and Albemarle grew extremely anxious
over the issue of his operations.
At length on the 27th Colonel Burton arrived from
America with three thousand men of the Forty-sixth
Fifty-eighth, Gorham's rangers and Provincial troops
having lost five hundred men captured by the French
on the voyage. Three days later the mine under the
counterscarp was sprung with success, and Fort Moro
was carried by storm with trifling loss, the Spaniards
offering but little resistance. New batteries were then
pushed forward along the shore at the foot of the
Cavannos in order to play on the town. On the 10th
of August these opened fire and on the same evening
silenced Fort Puntal. The Spaniards then proposed a
capitulation ; and Albemarle, in consideration of their
defence, granted them the honours of war, being in
truth devoutly thankful to obtain possession of Havanna
on any terms. His army was melting away rapidly
from disease ; there was indeed one brigade of four
battalions which could not muster twenty men fit for
duty. Albemarle hastened to ship it back to America;
but Amherst could spare no more troops to replace
these, having already reduced his garrison to a strength
of less than four thousand men. Albemarle hoped
that rest and better quarters might restore the health
of the army after the work of the siege was done ; but
on the contrary sickness increased. The losses actually
caused by the enemy's fire during the siege were rather
less than a thousand men killed and wounded, yet by
the 18th of October the British had buried over five
thousand men dead from sickness alone. Nor did the
transfer of the troops from Cuba to America serve to
abate the plague among them ; for the hapless brigade
first shipped off by Albemarle lost three hundred and
sixty men within a month after its return. Yet at any
p.544
rate Cuba was taken, and Cuba in those days was
reckoned a prize little less rich than India.
The virtual destruction of the army before Havanna
put all ideas of an attack on Louisiana out of the
question ; and the French seized the opportunity offered
by the removal of so many troops from Canada to send
a small squadron and fifteen hundred troops against
Newfoundland. The British garrison being only one
hundred strong could offer no resistance, and the island
was accordingly surrendered. Amherst, however, sent
his brother with a sufficient force to recover it ; and the
French after a short defence capitulated as prisoners
of war. As Amherst's losses did not exceed fifty men,
and the captured French garrison numbered six hundred,
the enemy gained little by this brief occupation of
Newfoundland.