l-^ ■^ ill" nil" w wBl i v3 n ^ g - ■n 1 wmmmimfMmmffmir. CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FROM Mrs.W.F.T^.Goirley CORNELL UNIVERSITY UBRARY 3 1924 091 765 655 M Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924091765655 British Battles On Land and Sea. BY James Grant, Author of " The Romance of War," &c, WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS. Vol. I. Cassell Fetter & Galpin, LONDON, PARIS, AND NEW YORK. CONTENTS. PAGE Introduction i Hastings, 1066 a Battleoftlie Standard, Tlie, 1 138 .... 10 Damme, The, 1214 15 Bouvines, 1214 16 Dover, 1217 17 Lewes, 1264 21 Evesham, 1265 22 Channel, In the, 1293 24 Stirling Bridge, 1297 26 Falkirk, 1298 30 Bannockbum, 13 14 35 Halidon Hill, 1333 .43 Sluys, 1346 45 Cressy, 1346 . - 47 Durham, 1346 ........ 52 Winchelsea, 1349 ....... 57 Poictiers, 1356 58 Black Prince in Spain, The — Najera, 1367. . . 62 Sea.-fight, 1378 66 Otterbume, or Chevy Chase, 1388 ... .68 Homildon, 1402 71 Shrewsbury, 1403 ....... 74 Agincourt, 1415 76 Bauj^, 1421 82 Crevant, 1423 86 Vemeuil, 1424 87 Roverai, 1429 89 Blore Heath, 1459 93 St. Albans, 1461 94 Towton, 1461 95 Chipping Bamet, 1471 98 Tewkesbury, 1471 100 Bosworth, 1485 105 Stoke-Bardolph, 1487 no Sea-fights, 1489, 1490 112 Dovras, In the, 1511 116 Bretague, Off, 1512 117 Flodden, 1513 119 Haddenrig, 1542 125 Ancrum Moor, 1 545 ■ • • • • • .128 Isle of Wight, 154s . . . . . .130 Pinkie, 1547 134 161 Leith, Siege of, 1560 . Zutphen, 1586 . Drake, Exploits of Sir Francis Spanish Armada, The, 1588 Groyne, The, 1589 . Sea-fights off Flores and Cape Corrientefe, 1591 Drake and Hawkins, Last Expedition and Death of Admirals, 1595 . Cadiz, The Capture of, 1596 Porto Rico, 1598 Cezinibra, In the Bay of, 1602 Cagliari, Sea-fight with the Turks off, Isleof Rhe, The, 1627 . Newburn Ford, The Rout at, 1640 Edgehill, 1642 .... Stamford Hill and Lansdowne, 1643 Roundway Down and Newbury, 1643 Marston Moor, 1644. Naseby, 1645 . Kilsythe, 1645 . "Unlawful Engagement," The, 1648 Cromwell in Scotland, 1650 Dunbar, 1650 . Cromwell in Scotland — Inverkeidiing, WorceStei-, 1 65 1 Dundee, The Sack of, 1 65 1 Blake, Exploits of Admiral, 1652 Dutch, Three Days' Battle with the, 1653 Point of Gober, and Camperdown, 1653 Glencairn, The Expedition of, 1653 . Blake, Last Exploit of, 1657 Dunes, before Dunkirk, The, 1658 . Lowestoft, Naval Engagement off, 1665 Dunkirk, Four Days' Battle off, 1666 North Foreland, Off the, 1666 . Pentland Hills, 1666 . Dutch in the Medway, The, 1667 Southwold Bay, 1672 Prince Rupert and the Dutch, 1673 . British Troops under Marshal Turenne St. Denis, 1678 Bothwell Bridge, 1679 Tangiers, 1680-4 .... 165 VI CONTENTS. Sedgemoor, 1685 .... Last Siege of Edinburgh Castle, 1689 Killycrankie, 1689 .... Dunkeld and Cromdale, 1689 , Haughs of Cromdale, The Bantry Bay, 1689 .... Siege of Londonderry Newton Butler, 1689 Surprise of the Bass Rock, 1689-94 . Beachy Head, i6go .... The Boyne, 1690 .... Aughrim, 1 691 Limerick, 169 1 La Hc^ue, 1692 .... Island of the Scots, 1693-7 Steenkirke, 1692 .... Landen, 1693 ..... Lagos Bay — St. Malo, 1693 Camaret Bay, 1694 .... Commodore Wilmot's Expedition, 1695 Namur, 1695 Pursuit of the Baron de Pointis, 1697 Darien Expedition, The, 1698-9 PAGE 380 386 389 393 395 400 404 408 411 417 422 425 430 434 438 443 447 452 455 462 46s Irish at Cremona, The, 1702 Vigo Bay, 1702 Benbow in the West Indies, 1702 Blenheim, 1704 Capture of Gibraltar, 1 704 PAGE 470 473 479 482 489 Malaga, 1704 493 Marbella Point, 1705 ; Ostend, 1706 . . . • 5°! Ramillies, 1706 504 . 508 • 513 519 • 52s • 529 • 532 539 . . 548 Almanza, 1707 .... Oudenarde, 1708 .... Lisle and Wynendale, 1 708 The Castle of Alicante, 1709 The Cruise of Commodore Wager, 1709 Malplaquet, 1709 .... Sheriffmuir, 17 15 . Affair of Preston, The Cape Passora, 1718 554 556 . . 561 Glenshiel, 1719 Expedition of General Wade, The, 1724 . Gibraltar, 1727 565 Portobello, 1739 Carthagena, 1 74 1 Dettingen, 1743 567 569 574 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Queen Elizabeth at Tilbmy Ruins of Hastings Castle .... Trophy of Norman and Saxon Armour (io66) Group of Norman Soldiers (a.d. io6^) Harold at the Battle of Hastings Early Scottish Claidhmores in Warwick Castle Walter L'Espec and the Earl of Albemarle Advance of the English Fleet upon the Damme De Burgh's Oath Battle of Dover, The " No Quarter to Traitors " Wallace and the Monks William Wallace Battle of Stirling Bridge, The Bishop of Durham's Charge at Falkirk Plan of the Battle-field at Bannockbum The Death of Bohun Edward Repulsed from Stirling Castle Sword and Shield of Edward III. in Westminster Abbey Charge of the Scots at Halidon Hill Edward III. Knighting the Black Prince . Early Cannons ...... Beaurepair Abbey ..... Surrender of the King of France at Poictiers Helmet at Parham Park, Sussex (1350) Crossbows and Daggers (Fourteenth Century) Black Prince's March through Roncesvalles, The Village of Yetholm, The. .... Hotspur's Night Attack .... Cannon, &c. , from a MS. in the British Museum Battle-field of Shrewsbury, The Saddle, Helmet, and Shield of Henry V. . View of Harfleur ..... Henry and Alen9on at Agincourt La Rochelle Battle of Herrings, The .... Battle of Towton, The ... . Crossbow-man, &c. , of Richard, Earl of Warwick Obehsk at Chipping Bamet, The Suit of Full Armour (Middle of Fifteenth Century) Murder of Prince Edward at Tewkesbuiy Plan of Bosworth Field Richard III. at Bosworth . Ruins of Kenilworth Castle Death of Sir Andrew Barton Plan of Flodden Field Battle of Flodden, The . Frontispiece, PAG"E 3 S 6 7 10 12 13 18 19 24 25 3ci 31 36 37 42 43 1410, 45 48 49 51 54 55 58 60 61 66 6.7 72 73 75 78 79 85 90 91 96 97 102 103 108 109 114 "5 120 121 Battle of Ancrum Moor, The Tuaghs, or Scottish Battle-axes, Preserved at Edinburgh Attack on the Isle of Wight Lord Grey of Wilton's Charge at Pinkie . Inveresk Fight for the Standard at Pinkie, The Breech-loader Wheel-lock Pistol Incident in the Seige of Leith, An Sir Philip Sidney at Zutphen Taking of Zutphen, The .... Dag, or Pistol, from Portrait of the Earl of Leicester Drake Attacking the Spanish Treasure Ship Sir Francis Drake Wrought-iron Breech- loading Ship Gun. . Blade of the Sword of Sir Francis Drake . Vessels of the Armada Wrecked on the Irish Coast Lisbon, from the Sea .... Spanish Attack on Penzance Chain-shot and Firework Weapons . Drake's Funeral ..... English Fleet before Cadiz, The Storming of Cadiz, The .... Powder-flasks, &c. ..... Attack on Porto Rico .... Attack on Cezimbra ..... Musket of 1620 . ... Musketeer and Pikeman (About 1625) Cagliari, from the Sea .... Duke of Buckingham's Army at the Isle of Rhe Rondelle, Wanvick Castle (1620) Retreat of the British from Rhe Collar of Bandoleers Passage of Newburn Ford .... Prince Rupert at Edgehill .... Iron Hat of Charles I. . . . . Nottingham Castle View of Launceston ..... Helmets (About 1620) .... ' Arquebusiers with Snap-hance Carbines (1632) English Cuirassier, Charles I. . Death of Falkland, at Newbury Steel Scottish Pistols (1630) ... Entry of Essex into London View of York ...... Buff Coat worn by Colonel Fairfax at Naseby, 1645 Battle of Naseby . . . , , . Charles I. at Naseby .... View of Perth f PAGE 126 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Highland Target .... Attack on Montrose's Cavalry, The . Charge of the Macleans . Pembroke Castle .... "Mons Meg" .... Attack on Leith .... Boot Worn by Captain Lench at Worcester Cromwell at Dunbar .... Monk's Siege of Tantallon Sir Hector Maclean's Charge . Glove Wom by Captain Lench at "Worcester Worcester, from St. John's Musketeer's Sword (Charles I.) . Pikeman of the Cromwellian Period . Surrender of Sir Robert Lumsden Skirmish between Blake and Van Tromp Admiral Blake ..... Sea-fight with the Dutch, 1653 . Death of Van Tromp Helmet and Support (Seventeenth Century) Taymouth (Balloch) .... Naval and Military Uniforms Death of Admiral Blake . Dunkirk, from the Sea Monk Entering London Fireworks, from Guns and Bows Making Proclamation of War . General Monk, Duke of Albemarle . Chatham in the Seventeenth Century . Pentland Hills, The . General Dalzell entering Edinburgh . De Ruyter's Attack on Upnor Castle . Solebay Fouchard and Partisan (Artillery Museum, Churchill before Maestricht View of Treves ..... City of Mons (from an old Bird's-eye View) Battle of Bothwell Bridge . Covehanters Meeting .... Plug Bayonet (Period of James II., l6S6) Tangiers Castle .... Landing of Monmouth Capture of Monmouth Bridgewater Castle .... Edinburgh Castle .... Pass of Killycrankie, The Lochiel's Charge at Killycrankie Matchlock (Time of William IIL) . Dunkeld Cathedral .... Claverhouse (From an Authentic Portrait) King James II. Landing at Kinsale Londonderry . , . Defence of Londonderry . Spontoons (Tower Collection) . Mounljoy at the Boom, The Bass Rock, The .... Paris PAGE 246 247 253 253 258 259 264 265 270 271 276 277 279 282 283 288 289 294 29s 300 301 306 307 312 313 318 319 324 325 330 331 336 337 342 343 348 349 354 355 360 361 366 367 372 373 378 379 384 38s 390 391 396 397 402 403 40S Beachy Head .... Plan of the Battle of the Boyne William III. at the Boyne Athlone Castle Plan of the Battle of Aughrim Limerick ..... Irish Troops leaving Limerick . Cape La Hogue Namur ..... Breech-loader (About 1700) Meeting of WiUiam III. and the Duke of Berwick Charge at the Battle of Neerwinden St. Malo . Attack off Brest, The Thompson's Fight . Hispaniola Death of Godfrey Vauban Lock (Match and Flint combined) A.D. 169: Arrest of Marshal Boufflers .... Gulf of Darien ... Military Uniforms, 1700 . . . . Cremona The Torbay Forcing the Boom at Vigo Bay . Landing in the Bay of Cadiz by the Duke of Ormond John, Duke of Marlborough .... Battle of Blenheim (from an Old Plan) . Battle of Blenheim, The Taking of Gibraltar, The Rock of Gibraltar, The Malaga Earl of Peterborough, The Rescue of the Duchess di Popoli Barcelona . » . . The Battle of Ramillies Prince Eugene . Marlborough in Danger Plan of the Battle of Oudenarde View in Ghent ... Skii-mish at Wynendale Webb's Attack . Alicante .... Marshal de Boufflers . Plan of the Battle of Malplaquet Eugene AVounded Braemar . Dunblane . on Tower Hill .Attack on Burntisland Earl of Mar's Coimcil of War Execution of Lord Derwentwater Harbour of Messina . The Chevalier St. George . Battle of Glenshiel, The . Musketi-y Exercise, Early Part of Eighteenth Century Uniforms, 1743 Plan of the Battle of Dettingen George II. at Dettingen Ur«N these pages we propose to detail the *> 'l\ exploits and glories by which our empire has become so vast that the siin never sets upon it, and by which we have maintained for ages long past the un- questionable supremacy of the sea. The battle of Hastings and the subse- ' c" quent reign of William the Conqueror natu- J^ rally form the first mighty landmark in English history ; then come the exploits of Richard Coeur de Lion, the model of a Crusader and a hero ; next were the wars of the Scottish Independence, when the first three Edwards, at the head of vast armies, sought in military superiority the means of territorial aggrandisement, but, fortunately for posterity, sought it in vain. The achievements of the Black Prince and BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. of the gallant Henry V., at the head of their splendid knights and unerring archers, unfold to us the origin of that deep-rooted antipathy which so long marked the relations between this country and France ; while with the reign of Elizabeth and the destruction of the Armada came the time when first our insular position was rightly understood, and the real foundation of our naval greatness laid ; when, in the exploits of Drake, of Hawkins, and of Raleigh, we find the foreshadowing of greater glories to be won under Benbow and Anson; when our old three-deckers were to ride the waves like floating, castles, and when Nelssn's last signal at Trafalgar found — and yet finds — an echo in eveiy English heart. Through the long and terrible wars waged by the Anglo-Norman kings, and even those of the House of Tudor, against Scotland and France ; those of the Roses, the Commonwealth, and the Covenant, to those of the stirring Jacobite period, we shall tell the story of our battles in a series of historiettes. The victories of Peterborough and Marlborough are not yet forgotten, nor the times when Almanza, Blenheim, Ramillies, and Oudenarde were house- hold words in many an English village and se- cluded Scottish glen ; though ere long to be rivalled, and even outshone, by the perils and splendours of the long and glorious strife in the Peninsula— those triumphs won by the Great Duke and his generals, before the old Moorish walls of Talavera de la Reyna; on the fatal hill of Albiiera, when, avenging the fall of him who died at Corunna, only i,8oo unwounded British soldiers, the survivors of 6,000, stood victors when the sun went down ; by the rocks of the Sierra de Busaco ; on the mountains of Fuentes d'Onore, and the plains of Salamanca and Vittoria ; or amid the hon-ors of the night at Badajoz when, by steel and lead, by fire and water, 5,000 of our soldiers fell, 2,000 dying in the trenches al6ne, and when even Wellington wept when he heard of the awful slaughter of his devoted troops. Nor shall the dark night of the sortie from Sayonne be for- gotten ere we come to the three days' carnage of " the king-making victory " of Waterloo. Forty years of peace follow, and then we come to that eventful night when our army landed at Eupa- toria, and where, without tents or baggage, 60,000 men remained on the bare ground, under tempests of wind and rain. Then we come to the heights of Alma, bristling with steel and zoned by fire ; the fatal ride of the "Six Hundred" at Balaclava, when cannon blazed in front, on flank, and in rear of; them, while the voice of Death was never still in the mighty batteries and frozen trenches of Sebastopol ; and that dull November morning, when the rumble of the Russian artillery was heard amid the wet mists of the Euxine, as Menschikoff poured his grey hordes into the Valley of Inkermann, but only to be swept away, in ruin and defeat, by our splendid infantry, which Marshal Bugeaud praised as being the finest in the world, adding, pithily, that, for France's sake, "it is Heaven's own mercy that there is no more ofit." Even with Sebastopol the story of our triumphs cannot end, for the wars of India have yet to be toldj and the victories of that army of Vengeance which came on from Uniballa to punish the destroyers of our women and children in the shambles of Cawnpore and Lucknow. Memories S'jch as these are as the life-blood of a people ; from generation to generation they make young hearts leap and old ones fill with fire again. In days to come warfare may change in its modes, as it has changed in times past ; but the glories of such battles as Trafalgar or Balaclava can never pale before any that are to come in the wars of the future. " The character of the British army,'' wrote one who had studied the subject well, " has ever been earned in battle and attested by victory. Wherever it has been even tolerably led it has conquered ; nor is there any army in the world which has sustained so few serious reverses. The elements of which it is composed are such as, if fairly developed in action on anything like equal terms, are certain to ensure victory; for not only are our soldiers more robust and athletic than those of any other nation, but they are also distinguished by an unflinching and indomitable pride and courage. The latter is often difficult to restrain, never necessary to excite, and always rises to a pitch of sublime elevation at the prospect of a charge or close conflict. "Ours are the only troops in the world which can look steadily, or with comparative indifference, on a line of bayonets, and who seem to rejoice when the order is given to charge ; and then goes up to Heaven that hearty hurrah which British throats alone can give, and which is inspired by the genuine British desire for fighting hand to hand. Hence it is that their fire is so close, steady, and destructive ; and hence that their charge, whenever given, is irresistible." " It has been asserted," says Napier, " that the undeniable firmness of the British soldier in battle is the result of a phlegmatic constitution uninspired by moral feeling. Never was there a more stupid PRESTIGE OF THE BRITISH ARMY. calumny uttered. Napoleon's troops fought in bright fields where every helmet caught some beams of glory ; but the British soldier conquered under the cold shade of aristocracy ; no honour awaited his daring, no dispatch gave his name to the applause of his countrymen ; his life of danger was uncheered by hope ; his death unnoticed. Did his heart sink therefore ? Did he not endure with- surprising fortitude the sorest of ills, sustain the most terrible assaults in battle unmoved, and, with incredible energy, overthrow every opponent ; and Isabella, in the fifteenth century, as given in the " History of the Conquest of Granada : " — "He brought with him a hundred archers, all dexterous with the long-bow and the cloth-yard arrow ; also two hundred yeomen armed cap-a-pie, who fought with pike and battle-axe, men robust of frame and of prodigious strength. " This cavalier was from the island of England, and brought with him a train of his vassals ; men who had been hardened in certain civil wars which had raged in their country. They were a comely KOTNS OF HASTINGS CASTLE. at all times proving that, while no physical military qualification was wanting, the fount of honour was also full and fresh within him?" The result of a hundred battles, and the united testimony of impar- tial writers of different nations, have given the first p'ace amongst the European infantry to the British ; " but," adds this able writer, " in a comparison between the troops of France and Britain, it would be unjust not to admit that the cavalry of the former stands higher in the estimation of the world." Intrepidity is the distinguishing feature of the British character, and from the page of general liistory we find compressed the following graphic delineation of a British soJdier at the period of the expulsion of the Mosrs from Spain by Ferdinand race of men, but too fair and fresh for warriors, not having the sunburned, martial hue of our old Castilian soldiery ; they were huge feeders also, and deep carousers, and coilld not accommodate them- selves to the sober diet of our troops, but must fain eat and drink after the manner of their country. " They were often noisy and unruly also in their wassail, and their quarter of the camp was prone to be a scene of loud revel and sudden brawl. They were withal of great pride, yet it was not like our inflammable Spanish pride ; they stood not much upon the punitonor and high punctilio, and rarely drew tlie stiletto in their disputes ; but their pride was silent and contumelious. Though from a remote and somewhat barbarous island, they yet BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Hastings. believed themselves to be the most perfect men upon earth, and magnified their chieftain, the Lord Scales, beyond the greatest of our grandees. With all this, it must be said of them that they were marvellous good men in the field, dexterous archers, and powerful with the battle-axe. In their great pride and self-will they always sought to press in the advance and take the post of danger, trying to outvie our Spanish chivalry. They did not rush forward fiercely, or make a brilliant onset like the Moors; but they went into fight deliberately, and persisted obstinately, and were slow to find out when they were beaten. Withal, they were much esteemed,, yet little liked by our soldiery, who considered them staunch companions in the field, yet coveted but 'little fellowship with them in camp." And such is still the character of our soldiers; and it is somewhat singular that the Emperor Napoleon and Marshal Soult made the same remark, that British troops never knew when they were beaten. With the great battle fought on the 14th of October, 1066 — a battle which for three centuries transferred the English crown to ' a race of foreign kings — yft commence the long and stirring story of our triumphs by land and sea. CHAPTER I. HASTINGS, 1066. The most important battle ever fought on English soil is unquestionably that of Hastings ; not only because of the great strength of the invading force, the perfect success of the enterprise, and the dread- ful misery which fell upon the conquered English for several generations, till the Norman element became blended, if not altogether lost, in the Saxon, but also on account of many incidents peculiar to that short and terrible war. From the day of the accession of Harold, the son of Godwin, to the English throne, the dread of a Norman invasion haunted him, for William of Normandy had sworn to stake on the issue of battle his personal right to that throne, which he claimed as the bequest of the Confessor ; and during the summer of 1066 all his dukedom and the territories of his adherents resounded with the notes of preparation. He received a banner, consecrated by the Pope ; and through all Maine and Anjou, Poitou and Bretagne, Flanders, Aqui- taine, and Burgundy, the mail was burnished, the spear flashed, and the steed galloped ; while lawless barons, whose ruined castles now stud the Rhine, wild robbers from the base of the Alps, knight, varlet, and vagrant, we are told, all mus- tered to join this holy banner, that was to be the guide to the pillage and conquest of England. " Good pay and broad lands to every one who mil serve Duke William with spear, with sword, and bow," was said on all hands; and the duke him- self added to Fitz-Osborn, as in perspective he parcelled out the fair land of England in fiefs to his Norman knights, " This Harold hath not the strength of mind to promise the least of those things that belong to me. But /have the right to promise that which is mine, and also that which belongs to him. He must be the victor who can give away both his own and that which belongs to the foe." The Normans were then in the zenith of their military glory. In France they had acquired a noble territory ; a few of their adventurous knights, by overcoming Italians, Greeks, and Germans, had laid the foundation of the opulent kingdom of Naples and Sicily : and thus the friends of William were as confident of success as they were resolute and fearless. Every harbour and roadstead in his dominions and in those of his allies was busy with preparation throughout the summer and spring of that eventful year. Workmen were employed at all the ports, building ships, setting up masts, and stretching sails. William had need of ships to cope with that Saxon navy which was the legacy of Alfred; for now "the last of the Saxon kings" had assembled at Sandwich the largest fleet and army that Engla:nd had ever seen, to resist the coming invaders, though the population was not then supposed to exceed 2,000,000, while two of the present English border counties, Westmoreland and Cumberland, belonged to the King of Scotland. Thierry estimates the entire fleet of AVilliam as amounting to 400 ships with masts and sails, and more than 1,000 transport boats (Hume says 3,000 sail) ; while his army, now fully collected, was care- fully organised by him according to the tactics of the day, and its fiery masses were welded together by the powerful and combined influences of love of glory and adventure, fanaticism, conquest, and plunder. Hastings.] THE LANDING OF WILLIAM. They mustered 60,000 men. Among them were Eustace, Count of Boulogne, Ameri de Thouars, Hugh d'Etaples, Guillaume d'Evi-eux, Geoffrey de Rotau, Roger de Beaumont, Guillaume de War- renne, Roger de Montgomerie, Hugh de Grant- mesnil, Charles Martel, and other knights and nobles, whose muster-roll of names, as given by Grafton, in his "Black Letter Chronicle," pub- lished in 1572, amounts to 753. Among them was Rend, a. monk of Fecamp, who substituted a shirt of mail for his cassock, to follow William with a ship and twenty men-at-arms, on receiving the pro- mise of an English bishopric. The rendezvous was the mouth .of the Dive, between the Seine and the Orme, and thence the armament was to sail in the middle of August. Sir Robert le Blount, styled "DuxNavium Militarium," was commander of the fleet. North-west winds de- layed William till tlie be- ginning of September. Ere this the, Saxon fleet at Sandwich had melted away, being unpro vision ed. Just at the time, too, when Harold's presence was all- important on the south coast, he was called north- wards to repel a Nor- wegian army that had landed under the bamier of Harold Hardrada, the last of the Scandinavian ■wikings. He routed them utterly at Stamford Bridge, on the 24th September; and then, when the weather was mild and serene, and a brilliant sun was shining on the snow-white cliffs of England and on the waters of the Chan- nel, Duke William and his army crossed that open strip of sea, and landed on the undefended shore, at convenient points between Bexhill and Win- chelsea, on the feast of St. Michael, the patron of Normandy. Carefully watching the disembarkation of his troops and their mailed horses, William was the last who stepped on the shore. He stumbled and fell as he did so, and rose with his gauntlets covered with mud, which being deemed a bad omen by some of those about him, he said, " What is the matter ? I have thus 'taken seisin of this land ; and so far as it reaches, by the splendour of God, it is yours and is mine !" Concentrating his forces on the green slopes at TROPHY OF NORMAN AND SAXON ARMOUR (lo56). Hastings, he formed an entrenched camp, and set up- " two wooden castles," by which are perhaps meant simply palisaded ramparts. Bodies of his mailed cavalry now overran the adjacent country, pillaging and burning the timber-built houses of the people, who sought in vain to hide their goods and cattle in the forests. Some sought refuge in the churches and burial-places, but even there they were massacred without mercy by the Normans. Yet, in addition to the consecra*ted banner, William wore on his right hand a ring sent him by the Pope, with one of St. Peter's hairs set in it ; and thus, as Hume remarks, all the ambition and violence of this invasion were safely covered over by the broad mantle of religion. Harold was at York when tidings of it came. His most gallant leaders had perished at Stamford Bridge. That victory was in some measure his ruin, and for years to come the ruin of England ; and but for the imfo'rtunate land- ing of Harold Hardrada, Duke William and his Normans might have had another tale to tell of Hastings. On examining his forces Harold found them sorely cut up and diminished ; but though Earl Gurth, his brother, a man of con- duct and courage, urged a protraction of the war, Harold, on being rein- forced by fresh troops from London and other places, was deaf to his argument, and fired by native courage, elated by victory, and justly incensed by the arrogance of the Normans, he vowed that " he would give battle in person, and convince his subjects that he was worthy of the crown they had set upon his head." ' So confident was he of success, that at London he manned 700 ships to prevent the escape of the Normans, and sent a message to the duke offering him a sum of money if he would quit the shores of England without further effusion of blood. This offer William rejected with mocking disdain; and in return sent certain monks requiring him to resign his crown or hold it of him in fealty, to submit their cause to the arbitration of the Pope, or fight him in single combat. "The God of battles will soon be the great Arbiter of all our differences," was the quiet res- ponse of Harold ; but he was conscious that dread BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Hastings, of the papal excommunication affected his Saxon followers, and perhaps would prevent them making a resolute stand against the invaders. Harold was undoubtedly a man of heroic courage, and had slain many of the Norsemen with his own hand at Stamford Bridge. He remained six days in London ere he marched against William ; and there came with him " Earl Gurth his brother, Earl Leofwin his brother, all his thanes, his franklyns, his housecarles, and the men of London and of Kent, and very many of the men was generally known in both armies that a battle would be fought on the morrow. The English were merry ; they drank much ale, and were heard singing old Saxon songs : while among the Norman host we are told that the night was passed in prayers and pious processions ; and that, notwithstanding the wild, lavi'less, and warlike spirits which com- posed it, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, and Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances, went through the camp, ex- horting to repentance, urging prayer, blessing, and hearing confessions. GROUP OF NORMAN SOLDIERS (A.D. Io66). of the southern and eastern shires of England : and the king marched on through the land of the South Saxons, and he came to a hill which men then called Senlac, whereon now is the town of Battle, and there he pitched his camp by the hoar apple tree," which was perhaps some tree held sacred by the Saxons in the '' /s of heathendom. Accompanied by his brother, Gurth, he rode forward in person to reconnoitre the Norman camp, after having secured his own by palisades. They are said to have quarrelled as to the line of action to be adopted, but to have been silent when they returned as to the subject of dispute. On the evening of Friday, the 13th October, it On the following morning Duke William rose early, heard mass, and received the holy commu- nion ; then gathering around him the leading knights- and nobles of his army, he told them that he had come, bent to take that which was his — the crown King Edward had left hini — and concluded by re- minding them of the ancient prowess of the Normans — how " they had won their land in Gaul with their own swords ; how they had given land to the kings of the Franks, and conquered all their enemies every- where ; while the English had never been famed in war, the Danes having conquered them and taken their land whenever they would." This harangue, though probably a fable, is recorded by Henry of Hastings. ] SITE OF THE BATTLE. BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Hastings. Huntingdon and William of Poictiers. Then the vWaole army marched from Hastings to the hill called Telham, whence they could see the camp of Harold; and then the Norman knights put on their coats of mail, assumed their heavy helmets, and ex- changed their light hackneys for their great barbed battle-horses. William, probably in his haste, put on his chain shirt with the back to the front. "A good sign and a lucky one," said he, laughingly, as he reversed it ; "a duke shall this day be turned into a king." The present aspect of the field is very different now from that which it presented on Harold's birth- day, the fatal 14th of October, 1066. No building stood there save a lonely Saxon fane, known as the Church of St. Mary-in-the-Woods, for the use of the peasantry who dwelt in the adjacent forests. The future abbey embraced the centre of Harold's posi- tion. His standard waved on Senlac Hill, and on a similar eminence was that of William. Between these a beautiful valley of green meadows and luxuriant woods winds away in a north-easterly direction towards Hastings, where it meets the sea. Then the plain was all desolate and wild. William rode a Spanish barb ; he wore a surcoat above his chain-mail, and a case of holy relics at his neck, and carried in his right hand a truncheon of steel. By his side rode Toustain the Fair, bearing the beau- tiful banner which Pope Alexander had blessed — a perilous honour, which two barons had declined. The formation of the Norman army was altogether peculiar. It was drawn up in three long lines. The first, formed of archers and light infantry, was led by Roger de Montgomerie ; the second, com- posed of heavily-mailed men-at-arms, was led by Martel j and the third, led by William in person, was entirely composed of cavalry — knights with their squires, and- yeomen-— and its length was so vast that it far outflanked the first two. Splinted armour had not been introduced ; the Normans therefore wore tippets and shirts or hauberks of minute iron rings, with high saddles and steel frontlets for their horses. There was a strong resemblance between the military equipments of the Normans and Saxons at this period ; and though the latter wore tunics of iron rings, much of their armour was composed of leather only, and consisted of over- lapping flaps, generally stained of different colours, -and shaped like scales or leaves. It was called corium by the writers in the succeeding century, and coriehcm in the Norman law. In addition to the ringed byrne, the Saxons had a kind of mail com- posed of iron bosses sewn on leather, and the short mantle added grace to the figure ; while the cross'-gartering, composed of thong, gave a lightness and firmness to their footing. The Saxons wore their hair and beard long and flowing ; the Normans had the former shorn and the latter closely shaven. There was a tribe in Wales then named the Veijta, who excelled with the bow, and that weapon, is frequently referred to in the poems of Ossian ; but save during the Heptarchy, when we read that Offrid, son of the King of Northumbria, was killed by an arrow in a battle fought in 633, near Hatfield, in Yorkshire, little relating to the bow appears in the Saxon annals. (See Mpseley on "Archery.") Harold drew up his army in order of battle on a rising mound, with his flanks and front protected by deep trenches, intending to sustain an attack, but avoid, if possible, the heavy-armed cavalry, a force in which he was inferior. In rear of the trenches were ballistse and other engines for casting stones. In the centre was his royal standard, depicting a warrior in th-e act of fighting, worked in gold and studded with precious stones, perhaps the handi- work of his queen, Algitha, or of Swans-hause ("Edith with the Swan's Throat"), whom Harold loved so well when he was Earl of the East Angles. Besides this, the EngHsh had one other great banner, charged with the golden dragon of Wessex. The Kentish men formed his first line, together with the Londoners, who guarded the standard. All these men were mailed, and armed with javelins, swords, and heavy battle-axes ; but the other troops v.'ho came from the south and east had no iron de^ fensive armour — few had swords, bows, or axes, and many had pikes, pitchforks, or anything '.they could get wherewith to arm them. Harold dis- mounted, with his brothers Leofwin and Gurth ; and there on foot, with his battle-axe in his hand, stood the last Saxon king of England, prepared to conquer or die, beside his standard, on the very spot where the high altar of the future minster- rose, and where then there was amid the waste nought but " the hoar apple tree." Precisely at nine o'clock the whole Norman army began to move forward in three great lines, all marching in unison, and loading the aiv with the hymn or battle- song of Roland, the peer of Charle- magne, who fell at Roncesvalles. This song was led by Taillefer, or "Cut-iron," the minstrel, who rode in front, tossing up his sword and catching it. With the morning sun shining on the arms and armour of 60,000 men, those lines came down the green slope, their parti-coloured pennons and banners waving, their grey but glittering shirts of mail, and t-heir gaudy surcoats of silk or fine linen, em- broidered or painted with the heraldic cognisances which from that day forward were to be those of .the future aristocracy of England. Hastings.] THE DEATH OF HAROLD. The Normans came on with spirit and alacrity, and ere long the clouds of " arrows and cross-bow bolts' filled the air from both front lines. " God is our help ! " was their cry, as they flung themselves against the palisades which fringed the edge of Harold's trench protecting his front, and strove with maiied hands to tear them up and force an entrance for their cavalry. " Christ's Rood ! The Holy Rood ! " was the incessant battle-cry of the Saxons, who shot their arrows thick and fast, hurled their javelins, and hewed with their axes, cleaving shields of iron and hauberks of tempered steel asunder. Many fell fast before and behind that formidable palisade, and the Norman writers tell us how dreadful the fight was, " and how the English axe in the hand of King Harold, or any other strong man, cut down the horse and his rider by a single blow." Harold and his brother fought there among the foremost. He lost an eye by an arrow, and though consequently half blind and in agony, he still con- tinued to fight ; while William ordered his archers to press forward, and "instead of shooting with level aim" to discharge their arrows with a curve, so that they might assail the English rear. Horse and foot, knight and pikemen, now poured like a living tempest sheathed in iron on the Saxon trenches. " Our Lady of help ! God be our help ! " was the cry ; but so terrible was the execution done by tlie English battle-axes, mauls, and spears, that they were driven down into the ravine between the two hills, where men and horses, killed, wounded,' or dying, rolled over each other pell-mell, and many men were even smothered in their armour and their own blood. William had three horses killed under him, and on the third occasion a cry arose that he was slain. On this he remounted and rode along the now shattered line, with his helmet in his hand, that all might see him, exclaim- ing, " I am here— look at me ! I hve, and, by God's help, shall conquer!" Aided by his half-brother. Bishop Odo, he rallied his troops, and once more they returned to the attack with greater fury; the palisades were torn up and an entrance forced for the living mass of men and horses that poured through. The tide of battle began then to verge from the hill _to the heath near the village of Epiton, northward of the present town of Hastings. In dense masses, however, and fighting desperately, the EngUsh threw themselves around the standard, and Duke William hewed his way towards it, intent on meeting Harold face to face — a result he never achieved ; though Earl Gurth, who fought near his royal brother, hurled a spear at the duke, who a few minutes after slew him with his own hand. Earl Leofwin fell next under the sword of Roger" de Montgomerie ; but still the half- blind Harold stood, axe in hand, beside his standard, with the orb of his shield full of Norman arrows. Twenty knights now swore to take the standard or die in the attempt, just as Harold fell disabled and faint with loss of blood. Ten fell; among these was Robert Fitz-Emest, whose skull was cloven by a battle-axe at the moment his hand was on the pole. However, the survivors succeeded in tearing down the English- standard, and planting in its stead the consecrated one which had come from Rome. The golden- dragon, " that ancient ensign, which had shone over so many battle-fields, was never again borne before a true English king," as it; too, fell into the hands of the Normans. Then four knights, one of whom was Count Eustace of Boulogne, rushed upon Harold as he lay dying. They recognised him by his rich armour and royal insignia, and barbarously killed him with many wounds, sorely mangling his body. Still the fight was not done, nor was it over till the setting of the sun, for the housecarles and other picked Saxon warriors fought with the cour- age that is born of vengeance and despair, in deep and miry ground, broken and disordered, against the mighty force of the Norman chivalry. No prisoners were taken, neither did any Saxon take flight till darkness came on, and by that time there lay on the field of Hastings 15,000 Norman dead, and a still greater number of the vanquished, stated at "threescore thousand Englishmen," which is cer- tainly an e. ajgeration of the truth. In their riotous joy at having obtained such a victory, when weary of tracking the fugitives by the light of the moon, the Normans exultingly caracoled their horses over the bodies ; while William, ordering a place to be cleared of them, pitched a great pavilion, wherein he feasted the principal nobles and knights of his army. Next day he permitted the bodies of the English to be carried away for burial ; and though Hume records that he generously restored the dead body of Harold without ransom to his m9th£r, Gurtha, we now know that though she offered him " Harold's weight in gold, that she might have his body to bury at the Holy Rood of Waltham," William of Poictiers, a trustworthy writer, dis- tinctly records that the Conqueror gave a stern refusal, and ordered it to be buried under a heap of stones on the beach, adding, with a sneer which must have been bitter to every Enghsh heart, " He guarded the coast while he was alive, let him thus continue to guard it after death." lO BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [The Standard. Another version is that his mangled body was found on the field by "Edith with the Swan's Throat," who recognised it by a mark on the flesh ; and that she had it carefully and tenderly interred under a cairn near the rocks at Hastings, where it lay till the heart of William relented, and it was interred in Harold's own minster at Waltham. There was a favourite fable or story long treasured •lay the English, to the effect that Harold sur- vived the battle, and lived long years after as •an anchorite in a cell near the church of St. John, at Chester — obviously a ridiculous fiction ; though Knighton asserts that when the recluse lay dying he owned himself to be Harold, and that the in- scription on his tomb was to the same effect. So ended the great field of Hastings — the last invasion of the island of Great Britain, save the terrible battle of Largs, in 1263, when the Nor- wegian army was totally destroyed by the Scots — a field which in one day made the proud and im- perious Normans lords of all England, from the Channel to the border mountains. EARLY SCOTTISH CLAIDHMORES IN WARWICK CASTLE. CHAPTER II. THE CATTLE OF THE STAXD.'^RD, II-;t 'The next great batde fought on English ground is •very remarkable from the circumstance that in the ■component parts of the invading force were repre- •sented nearly all of the various races which are now welded together as the British people ; and it is of this field that, in Scott's splendid fiction, Ced- ric the Saxon boasts so justly that the war-cry of Jiis subjugated race was heard as far amid the ranks of the foe as the cri de guerre of the proudest Nor- man baron. When Henry I., one of the most accompHshed princes that ever filled the English throne, died by an unlucky overgorge of lampreys, in 1138, at St. Denis, in Normandy, England had again the pros- pect of a succession to be disputed in blood. By will he left his kingdom to his daughter Matilda, widow of the Emperor Henry V. of Germany; and as the nobles of England and of Normandy had sworn fealty to her, she had every reason to expect tlie inlieritance as queen of both states. But the The Standard.] A DISPUTED SUCCESSION. fierce feudal barons had an aversion to female suc- cession ; the feeling was so strong that it prevailed over their oaths and their good faith, and prepared the way for the usurpation of Stephen, Count of Blois, third son of Adela, daughter of the victor of Hast- ings, who claimed the vacant throne in opposition to Maud, urging that he was the first prince of the blood, and that it was disgraceful for men to submit to a woman's rule. His brother, Henry, Bishop of Winchester, gained for him the leading clergy, and he was joyfully received by the citizens of London, after he had escorted the embalmed body of Henry to the Abbey of Reading, where, on the interment day, he lent his shoulder to bear the leaden coffin. The first to draw his- sword for Maud was her uncle, David I., King of Scotland. Thrice in one year he ravaged with great severity all Northumber- land, which he claimed as his own, and on the third occasion he marched as far as Yorkshire. On the approach of Stephen with an army, he deemed it advisable to fall back on Roxburgh, wliere he took up a strong position, and prepared to give battle ; but Stephen, on discovering that some of his nobles had a secret understanding with the enemy, avoided the snare that was laid for him, and, after laying waste the Scottish frontier, retreated south. In March, 1138, David, re-entered Northumber- land, urged, it is supposed, by letters from his niece, the Empress Maud,'the justice of whose claim to the throne of England he felt keenly, as she was the only legitimate daughter of King Henry. At the same time, curiously enough, he was uncle to the queen of Stephen. England was at this time in a very deplorable condition, and the inhabitants of her northern coun- ties had few other resources on which to rely than their own valour and the good policy of Thurstan. the aged Archbishop of York, who, in his decrepit form, displayed all the energy of a youthful warrior. Stephen was so pressed in the South of England, where many of the barons had risen in opposition to his government, that he could raise no army of any consequence to oppose the invading Scots, who mustered 26,000 men ; and the only succour he could seiid to the north was a body of lances under Bernard de Baliol, a Yorkshire baron, whose descendants were afterwards to bear a prominent and ignoble part in Scottish history. But Thurstan had already assembled the northern barons, ex- horting them "to fight for their families and 'their God; he assured them of victory, and pro- mised heaven to those who might fall in so sacred a cause." Aged, and unable to appear in public on account of many infirmities, this noble, old prelate deputed an ecclesiastic named Ralph Nowel, whom, in the exercise of his usurped authority over the Scottish Church, he had named Bishop of Orkney, to act as his representative. The archbishop issued an order for all the eccle- siastics in every parish of his diocese to appear in procession, with their crosses, banners, and relics, and enjoined all men capable of bearing arms to repair to the general rendezvous of the northern barons at Thirsk, in defence of Christ's Church against the barbarians. Three days were spent in fasting and devotion ; on the fourth Thurstan made thetti swear never to desert each other in the coming strife. He promised victory to 9.11 who were penitent. At York he heard the confessions of the barons, and delivered into their hands his crozier and .his metropolitan banner, -which was dedicated to St. Peter. The chiefs who came were William, Earl of Albemarle, Robert de Ferrars, William Percy, Roger de Mowbray, Ilbert de Lacy, and Walter I'Espec, an aged Norman warrior of great experience. Meanwhile the Scots were coming on with sword and with flame. David detached his nephew, Wil- ham, at the head of a body of Galloway men, into the West of England, where, on the 4th of June, he defeated a considerable force near Clitheroe, and carried off much spoil. The king by this time had laid siege to the strong castle of Norham, which Ralph Flambard, Bishop of Durham, had erected nineteen years before to repress the inroads of the Scottish borderers ; it was surrendered, and dis- mantled by David, who marched south through Northumberland and Durham without opposition, till he came to Alverton, now called Northallerton, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, on the 22nd of August. The EngHsh army was drawn up in array of battle on Cutton Moer, close by this place. It was then a wide waste of purple heather, dark green gorse, and stunted bushes. There they ! had erected a remarkable standard, consisting ' of the mast of a ship securely lashed to a four- ! wheeled car or wain. On the summit of this mast was placed a large crucifix, having in its centre a ' silver box containing the consecrated host, and : below it waved the banners of three patron saints ' —Peter of York, Wilfred of Ripon, and John of ' Beverley. Hence the name of the conflict, the ' " Battle of the Standard." I At its base, sheathed in armour, with his helmet ^ open, old Walter I'Espec harangued his followers > ^ and, at the conclusion of his speech, gave his unr ' gauntleted hand to William, Earl of AlbemarlQ> 12 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [The Standard. ^exclaiming, " I pledge thee my troth to conquer or to die ! " These words kindled a great enthusiasm among the fiery spirits aroufnd him, and the oath of fealty lo each other was then repeated by all. The repre- The three lines of the Scots were now in sight ; and on a signal being given, the whole English knelt while the representative of Thurstan read from the carriage the prayer of absolution. With' a universal shout, they answered "Amen," and then WALTER l'eSPEC AND THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE (see fage ll) . '•sentative of the energetic old Thurstan delivered a -speech for the encouragement of the army. It 'Opened thus, according to Matthew of Paris : — ■" Illustrious chiefs of England, by blood and race Normans, before whom France trembles — to whom fair England has submitted — under whom Apulia has been restored to her station — and whose names are famous at Antioch and Jerusalem ; here are the Scots, who fear you, undertaking to drive you from your estates ! " every man repaired to his place. From the Conquest to the close of the twelfth century but little change had taken place in the armour and weapons of the English ; but five distinct varieties of body-armour were worn by them about the time of the Standard — a scaly suit of steel, with a chapeUe de fer, or iron cap ; a hauberk- of iron rings ; a suit of mascled or quilted -armour ; another of rings set edgewise; and a fifth of tegulated mail, composed of small square plates of The Standard.] MISSION OF BRUCE AND BALIOL. 13 steel lapping over each other like tiles, with a long , flowing tunic of cloth below. Gonfanons fluttered from the spear-heads; and knights wore nasal helmets and kite-shaped shields of iron, but their spears were simply pointed goads. Though the red lion had been one national emblem of the Scots for more than a hundred years, and traditionally the thistle for a much longer period, on this day the standard borne by them was simply a long lance with a tuft of blooming mountain- hea- men-at-arms, with the men of Moray and from other parts covering the rear. Such was the singularly mixed force led by the Scottish king; for in his ranks were many men of England who favoured the cause of his niece the empress, or were disgusted with Stephen's rule at home. Favoured by a dense fog and the smoke of burning villages, which concealed his advance for a time, he was not without hope of taking the English by surprise ; but they were fully prepared, and every ADVANCE OF THE ENGLISH FLEET UPON THE DAMME (seepage I5). ther attached to it; and the armour and equipment of the Lowlanders were pretty much like those of the English. The vanguard consisted of the men of Lothian and Teviotdale, the moss-troopers of Liddesdale and Cumberland, and the fierce and wild men of Galloway under their principal chiefs, Ulric and Donald, led by Prince Henry, who was reinforced by a body-guard of men-at-arms under Eustace Fitzjohn, a Norman baron of Northumber- land, whom Stephen had offended by depriving him of the castle of Bamborough. The second line was composed of the Highland and Island clans, armed with their round targets, two-handed claymores, and tuaghs or pole-axes. The third, or reserve line, under the king, consisted of a strong body of Saxon and Norman knights and man stood to his arms. Ere the battle began, the Norman barons, inspired by a humanity somewhat new to them, sent to the Scottish army Robert Bruce, Earl of Annandale, and Bernard de BaUol, nobles who held vast estates in both countries, to offer as conditions of peace " to procure from Stephen a full grant of the earldom of Northumber- land in favour of Prince Henry." The speech of Bruce, which was long, and con- tains many curious facts, is reported at length by Aired, a contemporary and confidant of David, hence it may be assumed to be substantially accu- rate ; but David rejected all proposals. Then exclaimed William MacDonoquhy, his nephew, " Bruce, thou art a false traitor ! " Where- upon Bruce and Baliol departed, renouncing their 2 14 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [The Standard. allegiance to the Scottish crown, and the advance was resumed. The king, resolving now to place some Norman knights and Saxon archers in the van, gave terrible offence to the bare-kneed Celts who were in his army, and it threatened the most disastrous consequences. •'Whence comes this mighty confidence in those Normans ? " asked Malise, Earl of Strathearn, scornfully. "I wear no armour; but there is not one among them who will advance beyond me this day." " Rude earl," replied Allan de Piercy, a Norman knight, " you boast of what you dare not do." David had to interfere, and place the Celtic clans of Galloway in the van, and reserve to himself the command of the Scots properly so called. The English were drawn up in a dense mass around the sacred standard. Their men-at-arms dismounted, and sending their horses to the rear, mingled with the archers, and met the shock of battle on foot. It was begun by the fierce " wild men," as they were named, of Galloway, who flung themselves sword in hand on the serried English spears with shouts of " Albanaich ! Albanaich!" which means, "We are the men of Alhyn!" The spearmen gave way ; but a heavy shower of arrows threw the Celts into disorder, and as they fell back the EngHsh taunted them by shouting, '■'■ Erygh ! Erygh t" ("Ye are but Irish ! ye are but Irish ! ") Prince Henry now rushed on at the head of his mailed cavalry, charging with lances levelled, and broke through the English ranks, says Aired, " as if they had been spiders' webs," and actually dis- persed those who guarded the horses in the rear. Ulric and Donald had fallen, yet the Galloway men ralhed without them, and renewed the attack ; the other lines were closing up, and for two hours the^ battle was but one wild melee of men and horses wedged and struggling together. Thus far one account. Another says that it was in vain that the Scots, "after giving three shouts in the manner of their nation,'' sought with their swords to break through the forest of spears. "Their courage only exposed them to the deadly aim of the archers ; and at the end of two hours, disheartened by their loss, they wavered, broke, and fled." The story goes that when the Galloway men ral- lied, and with terrible yells were about to renew the attack, an English soldier, with singular tact and presence of mind, suddenly elevated a human head upon his spear, and shouted, " Behold the head of the King of the Scots ! " This spread speedy consternation, and the men of Galloway fled, falling back upon the second line, while the third abandoned the field without striking a blow. On foot, David strove to rally them, but in vain : then his knights and men-at-arms, perceiving that the day was lost, constrained him to quit the field. Placing himself at their head, he covered the retreat and prevented the pursuit of his ill-matched army as far as Carlisle, when, enraged by their defeat and the loss of some thou- sands of their number, fired with mutual animosi- ties and petty national jealousies, they assaulted each other, and fought promiscuously among them- selves. It was on the 25th August that David entered Carlisle, and there for some days he was in great uncertainty as to the fate of his gallant son. Prince Henry, whose impetuosity had carried him through the ranks of the English. " On his return from the chase of fugitives in the rear, finding the battle lost, he commanded his men to throw away their banners, and so mingling with the pursuers, he passed them undiscovered, and after many hazards succeeded in reaching Carlisle on the third day after the king his father." In their retreat the Galloway men carried off many Englishwomen, who were only restored through the intervention of Alberic, Bishop of Ostia, the papal legate, a circumstance which affords some proof of the barbarity of the times, and the ferocity of the troops who carried on the war. Yet David who led them was founder of twelve of the most magnifi- cent abbeys in Scotland. At Carlisle he exacted a solemn oath from all that they should never again desert him in war ; and after storming and razing to the ground Walter I'Espec's castle of Werk, he returned to Scotland more like a conqueror than one whose army had been so totally routed, as the victors of Northallerton were not in a condition to follow up the' advantage they had gained ; and, ultimately, through the mediation of the legate and the Queen of England, peace was concluded on the Qth April, 1 139. The old monastic vsriters of England dwelt with great satisfaction on the singular battle of the Stand- ard, which they considered to have been won, less by- the valour and hardihood of those who fought under old Walter I'Espec of Werk, than the influ- ence of the holy relics and the banners of St. Peter of York, St. Wilfred of Ripon, and St. John of Beverley. The place where they stood is still called the Standard Hill at Northallerton. The Damme.] ENGLAND'S FIRST GREAT NAVAL BATTLE. IS CHAPTER III. THE -DAMMK — BOUVINES — DOVER, 1 2 14 — 1217, The Damme. It is somewhat remarkable that it is in the time of King John, whom an EngUsh historian has justly characterised as " a mean coward, a shameless liar, the most profligate of a profligate age, and the most faithless of a faithless race," that we find those two great historical facts, the assertion of English supremacy over the sea, and the first great naval engagement between the French and English — a brilUant spot in the gloomy history of his time, and from which may be traced that series of bright naval exploits which have been our boast for ages, and, let us hope, may long continue to be so, after the " wooden waUs " have passed away, or given place to those of iron. The leading causes of the first great naval battle were as follows : — John having divorced Joanna, married Isabella of Angoul6me. This, with the murder of Arthur, roused his enemies against him, and they speedily stripped him of Normandy, and all that the Plantagenet kings once held in France. His quarrel with the Pope drew upon England the spiritual terrors of an interdict, and for six years there was no religious service in the land ; the churches were closed, the unused bells hung rusting in their spires ; the statues of the saints were draped in black, and the dead were interred without prayer or ceremony, while the living were under a curse. This state of matters caused Philip Augustus of France, a wily and ambitious sovereign, to conceive the idea of invading England, and annexing it as a fief to his cro\vn. That which William of Normandy had done before, might it not be done again? The opportunity was most favourable, and accor- dingly he made such great preparations for the com- plete conquest of England, at the call of the Pope too, that John, hitherto unmoved, yielded j and sensible that of the 60,000 soldiers whom he called his, not one was to be trusted, he took a new oath of fealty to the pontiff, and agreed to pay into his coffers 1,000 marks yearly rent for his kingdom of England and lordship of Ireland, This was in 1213, and now he took vigorous measures for rallying round him a large body of his subjects, and by the middle of April he had a great fleet as well as a large army assembled at Dover. The French monarch had determined to chastise Ferrand, Count of Flanders, for refusing to join with him in this expedition against England, and forming a secret treaty with John, who sent him armed aid. For this purpose he marched into the Low Countries, while his fleet sailed from the Seine to the Damme, an old town five miles from Bruges, on a canal of the same name, which extends from the latter city to Moerkerke. The fleet is said to have numbered 1,700 sail; and 'to anticipate and destroy all attempt at inva- sion, that of the English, consisting of only 500 sail, put to sea under Henry II.'s son by the fair Rosamond CHffbrd, William with the Long Sword, Earl of Salisbury ; John's brother, Jhe Duke of Hol- land ; and the Count de Boulogne. The vessels of those days were but small. Their masts were usually made in one piece; the sails were large and square ; the tops were large round turrets, where archers and crossbow-men lurked ; the sides were always furnished with iron grapnels ; the poops and prows were high ; and the knights on board were wont to hang their shields around the gunwale be- fore assuming them for battle. Long sweeps at times aided the sails, and around the masts were usually racked the axes and pikes of the crew. According to De Mezeray, when Salisbury with his fleet appeared off' the Damme, he found a great many of Philip's vessels at anchor in the road- stead, with most of their crews ashore. Others were moored inside the harbour and along the coast. Be all that as it may, he ordered an imme- diate attack on those in the roads ; and in a very short time the English captured 300 sail — 100 more of a small size were lying high and dry upon the beach. These were pillaged of all they contained and all thdt could be carried off, and were then set on flames. In their boats the English seamen next assailed the vessels lying within tlie harbour ; " and those Frenchmen," says old Holinshed, " that were gone into the country, perceiving that their enemies were come by the Tunning away of the mariners, returned with all speed to their ships to aid their fellows, and so made valiant resistance for a time, till the English- men, getting on land and ranging themselves on either side of the haven, beat the Frenchmen on both sides ; and the ships being grappled together in front, they fought on the decks as it had been in a pitched field, till that finally the Frenchmen were not able to sustain the force of the English- men, but were constrained, after long fighting and great slaughter, to yield themselves prisoners." i6 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Bouvines, lli'ere was a considerable number of ships in a dock higher up the harbour, and for the purpose of attacking these the English, now flushed with triumph, made an assault upon the town of Bruges, but were repulsed after a sharp engagement, and had to retreat to their ships with the loss of 2,000 men. Such was the effect of this engage- ment, in which so many vessels were taken, sunk, or burntd, and the city of the Damme given to the flames, that Philip, in a gust of fury, burned the remainder of his fleet and quitted Flanders. Such was the result of the first engagement be- tween the fleets of France and England ; and thus, under Lord Salisbury, was inaugurated a long series of naval glories. It is in Chaucer that we find the first description of an English sailor during the early part of the fourteenth century, and still in some points it is characteristic of the profession. He tells us how his shipman rode upon a hackney as ■ best he could ; he wore a gown of falding, or coarse cloth, to his knee — ' ' A dagger hanging by a lace had he About his neclc, under his arm adown. The hotte summer had made his face all brown ; And certainly he was a good fellow — Full mony a draught of wine he hadde draw. He knew well all the havens as they were From Gothland to the Cape de Finisterre, And every creek in Britain and in Spain ; His barge ycleped was the Magdalen," Bouvines. By the repulse at the Damme the schemes of Philip Augustus against England were baffled for a time, and this, together with the fact of many men of Poitou and Anjou seeking an asylum in England, so encouraged John, that in the first flush of success he sailed for Poitou, in the hope of creating a diversion in favour of the Count of Flanders ; but his hope of doing anything brilliant was blasted by the defeat of the latter, with the English forces under the Earl of SaHsbury sent to his aid, and those of the Emperor Olho, at Bouvine-s, a little village between Lille and Tournay, where, on the 27th July, 1214, was fought one of the most decisive battles of the age. There came the Emperor Otho, the Earl of Flanders, the Dukes of Lorraine and Brabant, and Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, at the head of 120,000 men. The King of France had not nearly so many ; Galon de Montigny was his standard- bearer. It was on this occasion that the French first began to use the cross-bow, invented in the days of Louis le Gros ; but it lay with the heavy cavalry, who were armed cap-k-pie, to decide the fate of the day. As for the infantry, they wore here what defensive armour they pleased; their weapons being the sword, the bow, the mace, and the sling of classical antiquity. Guerin, Bishop of Senlis, formerly a knight of St. John of Jerusalem, drew up the French array in order of battle ; and the famous Bishop of Beau- vais, who was so long the prisoner of Richard of England, rode near him armed with a ponderous mace, as he alleged that it was " against the canons to spill human blood ; " but there is no record in history of the mode or manner in which either the emperor or king ranged their troops. Before they closed in battle, the latter ordered that the 68th Psalm, Exsurgat Dens, et dissipentur inimici ejus (" Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered "), should be sung along the whole line, in lieu of the song of Roland ; as if Otho was in arms against the Almighty. Like the English standard at Northallerton, that of Otho was fixed in a four-wheeled chariot; it was a green dragon, surmounted by an imperial eagle of wood, richly gilded.' On the other side, the royal standard of France was a gilded staff, with white silk colours, powdered with silver lilies. Besides this, they had the oriflamme, which was, as its name imports, a flame-coloured banner, on a cross staff uncharged, divided at its lower edge into three parts, each furnished with a green tassel. It was always lodged in the Abbey of St. Denis, and never unfurled save when a king of France took the field ; and whenever he was in danger, one or other of the standards was lowered. Many thousand knights' pennons, square and swallow-tailed, were rustling in the wind as these great armies closed in the mortal shock ; the Ger- mans shouting " Kyrie eleison," and the French "Montjoye St. Denis !" Fortune-tellers had predicted, says De Mezeray, to the old Countess of Flanders, " that the king should be overthrown, and horses tread him down ; but that her nephew Ferrand should enter Paris in triumph." The first part of this prediction became true, for Philip was unhorsed in the first charge, and received blows on all sides from • swords, maces, and lances, but was saved unscathed by his armour, though a German reiter strove to pierce his neck with a javelin. Ferrand was afterwards taken, and literally entered Paris, but loaded with chains, in an open chariot drawn by four grey horses. Otho was routed, with the loss of 30,000 men; his imperial standard was taken, and the chariot that bore it was hewed to pieces with battle-axes ; and he died soon after of grief. He had five great nobles taken prisoners, one of whom wa,s the hero of the Damme, Longsword, Earl of Salisbury (whom the Bishop of Beauvais beat down I) over.] FIRMNESS OF DE BURGH. with his mace), and twenty knight bannerets, accord- ing to the Chronicle of Melrose, Matthew Paris, and others ; but only one knight fell, William Long- champ, who was killed by a thrust through the visor of his helmet. The mace was then the usual weapon of churchmen when they went to battle ; but knights carried it at the right side of the saddle- bow, and seldom used it till their sword or lance was broken. The person who lost most by this battle was Kmg John, and those who ultimately gained most were the English people. The tidings of Bouvines, where his friends, troops, and allies had been so completely routed that no prince dared ever after to withstand Philip Augustus, sent him home in- spired with double fury and ferocity ; and once more foreign mercenaries were let loose on England, until there came that ever-memorable iSth of June, 12 15, when, at Runnymede, a grassy meadow on the banks of the Thames, be- tween Windsor and Staines, the Great Charter of England's liberty was wrested by the justly incensed barons from the most pitiful tyrant that ever sat upon her tlirone. Dover. John's vengeance led to what we are about to narrate, the battle of Dover, another great fight which took place in sight of the shores of England, and which tended still further to assert and to maintain. her supremacy on the sea. No sooner had the barons dispersed their forces and retired to their castles, than John, at the head of a body of Gascon and Poitevin mercenaries, assailed them in succession with a fury and vin- dictiveness that showed how lightly he valued an oath, and soon the sky was red at night and darkened by day with the blaze of burning towns and cornfields, while the people fled to the hills and forests in despair ; and, unless he exaggerates, Mat- thew of Paris records that this was the state of matters from Dover to Berwick, over all the land. In this extremity, the English barons took the desperate course of offering the crown to Louis of France, who had married John's niece ; and then the horrors of a second Conquest seemed to hang over the divided people, for this Louis was the eldest son of Philip Augustus, and many of the great lords, inspired by a national spirit, were averse to the measure. With real avidity, but with pretended reluctance, the offer of the English crown was accepted ; a French army mustered at Calais, and Louis, with a numerous and well-appointed armament, consisting of 680 ships, set sail for England. Notwithstand- ing that the barons of the Cinque Ports, who re- 17 mamed faithful to John, attacked and cut off some of his ships on the high seas, he landed safely at Sandwich, on the 30th May, 1216. John was march- ing to meet him ; but on the shores of the Wash the nsing tide suddenly swept away all his baggage, jewels, and treasures. Agitation fevered him, and he died, unregretted by his friends, some say of poison, but according to others of a surfeit of peaches and ale. Louis with his adherents held London and the southern counties ; but the barons, whose feel- ings had changed since John's death, rallied round young Henry of Winchester, whom, as the royal crown had perished in the Wash, they crowned with a fillet of gold at Gloucester, and all true English- men wore a similar fillet of white cloth in honour of the event. But Louis was determined not to quit the island without a struggle, though forced to abandon all hope after the somewhat petty but otherwise important battle known as the " Fair of Lincoln," on the 19th May, 12 17. The Httle King Henry was only ten years old, and the Eari of Pembroke was appointed Regent. While Louis, who had lost everything north of London, was cooped up there, a powerful fleet and army were prepared in France for his succour. At Calais, the troops destined for this enterprise, em- barked on board of eighty large ships, besides galleys, and other armed and store vessels, the whole under the command of Eustace le Moine (the Monk), a famous sea-rover of those days, who had quitted his cloister for the more congenial scenes of outrage and battle by sea and land. This dreaded adventurer was born at Cors, in the Boulonnois, and was at one time in the service of King John, during 1205. About the time the Magna Charta was signed, he had collected many vessels, with which he harassed the English in the Channel; but now the time of his punishment was come. On the 24th of August the French armament put to sea, intending to sail up the Thames, to make spoil of London, and there land their troops, which were mider the command of Robert de Courtenay ; but " the silver streak " was not to be crossed so easily as in the days of the fated Harold. Hubert de Burgh — who had been Seneschal of Poitou ;■ whose fourth wife was Margaret, a princess of Scotland ; and who was now the Royal Justiciary and Governor of the Castle of Dover, which Louis was besieging — was fully impressed with the necessity of preventing the lafiding of this formidable force on English ground, and, more than all, their occupation of the capital, and took immediate measures for that purpose. Addressing Peter de Rupilius, then Bishop Qf BRITISH SAtTLES ON LANl) AND SEA. [Do Winchester, the marslial, and other great person- ages whom he had called round him, he said, em- phatically, " If these people land, England is lost. Let us meet them boldly, therefore, for God is with us, and they are excommunicated." "We are neither sea-soldiers nor pirates," replied Affected even to tears by his exhortation, and still more by the fate that seemed to await him, they pledged themselves to obey "liis commands. There is one other account of this episode, which though a little different is not the less interesting. It is said that when the French fleet was seen by UE burgh's oath (seepage i8). his audience, who did not share his ardour, or feared the monk Eustace, " neither are we fisher- men. Go thou and die !" Undiscouraged by this, De Burgh sent for his chaplain, and having hastily taken the sacrament, he put on his armour, and mustering the soldiers of the garrison of Dover, with an emphatic oath, he enjoined them to defend their post to the last, adding, " Ye shall suffer me to be hanged before ye surrender this castle, for it is the key of England." the people of the Cinque Ports, like white birds at the far horizon, knowing it to be commanded by the dreaded Eustace, they said, " If this tyrant land, he will lay all waste, for the country is unprotected, and the king is far away. Let us, therefore, put our souls into our hands, and meet him while he is at sea, and help will come to us from on High." " Is there any man among 30U who is this day ready to die for England?" asked another; and a third said, " Here am I." " Then," said the first fioTer..' ADVANCE OF THfi ENGLISH FLEET. t-) 20 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Dover. who spoke, "take with thee an axe, and when thou seest us engaging the tyrant's ship, dimb up the mast and cut down his banner, so that the other vessels may be dispersed for want of a leader." Sixteen ships belonging to the Cinque Ports, and about twenty smaller vessels, formed the English squadron. With the bravest of his knights, Sir Philip d'Albany (Governor of Jersey), Sir Henry de Tuberville, Sir Richard Suuard, Richard, a natural son of King John, and others, De Burgh, committing the defence of Dover to his second in command, led them on board, and they put to sea ; and from the white cliffs that overlooked it they were watched by thousands of anxious eyes. The enemy's fleet of eighty sail — a terrible dis- parity in strength and number — was already some miles off Calais when the English ships bore towards them, with all their gay banners flying; their square lug-sails, some brown, some gaudily dyed and painted; their high poops and forecastles having doors pointed like those of chapels, and studded with nails like those of prisons ; their hulls built in that quaint form still adhered to by the Dutch ; and each bristling from stem to stern with arms and armour. " But all the accounts of this engagement," says Sir Harris Nicholas, " are defective in nautical details, while the few that do occur are very obscurely expressed." It appears that the wind was southerly, blowing fresh, and the French were going large, i.e., with the .breeze abaft the beam, steering to round the North Foreland, and not expecting much if any opposi- tion. So the English squa:dron, instead of directly approaching them, kept their wind as if bound for Calais harbour ; then Eustace, the commander, exclaimed, " I know what these wretches think — they will invade Calais like thieves ; but that is useless, as it is well defended." So each bore on, but as soon as the little fleet of old England — it was " old England " then as now — got the weather-gage of the French, they suddenly bore down in the most gallant manner upon their rear ; and the moment they came athwart the sterns of the French ships, they threw their grapnels into them, and thus preventing the enemy from escaping, held them fast — an early instance of that wild love of close fighting for which English sailors have ever been distinguished. The battle began by the crossbow-men and archers, under Sir Philip d'Albany, pouring voUeysof bolts and arrows into the enemy's ships fore and aft with deadly effect ; and, to increase their dismay, as cannon were still unknown, the English threw sacks- ful of unslaked lime, reduced to fine powder, on board their antagonists, which being blown by the wind into their eyes, completely bUnded them. With pike, dagger, and axe, the English now poured on board in a torrent, and cutting away the rigging and halyards, the sails with all their top-hamper fell over the French, to use the expression of an old historian, " like a net upon ensnared small birds," and thus trammelled they could make but a feeble resistance. After an immense slaughter they were completely defeated ; for though the French were unquestionably brave, they were less accustomed to naval tactics and to fighting upon the water than their assailants, beneath whose lances, axes, and swords they fell rapidly. Disdaining to be taken alive, or more probably dreading to fall into the hands of the English, whose custom it was to treat prisoners with great severity, that they might be induced to pay exor- bitant sums as ransom, many noble French knights leaped into the sea in their heavy armour, and were never seen again. Matthew Paris records that Eustace the Monk was seized by Richard, the son of King John, who by one slash of his sword hewed off his head. Of his whole fleet only fifteen vessels escaped ; and with the remaining sixty-five in tow, or under prize crews, De Burgh and his Englishmen returned to Dover ; and we are told that, " while victoriously ploughing the waves," they devoutly returned thanks to God for their success, an example of simple religious gratitude after battle which has been followed by our tars often in more modern times. Prior to his death, Eustace the Monk is said to have hidden himself in some secret cabin, and when found offered a large sum of money as ransom for his life, promising at the same time to serve Henry of Winchester faithfully for the future ; on which Richard exclaimed, as he slew him, " Base traitor, never again shall you seduce any one by your false promises." His head was afterwards carried through England on a pole. There was no cannon- smoke to obscure the air then, and there were no telescopes to peer through; but the battle was witnessed, under a bright August sun, with exultation by the people and garrison of Dover, and the victors were wel- comed by the bishops and clergy in full sacerdotal vestments, bearing banners and crosses in. proces- sion, chanting praises to God for the rescue of England. Gold, silver, silken garments, rich armour, and weapons, the spoil of the foe, having been col- lected, and the prisoners disposed of. Sir Philip d'Albany was dispatched to the boy king and the Regent Pembroke, with tidings of " this glorious naval victoiy, whicli secured the independence of England." Lewes.] THE MAD PARLIAMENT. 21 Among the prisoners taken were Robert de Cour- tenay, Ralph de Tornellis, William de Barres, 125 knights, and more than 6,000 men-at-arms ; while De Burgh's loss, being nowhere mentioned, cannot have been very great. Sir Philip d'Albany died when performing a second pilgrimage to the Holy Land, in 1237. One of the most immediate and important results of this batrte was that Louis relinquished his claim to the throne of England, and quitted its shores, but not without reluctance, and certain stipulations for the safety of his friends ; thus ending a civil war which seemed to be founded on the most incurable hatred and jealousy, and which had threatened England with the most fatal consequences : and when Pembroke died, in the third year of his regency, the government of the country was divided between the Bishop of Winchester and the victor in, the battle off Dover, who was made Lord High Admiral of England. Ultimately he was very ill requited for all his services. On false charges, the year 1224 saw him a prisoner in the Tower of London, from whence he was removed to a dungeon in the casde of Devizes ; and after many vicissitudes, he died at Banstead, in Surrey, on the 12 th May, 1243. CHAPTER IV. LEWES, 1264— EVESHAM, 1265 — IN THE CHANNEL, 1 293. Lewes. France was now in no way disposed to meddle with England ; and during the long reign of Henry the sword was never drawn with Scodand, though there were several disputes as to which kingdom should .possess Cumberland, Northumberland, and West- moreland. The King's fondness for the Poictevins and the Proven9als, who flocked after his consort, Eleanor, roused, however, the jealousy of the nation, and ere long the barons revolted, under Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who had married the king's sister, Eleanor ; and this, to- gether with the departure of his younger brother, Richard, to win laurels in the fourth Crusade, and win the crown of the Romans, shook the throne of England, and raised the secret hopes of those who aspired to its overthrow. In 1258, in token of mis- . chief to come, the barons came to council at West- minster sheathed in full armour ; and when they assembled at Oxford, in what was called the " Mad Parliament," they appointed a committee of twenty- four restless spirits to reform the state, and these passed certain' enactments which are matters of ge- neral history, and were called the " Provisions of Ox- ford." But the wished-for reforms were delayed by disunion and jealousies among themselves ; and the King of France, on being chosen umpire, gave, perhaps naturally, the decision in favour of Henry III. On this the flames of civil war broke forth. Simon of Le-icester held London ; and when the great bell of old St. Paul's rang out the alarm, the citizens from Fenchurch, Chepe, and Strand, flocked round his standard to pillage the foreign tnerchants, whom they deemed fair objects of spoil, and to murder the unhappy Jews — then viewed as all men's prey, and as an accursed race. In the same year a famine increased the troubles of the land. The year 1264 saw the rival factions nearly equal in number of adherents and in military resources. The northern counties, conspicuous ever in history for reasoning and unreasoning ' loyalty, together with those along the Welsh border, declared for the king ; while the midland shires, the Cinque Ports, and London, " being the fattest and most attractive baits for the cupidity of foreigners," declared for Leicester. And among those who were- reckoned foreigners were Robert Bruce the elder, Earl of Annandale ; John Comyn, Lord of Badenoch; and John Baliol, all Scoto-Normans, who brought their vassals from beyond the borders, as volunteers to Henry's standard. OntheLeicesterside were De Warrene, Gloucester, the De I'Espensers, William Marmion, Robert de Roos, Richard Grey, John Fitz-John, Nicholas Seagrave, and many other nobles of high lineage and large estate ; and the politic earl endeavoured to impart a sacred character to his cause, for after recounting to them -the many alleged perjuries of the king, he assured them that God was on their side, and caused them all to wear white crosses on their surcoats, as if they had been warring in a crusade against heathens, and not Christian English- men like themselves. And when the parties drew near each other in order of battle, at Lewes, in Sussex, on the.i4th of May, John Arundel, Bishop of Chichester, and formerly a prebend of St. Paul's, went through the insurgent ranks, giving a general ab- solution to all, and promising heaven to all who might fall, BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Evesham. By this time flat-ringed armour had nearly disap- peared, and that composed of rings set edgeways was almost generally worn, with much quilted and padded armour, made of silk, cloth, buckram, and leather ; and these materials, from the peculiar manner in which they were ornamented, obtained the name of pourpoint and counterpoint. The sur- coats were usually elaborately emblazoned with the family arms and honours of the wearer. Small plates of steel were beginning to be worn at the shoulders, elbows, and knees, called, according to their position, epauUeres (hence epaulettes), cotites, and genouillires, and to these were added in turn splint after splint, till the complete mail of future years was reached. The helmets were barrel-formed, and rested on the shoulders, cumbrous, and liable to be wheeled round by a lance thrust. Iron skull- caps were worn by esquires, archers, and men-at- arms. A knight's shield was straight at the top ; and now, in addition to the weapons of the last century, he added a martel-de-fer, in fact, a mere pointed hammer, for the purpose of breaking the links of chain-mail and plates, to leave openings for the point of lance or sword ; and now, for the first time, the roweled spur had replaced the bar- barous goad. It was on the present race-ground, the down now traditionally known as "Mount Harry," the encounter we are about to narrate took place, near where the ancient town of Lewes, with its walls, and the loftily-situated castle built by William de Warrene, son-in-law of the Conqueror, still stately in ruin, look down on the grassy vales of Sussex and the Ouse winding to the sea. The royal army was divided into three bodies. Prince Edward had the right; the King of the Romans the left ; Henry III. led the main body, where his standard, a dragon, was displayed. The army of the barons was formed in five divi- sions. The first was led by Henry de Montfort and the Earls of Hereford and Essex ; the second by the Earl of Gloucester, with Fitz-John and William de Montcausis ; the third was led by the Earl of Leicester ; the fourth, consisting wholly of Londoners, was on the extreme left, under Nicholas Seagrave, mustering 15,000 men, according to Matthew of Westminster. The battle was begun by the young and fiery Prince Edward, who, at the head of a chosen body of knights and men-at-arms, with lances in the rest, made a terrible charge on the Londoners. Burn- ing to avenge the insults they had heaped upon his mother, whom they had threatened to drown as a witch, he attacked them with such impetuous fury that they were broken in an instant, driven in disorder from the field, trampled under hoof, and slaughtered in heaps ; and for four miles he pursued them without giving quarter to a single man. But this victory cost him dear, as he left the royal infantry totally unprotected ; so they in turn were borne down under a combined attack from the columns of Leicester and Gloucester. For a time all were mingled together, fighting " with a fury mixed with despair;" and ultimately the king's forces began to retire towards the foot of that high green hill on which the grey old castle of Lewes stands, many of them hoping there to find shelter and make terms. But — alas for them ! — town and castle were alike in the hands of the barons, and finding themselves surrounded on all sides, they surrendered at discretion. So there were taken Henry, King of England ; his brother, the King of the Romans ; Humphry de Bohun, Earl of Here- ford ; William Bardolf, Robert de Tattershall, Henry de Piercy, and the three Scottish auxiliaries, Bruce, Baliol, and Comyn. Young Edward returned from his vengeful pur- suit to find the day thus lost, more than 5,000 English corpses covering the ground, and among those of his father's people were De Wilton, the Justiciary, and Fulk Fitz-Warin ; and of the barons, • three noble knights, one of whom was Wilham Blund, their standard-bearer. For that night the king and his kinsmen were lodged in the Priory of Lewes, some remains of which are still discernible near the town. In the meantime the queen, Eleanor, who had fled to the Continent, gathered a numerous force with the aid of different princes, who regarded the cause of Henry as their own ; and she was now waiting at the Damme, in Flanders, ready to cross the Channel : but Leicester (" Sir Simon the Righteous," as the English called him), with great promptitude, ordered a muster of the barons' troops on Barbara Downs to await her landing. He also went on board a fleet to meet her on the sea. This display of resolution, together with the defeat at Lewes, so intimidated the leaders of the queen that they disbanded their land forces, and their fleet never ventured from port. Evesham. Leicester was frequently harassed by solicitations for the release of the two princes, Edward and Henry. At last he pretended to acquiesce, and convoked a Parliament to sanction the measure ; though the secret motive was to consolidate his own power, the power which he had won by years of labour, danger, and intrigue. He had hitherto enjoyed the co-operation of the Earls of Evesham. ] DEATH OF LEICESTER. 23 Derby and Gloucester ; but if he was ambitious and casting eyes towards the throne, they were too proud to bow to a fellow-subject. Quarrels ensued, and the arrest of the former warning Gloucester of danger, he unfurled the royal standard in the midst of his tenantry ; and Leicester immediately marched towards Hereford, carrying with him his prisoners guarded by a numerous body of knights. One day after dinner Prince Edward obtained per- mission " to breathe two or three horses '' in the fields outside the town, attended by certain gende- men who guarded him continually. After riding to and fro a little space, he suddenly dashed the spurs into the fleetest of the animals which he mounted, and which had been sent to him by the Earl of Gloucester, and ere his guards could recover from their surprise he had fairly escaped. Prince Edward, with Gloucester, now concerted the plan of a new campaign ; while evay day mal- contents with Leicester's government came flocking to their standard. The latter's forces were divided, a part remaining with himself at Hereford, while the rest were with his son, Simon de Montfort, in Sussex ; so the first object of Edward was to pre- vent their effecting a junction, by confining the earl to the right bank of the Severn. For this purpose he destroyed all the bridges and ^nk all the boats on the river, which was then broader and deeper than it is now : after that he marched against Simon, whose forces he surprised near Kenilworth in the night, and cut to pieces ; while Simon himself, without armour or even clothing, had to flee for shelter to his father's castle which stood close by. Meanwhile his father made several successful eiforts to extricate himself from the blockade he was undergoing on the right bank of the Severn. He crossed the river after several skilful manoeuvres, advanced to Worcester, and then to Evesham, "hourly expecting to form a junction with the forces under his son. On the morning of the 4th of August, 1265, when looking in the direction of his stately castle of Kenilworth, he saw a force descend- ing the hills, their armour glittering in the sun, and bearing his own standards. But he soon dis- covered that these had been taken from Simon's routed force, and that under them the enemy had stolen upon him, closing around him surely, in front, on flank, and rear. Bewildered by the pre- cision and secresy of this combined movement, the earl, after a gloomy pause, shook his gauntleted hand heavenward, and exclaimed, "They have learned from me the art of war ! May God have mercy on our souls, for our bodies are the prince's!"' He now made' every effort to array his lesser force in order of battle ; after which he spent a short time in prayer, and received the sacrament, as he was always wont to do before fighting. The battle began about two in the afternoon, and was barely concluded by sunset, so rancorous was the hate on both sides. The first movement was made by Leicester attempting, at the head of his knights and men-at-arms, to cut a passage to the Kenilworth road ; but he failed in this, being deserted by his Welsh followers in the heat of the onset. Fighting sword in hand, and in front, he strove by every example to withstand the efforts of Prince Edward, who displayed the most brilliant valour on the other side. His friends were falling fast on every hand, and their followers becoming disheartened. All order being lost, he formed them into a solid circle on the summit of an eminence, and by spear and axe repelled for a time the assaults of the Royalists, by whom they were completely surrounded. In one of these old King Henry, whom Leicester had cruelly led into the field to do battle against his own son and his own cause, and whose features were concealed by the bars of a riveted helmet, was unhorsed, thrown to the ground, and in danger of being dispatched (according to Heming), when he cried to his assailant with a loud voice, " Hold, fellow 1 I am Henry of Winchester, thy king !" On this he was saved, and Prince Edward, who was close by, on recognising his voice, had him conveyed to a place of safety, and asking his blessing, rushed once more into the conflict. By this time the small army of Leicester was wavering more than ever. His son Henry had been killed by his side. His horse felP beneath the closing spears, yet, freeing himself from the saddle and the dying animal, the earl fought with the fury that is born of desperation. Seeing all hopeless, he asked of the Royalists if they would give quarter. " No quarter to traitors !" was the stern shout ; and soon after he fell, sword in hand, near the corpse of his gallant son, who had fallen in seeking to defend him. All was over then ; defeat and the slaughter of his followers ensued, just as the sun was going down. All the ferocity that civil strife engenders was exhibited by the king's party on this occasion ; no prisoners were taken, and of Leicester's army there fell in this batde at Evesham 180 barons and knights, and an unnumbered multitude of inferior vassals. The body of the ambitious earl was found among the dead near that of his son. Roger Mortimer hewed off the head, and barbarously 24 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [The Channel. sent it to his wife, as a sure token of victory and of vengeance, for she had been ever one of Leicester's greatest enemies. The ■ bodies of father and son were then mutilated after a fashion singularly horrible ; and after being dragged to Evesham, were there, together with the remains of the Justiciary, by the troubles of a reign, save that of George III., the longest ever known in Britain. Sea-fight in the Channel. Twenty-one years after Edward's accession, there arose a naval war between France and England. NO QUARTER TO TRAITORS " (seepage 23). Hugh de I'Espenser, buried in the church belong- ing to the abbey, the stately tower of which is still remaining. A pedestal still commemorates the site of this battle, which replaced the English crown more firmly on the head of a weak and credulous king, whose lot was cast in stormy times, when a strong and almost tyrant hand was ever needed to hold the helm of the State. During the absence of his son Edward in Palestine he died, worn out In 1286, Edward was the first who appointed a person to the office of Admiral of the English Seas, as we find William de Leybourne styled " Admiral de le Mer du dit Roy d'Angleterre," at an ordinance made at Bruges concerning the conduct of the ships of England and Flanders in that year ; and about the same time first mention is made of an admiral of France, named Florent de Varenne, whose suc- cessor, Enguerrand, was " Admiral de la Flotte du Roi Philippe le Hardi," yet never was the sea more The Channel.] A SERIOUS QUARREL. 25 infested by piracy than in 1293, the period referred to. The feeble execution of the laws had given licence to all kinds of men ; and a general appetite for rapine, followed by revenge for it, seemed to infect the mariners and fighting merchant-traders of the time, and tempted them on the smallest pro- vocation to seek redress by immediate and merci- less retaliation on the aggressors. It chanced that a Norman and an English vessel met near the coast of Bayonne (De Mezeray has it " take revenge, and trouble him no more about it." Though more legal than usual in applying to the crown, they required but this hint to proceed to immediate outrage. Meeting an English ship in the Channel, they boarded her, and hanging some of the crew, together with some dogs, from the yard-arms, in presence of their shipmates, bade them inform their country- men that "vengeance was now taken for the blood of the Norman killed at Bayonne." WALLACE AND THE MONKS {s'C page 28). Guienne), and botli having occasion for water, sent their boats ashore at the same time, and, as misfor- tune would have it, to the same spring, upon \vhich there immediately ensued a quarrel for precedence. In the squabble a Norman drew his dagger and atterripted to stab an English seaman, who grap- "'pling with him, hurled him to the ground. The Norman was said to have fallen on his own dagger ; be that as it may, the man was slain, and from this petty scuffle between two obscure seamen about a cask of water, there grew a bloody war between two great nations, involving half of Europe in the quarrel. The mariners of the Norman ship laid their complaints before the King of France, who, without caring to inquire into the matter, bade them This injury, accompanied by circumstances so insulting, was speedily resented by all the mariners of the Cinque Ports, who, without the empty for- mality of appealing to King Edward, retahated by committing precisely the same barbarities on all French vessels without distinction ; and the French in return preyed upon the ships of Edward's subjects, Gascon as well as English : and soon armed piratical craft of all kinds swarmed in the Channel and Bay of Biscay in pursuit of each other, the sovereigns of both countries remaining perfectly indifferent the while. The EngUsh formed private associations with the Irish and Dutch seamen, the French with the Genoese and Flemings ; and the animosities of these lawless spirits became more and more violent. 26 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [The Channel, A fleet of 260 Norman vessels set sail to the south for wine, and in their passage seized all the English ships they met, and hanging or drowning the crews, made spoil of the cargoes, and arrived in triumph at St. Mahe, a port in Bretagne. Filled with fresh fury by this incident, the English ports fitted out a fleet of eighty sail, stronger and better manned, to take revenge. Depredations had now been carried to such a length, that at last the nations agreed on a certain day to decide the dispute with their whole naval strength, and a large empty ship was placed in the Channel midway between the coasts of England and France to mark the spot of the engage- ment. On the 14th April, 1293, they met in close battle. Long and obstinate was the engagement, and no quarter was either asked for or given ; in the end the French were totally routed, and the -greater part of their ships taken, sunk, or destroyed, and " the majority of their crews perished in the ocean." It has been alleged that the loss of the French was 15,000 men. If so, it can only be accounted for by the circumstance that the returning Norman fleet was transporting a considerable body of troops from the south. Matters were now looking serious ; and PhiUp, enraged by a defeat so murderous and disgraceful, dispatched an envoy to London demanding repara- tion. He did more, for he cited Edward to appear in his Court of Parliament, as his liege man and vassal, being Duke of Guienne, and having done homage on his knees as such before Philip, at Paris, in 1274. The English king sent his brother; but Philip, dissa- tisfied with this equivocation, declared him contuma- cious, and seized his French possessions. On finding himself in something like the same absurd feudal snare he had prepared for the Scots, Edward was exasperated ; the more so when he found France making preparations to invade England at a time when his hands were full with his northern neigh- bours : so, to anticipate any descents on the coast, besides three formidable fleets which were to pro- tect it, he equipped a fourth consisting of above 330 ships, with a body of 7,000 men-at-arms and archers on board, under the command of the Earl of Lan- caster, to recover his forfeited duchy of Guienne. He sailed to the mouth of the Garonne, took a town or two, and thence went to Bourdeaux and Bayonne, after the capture of which he died ; but all this did not prevent a French fleet of 300 sail, under the command of Matthew de Montmo- renci and John de Harcourt, assisted by Thomas de Tuberville, an Enghsh traitor, from landing at Dover, and reducing that town to ashes, ere the men of the country rose, and compelled the in- vaders fly to their ships with considerable loss. CHAPTER V. STIRLING BRIDGE, 1 297 — FALKIRK, 1 298. Stirling Bridge. In detailing the preceding sea-fight, we have somewhat anticipated a quarrel the most dis- astrous perhaps in British history, and which for many generations of men was the cause of blood- shed. In 1282, Scotland was in all the enjoyment of profound peace, and of most unprecedented pros- perity, under the gentle sway of Alexander III., who had married Margaret, a daughter of Henry III. of England, and consequently was brother-in-law of the reigning king of that country, Edward I. In the forty-second year of his age, and having a son and daughter grown to maturity, Alexander had every prospect of leaving his sceptre to a long line of descendants. The year 1282 saw his daughter united in marriage to Eric, the young King of Norway ; and soon after his son, who was named after himself, married the daughter of Guy of Dampierre, the powerful Count of Flanders. But a brief space of time suflSced to cover with sorrow and darkness all this prospect of a happy future. The Queen of Norway had only been married a year, when she died in giving birth to a daughter ; the death of Prince Alexander, without heirs, followed in January 1284; and on the i6th March, two years afterwards, the king, when riding on a dark night, was thrown from his horse over a high cliff at Kinghorn, opposite Edinburgh, and killed on the spot. By this fatality terminated the male line of the Celtic or old Macalpine kings, who had ruled the race of the Dalriadic Scots from the prehistoric times of dark and unknown antiquity — times clouded by fable and romance — and now the sovereignty of the most turbulent kingdom in Europe devolved upon an infant Norwegian princess, who, of course, was still absent at the court of her father. Had this child survived, the calamities that fell upon her kingdom might per- haps have been averted. The crown of her grand- Stilling Bridge.] WILLIAM WALLACE. 27 father had been secured to her by the estates of the realm ■ and since his death it had been arranged that as soon as she was brought home she should be betrothed to her second cousin, the eldest son of the King of England — a measure which, had it been carried out, might have finally united the two kingdoms under one sceptre — but this politic hope was doomed to blight, for on her passage home, the little Queen of Scotland died in the Orkneys, in her eighth year. When tidings of this fatal event came, " the kingdom was troubled," says the Bishop of St. Andrew^s, "and its inhabitants sank into despair." And now there fell on Scotland the greatest and most terrible calamity that can befall a warlike state — a disputed succession — but in this case, advantage was taken by the bold, able, and unscru- pulous Edward I. to endeavour to make himself master of Scotland by force or fraud ; and for more than twenty years the land was involved in all the barbarities of a war, waged as only in those days war was waged, bequeathing to posterity a long and unmeaning inheritance of hate. Thirteen competi- tors appeared for that crown which has been so often one of thorns for its hapless wearer ; but the claims of two, John Baliol and Robert Bruce, were declared by Edward, who was unhappily selected as umpire, superior to the rest. They were the descend- ants of David, a younger brother of William I., surnamed "The Lion," from having first borne that cognisance on his seals and banners ; Baliol being the grandson of the eldest daughter, Bruce the son of the second. Finding Baliol mean, timid, pliant, and ambitious, Edward, intending ere long to advance his own imaginary claim, decided in his favour, a measure which ultimately retarded the union of the countries for centuries. Prior to making any award, Edward, with great cunning and foresight, had required that English garrisons should be put in the principal fortresses, on the plea that the gift might be in the hand of him who was to bestow it. To the disgust and indignation of the Scots, the half Norman Baliol did fealty to Edward for the crown awarded him, and the spring of 1296 saw the nation in arms against him. This eifort, how- ever, was conducted without ability, and after a short time Edward again overran the Lowlands ; and as this was called the suppression of a " rebel- lion," the sword was allowed more than usual licence, and even priests were murdered in cold blood with- in the rails of the altar, as it was sought by sheer massacre to strike terror into the hearts of the people. On the 2nd of July, the miserable Baliol surrendered into the hands of Edward the kingdom v/hich should never have been his, and which he had obtained on terms unknown to the Scottish people ; and an English noble, John de Warrenne, Earl of Surrey, was made governor over it, or at least that part of it where English garrisons lay, with Hugh Cressinghara as his Justiciary. Edward's conception, the union of the entire island under one crown, was doubtless a great one ; it was infamously and cruelly enforced, but was never to be achieved by the sword. Amid incessant turmoil, petty strife, and maraud- ing, this state of matters only remained two years, when a body of Scots were again in arms. This time their leader was William Wallace, a man neither rich nor noble, but the second son of Sir Malcolm Wallace, of EUerslie, near Paisley. He is said by his detractors to have come of Norman blood ; but even were it so, the lapse of 230 years and nearly six generations miist have made him Scot enough to resent the oppression of his country. His father, his elder brother, and many of his kinsmen, had been slain in skirmishes with the enemy. His wife and family had been burned with his house at Lanark, and from that time he devoted himself to the cause of vengeance and freedom. Distinguished for bravery and hardihood, in an age when all men were hardy and brave, the fond admiration of his countrymen has endued him with attributes of strength and beauty equalled only by the demigods of Homer; but, however, his many achieve- ments prove that he must have been no ordi- nary man. Scotland owed little then as ever to her unpatriotic and infamous nobility ; and in this case it was to one of the people she was to owe all her future existence. , " When we read the story of William Wallace," says an eloquent English writer, " imagination wanders back to the times of heroic antiquity, and enthusiasm can scarcely keep pace with reason in forming an estimate of his services to his country. He gave new birth to the land of his nativity, and interested the sympathies of the world in behalf of her gallant struggle for existence. Personal wrong and the grinding oppression practised on his friends first stung him to revolt ; but his passion soon hardened into prin- ciple, like the burning lava converted into stone. Against the victorious might of England he threw himself, and carved his way to honour without the shouts of a thousand vassals to proclaim his feudal greatness, or a coronet on his brow to tell of the nobility of his blood. Fortune did not look askance upon his sacrifice. The discipline of English chivalry quailed before him ; castles changed masters ; ridicule gave way to reflection ; the oppressor deigned to assign reasons for his 28 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Stirling Bridge. oppression ; injury and insult were followed by retaliation and revenge; the haughty Plantagenet found himself no longer invincible ; and conquest gained by so many intrigues, so much artful policy, and such elaborate chicane, vanished like a dream." Among the many victories he won, that at Stir- ling Bridge, on the 13th of September, 1297, is alike the most splendid and remarkable. Edward I. was then warring with France, but he had remitted to John de AVarrenne, Earl of Surrey and Sussex, and to Hugh Cressingham (whom we have already named), a military ecclesiastic, his Lieutenant and Treasurer, or Justiciary, in Scotland, full power to repress all resistance ; and for this purpose an army of 50,000 infantry and a great body of horse, imder their orders, marched through the south Lowlands in quest of Wallace, who was then be- sieging Dundee with all the men that he and his friends, Graham, Ramsay, and Murray, could muster — only 10,000 in all. Yet, quitting Dundee, they crossed the Tay and marched with all speed to dispute with the English the passage of the Forth, by which they alone could penetrate into the more northern parts of the kingdom. The bridge across the Forth near Stirling was then of timber, and stood at Kildean, where some remains of the stone pillars which supported the woodwork are still visible, exactly half a mile above the present ancient bridge. It is described as having been so narrow that only two persons could pass along it abreast, yet the English leaders absurdly proposed to make 50,000 foot and all their horse undergo the tedious operation of pass- ing it in the face of an enemy. Walter de Heming- ford. Canon ofGisborough, in Yorkshire, and author of a History of England from 1066 to 1308, records that a Scotish traitor named Sir Richard Lunday (Lundin ?), who served the Earl of Surrey, strenu- ously opposed this measure, and pointed out a ford at no great distance where sixty men could have crossed the stream abreast ; but no regard was paid to his suggestions, and the sequel proved how headstrong was the folly of the English leaders. To increase their troubles, they, had in their army certain Scottish barons of the Baliol faction, on whom, with their followers, they could little rely in case of disaster. Notwithstanding all his force, Surrey was by no means anxious to encounter Wallace, whose success in past encounters had woji him a formidable name ; he wished to avoid a general action, all the more so that he knew that he was about to be superseded in his post by Briaft Fitzalan, and consequently was less zealous in the cause of the king their master. Seeking therefor? to temporise, he dispatched two Dominican friars to Wallace, whose force was then encamped near Cambuskenneth Abbey, on the hill so well known as the Abbey Craig ; thus both armies were within perfect view of each other, and only separated by the river, which there winds like a silver snake between the green and fertile meadows. The request of the friars was brief — that Wallace and his followers should lay down their arms and submit. , .. ' ', "Return to your friends," said he, "and tell them we come here vnth no peaceful intent, but ready for battle, determined to avenge our wrongs and to set our country free. Let your masters come and attack us ; we are ready to meet them beard to beard." Enraged by this reply, many of the English knights now clamoured to be led on. Then it was that the active traitor Lunday said to Surrey, '' Give me but five hundred horse and a few foot, and I shall turn the enemy's flank by the ford, while you, my Lord Earl, may pass the bridge in safety." Still Surrey hesitated, on which Hugh Cressing- ham exclaimed, passionately, "Why do we thus pro- tract the war, and waste the king's treasure ? Let us fight, it is our bounden duty." Surrey, contrary to his own judgment, yielded ; and by dawn of day the English began to cross the bridge, and Wallace heard the tidings with joy. Slow was this process ; when the sun rose they were still defiling across, and were permitted to do so without interruption till eleven o'clock, by which time one-half of Surrey's army was over the river, and gradually forming in order of battle, while the Scots looked quietly on from the gentle slope above it. The reader must bear in mind that, save in the details of their surcoats, banners, and insignia, these two armies, English and Scottish, were now pretty much alike in their war equipment. On one side were the banners of the English, bearing the arms then chosen by Edward I. — gules, three lions pas- sant regardant; St. George argent, a cross gules and of St. Edward the Confessor, a cross fleury between six martlets or. On the other side floated the Scottish lion rampant, and the silver cross of St. Andrew. Now the tunics worn over the mail-shirts were elaborately painted and blazoned, and those curious ornaments called aileties were worn on the shoulders of knights in battle. The barrel-shaped helmets were surmounted by their crests ; that of Wallace was a dragon. Skull-caps, spherical and conical, were worn by the infantry ; in lieu of the long pennons, the lances now had little emblazoned banners ; the mail gloves of the hauberks were divided into separate fingers ; and triangular shields Stirling Bridge.] THE StAUGHTteR ON THE BRIDGE. 2g were almost universally worn : for every generation saw some improvement in the panoply for man and horse. When one-half of the Englishmen were over, Wallace- began to advance, having previously sent a strong detachment to hold the ford already referred to. The moment the Scots began to move, Sir Marmaduke Twenge, a gaUant knight, belonging to the North Riding of Yorkshire, who, together with Cressingham, led the vanguard of horse, displayed the royal standard amid loud cries of " For God and St. George of England ! " and at the head of the heavily-mailed horse, made a furious charge up the slope upon the Scottish infantry, who received the shock upon their levelled spears, while their archers kept shooting fast and surely from the rear, and caused the English forces to waver and recoil upon each other. Led on by Wallace, Sir John Grahame of Dun- daff, Ramsay of Dalhousie, and others, the Scots made a furious downhill charge towards the bridge ; while in the meantime a masterly movement was executed by another body, who by a quick detour got in between it and those who had already crossed the river, completely cutting oif their retreat. All became immediate confusion, £Cnd the little dis- cipline then known was entirely lost. Wallace, as soon as he saw the movement for intercepting their retreat achieved, pressed on with greater fury ; and the half-formed columns of the English on the north bank of the river began at once to give way, and thousands of their heavy-armed' cavalry were hurled into the river and drowned. Surrey, who witnessed this scene from the opposite bank, sought to re- trieve the fortune of the day by sending across, at a moment when the bridge was open, a strong rein- forcement at full speed, with his own banner ; but unable to form amid the recoiling masses of their own infantry, they only added to the confusion and slaughter, being assailed on every side by Scottish spearmen. At this terrible momeint the bridge parted, a disaster of which there are several versions ; but this catastrophe, together with the passage of the river by a body of Scots at the ford, whence they fell on Surrey's own rear, decided the victory. An incredible number of English were drowned in attempting to cross the stream. There perished the nephew of Sir Marmaduke Twenge, a young knight greatly beloved by his soldiers; while his uncle cut his way across the bridge ere it fell, and escaped. On being advised at first to throw himself into the river, he repHed, " It shall never be said of me that I voluntarily drowned myself. God for- bid that such dishonour should ever fall on any Enghshman ! " The traitor Scottish barons who served in Surrey's ranks — one of whom was the Earl of Lennox — now threw off the mask, and, with their followers, joined in the pursuit, when the flight became, as usual in those days, a mere scene of barbarous slaughter. " No quarter was given. The country for miles round was covered with the bodies of the EngUsh soldiers ; 20,000 men are beheved to have fallen in the battle and the flight. Among these was Cressingham, a man so detested by the Scots that they mangled his dead body, and are said to have torn the skin from the limbs. The loss of the Scots was trifling ; and the only man of note among them that fell was Sir Andrew Moray." Surrey, after making one brave attempt to rally his soldiers in the Torwood, on being assailed by Wallace, again resumed his flight, and rode on the spur to Berwick, and thence sent to his master news of his terrible defeat. Scottish historians assert that the bridge had been sawn through by order of Wallace, and that on a certain trumpet being sounded, a man beneath it drew out a wedge, and let the whole fabric fall. On the other hand, an English chronicler says it was broken down by Surrey to secure his retreat. The present burgh seal of Stirling seems to com' memorate this victory. It represents the old wooden bridge, in the centre of which is a crucifix. At the south end are soldiers with English bows attempting to pass, on the northern are others with Scottish spears ; and the legend around it is, jfftc armis Bruti, S(oti stant hie cruce tuti, a plain allusion to the safety of Church and State resulting from the valour and victory of Sir William Wallace, who by this event also won the castle of Stirling, where he supped that night with his companions. The Scots now regarded him as the deliverer of their country, and crowded to his standard. He was chpsen protector of the kingdom, an office which he executed with fideUty and dignity, though not without exciting the malignity of those who have so generally been Scotland's curse, her no- bility; and as warfare had brought a famine on the land, and a pestilence too — " produced by the exhalations from the putrid carcases that lay rotting on the ground, aggravated by the deficient and unhealthy food of the people" — he marched his army into England,' that he might subsist it in the northern counties, and send food to the famishing people at home. By the result of this single battle the English were entirely driven out of Scotland, save at Roxburgh and Berwick, in the castles of which two gallant garrisons maintained a stubborn re- sistance, till they were relieved by Surrey when. 30 BRITISH SATTLES ON LAND, AND SEA. [Falkirk in January, 1298, he entered Scotland for that purpose. Falkirk. Filled with rage at the effect produced by the batde at Stirling, and the terrible retaliations of the otherwise condign punishment ; but to this sum- mons they paid not the slightest regard, either deterred by fear of Wallace, or ashamed at last of their own treason and supineness. But so little reliance had his own peers on the faith of Edward, that they refused to march against the Scots until WILLIAM WALLACE. Scots in the English border counties, Edward con- cluded in haste a truce with the King of France, and hastened home intent on vengeance. He reached England about the middle of March, and instantly summoned the barons and other military tenants to assemble with their followers at York on the Feast of Pentecost ; and he also pompously ordered the Scottish nobles to meet him in the same place on the day appointed, threatening he ratified in person the Magna Charta and the Charter of Forests. Unwilling to comply, and yet fearing to evade, with his usual cunning, he in- duced the Bishop of Durham and three earls to take a solemn oath, '' on the soul of their lord the king," that if he obtained victory he would per- form his promise. The suspicious barons were obliged to content them with this, and began their march against the Scots under Wallace ; prior to Falkirk.] EDWARD'S PREPARATIONS FOR VENGEANCE. 31 32 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [falkirk. which movement Edward made a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. John of Beverley, whose consecrated banner he is supposed to have brought with him. By his laws, every man was compelled to arm according to his station, that is to say, according to the amount of his property — those who possessed land to the value of ^15, and goods to the value of 40 marks, were required to have a hauberk, an iron cap, knife, and horse ; those possessed of 40 shillings, a sword, bow, knife, and arrows. In the month of June he entered Scotland by the eastern borders, the forces being led by himself in person. Under his immediate orders were Anthony de Beck, the famous fighting ' Bishop of Durham ; Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, and High Constable of England ; Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, the Chief Marshal ; the Earl of Lincoln ; and Radulf, Lord Basset de Drayton, afterwards, in extreme old age, one of the first Knights of the Garter. At Roxburgh he reviewed his army, which consisted of 80,000 infantry, English, Welsh, and Irish, besides a powerful body of splendidly mailed, mounted, and disciplined cavalry, the veterans of his French wars ; 3,000 of these rode horses completely armed from head to crupper, and 4,000 were light cavalry. In addi- tion to these were 500 special gens de ckevaHiom Gascony, nobly mounted and magnificently ac- coutred. His whole force mustered more than 90,000 helmets. He poured tliese forces through the Lothians, where, after a brave resistance, the great castle of Dirleton, the stronghold of the Scoto-Norman family of Ds Vaux, was surrendered to Anthony Beck, whose troops sufi'ered from a scarcity of pro- visions, and were compelled to subsist on the beans and peas in the fields — a circumstance, says Lord Hailes, in his Annals, which presents us with a favourable view of agriculture in Haddingtonshire so far back as the thirteenth century. Without meeting any other obstacle of importance, the great host marched onward till it reached the Priory of the Scottish Knights of the Temple, at Kirkliston, where Edward halted and encamped for a month, waiting for his supplies by sea, as he intended to march into the western counties and crush for ever the rebellion of the Scots, as he curiously termed their resistance of his armed invasion. Indefatigable and undismayed, Wallace had meanwhile collected from amid the peasantry, of whom he was the guardian, and to whom he was an idol, a resolute force of 30,000 men. With these he marched to Falkirk in West Lothian, where, with great skill and perception, he chose a strong military position, having in its front a morass through which no cavalry could approach, while he covered his flanks by rude field-works of palisades driven into the earth and bound together by. ropes. Provisions soon became scarce in Edward's camp at Kirkliston ; the fleet from Berwick was anxiously looked for. The surrounding country had been many times wasted by fire and sword ; the soldiers complained bitterly of their scanty provender, and a change of quarters to Edinburgh was contem- plated. A small supply was procured ; but on the great body of the fleet being still detained by ad- verse winds, a dangerous mutiny broke out in the English army. Under his banner Edward had 40,000 Welsh, led by their chiefs, whom he had but recently subjected to his stern sway. These hardy mountaineers were not over-zealous in his service, and on them the famine was permitted to press hardest. A supply of wine sent to them by Edward brought on a crisis. Whether it was served too liberally is unknown now; but in a sudden paroxysm of national antipathy, they fell upon the English in their tents at night. Edward's trumpets sounded promptly to horse, and charging the Welsh he slew more than eighty of them, and restored order. Exasperated and sullen, the Welsh chiefs now openly threatened to join Wallace. " Let them do so,'' said Edward, scornfully; "let them go over to my enemies. I hope soon to see the day when I shall chastise them both." It was at this very crisis of the Welsh discontent that Wallace had ably planned a night assault upon the English camp, a movement which if properly executed might have ended, by panic and confu- sion, in the destruction of Edward's army ; but his scheme was frustrated by two of those ignoble peers who, ever since the voice of the people had chosen him guardian of Scotland, had envied his power, as the son of a mere lesser baron, and took every opportunity of resisting his authority. These traitors were Gilbert de Umphraville, Earl of Angus, and Patrick, Earl of Dunbar; who in the dusk secretly sought the King of England, and informed him that "William Wallace, then encamped in a fortified position in the forest of Falkirk, had heard of his proposed retreat, and intended to sur- prise him by a night attack, and to hang upon and harass his rear." "Thanks be to God, who hath hitherto extri- cated me from every peril ! " exclaimed Edward, with stern triumph ; " they shall not need to follow me, these Scots, since I shall go forth to meet them." Accordingly, at three o'clock in the afternoon of the 2oth July, he put his cavalry and infantry in motion, and marching to Linlithgow, encamped on the Burgh Muir, to the sa-stward of that town. The Falkirk.; ARRAY OF THE SCOTS. 33 Tear-guard, with the pavilions and sumpter horses, not having come up, the troops lay for that night on the bare heath, the cavalry having no other forage than the furze and grass of the moor. Though a tyrant, and merciless to his enemies, Edward of England was every inch a soldier ; so that night he slept in his armour, by his horse's side, with his sword and shield for a pillow. Startled by some distant sound about midnight, the barbed charger trod heavily upon its royal master, and crushing his shirt of mail — perhaps the identical suit that is now preserved in the Tower of London — ^broke three of his ribs. Edward's cry of agony, and the trampling of hoofs, caused a panic in the bivouac, and there arose on all sides cries of " Treason ! treason ! The king is wounded ; the Scots are upon us ! " But the dawn of the midsummer morning soon brightened on Torduff and the Pentland peaks. Edward mounted, and showing himself to his troops, dispelled their fears, after the bruises had been dressed by his surgeon, Monsieur Philip de Belvey. He then ordered his banners to be un- furled, the trumpets to somid, and once more his vast army resumed its march towards the forest of Falkirk, where the Uttle town of that name, with its ancient church of St. Modan, rose on high and commanding ground. As the English approached the hills of Muiravon- side the flashing of steel was seen in front. These were the helmets and lances of some Scottish horse thrown forward by Wallace to reconnoitre, as Hem- ingford records, and they soon fell back on his main body. On gaining the summit of the heights of Maddiston and those south of Callender Wood, the whole EngUsh army halted, while mass was celebrated by the Bishop of Durham, Anthony de Beck, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and Lord of the Isle of Man, in full armour, with a sword by his side, and a shield slung at his back. Then, as now, the view which met the eyes of that English host from the heights of Callender was one of won- derful beauty. At their feet lay the fertile carse of Falkirk, and the vast oak forest known as the Tor- wood stretching away to where the towers and town of Stirling rose in the sunshine. The river Forth flowed between, like a thread of blue and silver between forests of natural wood in all the foliage of summer. In the background were the peaks of the Ochils— part of the dark and distant Grampians— that rose Alp on Alp, a barrier between the Lowlander and Celt; and in the immediate foreground, midway between Falkirk and the river of Carron, was the army of the' Scottish patriot, their 36,000 helmets shining in the sun. This was on St. Magdalen's-day, the 22nd of July. Edward, who was as politic as he was brave, pro- posed to refresh his soldiers ; but, confident in their overwhelming numbers, they clamoured to be led against the Scots. Edward consented, " in the name of the Holy Trinity," and the English advanced in three columns, each of 30,000 men. The first was led by the Earl Marshal, having under his orders the Earls of Hereford and Lincoln ; the second was led by the fighting Bishop of Dur- ham, having under his orders Radulf Basset de Drayton, for a time Englisli governor of Edinburgh Castle ; and the third was led by Edward in person. Wallace had drawn up the Scots in three schil- trons, or columns of lefes than 10,000 men each. These were almost entirely composed of peasantry; for, being keenly jealous of his increasing popularity, few knights and still fewer barons would join him. Under him, however, there served as leaders Sir John Stewart of Bonhill, who commanded the archers of Ettrick Forest, and the hardy Brandanes of Bute, or vassals of the Great Steward, of whom 1,200 were in the field ; Sir John, the Graham of Abercorn and Dundaif, wearing the sword which his dying father had bequeathed to him on the fatal field of Dunbar; Duncan Macduff, eleventh Earl of Fife, a youth of twenty years of age ; and John Comyn, son of the Lord of Bade- noch. The three last-named led each a column drawn up in the ancient form of an orb, with the spearmen in front, having their long weapons levelled from the hip to repel cavalry. The imme- diate front ranks knelt on the right knee, against which the butt of the spear was planted, exactly as in the present mode of preparing to receive a charge of horse ; aijd the circle was the simple old Scottish order of batde prior to the introduction of ^;he solid square. In his chronicle, Langtoft says that the Scots stood like a " castelle, the spears poynt over poynt." Between each of these schiltrons was placed a band of border archers ; while 1,000 well-armed and well-mounted horsemen — all the Scottish chief could muster — formed a corp-de- reserve under John Comyn, and remained in the rear for any emergency. While the Bishop of Durham had been celebra- ting mass on the hill, the same solemn sacrament was performed, amid equal silence and awe, in the Scottish ranks; and all awaited steadily the advance of the foe. Hitherto the leaders of these unfortu- nate men had acted with pretended unanimity ; but now, at this most critical moment, a dispute arose about the chief command. Sir John Stewart, as 34 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Falkirk. the representative of his brother, the hereditary- Lord High Steward, claimed it ; the traitor Comyn boasted of his descent from King Donald ; while the more modest Wallace asserted that with him lay the right to lead, as the legally authorised guardian of the country. But Sir John Stewart up- braided him as one who aspired to a dignity far above his rank; and tauntingly compared him to " the owl in the fable, which, having dressed itself with borrowed feathers, affected not only a beauty above its kind, but a dominion over the whole winged tribe." The foe was still advancing, and still the dispute continued ; but, sensible of the peril that menaced all, Wallace maintained his temper and with it his authority. Led by the Earl Marshal, by Lincoln, and Here- ford, the first column came furiously on ; but not having reconnoitred the ground, their leading files rolled pell-mell into the morass, where horse and man, English and Gascon alike, were exposed to the arrows of the Scottish archers. Swerving a little to the left, however, they found firmer ground, and closing their files, charged. " Now," exclaimed WallacCj with pleasant con- fidence, to his soldiers, " I haif brocht ye to the ring — hop gif ye can ! " and at that moment the heavily-mailed Enghsh cavalry of the first line fell with a tremendous shock on the charged spears of his right flank, while sharp and sure — for there was then no smoke of arquebuse or musket to impede an aim — the archers of Bonhill plied their shafts obliquely among them. Perceiving the mistake made by the first column, the second, under the Bishop of Durham, avoided the morass, and wheel- ing to the right menaced the Scottish left ; but so steady was its aspect that the warhke prelate, though his men were three to one, proposed a halt until the king came up with the reserves. On this Radulf Basset exclaimed, scornfully, " Stick to thy mass, thou Lord Bishop ; we shall conduct the military operations of the day ! " " On, then ; for this day we are all bound to do our duty as good soldiers," replied the bishop. And brandishing his sword, he led on his column, amid the glittering lances of which there floated no less than thirty-six banners of the noblest families in England, and fell thundering on the Scottish left, while the Earl Marshal assailed their right. At that very moment, to the astonishment of the English and the bewilderment of Wallace, Comyn drew off, some allege, 10,000 of his vassals, and with the utmost deliberation quitted the field. "That there was treachery among the Scottish nobles," says Tytler, "is satisfactorily proved by Hemingford, an Enghsh historian, who says that the Scottish horse fled without striking a blow (absque ullo gladii ictu) when the battle had just begun. The Scottish cavalry was a body of 1,000 horse, amongst whom were the flower of the Scottish knights and barons. Are we to believe that these, from mere timidity, fled before a lance was put in rest, and upon the first look of the English?" Another writer alleges that "it sprang from the treachery of Comyn, who led them, and their- in- fatuated jealousy of the Scottish guardian. Un- dismayed, his followers, though now but 20,000 opposed to more than 90,000, stood firm ; and Wallace did all that a brave man could do to in- spire them, fighting in front with his two-handed sword — his stature, conspicuous position, and armour, rendering him the mark of many a levelled lance and bended bow." Again and again the cavalry of the Earl Marshal and De Beck spurred in furious charges on the Scottish pikes. Stoutly they stood, shoulder to shoulder; and though infantry came up, and showers of cloth-yard shafts were shot point-blank into the ranks of Wallace, while with a storm of stones, the Welsh and Irish slingers plied their missiles securely from behind, they could not penetrate what an .old historian calls "that wood of spears." As if to make up for his recent contumacy, the young Knight of Bonhill, who led the foresters of Ettrick, fought like a hero of romance, but was mortally wounded while in the act of giving orders, and, rolhng from his horse, was instantly slain. The archers of Ettrick tried to save him, but in vain; there they all perished to a man : and their tall, athletic, and handsome figures drew forth even the praise of their enemies — at least so says Hemingford of Gisborough. Sir John the Grahame, of Dundaff, the friend and richt-hand of Wallace, and the young Earl of Fife, with nearly all their vassals, were slain ; and now the survivors, disheartened alike by the fall of their three principal leaders, began to lose heart, and fell into disorder. Deserted by their cavalry, and, after the destruction of their archers, left exposed to a pitiless storm of missiles from the English bows and slings, the Scottish infantry, with their long spears levelled over a breastwork of their own dead and dying, made a desperate attempt only to keep their ground ; but their numbers were thin- ing fast and becoming unsteady ; and when the English cavalry once more dashed among them, with lance and sword, axe and mace, all was over. Armed with that great two-handed sword which his fond countrymen superstitiously believed to have been a gift to him from St. Andrew of Bethsaida, Bannockbum.] DEATH OF WALLACE. 35 the patron of Scotland, long and bravely did Wallace maintain the field ; and not until the sun was sinking beyond the western hills did he begin his perilous retreat ■ by crossing the Carron, near the old Roman ruin then known as Arthur's Oven, where there was a ford when the tide was low. There, at a place called Brian's Ford, near the Carron Iron Works, fell the only Englishman of distinction whom Edward lost. Sir Brian le Jay, Master of the Templars, who, pressing in pursuit, was there unhorsed and slain by the hand of Wallace, whose horse, covered with wounds and stuck full of spearheads and arrows, was only able to bear him across the river, when it sank beneath him and died. He then continued his flight on foot towards Perth, accompanied by 300 chosen men. Though most of the details of this battle are very minute, authorities vary very strangely in the number of the Scottish slain. Lingard, after Trivet, computes them at from 20,000 to 30,000 ; Matthew ojT West- minster and Harding at 40,000; Hemingford at 50,000; andWalsingham at 60,000, twice the number of Scots in the field. The more probable number, as given by others, is about 15,000 men. Edward's loss was very trivial. The tombs of Sir John Grahame and Sir John Stewart are still preserved at Falkirk ; the inscrip- tions on both have been frequently renewed. No other mementoes of the field remain save a rude block in Callender Wood known as Wallace's Stone, and a tract of ground called Wallace's' Ridge. On Edward's return to London victorious, the citizens received him with triumph; but the fra- ternity of Fishmongers outshone all their compa- triots. "With solemn procession," says Stow, "they passed through the citie, having amongst other pageants and shows, four sturgeons gilted, carried on four horses, and after five-and-forty knights armed, riding on horses made like luces of the sea ; and then St. Magnus, with 1,000 horsemen. This they did on St. Magnus'- day, in honour of the king's great victory and safe return." Again the Lowlands were overrun, and castles were retaken and garrisoned by Edward ; and history tells how, after totally failing to corrupt and attach Wallace to his own cause, he had him betrayed by a friend, and barbarously executed, in his thirty- fifth year. But, as if to prove how irrepressible is the spirit of freedom, the scaffold on which Wallace died proved the foundation-stone of Scottish in- dependence. Two years subsequent to that event saw the Scots in arms under Robert Bruce and the spirit of resist- ance taking deeper root than ever. CHAPTER VI. BANNOCKBURN, I 3 I 4. Bv sea as well as by land were the Scots tormented at this time by the adherents and subjects of the King of England. To further the war against Scot- land, we find that about the year 1300 a fleet of thirty ships, called galleys, barges, snakes, cogs, and boats, was fitted out by the Cinque Ports chiefly. Each of these craft had from twenty to forty men on board, and the whole was commanded by an admiral named Gervase Alard, who had a chaplain, Sir Robert of Sandwich, to confess the sailors. The most of these vessels were named after saints, and every commander was entitled to carry a banner and light. In 13 10 the king desired the Chamber- lain of North Wales to deliver two anchors and two cables in his care to " Sir Simon de Montacute, whom he had appointed admiral of his fleet going towards Scotland." On the 12th October in the following year, the king commends the zeal and valour of the captain of his fleet off the west coast of Scotland, Sir John of Argyle, whose name is now quite unknown to the S<;ots. He was styled " Captain and Admiral of the King's fleet in the Isles of Scot- land and Arg}'le ;" and on the 25th of March, 1314 brought over in his squadron 4,000 Irish infantry to take part in the ensuing campaign. This personage, say Sir Harris Nicholas, " appears to have been one of those base Scotsmen who adhered to the invader of their country during its struggle for independence. He was in the service of Edward I. in 1297, when he was commanded to proceed with horse and arms abroad. On the 13th December, 1307, he and many of his faithless countrymen were enjoined to maintain tranquillity in Scotland during the king's absence in France ; and the various duties entrusted to him prove that he possessed the entire confidence of Edward II." In 13 10 he was admiral of the fleet serving off the Scottish coast ; and lands be- longing to the Templars,inYorkshire, were bestowed upon him as the reward of his treason. Sir John oi Argyle died at Ospring, in Kent, in 1316, while on a pilgrimage to Canterbury, leaving a son, also named mysteriously Sir Alan of Argj-le. 36 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Bannockburn. Whatever efforts the second Edward made by sea or land, they were dpomed to be crushed by the memorable battle which was fought at Bannock- burn on Monday, the 24th of June, 13 14, and which secured for ever the independence of the Scottish an army that numbered fully 100,000 men upon the borders. With it there followed a vast multitude of attendants, in the hope of getting plunder. This prodigious host was composed not only of the crown vassals in England, Ireland, and Wales, but of THE BISHOP OF DURHAM'S CHARGE AT FALKIRK [see page 34). crown, seating the great King Robert firmly on the throne — a battle that was the greatest of his triumphs and the reward of his valour, skill, and undying perseverance. To prosecute the troublesome war his father had bequeathed him, young Edward, in addition to his own resources, borrowed large sums from the more wealthy monasteries to defray the expenses of a new expedition ; and in the spring of 13 14 he assembled numbers of foreign troops from Flanders, Gascony, Guienne and Aquitaine, Poictou and Languedoc, &c. Eth O'Connor, Prince of Connaught, and twenty-five other Irish chiefs, were summoned to his assistance, and the whole were to muster at Berwick on the nth of June. Some idea may be formed of the extent of his preparations from the summonses still preserved as issued to the Sheriffs of Durham, Northumberland, Leicester, Banhockbufh. 1 ENGLISH PREPARATIONS FOR INVASION. 37 shire, Chesljire and Lancashire, Derbyshire, Lin- colnshire, Shropshire, Nottingham, Stafford, and Warwickshire ; to the Earls of Hereford, Hertford, Essex, and Gloucester; and to seven barons, re- quiring them to equip certain quotas of infantry, amounting in all to 26,540 men. In his ranks were 50,000 archers and 40,000 cavalry, of whom 3,000 were cornpletely sheathed in mail, both horse and man. The Welsh auxiliaries were under Sir Maurice de Berkeley, and Edward relied much on in great numbers as they retired in confusion towards their own country." Great care was taken that an abundant supply of provisions should be collected, together with wagons and cars for the conveyance of tents and baggage. Barbour mentions particularly 160 carts laden with poultry alone ; and William of Malmes- bury says that the multitude of carriages was so great that, if placed In one line, they would have extended sixty miles in length. PLAN OF THE BATTLE-FIELD OF BANNOCKBURN. them as mountaineers who might cope with the- Scots. "But this policy," says Sir Walter Scott, "was not without its risks. Previous to the battle of Falku-k, the Welsh quarrelled with the English men- at-arms, and the feud between them at so dangerous and critical a juncture was reconciled with difficulty. Edward II. followed his father's example in this particular, with no better success. They could not be brought to exert themselves in the cause of their conquerors ; but they had an indifferent reward for their forbearance. Without arms, and clad only in scanty dresses of linen cloth, they appeared naked in the eyes of the Scottish peasantry ; and after the rout at Bannockbum, were massacred by them Bruce was now master of all Scotland save the castle of Stirling, the blockade of which he had committed to his brother Edward, who concluded a treaty with the English governor. Sir Philip Mowbray, to the effisct that the fortress should be surrendered, if not relieved before the festival of St. John the Baptist, which is celebrated on the 24th of June. King Robert was displeased with his brother for the impolicy of a treaty which per- mitted the King of England to advance with his collected forces, and compelled him to hazard a battle or raise a siege with dishonour. "What matter is it?" replied Edward Bruce, stoutly. " Let all England comcj and we shall fight 38 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Bannockburn. them were they more ! " So King Robert agreed to the treaty, and prepared to meet the Enghsh on the appointed day. He had collected his forces in the forest called the Torwood, midway be- tween Stirling and Falkirk, to the number of only 30,000 men, and these were followed by about 20,000 more — camp-followers, gillies, women, and children. Impoverished as the country was by long war, the great deficiency of the Scotch army was cavalry, which, both in numbers and accoutrements, were totally unfit to cope with the English men-at-arms, though it was not every Englishman in those days that could afford body-armour; for the 130 English knights who proposed to assist Dermot of Leinster in recovering his kingdom possessed only sixty coats of mail among them. Bruce knew, both from his own experience and that of Wallace, that a body of Scottish infantry, armed with their long spears, and judiciously posted, could effectively resist all charges of cavalry ; and he was not ignorant of the discomfiture of the French mounted men-at-arms, under the Constable and the Count of Artois, by the Flemish pikemen at Courtray, in 1304. He resolved, therefore, to fight the battle with his infantry ; and " having reviewed his army, he was greatly delighted with the courageous appearance both of the leaders and common soldiers, and addressed them in a cheerful and encouraging manner, urging them to fight manfully in the coming battle, in defence of their lives, fortunes, and liberties, and the honour of his crown." The Highland clans, which had hitherto held aloof, or looked with grim disdain on the Lowland Scots — the Scoto-Normans and Anglo-Saxons — cut- ting each other's throats, viewing all as strangers and intruders alike, had now come down from their mountains and joined Bruce in some strength. Among these were twenty-one chiefs — viz., WiUiam, third Earl of Sutherland"; Angus Macdonald, Lord of the Isles ; Sir Malcolm Drummond, ancestor of the Dukes of Perth ; Sir Neil Campbell, of Lochow and of Argyle ; Sir John Grant, of Grant, who had been a prisoner of war in London in 1297; Sir Simon Eraser, of Oliver Castle, ancestor of the Lords of Lovat ; Mackay, Macpherson, Cameron, Sinclair of Roslin, Ross, Macgregor, Mackenzie, and eight others ; and, singular to say, the heirs of eighteen of these are still in possession of their estates. Three other chiefs, with their tribes — Macdougal, Gum- ming, and Macnab — were in the ranks of the English. The place selected by Bruce for the battle, and to bar the approach of the English to Stirling, was a piece of ground then known as the New Park, partly open and partly encumbered with trees ; on one side it was protected by a morass, known as the New-miln Bog, the passage of which he knew to be dangerous and difficult. He formed his troops in four columns, apart from each other, yet sufliciently near to keep up communication. Three of these formed a front line facing the south-east, the direction by which the enemy must approach, and extending from the brook or " bum " called the Bannock to the village of St. Ninian. The right wing he protected by means of pits — the suggestion of Sir Malcolm Drummond — dug where the ground was firm, a foot in breadth and three in depth, with a stake in each, and covered lightly with sods and branches. • Elsewhere were strewn iron calthrops — pieces of iron all disposed in a triangular form, so that while three of the pikes rest on the ground, a fourth stands in a perpendicular direction, and is especially calculated to lame horses. On the 22nd, Bruce received tidings that the English were advancing from Edinburgh, and he immediately marched his forces from the Torwood to the positions he had assigned them two da)s before. The right wing was commanded by his brother Edward ; the left was led by Douglas and the young Steward of Scotland ; the centre by Thomas Randolph, the veteran Earl of Moray. The reserve, or fourth column, was led by Bruce in person, Angus of the Isles, his faithful friend and ally, was with him ; and there was stationed his little body of cavalry, under Sir Robert Keith, the Mareschal of Scotland, to whom he assigned the particular duty of attacking and, if possible, dispersing the English archers. The royal stan- dard was fixed in the stone which now marks the centre of the Scottish line, and is protected by an iron grating. In Bruce's rear lay a little valley. Above it rose a long, green ridge, now known as the Gillies' Hill, for thereon were all the camp-fol- lowers and baggage of his army. The airs to which the Scots are said by history and tradition to have marched to the field are now known as " Bruce's Address " and " The Land of the Leal," a common Dead March with all Scottish regiments ; but their instruments could have been only the bagpipe, harp, and kettle-drum. On the morning of the 23rd of June, the whole army heard mass, which was performed on the field by the aged and blind Maurice, Abbot of Inchaffray ; and perhaps no grander sight can be imagined than the appearance of those 30,000 men, all ready to die for their country, on their knees before God in prayer. Then Bruce caused proclamation to be made that if any man was unprepared to fight and fall with honour, he might depart; but a wild shout responded, and no man quitted his ranks. Bannockbum. ] RANDOLPH'S VICTORY. 39 On the morning of St. John the Baptist, the 24th of June, the mighty and magnificent array of the English army, with all their spears and banners, was seen debouching from the vast wood which then stretched away towards Falkirk. The June sunshine fell brightly on their burnished arms. According to Barbour, they seemed to cover all the country far and wide, and the mail of the men- at-arms " made the land seem all aglow." In- numerable white banners were waving in the wind, and the particoloured pennons of the knights floated above the glittering columns like a sea. The van- guard of the English, consisting of archers, billmen, and spearmen — comprehending most of the infan- try — ^was now advancing fast, under the Earls of Gloucester and Hereford, who were covered by a heavy body of mailed cavalry as supports. All the remainder of the English troops were so hampered by the narrowness of the ground over which they were compelled by its nature to pass, that their formation of nine great columns seemed to the eyes of the Scots to form but one enormous mass, gleaming mth flashes of armour, and shaded by the multitude of silken banners and pennons that floated over them in the soft summer wind. Edward in person commanded this vast array, surrounded by 400 chosen men, the very flower of his splendid chivalry. Immediately by his side rode Sir Aymer de Valence, who had de- feated Bruce at Methven Wood, but was now to see a very different day ; Sir Giles de Argentine, a Knight of St. John of Jerusalem, who had covered himself with glory in Palestine, and was accounted " one of the best knights that ever lived ;" and Sir Ingram Umfraville (or Umphraville), a Scottish traitor, but a man of undoubted bravery. Once again the Scots, when they saw this mighty host rolling towards them like a human sea, joined in a universal appeal to Heaven for aid against the strength of their enemies ; an 1, barefooted and bareheaded, the Abbot of Inchaffray passed along the line, with a crucifix in his hand, bestowing benediction and absolution on all sides, while the soldiers knelt before him. The traitor Umfraville suggested to Edward the policy of feigning a retreat, to lure Bruce from his strong position; but his council was heard with disdain, and on observing the Scots on their knees, "They crave mercy!" exclaimed Edward, joy- ously. " It is of Heaven, and not your Highness,'^ repUed Umfraville ; " for on that field they will be victorious or die." Edward then commanded his trumpets to sound and an attack to be made, and about this time two striking episodes occurred. Previous to the appear- ance of the English army, on the 23rd, they had detached 800 horse under Sir Robert Clifford, with the double object of reaching Stirling Castle, and of thus releasing from his promise Sir Robert Mowbray, who might then, without dishonour, have made a sortie on the Scottish left wing. They made a great circuit by the low grounds bordering on the Forth, and had actually passed the Scottish left before the eagle eye of Bruce de- tected the glitter of spears, the flashing of armour, and a long line of dust rolling northward in the direction of Stirling. " See, Randolph," he exclaimed, " there is~a rose fallen from your chaplet ! Thoughtless man ! you have permitted the enemy to pass.'' On this, Randolph hastened at the head of 500 spearmen to repair his fault, for such he deemed it. As he advanced into the plain, Clifford, inter- rupted in his progress towards Stirling, wheeled his horse to the left and at full speed attacked the party of Scots, who received his charge in close column. Before this wall of spears. Sir William d'Eynecourt, a distinguished knight, was unhorsed and slain. The English cavalry surrounded the little column, and charged it so furiously on every side that Sir James Douglas prayed the king's per- mission to succour his old comrade, Randolph.- " You shall not stir a foot to help him," repUed Bruce ; " neither shall I alter my order of battle or lose the advantage of my position. Let him repair his error as he may." " In sooth I cannot stand by and see Randolph perish,'' urged Douglas ; " therefore, with your leave, I must aid him." Bruce unwillingly consented ; but on Sir James hastening to the assistance of his friend, he found the English detachment in com- plete disorder, and many horses galloping away with empty saddles. On perceiving this, " Halt," cried Douglas ; " these brave men have already repulsed the enemy, let us not diminish their glory by seeking to share it." While this affair took place, the English vanguard was still steadily advancing, but yet so distant that Bruce, who had not yet mounted his battle- charger, was still riding along his line mounted on a small hackney, to see that all were in their places. He carried a battle-axe in his hand, and wore a golden crown upon his helmet, which thus rendered him conspicuous alike to friend and foe as the king. At that moment there came gallop- ing forward from the English vanguard, " a wycht knicht and hardy," named Sir Henry de Bohun, who bravely conceived the idea of terminating the strife at once and covering himself with honour. Couching his lance, he rode furiously at the king. 40 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Bannockbum. Armed on all points and more heavily mounted, the encounter would have been most unequal, yet Bruce did not decline it, and rode forward to meet him in his full career. Just as they were about to close he swerved his hackney round, and as De Bohun's lance passed harmless, he clove his head and helmet in twain by one blow of his battle- axe, and laid him dead at his feet. The weapon was shivered by the violence of the stroke ; and to those who blamed him for his temerity, he replied simply, " I have broken my good battle-axe." Led by Gloucester and Hereford, the English vanguard dashed with great bravery at the right wing of the Scots, under Edward Bruce. A rivalry between these two earls made their attack so precipitate as to diminish its eftect. Firm stood the Scottish spearmen in their ranks, presenting a serried wall of steel which bore back the enemy. According to Barbour, there was a great crash of spears at the first shock ; it could be heard at some distance, and many good knights were dismounted and slain, while their horses, stabbed and maddened with wounds, carried confusion to the rear. When the Earl of Moray saw the right wing thus success- fully engaged, he brought up the centre to meet the main body of the English with such spirit that he began to gain ground upon them and to pierce their masses at push of spear, " so that his men appeared to be lost amid the multitude, as if they had been plunged into the sea." Now came on the Scottish left wing, under Walter, the Great Steward, and Sir James Douglas, so that the whole line was soon engaged in a wild and desperate hand-to-hand conflict with the enemy ; and the ground on which they fought was fast becoming one crimson swamp. Again and again the splendid English cavalry strove by desperate charges to break the columns of Scottish spears, but every attack was repelled, horse and man went down before them ; but now those archers, ever so fatal to the Scots, were coming on, and their shafts were beginning to make deadly gaps in the hitherto steady ranks. Their effect had already by sad experience been foreseen, and their attack had been prepared for by Bruce ; so Sir Robert Keith, with only 500 chosen mounted men-at-arms, came swiftly round the flank of the morass, and as the multitude of archers had neither pikes or other long weapons wherewith to defend themselves against cavalry, they were almost im- mediately overthrown, huddled together, cut down, Or dispersed in all directions, thus spreading con- fusion and disorder throughout the whole English army. Part fled to their main body and could not be induced to rally j while now the Scottish bow- men, inferior in number and in skill to their EngUsh opponents, came into action, and, after galling the cavalry without opposition, made havoc among them with the short but heavy axes which Bruce had ordered them to wear. " It was awful," says Barbour, at this crisis, " to hear the noise of these four battles {i.e., columns) fighting in a hne ; (when Bruce brought his reserve into action) the din of the blows, the clang of arms the shouting of war-cries ; to see the flight of arrows, horses running masterless, the alternate rising and sinking of the banners, the ground streaming with blood, and covered with shreds of armour, broken spears, pennons and rich scarfs torn and soiled with blood and clay, and to listen to the groans of the wounded and the dying." The Scots were still gaining ground, and were pressing on the already wavering masses of the English, shouting from wing to wing, " On them ! on them ! They fail— they fail !" when at that most critical moment, and while the fortune of that day which was to live for ever in history yet hung in the balance, the Scottish camp-followers on the hill in rear of the reserve, prompted either by enthusiasm or a desire for plunder, suddenly came in sight, with such arms as they could collect, and with sheets and horsecloths displayed on poles as ensigns. This unexpected sight spread instant dismay among tlie already disheartened ranks of the English, and their whole line began to give way. The eagle eye of Bruce perceived the i-yovement. He put himself at the head of the reserve, and raising his war-cry, fell with redoubled fury on the recoiling enemy, who now gave way in all directions, and then the slaughter became terrible. The deep ravine of Bannockbum, to the south of the field, lying in the direction taken by most of the fugitives, was literally choked and bridged over by the slain, the difficult nature of the- ground retarding the fugitive horsemen till the . Scottish spears were upon them. Others in great number rushed into the river Forth, and were there drowned miserably. In an attempt to renew the fight, the young Earl of Gloucester rode madly back upon the Scottish infantry, but was immediately unhorsed and slain, at a place still call the Bloody Faulds, though the Scots would gla'dly have saved his life; but on that day he wore no surcoat above his armour. Seeing all lost, the Earl of Pembroke and Sir Giles de Argentine seized the bridle of Edward, whose courage was undoubted, and forced him off the field. As soon as he was safe. Sir Giles bade him farewell ; and adding, " It is not my wont to fly," he raised his war-cry of "Argentine !" and rushing Ipack upon the Scottish spears was slain, to the ^annoskbum.^ Total defeat of EDWAim. 41 sorrowof King Robert, who knew him well. Argen- tine was then deemed the flower of English knigjit- hood, and had but lately returned from Palestine and tiie wars of Henry of Luxembourg. Sir Robert Clifford, renowned in the Scottish wars, and Sir Ed- ward Mauley, Senesehal of England, were also killed ; 200 knights and 700 esquires of high birth and blood, inheritors of the noblest names in England, with more than 30,000 of the common file, filled up the roll of slaughter. Leaving his mighty host to its fate, Edward in his confusion, after making a great circuit, rode to Stirling, where he sought admittance to the castle ; but De Mowbray was true to his pledge, and refused to open the gates. The unfortunate king was then compelled to take the road for England, pursued by Sir James Douglas on the spur, with sixty horse. At length the worn fugitive reached the castle of Dunbar, where he was hospitably re- ceived by the traitorous Earl of March, who sent him in a fishing skiff to Berwick, "leaving behind him the finest army a King of England ever com- manded." The Scottish loss was very small ; Sir William Vipont and Sir Walter Ross were the only persons of consideration who fell. A list of the English lords and knights killed or taken mil be found in Trivet's Annals, and the quantity of spoil gained by the victors was inestimable ; while the ransoms for life and liberty paid by the prisoners added to the treasury of the long-impoverished Scots. The Earl of Hereford with a few others fled to Bothwell, where they possessed themselves of the castle ; but had soon to surrender. The castle of Stirling capitulated on the day after the battle. Barbour records that two hundred pairs of gilded spurs were found on the English dead; manj of whom lay long unburied, .especially at a place called Polmaise, which signifies " the pool of rotting.'' Among the prisoners was taken Roger de Northburge, Keeper of the Privy Seal, with the seal itself, which Bruce sent to Edward, on con- dition that it should never more be used. Scottish historians narrate the great stores found in the English camp, the vessels of gold and silver, the splendid armour, rich apparel, sumptuous horse and tent furniture, and, though last not least, the chest of money for paying the troops. " O day of vengeance and misfortune .*•" exclaimed William of Malmesbury ; " odious and accursed day ! unworthy to be included in the circle of the year, which tarnished the glory of England, and enriched the Scots with the plunder of the precious stuffs of our nation to the extent of two hundred thousand pounds (about two millions of our present money) ; how many illustrious nobles and valiant youths, what numbers of excellent horses and beauti- ful arms, precious vestments and golden vessels, were carried off in one cruel day ! " King Robert sent the body of the young Earl of Gloucester home ; Qifford, Argentine, and others, he interred with the honour due to their rank — the latter in the church of St. Giles at Edinburgh. Sir Marmaduke Twenge, who handed his sword to Bruce, was released and sent home without ransom. Such was the memorable battle of Bannockburn, which, both in its immediate consequences and its more remote effects, even to the present hour, must be regarded as one of the most important events in the annals of our country. It ended for ever the English schemes of conquest ; it taught the Scots never to despair "so long as one hundred of them remained alive." Their cities had been sacked, their archives destroyed, their noblest and best had been given to the axe and the gibbet without mercy ; all these horrors were over now, and the throne of Scotland was established on as solid and perma- nent a basis as it had been left by Alexander III. " Dark times indeed succeeded these brilliant days," says Sir Walter Scott, " and none more gloomy than those during the reign of the conqueror's son. But there could be no fear or doubt, there could be no thought of despair, when Scotsmen were hanging, like hallowed reliques, above their domestic hearths the swords with which their fathers served the Bruce at Bannockburn." Relics of the field are rarely found now, but some of the pits dtig by Bruce were opened lately. These were found to have been eighteen inches deep, very close together, with a sharp-pointed stake in each. The stakes were in a state of decomposition, and offered no resistance to the spade; but the bark W;as sufficiently entire to show that they were of hazel. Some fragments of swords, spear-heads, horse- shoes, and horse-hair (the latter mixed with whitish matter like tallow), were found in them. In allusion to the suggestion of Sir Malcolm Drummond, that these pits and the calthrops should be adopted to protect the Scottish position, the armorial supporters of the Drummond family to this day are two naked men bearing clubs, standing on ground studded with spikes ; and their significant motto is, " Gang warily." BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA, r Bannock burn. HaUdon Hill.] REVIVAL OF BALIOL'S CLAIM. 43 CHAPTER VII. HaLIDON hill, 1333 — SLUYS, I346. Halidon Hill. The causes which led to " the next great contest between England and Scotland were as follow : — The wise and valiant Bruce, who had won his throne by his sword, and confirmed its independence by and many nobles of the latter country had lost theirs by adherence to the invaders ; so all these saw the utility of Baliol, in stirring up a new war nearly twenty years after Bannockburn. They applied to Edward for his concurrence ; but though EDWARD REPULSED FROM STIRLING CASTLE {see /tr^f 4I). a written treaty, was now in his' grave at Dunferm- line; and his son, David II., a minor, was left under the care of his old comrade in arms, Randolph, Earl of Moray, as regent of the realm. About this time Edward Baliol, son of John, the whilom puppet King of Scotland, was discovered in a French prison by the Lord Beaumont, an English baron, who clakned the Scottish earldom of Buchan in right of his wife Alicia, daughter of John Comyn, • the fourth earl, who had been Constable of Scotland ; and deeming young Baliol a suitable instrument for his purpose, he induced him to revive his claim to the Scottish crown. Many other English nobles were in the same situation with Beaumont, having obtained grants of imaginary estates in Scotland, he wished the enterprise well, he was ashamed to avow his approval of it. He was afraid that injus- tice would be imputed to him if he attacked with superior force a niinor king — a boy and a brother- in-law — whose independent title had been so lately confirmed by solemn treaty and after such terrible bloodshed ; but he secretly encouraged Baliol in his lawless claim, connived at the muster of his forces in the north, and gave countenance to all who were disposed to join him : and with only 3,000 men this adventurer landed on the coast of Fife, and marching into the heart of the country, defeated the Earl of Mar, of whose force 12,000 are alleged to have been slain. Baliol now made himself , master of Perth, and at Scone was crowned by his 44 brItish battles on land and SfiA. [Halidon Hill. foliowers as " King of Scotland." But he lost his imaginary power almost as quickly as he won it ; being unexpectedly attacked near Annan by Sir Archibald Douglas and other loyal chieftains, who routed him, slew his brother John, and chased him in a wretched plight home to England. In this extremity, the servile but ambitious Baliol had again recourse to Edward III., without whose assistance he saw that his designs on the Scottish crown were vain. He offered, if it were obtained for him, to do homage for it, to acknowledge Edward's superiority over it, to espouse the Princess Jane, or do any- thing else his patron wished ; and then, ambitious of emulating his predecessors, the third Edward put himself at the head of a powerful army in order to involve the affairs of Scotland once more in blood and confusion, and to place Baliol on the throne. The capture and reduction of Berwick was the first object of the English king; and on uniting his forces with the malcontents of Baliol, he sat down before the town and closely invested it by land and sea. It was vigorously defended by the governor, Sir William Seton, who repulsed an attempt to take the town by storm, and also contrived to burn a portion of the EngHsh fleet. The siege now became a blockade, and the inhabitants were reduced to such distress that they agreed to sur- render if not relieved by a Scottish army before a certain day, giving hostages to Edward in the meantime, and among these was young Seton, the governor's son. Sir William Keith, at the head of a body of Scots, succeeded in cutting his way into the town ; he was chosen governor by the garrison, and refused to comply wth the King of England's second summons to capitulate. Edward then •threatened to put the hostages to death. The Scots could not beHeve he would be guilty of an act so infamous, and remained firm. Nevertheless, they were all put to death; and Thomas Seton, " a brave and handsome young man, was hanged so near the walls that his father could witness his dying struggles." Horror-struck by this scene, the citizens of Berwick clamoured on Keith to surrender, lest worse should befall them at the hands of one so merciless ; and he promised to them and to Edward "that the town and castle of Berwick should be unconditionally given up before the hour of vespers, on the igth July, unless the Scots in the mean- while could reinforce the garrison with 200 men- at-arms, or defeat the English in a pitched batde." To prevent the loss of so important a frontier town, the Scottish army, under the new regent, crossed the Tweed on the 1 8th July, and encamped at Dunse Park, a few miles north of Berwick. Archibald Douglas, Lord of Galloway, who led them, was the brother of Bruce's comrade, the good Sir James, who had fallen in battle against the Moors in Spain. He was a brave man, but an im- prudent leader, and was neglecting the dying advice of King Robert, " that the fate of the kingdom should never, if possible, depend on the doubtful issue of a general engagement." He found the English army strongly posted on the crest of an eminence called Halidon Hill, situated to the westward of the town, with a great body of Irish in their ranks, under Lord Darcy. Of their strength and particular disposition history fails to inform us, save that the traitor Baliol com- manded one of the wings, and that a marshy hollow lay in front of their line. The Regent of Scotland divided his army into four columns. The first was led by John, Earl of Moray, son of the veteran Randolph ; but being young and in- experienced, he had to assist him two well-tried soldiers, John and Simon Eraser, of Oliver Castle, whose father was killed at the battle of Dupplin. The second was led by the Steward of Scotland, a boy of sixteen, assisted by his uncle. Sir James Stewart, of Rosythe, in Fifeshire. The third was led by the regent himself, having with "him the Earl of Carrick; and the fourth, or reserve, was led by Hugh; Earl of Ross. The numbers of the Scottish army are variously stated by historians. The continuator of Hemingford, an author of that age, and Knyghton, who lived shortly after, ascertain their strength with more precision than is generally required by historical facts. The former records the Scottish force to have been, be- sides earls and other great lords and barons, 55 knights, 1,100 men-at-arms on horseback, and 13,500 of the commons, lightly armed — in all 14,655 men — but the servants, pages, and camp-followers were more numerous than the actual combatants. At noon on the 19th of July they advanced to decide the fate of Berwick, but their leaders ex- hibited a deplorable lack of all military skill. As the EngUsh were so posted that they could not be attacked by cavalry, the whole of the Scot- tish knights and men-at-arms dismounted, com- mitted their horses to their pages, and prepared to fight on foot. While drawing near they were severely galled by the English archers, but managed to reach the intervening morass in very good order; but then the disasters of the day began. Impeded in their advance by the soft and spongy nature of the ground, their ranks became broken, while from the crest of the hill the archers poured on them volley after volley of arrows with certain aim and fatal effect. An ancient writer, quoted by Tytler, says, " These arrows flew as thick as motes in the HalidonHill.] FLIGHT OF THE SCOTS. 45 sunbeam, "^ . and every instant hundreds were wounded or slain. Yet the four columns cleared the swamp, and with levelled lances, eighteen feet in length, made so furious an uphill charge upon the English, that for a few minutes the ranks of the latter were broken, and defeat seemed at hand till their reserve came on. Then, breathless and dis- ordered by their ascent of the eminence, the ill- fated and ill-led Scots were unable to sustain the ground they had won. After a brief but terrible struggle, they were borne down the hill towards the swamp. The Earl of Ross, in leading the reserve to attack the flank of the wing led by Baliol, was killed. Fighting in the van, the regent received a mortal wound, and was taken prisoner, with the Earls of Sutherland and Menteith. The Scots gave way on all hands, and as the pages were the first to fly vdih the horses, very few of the nobles or men-at- arms escaped in the bloody pursuit that en- sued and was continued for some miles, chiefly by the Irish kerns, under Lord Darcy. Four thou- sand Scots and more lay dead on the field. Among these were the aged Malcolm, Earl of Lennox, one of the earliest adherents of Robert Bruce ; Alexander Bruce, Earl of Carrick ; John Campbell, Earl of Athole, nephew of the late king ; John Graham, Alexander Lindesay, and other great barons ; the two Erasers ; and John, James, and Alan Stuart. " It may be remarked," says Lord Hailes, "that at Halidon two Stewarts fought under the banner of their chief— Alan of Dreghom, the paterflal ancestor of Charles I. ; and James of Rosythe, the maternal ancestor of Oliver Crom- well." Rapin, from an old authority, states the Scots killed at 36,907 of all ranks, more than twice the number of men in the field. The victory was won with very inconsiderable loss. It is related by EngHsh historians that on the side of their countrymen there were killed one knight, one esquire, and twelve foot-soldiers. " Nor will this appear incredible," says Lord Hailes, "when we remember that the English ranks re- mained unbroken, and that their archers, at a secure distance, incessantly annoyed the Scottish infantry." Aware that it had been provided by the treaty of capitulation " that Benvick should be con- sidered as relieved in case 200 men-at-arms forced a passage into the town," the Scottish men-at-arms during the action had made a vigorous effort to achieve this, but were opposed by Edward in person, and repulsed with great loss ; and after this disastrous battle, on the 20th of July, the town and castle of Berwick were surrendered according to the agreement. Sluys. To unite in his own person the crowns of France and England was now the great aim of Edward's policy. The three sons of Philip IV. had died without heirs, and Ed- ward III. of England and Philip of Valois were rivals for the va- cant throne. Edward's mother was a daughter of Philip IV., and Philip was a nephew of that monarch. The Salic Law, which enacts that no female can inherit the French throne, ex- cluded Edward, so Philip was elected. The King of England, whose con- duct to France was as lawless and unjustifiable as to his neighbours the Scots, seized all the wool and tar in his crown and his jewels, quartered on his shield and banners the golden lilies of France, assumed " Dieu et mon Droit " as his motto, and sailed to the Continent for the purpose of asserting in battle what he conceived to be his rights ; and the year 1340 witnessed a naval engagement which will bear comparison even with the most glorious achievements of more modern times. "The name of Edward III.," says Sir Harris Nicolas, "is more identified mth the naval glory of England than that of any other of her sovereigns ; for though the sagacious Alfred and the chivalrous Richard commanded fleets and de- feated the enemy at sea, Edward gained in his own person two signal victories, fighting on one occasion until his ship actually sunk under him, and was rewarded by his subjects with the proudest title ever conferred on a British monarch — ' King of the Sea.'-'' SWORD AND SHIELD OF EDWARD III. IX WESTJIINSTER ABBEY. kingdom, pawned his 46 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Sluys. Philip of France was duly apprised, by the pre- parations that were being made in England and the Low Countries, of the designs of Edward upon his crown and kingdom. He fitted out a great fleet, con- sisting of 400 vessels, which he stationed in the port of Sluys (then considered one of the finest harbours in the world), with 40,000 fighting men on board. Robert of Avesbury relates that on the Saturday fortnight before the feast of St. John the Baptist, " the king was at Orwell, in Suffolk, where there were forty ships or thereabouts, preparing fot his passage into Flanders, where he was going to his wife and children, whom he had left in the city of Ghent," where his chief ally was the famous brewer, Jacques van Ardtfeldt, and that he was about to sail in two days ; when the Archbishop of Canter- bury sent to warn him of the vast force collected by Philip at Sluys, and urged " His Majesty to pro- vide himself with a better squadron, lest he and those who were with him should perish." But the king replied bravely that " he was resolved to sail at all events.'' The archbishop thereupon quitted his seat at the council, obtained leave to retire, and resigned the Great Seal. 0)i this the king sent Sir Robert de Morley, his admiral, and Sir John Crabbe, another skilful seaman, over to Sluys, and on their return they agreed with the bishop. The king, in anger, said, "You have arranged this with that prelate, in order to stop my voyage ; but I shall go without you ; and all who are afraid may stay at home ! " Then the admiral and seaman said that they would stake their heads that if the king persisted "in this resolution, lie and all who went with him would certainly be destroyed ; yet that they were ready to follow him, even unto certain death." On this Edward sent for the archbishop, and pre- vailed upon him to resume the care of the Great Seal, and then he issued his orders to all the ports both in the north and south of England, and to the Londoners, to send him aid ; so that within ten days he had a navy said to consist of 260 sail, with which he appeared off Sluys on the feast of St. John the Baptist. Other writers say that he had the French fleet reconnoitred by the Lords Reginald de Cobham and John de Chandos, who reported that it was alike powerful and nu- merous. On this the king put on his armour, and exclaimed, with joy, " For this opportunity I have long wished ; and, by the help and blessing of God and St. George, I shall now engage them, and avenge my wrongs ! " This was a very gratuitous oath on Edward's part, as history has failed to record that he had any "wrongs" to complain of — his wars with France being as wanton and as wicked as his wars with Scotland. Schotnberg, in his " Naval Chronology," says that " Edward gave the necessary directions for forming his line and the mode of attack with as much dexterity as if he had been bred to the sea." He certainly displayed that genius for the art of war which always characterised him. He formed his fleet in two lines; the first consisted of his largest and stoutest ships, to bear the brunt of the encounter; each alternate ship being filled by archers, and crossbow-men, with men-at-arms. The second line was a mere reserve, to be drawn upon if necessary. At eight o'clock in the morning the battle began by the enemy advancing with the Great Christopher, a ship taken by them in the preceding year from the English, and the ships throwing their grap- pling-irons on board each other, till the whole re- sembled a vast raft ; and then ensued a close and murderous hand-to-hand fight with pike and dagger, sword and axe. The French fought with resolute bravery, and a vast number of them were slain or driven overboard into the sea. For eleven hours the fight continued, and at seven in the evening it was likely to be a drawn battle ; when it was begun a second time wit;h renewed fury, for the French galleys, on attempting to escape in the twilight, were assailed more resolutely than ever. One large craft, called the St. Jacques de Dieppe, with many others, was sunk ; for of the whole French fleet, only thirty escaped, all being taken or destroyed; and these, says Knyghton, the king ordered Sir John Crabbe — a Fleming, formerly in the service of the King of Scotland — to pursue with forty sail, but he failed to overtake them in the dark. The prudence, resolution, and bravery of Edward won him the admiration of all, particu- larly of " the mariners, who were amazed to see him give orders with such foresight that one would have thought he had commanded at sea all his life." He lost 4,000 men, and one great ship, a galley of Hull, was sunk with all hands by a shower of stones, a somewhat singular kind of broadside, but one common enough in those days. The French lost their two admirals and nearly 1 2,0.00 men, and Edward kept the sea for three days with all his banners flying, to put his victory beyQnd all dis- pute ; and save his court buffoon, no man in France dared tell Philip the terrible story of the destruction of his armament. Walsingham states that the jester came into his presence in a seeming passion, and exclaimed, " Cowardly Englishmen ! Dastardly, faint-hearted Enghshmen !" Then Philip asked him why he called them so. CrcEsy.] THE BLACK PRINCE. -17 "Because," replied the jester, "they durst not leap out of their ships into the sea, as the brave Frenchmen did." Walsingham tells us that in this battle many guns were taken from the French. Six years after this we find Edward at the siege of Calais, with a fleet of 738 sail, manned by 15,000 men, "which," says a pleasant writer, "gives an aver- age of about twenty men to a ship about the size of a merchantman's long-boat ! So, after all, it was but a fleet of midges — a fleet that the Sandwich Islanders have surpassed in more barbarous days." De Mezeray alleges discord between the two French admirals to have been the cause of their defeat at Sluys on the 24th of June. Edward's exploits there so raised the ardour of the English Parliament that they were eager for the prose- 'cution of the war, and he speedily found himself at the head of 100,000 Englishmen, at home and abroad (besides 40,000 Flemings), and of these 30,000 sailed from Southampton to win the field of Cressy, and cut their way to the gates of Calais. CHAPTER VIII. CRESSY, 1346. EDWARt) landed at La Hogue, in l^ormandy, on the 26th August, and his first act was to knight his son — a mere boy, the Prince of Wales— the future Black Prince of glorious memory. His anny con- sisted of 4,000 men-at-arms, 10,000 archers, 1 2,000 Welsh and 4,000 Irish infantry. He divided it in three divisions, which marched separately in the day, but all formed one camp at night. They ravaged the country with great atrocity, and the towns of Valoque, St Lo, Charenten, and Har- fleur were plundered and partially destroyed. Considerable alterations had now been 'made in the armour worn; a visored bascinet was used by knights in the field, the crested helmet being re- served for the lists alone. The casing of the body in jointed armour was now nearly complete, and the adoption of breast and back plates enabled soldiers to dispense with the ancient hauberk of rings. The use of plate-armour was a decided improvement, being lighter than the chain with its accompany- ing garments. The magnificent jupon, emblazoned with the wearer's arms, and the splendid knightly girdle, are both the testimonies of a warlike age ; greaves, or jambs (steel boots), and sollerets to cover the feet had been introduced. The backs of the gauntlets were furnished with overlapping plates, armed with knobs or spikes of iron. Those of Edward the Black Prince were of brass ; and Cam- den, but without authority, says that he adopted the famous triple plume, or " Prince of Wales's fea- thers," by slaying John, King of Bohemia, who wore such a plume, at Cressy, but it is very unlikely that so gallant a prince would have slain with his own hand the aged and blind monarch referred to. He is also said to have worn at Cressy, as afterwards Henry V. did at Agincourt, a heart-shaped ruby, which is now in the new crown that wa» made for Queen Victoria. By this time cross-bows were in pretty general use among the English. These were of different kinds, such as the latch, the prodd, &c., but they all carried indifferently arrows, darts, qnarreaux or bolts of iron, and stone or leaden bullets. The common range of a point-blank shot was from forty to sixty yards, with an elevation of 1:20; Crossbow-men were dressed like other archers, biit sometimes fought on horseback. But a new era in war was to be inaugurated, for with the army of Edward III. came five pieces of small cannon, a species of weapon supposed to be unknown in France, though cannon are spoken of in a sea en- gagement in the thirteenth century, between the King of Tunis and a Moorish King of Seville. By whom the five pieces of ordnance were made is un- certain ; but Le Blond, in his "Treatise of Artillery," says that the earhest guns "were of a very clumsy and inconvenient make, being usually formed of several pieces of iron fitted together lengthwise, and then hooped with iron rings ; and as they were used for throwing stones of prodigious weight, in imitation of the ancient machines, they were of enormous bore. But the difficulty of conducting and managing these pieces, and the discovery that iron bullets of much less weight might be impelled by better powder, soon introduced the present fabric and matter of cannon." 1 Edward's Welsh and Irish were light and dis- orderly troops, more fitted for plunder and pursuit than a steady encounter with the well-armed soldiery of France, and even the best men of his army were but newly levied and unused to war ; 4^ BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Cressy. but they committed fearful ravages, in most in- stances sparing neither sex nor years. At length Philip advanced against Edward, at the head of 100,000 men; and the latter, afraid of being sur- rounded, in an enemy's country, began a retreat towards Flanders. In this retrograde movement Thus on a few moments depended the fate of Edward III. ;. and, by -his presence of mind and celerity, these moments were turned from ruin to victory, for the justly infuriated French would have wreaked terrible vengeance on him and his army. He theh continued his march, and took up a posi- *;* -, .^r^" .^■age 45). occurred the famous passage of the Somme, at the ford of Blanchetaque, all the bridges being either strongly guarded or broken down. Under Gode- mar de Faye, 20,000 Frenchmen held the opposite bank ; but Edward threw himself into the river sword in hand, at the head of his troops, and forced the passage, and reached in security the opposite bank with his whole force, just as Philip and his vast army reached the river and the tide was rising. tion at the village of Cressy, or Creci en Ponthieu, on advantageous -ground, and there awaited the enemy. In Froissard we find a description of how the English army passed the night before Cressy, one of the most memorable battles of the age. The king lay in the fields with his host, and made a supper to all his chief lords and knights. "And when they were all departed to take their rest, then the king entered into his oratory and Cressy.] AN OMEN. 49 kneeled down before the altar, praying God de- voutly that if he fought the next day, he might achieve the journey to His honour. Then, about midnight, he laid him down to rest, and in the morning he rose betimes and heard mass ; and his son, the Black Prince, with him, and the most of they saw the French army moving across the plain As far as we can calculate, it was now the morn- ing of Saturday, the 6th of August, 1346, though some writers give a different date. The English army was formed in three divisions on the grassy slope, and all lay on the ground till EDWARD III. KNIGHTING THE BLACK PRINCE {Sce tage 47). bis company, were confessed and houseled. And after the mass he commanded every man to be armed and to draw to the field, to the place before appointed. Then the king caused a park to be made by the roadside behind his host, and there were set all the carts and carriages, and within the park were all their horses, for every man was afoot; and into this park there was but one entry." towards them, rending the air with shouts, such as, " Down with them ! " " Let us slay them ! " Then the archers assumed their bows and salades (or helmets), and every man stood in his ranks. A great flock of ravens were seen to hover over the French army, and this, says De Mezeray, "was deemed a presage of their defeat." But there was a natural cause for their appearance, as the morning of the battle broke with storm and rain, thunder 6 5° BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Cressy, and lightning — ''a fitting prelude for a day of blood." The first line of the English was commanded by Edward the Black Prince, so called from the colour of his armour, and, as a French historian adds, also from his sable plumes. Under him were the Earls of Warwick, Oxford, and Harcourt; the Lords Chandos and Holland, and other nobles. The second line was led by the Earls of Arundel and Northampton, with the Lords Basset, Willoughby, and Roos, and Sir Lewis Tufton. The king in person led the third line, with which he proposed to sup- port, if needful, the two first, or secure a retreat for the whole in case of defeat. He formed trenches to protect his flanks and secure his baggage in the wood. With the English army were 6,000 Irish. Philip had also divided his army into three great columns. The first consisted of 15,000 Genoese crossbow-men, led by Antonio Doria and Carlo Grimaldi. The second was led by the Count d'Alengon, brother to the king, who had on this occasion no less than three other crowned heads serving under his banner — John of Luxembourg, the aged King of Bohemia, who had lost one eye in battle' against the pagans of Lithuania, and been rendered totally blind of the other by a Jewish quack ; the King of the Romans, his son ; and the King of Majorca, who had been driven from the Balearic Isles three years before, by Pedro IV., of Arragon. United with the force of Godemar de Faye, the French army now mustered 120,000 men all told, in their helmets. Hume asserts that Philip had cannon, but in his haste left them behind, a very unlikely circumstance if he possessed them at all. The " Dictionnaire Militaire" (1758) asserts that cannon " were known in France," according to some authors, in 1338, under Philip, but known of only. " Nevertheless," says Voltaire, " till the reign of Charles VIII. artillery continued in its in- fancy ; such is the force of inveterate customs, and so slow the progress of human industry. They did not make use of artillery in sieges till the reign of Charles V., King of France ; and the spear was their principal weapon till the reign of Henry IV." The French, in their enthusiasm, had marched in great haste ; and the heavily-accoutred Genoese, weary after a march of six leagues, carrying their cross-bows, were already begining to fail : and when Philip said, "Make the Genoese go on in front, and begin the battle, in the name of God and St. Denis ! " they muttered, and, in the words of Froissard, said to their constables, " We be not well ordered to fight this day ; we be not in the case to do any great deed of arms, and have more need of rest." Then said the Count d'Alengon, commander erf the second line, with scorn, "Truly, a man is well at ease to be charged with these kind of rascals, who are faint and fail us now when most at need ! " Now the sun came forth briUiantly in rear of the English, but shone full into the eyes of the, French. The Genoese continued to advance, whoop- ing, yelling, and making many antics ; " but the English stood still and stirred not.'' This whooping the Genoese continued, adds Froissard, whose de- scription we chiefly follow, till they came within range; but the recent rains had relaxed the strings of their arblasts, so that the bolts fell short. The English archers drew their bows from their cases dry and serviceable — those splendid six-foot bows, on which the glory of England S9 often depended. "Then," says the knightly historian, "the English archers each stepped forth one pace (as he drew the bowstring to the ear), and let their arrows fly so wholly and so thick that it seemed as snow." The cloth-yard shafts soon quivered in the faces, breasts, and arms of the Genoese, who fell into) immediate disorder ; some cut the strings of their cross-bows, others cast them away, and the whole began to recoil upon the heavily-mailed men-at-arms of the Count d'Alengon. ^ " Slay those rascals," cried Philip of France ; " they do but hinder and trouble us without reason." Then their own cavalry dashed among them, and killed a great many, while the English arrows fell fast among both ; and, to add to the general con- fusion, the cannon — now heard in battle for the first time — belched forth a storm of stones upon the wild melde. Then nothing was seen in that vast body but hurry and confusion, terror and dismay. The Welsh and Irish now began to creep forward, with great knives or daggers, and slew, by stabs and gashes in the throats, great numbers of the dismounted French knights and men-at-arms, who were simply wounded, or rolling helplessly amid the press in their heavy armour. Then it was that the old blind King of Bohemia, when the state of affairs was explained to him, said to those about him, "Sirs, ye are my men, my friends, and companions ; I re- quire you to lead me so far forward that I may strike one stroke with my sword." Then two knights buckled the reins of their bridles to those of his horse, lest they should lose him in the press, and the three charged together. The aged king "struck a stroke with his sword, yea, and more than four, and fought valiantly, and so did all his company ; but they adventured so far forward that they were all slain, and the next day were found in the place about the king, with their horses tied to each other." This was about three in the afternoon. Creasy.] VICTORY OF THE BLACK PRINCE. SI The young Prince of Wales had presence of rnind to take advantage of the confusion, and led his line to the charge. The French cavalry had by this time freed themselves of the Genoese runaways, and, by superior numbers and steady hand-to-hand fighting, began to hem young Edward round. The Earls of Northampton and Arundel now advanced to his aid ; and soon the battle became hot and terrible. From the summit of the hill of Cressy, the king, near a windmill, was looking on, when a messenger from Warwick came, clamouring for succour. Then said the king, " Is my son dead, or the captain came to the walls, and asked, " Who calleth there at this time of night?" " Open your gate quickly," cried Philip, " for this is the fortune of France." The sorrowful captain recognised the king ; he let down the bridge and opened the gate : and when Philip entered he had with him but Sir John of Heynault and five other barons. On his return to camp the Black Prince, who had distinguished himself in a manner so remark- able, was embraced by the king his father. "My brave son!" he exclaimed, "persevere in EARLY CANNON. hurt, or on the earth felled ?" No, sire," replied the knight ; " but he is overmatched, and hath need of your aid." " Return to my son," said Edward, " and tell him that to him I reserve the honour of the day. I am confident he will show himself worthy of the honour of that knighthood which I so lately conferred upon him ; and that, without my assistance, he will be able to repel the enemy." This message added to the ardour of Warwick and the prince. A fresh charge with redoubled vigour was made upon the French, by which the whole line of cavalry was thrown into disorder, and the Count d'Alengon was killed ; and then flight followed the confusion. Philip of France remained on the field your honourable course. You are indeed my son, for valiantly have you acquitted yourself this day, and shown yourself worthy of empire." The young prince then went on his knees and craved his father's blessing, and the night was spent in feasting and rejoicing. The recorded results of this battle would seem exaggeration, were they not so well authenticated. Won as it was chiefly by the bow, the EngUsh loss was so small that it has never been stated; but that of the French was terrible. Besides the Kings of Bohemia and Ma- jorca and the Count d'Alen^on, there fell the Duke of Lorraine ; Lewis de Creci, Count of Flanders ; and eight other countSj two archbishops, the EARLY CAiNNON. till the last, when the evening was closing in, un- willing to believe that all was lost. When no more than threescore knights remained about him, one, named Sir John of Heynault, who had remounted him after his horse had been killed by an arrow, said, "Sire, depart while tliere is yet time; lose not your- self wilfully. If this field is lost, you shall recover it again another season." They galloped away, and now the flight became general. The Welsh infantry rushed into the throng, and, with their long knives, cut the throats of all who had fallen ; nor was any quarter given that day by the victors." Philip rode to the castle of La Broyes, where he found the gates closed, for the night was dark ; but Count de Blois, 1,200 knights, and 30,000 soldiers. Such was the cost to humanity of one day's proceed- ings, in the unjust endeavour to conquer France. Eighty standards were taken. Among these was the beautiful banner of the King of Bohemia, em- broidered in gold, charged with three ostrich feathers, and the German motto " Ich Dien" which, says Rapin (after Camden probably), was brought to the Prince of Wales, who assumed therefrom his well-known crest and motto. But this favourite tradition is unsupported by history ; for on the seal appended to a grant of the prince's to his brother, John of Gaunt, dated 1370, twenty-four years after Cressy, he appears with a single feather, while the 52 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA, [Durliam. crest of John of Bohemia in that battle was a single eagle's pinion. The triple plume, now known as that of the Prince of Wales, was first adopted by Henry- Stuart, the young and gallant son of James I. of England and VI. of Scotland, who, like the Black Prince, died before his father. On the day subsequent to the battle, by display- ing the captured French standards, many of the country people, who were ignorant of the general result, were lured towards the English camp, where a pitiful slaughter was made of them by 500 lances and 2,000 archers, dispatched for that special pur- pose. Edward remained for three days to bury the dead, some of whom he interred at Montreuil ; and then he marched through the Boulonnois to lay siege to Calais, that he might always have an open gate into France. It may be interesting to give here a statement of the pay of the English troops in Normandy and before Calais at this time, as given in the Appendix to " Brady's History of England" (Vol. II., p. 88). They consisted of 31,294 combatants, whose subsistence for 131 days amounted to ;^ 1 2 7, 2 01 2s. gd. "To Edward Prince of Wales, being in the king's service, in Normandy, France, and before Calais, with his retinue, for his wages of war, 4s. a day ; 102 knights, each 2s. a day; 264 esquires, each i2d. a day; 384 archers on horseback, each 6d, a day; 69 foot archers, each 3d. a day; 513 Welshmen, whereof one chaplain, at 6d. a day, one physician, one herald, 5 ensigns, 25 sergeants or officers over twenty men, each 4d. a day, 480 footmen, each 2d. a day. "To Henry of Lancaster, being in the king's service before Calais, with his retinue and one other earl, each 6s. 8d. a day ; eleven bannerets, each 4s, a day; 193 knights, each 2S. a day; 512 esquires, each 1 2d. a day; 46 men-at-arms and 612 archers on horseback, each 6d. a day. " To William de Bohun, Earl of Northampton (K.G. in 1350), and his retinue, at the same rate. " To Thomas Hatfield, Bishop of Durham, 6s. 8d, per day; 3 bannerets, 48 knights, 164 esquires, 8l archers on horseback, as above." Knights-bannerets were generally created on the field, and the form of creation was simply per- formed by the candidate presenting his pennon to the king or > eneral, who cut off" the train and made it square ; hence they were sometimes known as knights of the square banner, marking authority over a troop capable of forming a solid square of from ten to fifteen men per face. Hence the term "squadron.'' While Edward was pressing with famine and steel the siege of Calais, where John de Vienne held him at bay for nearly a year, there occurred an event at home, and only two months subsequent to the splendid" victory at Cressy, which, like it, did singular honour to the English arms. CHAPTER IX. DURHAM, 1346 — WINCHELSEA, 1 349. Durham. Induced by the urgent entreaties of the King of France, now sorely pressed by the invading army of England, David II., King of Scotland, was lured into war with that country. He accordingly assembled a numerous army at Perth, where a body of troops from the Highlands and Islands of Scot- land appeared at the royal muster-place; but a deadly feud which existed between Ronald, Lord of the Isles, and the Earl of Ross, led to the assassina- tion of the former in the monastery of Elcho, at the instigation of the latter, who, dreading the king's vengeance, retired with all his followers, and sought ■refuge in the mountains. Then the men of the Isles, enraged by the unpunished murder of their chief, r§turne4 home in confusion; and by this feqd the king's host was sensibly diminished in num- ber, yet he commenced his march for England at the head of 50,000 men. Though possessing but little of his father's judgment, and less of his mili- tary skill, David had all the hereditary valour of his house, and made the utmost haste on his expedition. He entered England by the western frontier, with a force stated variously by Froissard at 50,000, by Speed at 62,000, and by Knyghton at 36,000, and more probably with truth, 2,000 of these were cavalry in complete armour ; and though the Scots used cannon so early as 1340, there is no record of their having as yet such engines in the field. He stormed the Moat of Liddel, which was de- fended hy Walter Selbj^, a celebrated freebooter, Durham. 5 HALT AT BEAUREPAIR. 53 whom he beheaded. He was one of the band of robbers, so famous in EngUsh story, who pillaged two cardinals and the Bishop of Durham, when they came towards Scotland to publish the Pope's most unjust sentence of excommunication against the Scottish people for resisting England, on the plea that by doing so they retarded the progress of the Holy War ! The garrison of the Moat were put to the sword. At this early stage of the expe- dition, Douglas, the Knight of Liddesdale, recom- mended its abandonment, to the indignation of the other Scottish barons. " What !" they exclaimed ; " must we fight for your gain? You have profited by the spoils of England, and do. you grudge us our share ? Never had we such an opportunity for taking just ven- geance on our enemies. Edward and his chief commanders are absent, and here are none to oppose our progress save churchmen and base artisans." In this reply to Sir WiUiam Douglas, the barons IJarticularly alluded to the storming of the Moat of Liddel, which was connected with the western territories of Liddesdale, and served as a frontier garrison against his castle of Hermitage. Then the king continued his march, and, crossing the Tyne at a place called Ryton, above the town of Newcastle, advanced into the Bishopric of Dur- ham, where, according to the legendaries, St. Cuth- bert appeared to him in a vision one night, and besought him to save the property of the Church from pillage and sacrilege. On the 1 6th of October, 1346, at nine in the morning, he halted and en- camped at Beaurepair, or Bear Park, in the parish of St Oswalds, at Durham, a beautiful ecclesiastical retreat, which had been defaced and ruined by the Scots in the time of Edward II. ; but its remains still exist, pleasantly situated on an eminence two miles from the city, having a long, extended, level meadow to the south. Meanwhile, unknown to King David, Henry de Piercy, Ralph de Neville, Musgrove, Scrope, Hast- ings, and other great northern barons, were assembling forces to repel him. With them was the ubiquitous Edward Baliol — for in those days the Baliols were to Scotland what the Bonapartes are to France — and they were further reinforced by the Church vassals of the Archbishops of Canter- bury and York, by those of the Bishops of Durham, Carlisle, and Lincoln, and by 10,000 trained soldiers, who had been about to depart for the closer siege of Calais. Their muster-place was the park of Bishop Auckland; and their whole strength is said to have been 1,200 men-at-arms, 3,000 archers, and 17,000 infantry.' Many monks were in the ranks, a proof of useless zeal, when so many of the northern lords and sheriffs were present in arms. Froissard has asserted that Queen Philippa was their leader, and other his- torians of both countries have followed him im- plicitly. " A comely princess, the mother of heroes, at the head of an army in absence of her lord, is an ornament to history," says Lord Hailes ; " yet no English -writer of considerable antiquity men- tions this circumstance, which, if true, they would not have omitted." On the morning of the 17th October they were only six miles distant from the Scots, to oppose whose progress they marched towards Sunderland Bridge, intending, doubtless, to barricade and defend it by archers. The Knight of Liddesdale who had advanced on a foraging expedition at the head of the men-at-arms alone, suddenly came upon the entire English army on the march, near the Ferry-of-the-Hill. He endeavoured to elude an encounter, but was compelled to fight, and had his brother taken prisoner and 500 of his best men slain j while he escaped vfith. difficulty, to alarm the Scottish camp, where all were now under arms and prepared for battle. David formed his army in three' divisions. The first was led by the High Steward of Scotland and the Earl of March ; the second by the Earl of Moray and Sir William Douglas of Liddesdale, then named "The Flower of Chivalry ;" the third, which consisted of select troops, the principal knights, many nobles, and a party of French auxiliaries, was led by the king in person. Advancing by the Red Hills, on the west of the city of Durham, the English were gradually draw- ing near the ground on which the battle was to be fought. It was hilly, and in some places so steep towards the river Wear that it is singular how masses of men could manoeuvre in such a place. Notwithstanding the repulse of Douglas, Knng David considered the English a raw and undis- ciplined army, and evinced the utmost eagerness to begin the encounter. He felt certain of victory, as his soldiers did of the spoil of Durham. In front of the English army, amid the banners of the nobles, was borne a great crucifix ; and the monks of Durham, aware that they might be pillaged without ceremony if the Scots were victorious, had resort to that which in those days was easily believed in — a miracle. On the night before the battle, it was said, the Prior of Durham, John Fossour, had a holy vision, in which he was com- manded to take the sacred corporal cloth with which St. Cuthbert was wont to cover the chalice when he had celebrated mass, to place it on a spear, and 54 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Durham, next morning to repair to the Red Hills, where he was to remain with it until the close of the battle. The English advanced in four divisions. Lord Henry Piercy led the first, supported by the Bishop of Durham, and several nobles of the northern counties ; the second was led by William de la Zouche, the Archbishop of York, accompanied by the. Bishop of Carlisle, and the Lords Neville and Hastings ; the third was led by the Bishop of Lin- coln, the Lord Mowbray, and Sir Thomas Rokeby; lines were drawing nearer, with all their arms and armour glittering in the sunshine, the monks of Durham, in obedience to the prior's, vision, were busy on a hillock called the Maiden's Bower. There they were offering up their prayers for the success of their countrymen, on their knees around the holy relic of St. Cuthbert. This banner-cloth has been, described as being a yard broad and five quarters deep, " the bottom indented in five parts, all fringed and made fast about with red silk and gold. BEAUREPAIR ABBEY (see page 53). the fourth was led by the Archbishop of Canter- bury, Lord de Roos, and the Sheriff of Northumber- lan.l. With this division rode Edward Baliol, who some writers assert commanded it. Each of these divisions consisted of above 4,000 men, and each had an accompaniment of horse and archers. Fordun, and some others, enumerate the latter at 20,000. Be that as it may, Sir John Grahame, who was now Earl of Menteith, remembering how a quick cavalry movement against the archers had decided the field of Bannockburn, asked leave to attack them. " Give me but one hundred horse," said he, " and I shall undertake to disperse them all." But David declined. Meanwhile, as the adverse It was made of red velvet, on both sides embroi- dered with flowers of green silk and gold ; and in the midst was the corporal cloth enclosed, covered over with white velvet, half a yard square every way, having a cross of red velvet on both sides; and then five little silver bells fastened to the said banner-cloth, like unto sacring-bells." During the whole time of the conflict the monks also occupied themselves in forming and erecting "a beautiful wooden cross, in remembrance of the holy banner being borne to the battle." The first blow was struck by Sir John Graham e, who attacked the archers, in his anxiety to scatter them, at the head of his own private followers ; but Durham.! ST. CUTHBERT'S BANNER. SS S6 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. tDurhairt. these being far too few in numbers to make any impression, were speedily beaten off, and their brave leader had a narrow escape, as his horse was shot under him. At nine in the morning the Scots commenced a general attack, by order of the king. The High Steward led the vanguard, the advance of which was sorely impeded by walls and hedge?, from behind which they were galled by the English archers, whose arrows flew thick as hail ; while the men-at-arms and bill-men, pouring through the gaps made in the ranks by those field enclosures, charged the Scots in a confused but desperate manner. Nevertheless, the latter came on with such impetuous fury that, by sheer dint of sword and battle-axe, they hurled the first English column back in confusion against that of Lord Piercy. At this crisis the renegade Baliol is said to have rushed into the thickest of the mSl^e with a body of horse, the weight of which threw the Scots into confusion, and gave the first column ©f the English time to reform. Here the Earl of Moray fell, and the Knight of Liddesdale was taken prisoner j while the High Steward was compelled to retreat and reorganise his troops, who were entangled among hedges and ditches, where they had little room to act. Baliol was too wary to follow in that direction, but flung himself, with all who would obey him, on the flank of that division which was led by the King of Scotland, around whom all the tide of battle rolled. In spite of every disadvan- tage, the conflict was maintained for three hours ; and amid the most furious charges from the English men-at-arms, and the slaughter made by the unerring shafts of their archers, the king, sur- rounded by his nobles and knights, fought valiantly. The Scots had now completely given way, yet the ' son of the great Bruce repeatedly brought masses of them back by his exhortations and example'; but by twelve o'clock the royal banner was beaten down, and on seeing it fall, the whole division of the Great Steward and of the Earl of March, de- spairing alike of being able either to rescue the king or retrieve the fortune of the field, quitted it and retreated ai masse, a circumstance which it is said that David ever remembered and never for- gave ; yet that the Steward did not retire without severe loss is evident from the great number of barons and gentlemen of the name of Stewart who fell on that day. When only eighty Scottish gentlemen remained about him, at last the king was taken. Proud, fiery, active, and strong, in the prime of life, and not yet in his fortieth year, David, "though he had two spears hanging in his body, his leg almost incurably wounded, and his sword beaten out of his hand, disdaining captivity, provoked the English by opprobrious language to kill him ; and when Sir John Copeland, of Northumberland, advised him to yield, he struck the knight on the face with his gauntlet so fiercely that he knocked out two of his teeth. But, however, Copeland conveyed him out of the field a prisoner. Upon his refusing to deliver him up to the queen, who stayed at Newcastle during the battle, the king sent for him to Calais, where he excused his refusal so hamdsomely that he sent him back with a reward of five hundred pounds a year in land, where he himself should choose it, near his own dwelling, and made him a knight- banneret." The armour which David wore on that day is said to be still preserved at Raby Castle. As usual in detailing these Scottish and EngHsh battles, the loss of the latter is not mentioned, though one writer states that only four knights and five esquires fell, and that Lord Hastings was mortally wounded; but we may safely conclude that in such a battle, and one so bitterly contested, many Englishmen must have fallen, and not a few of high rank among them. Of the Scots the slaughter was undoubtedly great, for there fell the Earls of Moray (Randolph, last of his line), Maurice of Strathearn, Hay of Erroi (the High Constable), Charteris (the High Chancellor), Peebles (the Lord Chamberlain), more than thirty other nobles, and about 15,000 soldiers, as recorded by Fordun and Knighton. With the king were taken prisoners the Earls of Fife, Menteith, Sutherland, and Wigton, and fifty other barons and knights. In addition to the wounds enumerated, David had also received two from arrows. Knighton mentions one in the head, and Fordun speaks of another as being so deep that the barb could not be extracted, till it came forth when he was praying at the shrine of St, Modan, in Fifeshire. Escorted by 20,000 men, the King of Scotland was conveyed in triumph to London, where he was shown to the citizens on a tall black horse ; and in the procession which conveyed him through the streets, the civic authorities and all the guilds or companies of the city took part, clothed in their appropriate costumes. Until he could ransom him- self, the royal captive and his companions in misfor- tune were secured in the Tower, where, by a mean and ungenerous parsimony, unworthy of his position, Edward III. compelled them to maintain them- selves. He did worse ; for on the miserable plea that the Earl of Menteith was a traitor to Baliol, he had him executed with all the shocking barbarities then sanctioned by the English law of treason. Winchelsca.] A FIGHT WITH THE SPANIARDS. 57 Tradition asserts that many jewels and banners found on the field, together with the famous Black Cross or Rood of Scotland, which was in the hands of St. Margaret when she died in the castle of Edinburgh, were offered to the shrine of St. Cuth- bert at Durham, where thanks were offered up for the victory. " No man could ever know of what wood or metal the cross was made — it was of pure and massive gold on the pedestal, which was gar- nished all about with rich and large diamonds, precious rubies, turquoises, and emeralds, and placed on a pillar near St. Cuthbert, in the south aisle of the cathedral" {"Scottce Redivivia"). David's ransom was finally fixed at 90,000 merks sterling, to be paid at the rate of 10,000 merks annually for nine years ; and during those years there was to be a truce between the two kingdoms. Such was the battle of Durham, or Neville's Cross, as it is frequently called, from a beautiful stone cross erected by Lord Neville on the field, to commemorate the English victory. There were seven steps round the pedestal, which measured four feet nine inches square. The Neville arms, a saltire, &c., were carved thereon, also the effigies of " our Saviour Christ crucified, the picture of the Blessed Virgin on one side, and of St. "John the Evangelist on the other." It remained till the year 1589, when, according to a writer quoted by Rid- path, in his "Border History," "the same was broken down and defaced by some lewd and wicked persons.'' Had Edward Baliol fallen in battle at Durham, the bravery of such an end might have atoned for the political errors of his past life. His claims to royalty he forfeited by treason to Scotland. He spent the remainder of his days in obscurity, and died childless, in 1368. AViNCHELSEA. Some fighting on the seas followed shortly after the English victories at Cressy and Durham, and this time with a different nation, with whom, in fact, England had been for some time at peace, but with whom she was destined in years to come to have many a bitter struggle for the dominion of the sea. It would seem that in 1349 the Spaniards con- ceived it necessary to exact from England revenge for certain piracies alleged to have been perpetrated by her warlike skippers on the high seas. They sent a squadron up the Garonne, where they found geveral English vessels, a little leaky, but all deeply laden with wine. Though the King of England was then at peace with the princes of Castile and Arra- gon, the Spaniards boarded the vessels, murdered the crews, made capture of everything, and then i bore awa)'. Edward III. was not a monarch who would submit tamely to an outrage such as this. Fitting out a fleet of fifty sail, he put the Black Prince on board with a body of troops, and embark- ing himself, sailed from Sandwich in quest of these corsairs, who were now forming portion of a richly- laden Spanish fleet of merchantmen on their home- ward way from Flanders. On the 29th of August, 1349, he came up with them, in sight of Winchelsea, off the coast of Sussex, and then Lancaster, Salis- bury, Warwick, Arundel, Gloucester, and all the great lords who were with him, prepared for battle ; and it is alleged that in this sea-fight cannon were first used on board ship by the English, but there is not any very precise or reliable information on the point. The Spanish fleet numbered forty-four great vessels, described as carracks. King Edward bore resolutely down upon them, grappled with chains and hooks, and engaged. " The Spaniards, defend- ing themselves with obstinate bravery, and pre- ferring death to bondage, rejected with disdain the quarter that was offered them." The king defeated them, took twenty of their vessels, and sunk others with all on board ; but a few set all sail and escaped in the dark. The prizes were laden with woollen cloths and valuable stuffs, the produce of the looms of the industrious Flem- ings ; and to commemorate this battle, Edward had a gold coin struck, whereon he is represented in the middle of a single-masted ship, with his sword, crown, and shield — the latter charged*'with the arms of France and England quarterly ; the arms of pretence being in the first and fourth can- tons of the shield. This battle off Winchelsea is chiefly remarkable for the alleged adoption of cannon at sea, and, moreover, the mariner's compass was now in use. All the weapons used on land were then used at sea ; and in addition to these was the falcastrum, a sort of bill or guisarma, described as a scythe attached firmly to a very long spear. The shape was after- wards preserved, in the double-bladed weapon formed of one piece of iron, and called the guis- arma, down to the close of the fifteenth century. Then and for long after the balls shot from cannon were of hewn stone. Sometimes the Scots used gun-stanes, or large pebbles lapped in sheet, 1 lesici, S8 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Poictiers. CHAPTER X. POICTIERS, 1350. Philip of France was dead, and John I., his son, ' vvas on the throne. Edward of England had now awakenid thoroughly from the dream of his grasp- | ing ambition. Convinced by stern experience that the crown of France lay beyond his reach, he offered to renounce his pretensions thereto by exchanging for them the authority he held as Philip's vassal and liege- man over certain provinces. By Philip this offer had been rejected with contempt, but now his son and successor feigned a willingness to ac- cept of it ; but the pride of France was roused. Edward again had recourse to arms, and a plan of combined operations was concerted between him and his son, the Black Prince, who, some historians say, was styled so less from the colour of his plume and armour, than from the cir- cumstance of the French calling him Le Noir, on ac- count of the gloom his war- like deeds threw over their country. With some of his companions after-named, he was one of the first Knights of the Garter when the order was founded, six years before. Advancing from Calais at the head of 60,000 men, the campaign was opened in 1355 ; and in seven weeks he had laid in ashes five hundred cities, towns, and villages, chiefly in the fertile pro- vince of Bordeaux, accompanied by the most shocking barbarities. The harvest was trodden under foot, the people and the cattle were slaugh- tered together, and all that the army could not consume was wantonly destroyed. The second year's campaign was signalised by the battle of Poictiers. The adventurous prince had pierced too far into the heart of France, and King John, justly provoked by so wanton an invasion, collected ^n army, also of 60,000 combatants, and made HEtMET AT PARHAM hasty marches to intercept him while occupied before the castle of Remorantin ; and the 19th of September saw them engage among the vineyards of Maupertois, near Poictiers, which is the chief city in the department of Vienne. The army of the prince was now reduced to little more than 14,000 men. It was on the evening of the 17 th that the English van- guard fell suddenly on the French rear, and then the prince became aware for the first time that he was outnumbered by 46,000 men, that they swarmed over all the neighbourhood, and that his retreat was cut off. "God help us!" he ex- claimed ; " we must consider only how we can best fight them." He instantly chose an admirable position, on elevated ground, having his flanks protected by vineyard walls and trenches, and to which there was but one approach, a long deep lane between hedgerows, so nar- row that only four horse- PARK, SUSSEX (1350). men could ride through it abreast. In rear of these hedges he placed strong bodies of archers, to gall the enemy as they advanced. Over-night he placed in ambush 300 men-at-arms and 300 archers, at a post from whence they were to make a sudden and unforeseen attack upon the French flank. These men were under Piers, the Captal de Buche, K.G. The English van was commanded by the Earl of Warwick ; the rear, or reserve, by the Earls of Salisbury and Suffolk ; the main body by the Black Prince himself; while the Lords Sir John de Chandos, K.G., and Audeley, K.G., with other brave and experienced soldiers, were at the head of different corps of the army. Before a blow was struck, or an firrow shot, the Polctlers.] THE ENGLISH BOW. 59 Papal Legate, the Cardinal Tallyrand de Perigord, anxious to prevent the effusion of human blood, offered his services as mediator. He induced the Prince of Wales to promise that he would repair the damages done by his troops; that for seven years he would not bear arms against King John : but the latter scornfully rejected these offers, and, confident in the overwhelming strength of his forces, he would be satisfied with nothing but the surrender of the prince and his whole army at dis- cretion, and, according to Froissard, having four of the leading English nobles " at his mercy." " I will rather die sword in hand," replied the gallant pisince, " than be guilty of deeds so contrary to honour and the glory of the English name ! " Then, says Walsingham, he made a shcart speech to his treops, telling them "that victory depended not , upon numbers, but on bravery ; that, for his own part, he was resolved to conquer or die, and would not expose his country to the disgrace of paying his ransom." This was on Sunday, the i8th, and the day was spent in making fresh trenches, and barricades of wagons, stones, and earth. With earliest dawn on the morning of the 19th, the English trumpets were heard pealing all over Maupertois, calling every man to his feet ; and the archers began to bend their bows. Once more the cardinal failed to move the proud resolutions of the King of France. " Then," said the prince, " let him come on ; and God defend the right!" And, doubtless, in that hour of danger, every English heart was animated by the recent memories of Cressy, where they fought with an equal disparity of numbers, and resolved to emulate the courage of those who were the victors there. John marshalled his host in three divisions, each of 20,000 men. The first was commanded by the Duke of Orleans ; with him were a body of Ger- man cavalry, and a great band of Scots, who, says Lord Hailes, enjoying a momentary tranquillity at home, crowded to the French standard under Lord William Douglas, who was received with dis- tinguished honours. The second division was led by the dauphin; the third by the king himself, who had by his side Philip, his fourth and favourite son, then only fourteen years of age. So confident were the French of victory, that on this day all the knights wore their richest armour, their most valu- able ornaments and orders. The battle began by a select body of French gendarmerie, led by two marshals; these rode furiously along the lane, but ere they could form in any order to charge or break the front of the English infantry, the archers suddenly opened their deadly volleys from behind the hedgerows. In a few minutes one marshal was shot down, the other was taken prisoner, and the lane become choked with dead or wounded men and horses — the dying rolling over each other in heaps — while, as De Mezeray has it, "tHe Englishmen's bearded arrows made the horses mad," and in masses they recoiled in terror upon the advancing Germans. This cir- cumstance so alarmed the second column, under the dauphin, that it began to waver in its advance, and many men were seen quietly retreating to the rear. This did not escape the eagle eye of the Black Prince, who at that most critical moiiifent, brought into action the 600 horse and archers whom he had placed in ambush under the Captal de Buche. The archers shot their volley, and the horse fell on with sword and mace, throwing into confusion by their unexpected attack, the whole left flank of the dauphin's line. A sudden alarm seized the Lords Landas, Bodenai, and St. Venant, to whose care that young prince and two of his brothers had been committed. Anxious for the safety of their charge, they carried them out of the field, most unwisely with a formidable escort of 800 lances, which set an example of flight that was followed almost instantly by the whole division ; for since Cressy the French had cherished a whole- some dread of " the green jackets and white bows " of the English archers. The leading division, under the Duke of Orleans, became seized with a similar panic ; and imagining at this early stage of the battle that all was lost, thought no longer of fighting, but began a retreat that speedily became a flight ; while the exulting English men-at-arms began to shout, "St. George for Guienne ! " Then said Sir John de Chandos, one of the most able and brilliant warriors of the age, and who had never quitted young Edward's side, " Sire, ride for- ward ; the day is yours ! Let us assail the King of France, for with him lies all the strength of the enterprise. Well I know his valour will not permit him to flee; therefore, please God and St. George, he shall remain with us ! " Seeing, also that the auspicious moment had arrived, the prince called to the standard-bearers, saying, " Advance, banners, in the name of God and St. George ! " Led by the prince and Chandos, the English men-at-arms poured at full speed through the corpse-encumbered lane, and forming upon a piece of open moor, charged the French with terrible force. Their shock was alike fierce and irresistible- The Constable of France, with many squadrons of 6o BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Polctiers. horse, vainly endeavoured to hold his ground, but was slain with the chief of his knights; the German horse, under the Counts of Sallebruche, Nydo, and Nostra, were next cut to pieces ; and a terrible carnage was made of the Scots. Lord Douglas was wounded and escaped; but his half-brother, Sir Archibald, was taken prisoner, together with Sir William Baird, of Evandale. The division under the king, inspired by his fine example, fought bravely. He and his principal knights were now who, under axe, arrow, and lance, were falling fast in blood and death. A furious throng of mingled English and Gascons now pressed close upon him, with cries of " Surrender ! " He was wounded and beaten to the ground ; but again he rose, axe in hand, and continued the unequal combat with furious courage. Anxious to save him, many English gentlemen prayed (among otheis. Sir John Treffry, a knight of Cornwall) that he would yield ; but, being unwilling to do so to any one of inferior CROSSBOWS AND DAGGERS (FOURTEENTH CENTURY). on foot, while their assailants were mounted ; yet, despite this disadvantage, they made a gallant re- sistance. Battle-axe in hand, King John fought foremost in the fray; the boy, Philip, by his side, calling to him ever and anon, "Father, guard yourself on the right— guard yourself on the left ! " Around them were the great lords of what was then a noble nation and faithful to its kings, all resolute to die in their defence, though there was death in front and flight in the rear. The prince and Sir John Chandos kept their troops steadily in hand, and concentrated all their efforts on this con- fused multitude who fought around the king, and rank, the hapless monarch repeatedly asked, "Where is my cousin ? Where is the Prince of Wales ? " Then said a young knight of St. Omer, in French, " Sire, surrender ; he is not here, but I shall lead you to him." Struck by the pure accent, the king asked, "Who are you?" " Sire," replied the other, " 1 am Denis of Mor- beque, a knight of Artois; but I serve the King of England because I have lost my all in France." " To you I surrender," said John, and presented him with his right-hand gauntlet. As he led him and his son away, the English claimed him with vio- lence from Morbeque; then the Gascons demanded Poictiera.] THE ESCAPE OF DOUGLAS. 6i the honour of guarding him ; and some, more brutal than the rest, proposed that, rather than yield him to others, he should be put to death : but, luckily for the honour of England, the appearance of Thomas Beauchamp, the Earl of Warfrick, K.G., and of Sir John de Pelham, ancestor of the Earls of Chichester, overawed all parties ; and, approaching the royal captive with every demonstration of re- spect, they conducted him to the Prince of Wales. The English army at Poictiers behaved with a coincidence, the four aides-de-camp of Sir Row- land Hill in the Peninsular War, iour hundred and fifty years later. The Black Prince ordered the body of Robert de Duras, nephew of the Cardinal de Perigord, to be borne away on his shield, accord- ing to the etiquette for a knight slain in battle. The escape of the Scottish prisoner, Archibald Douglas, a warrior famous in the annals -of his country, from the English at Poictiers is curiously related by Fordun and Hume of Godscroft. Being THE liLACK PRINCE S MARCH THROUGH RONCESVALLES. more consideration and humanity than was usual with victors in those days, otherwise the slaughter would have been terrible. As it was, the French lost on the field about 8,000 men, of whom 800 were men of family. Among these were the Due de Bourbon, the Due d'Athenes, Constable of France, the Marshal de Nesle, and others ; while tlie king. Prince Philip, thirteen counts, one arch- bishop, seventy barons and baronets, 2,000 splen- didly-accoutred men-at-arms, and a vast multitude of inferior soldiers, remained prisoners in the hands of the Black Prince. Burke records, as a curious circumstance, that the representatives of the four esquires of the Lord Audeley at Poictiers were, by arrayed in armour of a very sumptuous kind, he was supposed to be a noble of high rank ; and, late in the evening, when some English were about to strip him of it, his friend. Sir William Ramsay, of ColkUliie, also a prisoner, anxious he should escape, affected to be furious with passion, and said, "You accursed murderer, how comes it that you are decked in your master's armour? Come hither, and pull off my boots ! " Douglas, who instantly divined his object, knelt down and pulled off one of the boots of Ramsay, who struck him with it ; on which some English- men interposed, and asked Ramsay " how he dared to so misuse a nobleman of rank ? " 6 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Najera. '•He a nobleman!" exclaimed Ramsay; "why, he is a scullion — a base knave, who I fear has killed his master. Go, villain, to the field, and search for the body of my cousin, your master, that I may give him decent burial." He then ransomed him for forty shillings, and said, " Go — get you gone ! " Douglas carried on the deceit. He was permitted in the dark to search for the body of his pretend-ed master, and was soon beyond the reach of his captors. Most of the prisoners were speedily dismissed — the more important on parole of honour to appear at Bordeaux with tlieir ran- soms on a given day — and now came the most splendid and generous chivalry of the Black Prince. In spite of his father's pretensions to the throne of France, which seemed more than ever feasible, " it was no longer in his eyes," says Sismondi, " John ofValois, who styled himself King of France ; it was the true king, whom he acknowledged lor the chief of his house, and suze- rain of the lordships which he held in France. In the evening he gave a supper to his royal and other distinguished prisoners ; but not all the entreaty of King John could induce liim to sit down himself at the banquet. His constant reply was — and could A^ords ever have been more delicious to the wounded vanity of a brave man in King John's position ? — he ■' was not yet qualified to sit at the table of so great a prince and so brave a man." Seeing that the king took little refreshment, he said, on his knees, " Dear sire, please to make simple cheer. Though God has not been willing to consent to-day to your will, you have on this day won the lofty name of prowess, and have surpassed all the best on your side." So thus gallantly and nobly did the prince close the day of Poictiers, which was long a household word among the English people. He landed his royal prisoner at Plymouth, according to Walsing- ham; and on the 24th of the ensKing May he made his entry into London, as the King of Scots had done so recently. He rode a stately white courser, magnificently trapped, and by "his side was the Prince of Wales "on a little black nag :" so studious was he to do honour to his prisoner. He was received by Henry Picard (the same Lord Mayor who so magnificently entertained the four kings at one time in his house, England, Scotland, France, and Cyprus), and by all the aldermen in their robes and the citizens in armour ; while all the streets were decked with tapestry and gar- lands. He was less fortunate than his Scottish companion in misfortune, for he failed to raise the sum of three millions of golden crowns, which were required as his ransom, and eventually'died a captive at the Savoy Palace, in the Strand, which was in those days a fashionable and airy country suburb of London. CHAPTER XI. THE BLACK PRINCj: IN SPAIN — NAJERA, I367. The battle of Najera, or Navaretta, as it was sometimes named, near the Ebro, and the Spanish campaign of the Black Prince, are lightly passed over in English history, as the annalists of those (lays were more intent on recording the wars with the sister kingdom and troubles at home than on looking much abroad ; but these events came to pass in conseqiience of the prince's supporting the cause of Pedro the Cruel — a cause of which he had soon reason to be ashamed and to deplore. Pedro had succeeded in 1350 to the throne of Castile, and history cannot show another monarch who was equally perfidious, cruel, debauched, and bloody. Pie began his reign by the murder of his father's mistress, Leonora de Guzman ; daily his nobles fell victims to his suspicion and tyranny ; he slew one of his brothers and one of his cousins, in a fit of groundless jealousy; and he caused his innocent queen, Blanche de Bourbon, of the royal blood of France, to be imprisoned and poisoned, that he might indulge unrestrained in an amour with Maria de Padella, who also died mysteriously. At this crisis, Henry, Count of Trastamare, his natural brother, fearing the ruin of all, took up arms against the tyrant, but failing, fled to France, where he found all men's minds inflamed against Pedro, by the assassination of the French princess ; and he craved leave of Charles to enlist the Free Companies under his banner, and lead them into Castile against his brother. Charles V. was charmed with the project, and employed the famous Bertrand du Guesclin to negotiate with the leaders of those Companies, which were composed of a multitude of military adventurers, who had fol- lowed the standard of Edward III. in his. French wars. They had refused to lay down their arms, or Nfijera. ] MARCH OF. THE BLACK PRINCE. (•T, relinquish the mode of hfe by which they could alone earn subsistence ; they therefore associated themselves with other wild spirits, to the number of 40,000 men, as Free Companies or Companions, led by gentlemen of England and Gascony. They were dangerous residents in France, so Charles hailed with joy the double chance of getting rid of them, and having vengeance on Don Pedro. These Free Lances were also called Malandrins; and the Abbd de Choissi says it was extremely dangerous to oppose them, as they observed a species of discipline in their plundering raids. Their principal leaders were the Chevalier de Verte, Hugues de Courel^e, Robert the Scot, Mathieu de Gournar, and others, all of whom had been solemnly dubbed as knights. Du Guesclin soon completed his levies; re- ceived a sum of 100,000 livres from the Pope, and entered Spain against Pedro, who fled from his dominions and took shelter in Guienne, where he implored the aid of the Black Prince, whom Edward III. had invested with the sovereignty of the ceded provinces, as Prince of Aquitaine. De Mezeray avers that jealousy of Du Guesclin's war- like fame led the prince to make the cause of the dethroned monarch his own ; anyhow, on obtain- ing consent of the king, he levied an army against the Count of Trastamare, who had been crowned king at Burgos. On hearing that the Black Prince was approaching the frontiers of Castile, great numbers of the Free Companies, especially those led by Sir Robert KnoUys and Sir Hugh Calverley, to the number of 12,000 men as computed by Walsingham, withdrew from Burgos and joined his standard; yet Heniy was so beloved by his new subjects that he and Du Guesclin had remaining a force of nearly 100,000 men with which to meet the invader. The latter, who marched through the deep and beautiful Pass of Roncesvalles, amid tempests of wind and snow, was accompanied by his younger brother, John of Gaunt, created Duke of Lancaster, by John de Chandos, and other companions of Cressy and Poictiers. When he had reached Pam- peluna, he received the following letter from the new king, Henry II. : — " Enrique, by the grace of God, King of Castile and Leon, of Galicia, Murcia, Jaen, Algarbe, Algeziras, and Gibraltar, Lord of Biscay and Mo- lina. — To the right puissant and most honourable lord, Edward, Prince of Wales and Aquitaine, Duke of Cornwall, and Earl of Chester, greeting : Whereas it is given us to understand that you and your troops have passed the Pyrenees, and are marching towards us, having entered into strict alliance with our enemy, and intend to wage war ' against us ; we greatly marvel thereat, since to our knowledge we never offended you, or ever had the least intent so to do. Wherefore, then, are you come against us with such mighty force, to deprive us of that small inheritance which Providence hath allotted us ? You have, we acknowledge, the good fortune to be successful in arms above any prince now living, and you magnify yourself in your puissance. But since we know for certain that you intend to give us battle, we also hereby give you to understand as certainly, that whenever you advance into Castile, so surely shall you find us in front, ready to defend and hold this our seignory. Dated at San Domingo de la Calzada.' When the Black Prince had read this letter (which we quote from " The History of Pedro the Cruel "), he said, with his usual spirit, "I well per- ceive this bastard Hem^y is a valiant knight, and showeth good courage thus to write us." Then he ordered the Castilian herald to be detained, deem- ing it unwise to send him back for the present. While on his march to Salvatierra, near the Za- dora, in Alava, Sir Thomas Felton, who, with a troop of Free Lances, had taken post at Navaretta, near King Henry's camp, brought word that the latter had moved thence, and was now at San Miguel ; on which the prince marched with all speed as far as the city and plain of Vittoria, at the base of the hills of La Puebla. There he con- ferred the honour of knighthood on Pedro the Cruel and the Lord Holland, a gallant boy of seven- teen (son of his princess by her former husband) ; the same honour was conferred by the King of Ma- jorca, the Duke of Lancaster, and Chandos on no less than 300 English esquires. But the army soon began to suffer from want of food. The land ' of Alava was barren, and a small loaf cost a florin. Now tidings came that Henry had moved to Najera; so the prince marched to Logrono, in a fertile plain near the Ebro, which he crossed by a bridge, and began the advance into Castile. But before he quitted his camp at Vittoria, his advanced post, situated on a hill, had been surrounded and cut off; and there fell Sir Thomas Felton and his brother, Sir William, the Earl of Angus, Sir Hugh Hastings, Sir Gaylerd Vigors ; and 200 other knights and squires. This happened at a place called Ariniz, a league from Vittoria ; and the peasantry to this day call the hill Los Iiigksmonde, or "The Mount of the English." The prince's array was now about 30,000 strong. On the 2nd of April he departed from Logrono, and encamped in sight of the enemy, who occupied the little town of Najera, in the district of Rioxo. 64 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. fNajtra, In their front flowed the Httle river Nagerillo, and there, too, lay the road by which Pedro and the prince must pass if they would reach Burgos. There Henry II. was ■ determined to meet them, and all his army was eager for battle. , The. night was spent by both hosts in ; preparations for that strife which was to decide the fate of .Castile. ; - and most quaintly are the details- of it chronicled by Frois- sard, who accompanied Edward, in part of the -campaign. •'After midnight," we are told, "the trumpet sounded in King Henry's host; then every man armed himself. At the second blast they left their quarters, and were formed in three battles " — i.e., columns. The first, under Sir Bertrand du Guesclin, con- sisted of 4,000 knights and esquires, armed and attired after the fashion of France. The second was led by Don Tello and Don Sancho de Castilla, the king's natural brothers, and consisted of lightly- armed cavalry, "mounted on jen.nets, with a body of infantry — in all 15,000 men. The third, led by Henry in person, with the banner of Castile, con- sisted of 7,000 horse and 60,000 foot, crossbow-men, and slingers. Prior to mounting his battle charger, Henry rode on a mule along the ranks, "right sweetly praying every man that day to employ him- •self to defend and keep their honour." The rising sun showed the smaller army of the Black Prince advancing in fine array, with the white banner of St. George flying, "and it was a great beauty to behold the battalions with all their armour shining." The van of the English was led by John, Duke of Lancaster, and De Chandos. Before the attack was made, Sir John, or Lord Chandos, as he was sometimes called, brought to the prince his banner rolled round the staff, and said, " Sir, behold, here is my banner : I require you to display it abroad, and give me leave this day to raise it ; for, I thank God and you, I have lands and heritage sufficient to maintain it withal," he added, in allusion to the qualification necessary in a knight who desired to raise his banner, which consisted of at least fifty men-at-arms, with their usual number of pikemen and archers. The prince and Pedro the Cruel took the banner in their hands between them, and unfurled it to the wind ; it bore a sharp pyle gules, embroidered on silver. After this he bore the banner to his company, and placed it "in the hands of a good English squire, named William Allestry, who bore it that day and acquitted himself right nobly." Then, adds Froissard, every man, English and Gascon, drew up under their own standards, " and it was gi^eat joy," to see all the banners, pennons, and the noble suits of armour that were there. When the English lines began to advance, the Black Prince raised his eyes and his gauntleted hands to heaven, and prayed thus :— " Very God, Jesu Christ, who hath formed and created me, consent by your benign grace that I may have this day victory over mine enemies ; as that which I do is a rightful quarrel to aid this king chased out of his own heritage." Then, laying his right hand on Don Pedro, who rode by him, he said, " Sir King, ye shall know this day if ever ye shall have any part of the realm of Castile or not. Advance, banners, in the name of God and St. George !" Then went up the shout "St. George for Eng- land !" and the Duke of Lancaster's division flung itself headlong on that led by Du Guesclin and the Marshal Arnauld d'Endreghen. At the first brunt there was a great crashing of spears and clashing of iron shields, while the slings of the Castilians — a weapon which they retained from the Roman days — whirled large' stones that did great mischief, till the twang of bows was heard, and the archers of England made their usual havoc among them. Henry's left wing being ill supported, was soon driven back by the prince's right, led on by the Counts D'Armagnac and D'Albert ; and as the other divisions closed up the contest became fierce and bloody. The stones of the slingers actually " clave and brake many a bascenet and helm;" but the cloth-yard shafts drove Don Sancho quite out of the field with 2,000 spears, making a passage into the heart of the host for the Captal de Buche and the Lord Clysson, with their companies. " Castile ! " was the war-cry on one side, " St. George for Guienne ! " on the other ; and, in spite of their over- whelming liumbers, the Spaniard's began to give way. Henry of Trastamare performed prodigies of valour, and, fighting sword in hand in the front and thickest of the carnage, ralhed and reformed the shattered columns no less than three times. " Lords," he cried, " I am your king ; ye have made me King of Castile, and have sworn and promised that to die ye would not fail me. For God's sake, keep your promise, and acquit your- selves with honour !" Then, finding them giving way a fourth time, he cried, with something of despair, " Oh, where is the courage of those noble Spaniards who, under my father, Alphonso, van- quished the Moors ? Do not disgrace yourselves this day by flight !" On the other side, Pedro the Cruel was fighting with the fury of rancorous hate among his own subjects ; and history puts some very opprobrious epithets in his mouth, while he called ever and anon, " Where is this Bastard of Trastamare, who Majera.-. MURDER OF DON PEDRO. 65 calls himself King of Castile ! Let him face me if he dare ! " Under Bertrand du GuescHn, the French made the bravest resistance, and kept longer together; but at last he was taken prisoner. Henry's army gave way on all sides, and then the slaughter of the fugitives was terrible ! They mostly hurried towards the river ; " and at the entry of the bridge of Najera there was a hideous shedding of blood, and many a man slain and drowned, for divers leaped into the water, which was deep." At the bridge of Navaretta there was also a choke, and great loss of life ; and there fell the Grand Prior of St. James and the Grand Master of the Knights of Calatrava. " The water that ran by Navaret," adds Froissard, " was of the colour of red, with the blood of men and horses that were there slain." King Henry's lodgings were pillaged, and therein were found great plenty of jewels, and rich vessels of gold and silver ; but he, knowing that a terrible death awaited him if taken by the merciless Pedro, had escaped by a safe and secret route. Pedro, on the. field, deliberately murdered with his own hand Inigo Lopez de Orosco, a noble Castilian, who had been taken prisoner by a knight of Gascony ; and he repeatedly said, " If the bastard be not killed, the business is but half complete." The great Sir John Chandos had on this day a narrow escape. Having pressed too far among the enemy, he was surrounded and felled to the earth, where he was grappled with by a huge Castilian of noted prowess, named Martin Fenant, and would have been slain had he not bethought himself of a knife that was in the bosom of his surcoat. This he plunged re- peatedly into the back and ribs of Martin as he lay above him ; then he turned him over on his back, and started up just as his followers came to his rescue. The dagger which knights employed in these close and deadly struggles was named, some- what inaptly, the "poniard of mercy." The Black Prince would have thought the battle dearly won had Chandos perished, even though the number of slain had been no more than the incredibly small amount stated by Froissard, as four knights ^nd some forty others. Of the four knights, " two were Gascons, the third an Almayne, and the fourth an Englishman." Of the Spaniards and French, 560 men-at-arms lay dead on the field, and be- tween 7,000 and 8,000 more ^ere destroyed or drowned in the flight and pursuit. Many prisoners were taken ; the principal of these,' to quote the " History of Pedro,'' were " Don Sancho de Castilla, base brother of Pedro ; Du Gues<4in ; the Marshal Ariiauld d'Endreghen ; the Begue de Vilaine ; the Count of Denia, of the royal line of Arragon ; Philip de Castro, brother-in- law of Henry ; Pero Lope de Ayla, the historian, and many lords." The number of prisoners of rank was about 2,000, whereof 200 were French, and not a few were Scotch. The next day, Sunday, the remorseless Pedro craved leave to put all these prisoners to death ; a measure to which the Black Prince would by no means consent, and represented to him in strong terms that if he did not relax the severity of his temper the victory was useless. However, he would not be satisfied until the Commander of St. James, Garci Jofre, son of the Admiral of Castile, and Gomez Carillo de Quintana, were slaughtered, the last-named at the door of his tent. All Castile now submited to Pedro, who would never forgive the Prince of Wales for his clemency to the prisoners. He withheld the stipulated pay of the English troops ; thus young Edward, though he had finished his perilous enterprise with glory, had soon cause to repent that he had undertaken it in the cause of a monster. He sold his plate and jewels to feed his brave soldiers, but they perished fast by huriger and sickness ; and his own health being impaired hopelessly by the climate,, he was compelled to retreat into Guieime. The tyrannies of Pedro drove the CastUians speedily again to arms. He had no longer the sword of the Black Prince to rely upon. Defeated at Toledo, within a year after the victory at Najera, he took refuge in a castle, where he was captured and brought before Ills brother, Henry, by the Beque de Vilaine, and then ensued a scene of horror. The brothers were at last face to • lace. A few words of scorn and reproach passed between them, and then they rushed on each other like wild beasts. Pedro drew a secret dagger; it .was wrenched from his hand by the Viseount~de Roquebertin, and placed in the grasp of his brother, who stabbed him to death. From that moment Henry was sole monarch of Castile and Leon, the crown of which he trans- mitted to his posterity. Najera proved a fatal field to the great and gal- lant Prince Edward, who was soon after obliged to return to England, where he wasted and died, in his forty-sixth year, and was interred at Canter- bury, where may still be seen, above the altar-tomb wheron his effigy lies, some of his armour, his shield, with the fleur-de-lis and lions, his surcoat, now fad-ed to a dusky brown, his helmet, and gauntlets, the same perhaps^ which he wore when in prayer and battle on the field of Najera, in Castile. 66 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [The Channel. CHAPTER Xn. SEA-FIGHT, 1378— OTTERBURNE, OR CHEVY CHASE, 1388. SeA-FiGHT in THE CHANNEL. After the accession of the Black Prince's son to the throne, as Richard II., the naval affairs of England were so much neglected that most of the towns along the coast of the Channel were pillaged ships of war plundered the merchants of England, and made repeated descents upon her coast ; and not unfrequently her ships, when at anchor or m harbour, were cut out in sight of the people. The commerce of England suffered severely from these -^'^^^"^•^ -«* *'*^%A.*W«»r'*?%-»^r-^ " 1 * THE VILLAGE OF YETHOi.M (seepage 68). and burned by the French. At length a litde fleet was fitted out, under Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, and William de Montacute, Earl of Salis- bury, with orders to take possession of Cherbourg, which the King of Navarre had promised to deUver to the English. On the sea they were attacked by the Spaniards, who still resented the battle of Najera, but were beaten off; and the two earls put a garri- son into Cherbourg,- thus giving England an open- ing into Normandy, as Calais did into Picardy. The late King Edward III. had bitterly repented in his latter years the neglect of naval affairs. During the long-continued hostility with Scotland that marked the reign of David II., the Scottish attacks ; and Tytler quotes from "Rotuli Scotim " a remarkable order addressed by Edward III. to his admirals and naval captains, complaining in bitter terms "of their pusillanimous conduct in permitting the united fleets of the Scots, French, and Flemings to capture and destroy the ships of England in the very sight of his own navy." While the two earls were with the fleet at Cher- bourg, an opulent Scottish merchant, named John Mercer, who resided in France, and was greatly esteemed by Charles the Wise, had been captured on the sea by some Northumbrians, and carried prisoner into Scarborough. In revenge for this, his son, a bold and enterprising mariner, fitted out a the Channel.] RAVAGES BY fRENCtt SHIPS. 67 68 BklTlSH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [OtterburnSi fleet of Scottish, French, and Cast-ilian ships, with which he attacked and burned Scarborough, and carried off the ships that lay tliere. Thence he sailed to the Channel, the coast of which he con- tinued to scour with impunity, and captured many richly-laden prizes bound for London, thereby inflicting great damage upon English commerce. The losses he occasioned the merchants, caused loud complaints against the Duke of Lancaster, who had undertaken to protect England by se,a, but as yet had failed to do so. At length John Philpot, a wealthy and public- spirited merchant of London, on his own -responsi- bility, fitted out a squadroa ef vessels, put i,ooo soldiers on board, and sailed in quest of Mercer. After a little time he came up with him in the Channel, and a severe battle ensued, of which Wal- singham gives us no other details than that Philpot proved victorious, and took all Mercer's fleet, together with many of the prizes he had captured. The Scottish mariner was brought in triumph to London, where the victor obtained the applause of the people ; but the Regents resented that a private individual should have undertaken such an expedi- tion without their consent. The patriotic Philpot, "however, made so able a defence of himself " that he was dismissed without further trouble." The naval power of England remained at the same low ebb during the reigns of Richard II. and Henry IV. ; and hence it is that in the annals of those times we read of repeated projects of invasion by the French, and of constant depredations on the coast ef England by their squadrons. Otterburne, or Chevy Chase. A projected attack on England by land and sea from France and Scotland ended only in drawing an English army into the latter country, with fire and sword, as far as Perth and' Dundee ; and after some ten years of war and ravage, with alternate,' truces and negotiations, was fought the battle of Otterburne, perhaps one of the most splendid en- counters in the annals of chivalry. England was now rent, as Scotland had so often been, by internal dissensions, the result of weakness in the unfortunate Richard II., and the ambition of his nobles ; hence the Scottish barons of King Robert II. deemed the opportunity most favourable to retaliate upon her for past injuries. A prehmi- nary meeting was held by them at Jedburgh ; and having there made all their arrangements, they ap- pointed a muster-place, and keeping all their plans secret from the king and his councillors, they sepa- rated, each to prepare his vassals and followers. The village of Yetholm, not far from Jedburgh, and situated at the base of the Cheviot Mountains, was the , next trysting-place ; and there on a day in the middle of August, 1388, came the Earls of Douglas, Moray, and Fife, Sir James Lindesay, of; Crawford, and other barons, with a following of 1,200 men-at-arms and 40,000 infantry. On the other side ©f the border, the EngUsh lords, who by minstrels and heralds — alike privileged spies — had been duly informed of this unexpected muster (the largest Scotland had seen for some years), were far from being idle, and began to prepare for resistance, and actually dispatched a gentleman to Yetholm to discover the objects and strength of the Scots. This gentleman, or squire, as Froissard calls him, disguised as a groom, had the hardihood to enter the church where the Scottish chiefs were holding council, and learned the whole of their plans ; but when he returned to the place where he had left his horse tied to a tree, he found that it had been stolen, and, afraid to malke any inquiries concerning it, he set off towards England on foot (Buchanan says, "in his boots, spurs, and riding-suit"), but this very caution led to his detection. " I have witnessed many wonderful things," said a Scottish knight to a friei=id, as they stood at the ■ church door, " but what I now see surpasses any. Yonder man has lost his horse, and yet makes no inquiry about it. On my troth, I doubt much if he belongs to us. Let us after him, and see whether I am right or not." His confused and contradictory answers con- firmed their suspicions ; he was made a prisoner, interrogated, and threatened with instant death if he failed to reveal the intentions and force of his countrymen ; and from his confession the Scottish leaders learned that the EngHsh did not yet deem their troops numerous enough for battle ; but had resolved to await the inroad of the Scots, and then to make a counter-invasion of Scotiand. " Should you march through Cumberland," added the un- lucky spy, " they will take the road through Ber- wick to Dunbar and Edinburgh ; should you take the other way, then they will march by Carlisle, and enter your country by these mountains." The Scottish nobles were in the highest spirits at this intelligence, says Froissard, " and considered their success as certain now that they knew the disposition of the enemy. They held council as to their mode of procedure, and the wisest and most accustomed to arms, such as Sir Archibald Douglas, the Earl of Fife, Sir Alexander Ramsay, Sir John Sinclair^ and Sir James Lindesay, were the speakers ;" and, to frustrate the object of the Eng- lish, it was resolved to cross the border in two divisions, by the Eastern and Western Marches. ©tterTaurne. ] "CHEVY CHASE." 69 Accordingly one division, the largest, led by the Earl of Fife, the king's second son, and others, ■began to march through Liddesdale towards Carlisle, while the other, and smallest, consisting of 300 men-at-arms and 2,000 infantry, led by the young and fiery Earl of Douglas — the rival of Piercy — by a swift and rapid march, pushed on through North- umberland without molesting the inhabitants ; but as soon as the bishopric of Durham was reached the plundering began, and the smoke of the blazing villages acquainted the English leaders that the Scots had crossed the border. Douglas was per- mitted to ravage the whole of that beautiful and populous district without opposition, as the English supposed that he was but the vanguard of the entire army. After destroying the country to the gates of Durham, Douglas returned by the way of Newcastle, which was garrisoned by the brave Sir Henry Piercy, surnamed Hotspur. His force was too slender to attack Douglas in the field ; but the English knights frequently dashed out from their defences to break a lance with the Scottish, and many noble deeds of chivalry were there done. In one of these hostile meetings, Douglas and Hotspur encountered hand to hand. After a long combat — for in arms, strength, and almost in years, they were equal — the latter was discomfited, and his lance with its silken pennon was wrested from him. Raising himself in his stirrups, Douglas shook it triumphantly aloft, exclaiming — " I shall carry this to Scotland, and place it on the highest tower of my casde of Dalkeith, so that it may be seen from afar." "By heaven. Earl of Douglas," cried Piercy, " thou shalt not even bear it out of Northumber- land ! Thou shalt never have my pennon in Scot- land to brag of" "Well," replied Douglas, "your pennon shall this night be placed before the door of my tent — come and take it if you can." Such was the defiance that led to the battle of Otterburne, better known in song and story as " the battle of Chevy Chase ;" for Douglas continued his march up the Tyne, and when he encamped at night he stuck the lance of Hotspur in the ground before his tent, never doubting that its gallant o\vner would come to redeem his pledge. The armour of this period partook of the extrava- gant modes of the age. Plate was soon so com- pletely worn that the gussets of chain at the joints and the chain apron were all that remained of the old mail of the tenth century. The jupon and military girdle were still worn, and visored bascinets were sometimes used, with the ventaille fashioned like the beak of a bird ; while the bascinet itself was often encircled by a band or fillet of ermine, or border of beautiful workmanship. Milan was now the grand emporium for equipping the chivalry of Europe. Heraldic crests on the helmet are said to have not been generally used in Scotland for a hundred years after they were worn in England by all men of rank ; and they excited surprise in the Scots in the very year of Otterburne. In 1385 the Scottish Parliament ordained that every Scottish and French soldier in their service should wear a white St. Andrew's cross on his breast and back, which, if his surcoat was white, was to be embroidered on a division of black cloth. According to a book called the "Lamp of Lothian," the armour of Douglas and his squire took a year to temper and make. Henry Piercy was born in 1366, and was now in his twenty-second year. Douglas was older, as Froissard, who, about the year named, spent fifteen days at the castle of Dalkeith, speaks of him as " a promising youth." Piercy's evident desire to attack Douglas that night, and regain his lance with its pennon, was overruled by the English leaders, who were still under the impression that the whole army of the Scottish barons Avas close at hand, and that the earl sought to draw them into an ambush. Douglas waited some time, expecting an attack ; and then resuming his homeward march, after destroying the tower of Ponteland, he arrived on the second day at the hamlet of Otterburne, in Redesdale, about thirty miles from Newcastle. There he halted, for the double purpose of reducing a strong castle which stood there, and of giving Hotspur an opportunity for regaining his lance, especially as the latter had now mustered a far superior force. Douglas pitched his camp on the banks of the Reed A\'ater. A marsh flanked him on one side, on the other was a small hill covered by leafy timber ; in his front he placed all his wagons and carts, sumpter horses, and so forth, in charge of the sutlers and drivers, to guard against surprise. Having spent the day in skirmishing with the people in the casde, the Scots retired to their camp ; while Hotspur, having now discovered tha.t the forces of his rival in arms were but a small detached column, was coming on with all speed, at the head of 6,000 men-at-arms (horse and man all sheathed in steel) and 8,000 infantry. Froissard, so picturesquely "minute in his descrip- tions, tells us that it was after sunset when Piercy came in sight of the litde Scottish camp. It was a sweet moonlight evening — the last one of July — clear and bright, with a soft fresh breeze, though the past day- had been warm. Most of the Scots, fatigued by the assault of the castle, had taken their 70 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Otterburne. evening meal, and then lain down to rest. Earl Douglas and their other leaders had taken off their armour, and were at supper in their gowns and doublets, when the gleam of spears and mail was seen amid the grassy glen, and the cry of "A Piercy ! a Piercy ! " rang upon the still air, while Hotspur came on with great fury. Buchanan says that the moon shone so brightly that her light was equal to that of day, and that " To your arms ! " was the shout of the Scots. The EngUsh men-at- arms fell with sword and axe upon the barricade of wagons, which was defended by the camp-followers, and thus gave those in camp time to arm and get into their ranks ; but they had to accoutre in such haste that the armour of Douglas in many places was unclasped, and the Earl of Moray had to fight all night bareheaded, without his helmet. Earl Douglas now gave his banner to his natural son, a mere youth, named Archibald Douglas, an- cestor of the family of Cavers, hereditary Sheriffs of Teviotdale, by whom it is still preserved ; and, charging him " to defend it to the last drop of his blood," instead of waiting within camp to receive a closer assault of the enemy, drew off his troops, and sweeping in silence round the wooded hill, fell on the flank of the English while they were en- tangled in the marsh which bordered on the camp. Hotspur, who had now discovered his mistake, drew back his force to firmer ground, and received the attack of the enemy with great gallantry. If the English were somewhat fatigued by a long and hot day's march, they were superior in number to the Scots, " and in the temper of their armour and weapons.'' And now the hand-to-hand conflict raged for some hours with equal fury and ferocity, till the moon suddenly became obscured by a cloud so dark that, as Buchanan states, "friend could not be discerned from foe; whereupon they rested a space to recover breath." When the moon shone forth again, the conflict was resumed over the dead and dying, and the Scots, who fought against treble their number, began slowly to give way; till Douglas, whose standard was nearly lost, wielding a battle- axe with both hands, and followed by a few of his household, and his most faithful friends, Robert Hart and Simon Glendonwyn, hewed a passage amid the thickest of the enemy, till, being com- pletely isolated from his men, he was borne to the earth and mortally wounded in the head and thigh. The first-named wound would seem to corroborate the old ballad, which asserts that, like the Earl of Moray, he had entered the action in haste, without his helmet. " The Scottish spearmen were about giving way," to quote the " Lamp of Lothian," "when John Swinton, a brave knight, instead of pushing forward with his spear, raised it aloft, and, with herculean strength, smashed the shafts of the foremost rank of the enemy. He did this with such effect that the panic was fatal." The disaster to Douglas was unknown to the Scots for a time, till the tide'of battle turned ; and on the Enghsh being forced to give way, the spot where the great earl lay was cleared by dint of sword and spear, and Sir James Lindesay, Sir John and Sir Walter Sinclair were the first to discover him as he was bleeding to death. Near him lay his banner, the bearer of which had fallen. His chaplain, William Lundie, afterwards archdeacon of North Berwick, who had fought during the whole batde by his side, was still there, armed with a curtal-axe, and bestriding his body to protect him from further harm. "How fares it with you, cousin?" asked Sir John Sinclair. " But so so,'' replied the earl, in a weak voice ; " yet, God be thanked, few of my ancestors have died in chambers or in beds. There has long been a prophecy that ' a dead Douglas should win a field,' and I trust it shall now be fulfilled. My heart sinks — I am dying. Do you, Walter, and you, John Sinclair, raise my banner and war- cry; but tell neither friend nor foe that Douglas is lying here.'' These were his last words. Buchanan says they covered his body with a mantle, erected the banner, and shouted, " A Douglas ! a Douglas !" A fresh onslaught was made on the English. Hotspur, who was wounded, was captured by the Earl of Moray, and his troops losing heart, gave way and took to flight; so that, literally, the dead Douglas won the field. Scarcely a man of note among the Enghsh escaped either death or captivity; i,86o of their men-at-arms were slain, and more than I, cob were wounded. Froissard, who received his account of the battle from both the English and Scottish knights who were engaged in it, says in his chronicle, " Of all the battles that have been described in this history, great and small, this was the .best fought and the most severe ; for there was not a man, knight or squire, who did not acquit himself gallantly hand to hand with his enemy, without either stay or faint-heartedness." He adds that they all agreed that it was one of the most obstinate battles ever fought. In his " Annales," Sir James Balfour states that the only Scots " of quality " who fell were Sir Robert Heriot, Sir John Touris of Inverleith, and Sir William Lundin, who died of his wounds three days after the battle. On the following day the Bishop of Durham, Homiidon. ] BURIAL OF DOUGLAS. 71 hearing of Piercy's defeat, arrived at Otterburne in hot haste, with 10,000 men, to cut off the retreat of the Scots ; but finding them strongly intrenched, under the Earl of Moray, he deemed it more prudent to let them retreat home without molestation. In solemn procession, the body of Douglas was borne to the abbey church of Melrose, and laid in the tomb of Jiis forefathers, above which his banner was Ivj.ng. Among the noble prisoners carried into Scotland were, besides Hotspur, his brother, Sir Ralph Piercy, the Seneschal of York, Sir Ralph Langley, Sir Robert Ogle, Sir John Lilburn, Sir John Copeland, Sir Thomas Walsingham, Sir John Felton, Sir Thomas Abingdon, and half of the chivalry of the northern shires. Froissard highly applauds the courtesy shown by the Scots to their prisoners, and adds " that both nations were not less deserving of praise for their gentleness after a battle than for their courage during the conflict ;" from which we may suppose that much of the savage rancour infused in these wars by the ferocious policy of Edward I. was passing away. While this brilliant fieldwas fought in Redesdale, the main body of the Scottish army was simply occupied in the devastation of the western counties of England; and Andrew Wynton records that its leader, the Earl of Fife, heard of it with envy, for the wealth that accrued from the ransom of the prisoners was the most remarkable that had oc- cured since Bannockburn. Froissard estimates it at 200,000 francs. For his ransom to the Lord Montgomerie, Hot- spur built the castle of Penrose, in Ayrshire, belong- ing to the future Earls of Eglinton ; and the King of Scotland redeemed Ralph Piercy from Sir Henry Preston, of the family of Craigmillar, by granting him certain lands and baronies in Aber- deenshire. Such was the field of Chevy Chase, the story of which so roused the heroic blood of Sir Philip Sidney that he wrote, " I never heard the old song of Piercy and Douglas, that I found not my heart moved more thereby than with the sound of a trumpet; and yet it is sung but by some blind crowder, with no rougher voice than rude style.'' CHAPTER XIII. HOMILDON, 1402 — SHREWSBURY, I403. HOMILDON. In England and in Scotland, the earliest military force — apart from clanship in the latter country: — arose from the feudal system, service in war being performed under that tenure : the greater vassals holding immediately of the respective crowns, under that obligation ; and the inferior vassals from the others, on the express condition of appearing in arms under their lord's standard, whenever he should require their services. This was enforced by the right of confiscation, or resumption of the lands granted under the condition, although the usual punishment was a pecuniary fine. Every possessor of a knight's fee in England, where there Avere more than 60,000, was obliged to furnish one soldier for the king's service during forty days in each year. So early as the reign of Edward IL, we find a chirurgeon for every 1,900 men. His pay was four- pence per diem. Henry V. had one surgeon and twelve assistants with his army; and they rank thus in his military code, drawn up at Manse : "Soldiers, shoemakers, taylors, barbers, physicians, and washer- women." A tax was first levied under Elizabeth for the support of "maimed soldiers and mariners;" but so early as the days of which we are writing grants of money were occasionally made by the sovereigns of England to men wounded in action. Thus, in the ordinances of Edward IV., we find an allow- ance of four marks per annum to John Sclatter, a private soldier of foot, who had lost a hand at the battle of Wakefield; and ten pounds per annum to another, for gallantry at the battle of Sherborne. A Scottish war being the first undertaking of Henry IV. on his accession, the old rivalry and hostility between the great border lords, Piercy and Douglas, flamed out anew, and the flower of the Lothians fell in battle at Nisbet Muir. Incensed by that disaster, Archibald, fourth Ead of Douglas, afterwards a Marshal of France, collected 10,000 men, and accompanied by Murdoch Stuart, eldest son of the Duke of Albany, the Earls of Mora}- and Angus, together with Fergus Macdowal, Lord of 72 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. tHomildon. Galloway, at the head of the fierce Celtic clans of the southern Highlands, entered England, and, in the usual fashion, laid waste all the beautiful border land to the gates of Newcastle. At this crisis Henry content or refugee, collected a powerful army; and resolved to intercept the Scots when on their home- ward march, encumbered by spoil and with herds of cattle, and while they seemed lulled into security CANNON, ETC. FKOM A MS. IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM (14IO). IV., whose wanton invasion of Scotland in the pre- ceeding year had «drawn the present expedition on himself, was engaged in suppressing the Welsh insurrection under Owen Glendower ; but he had left the charge of the English frontier in the able hands of the Earl of Northumberland and his son, the gallant Hotspur. These experienced leaders, together with the Earl of March, who was -well skilled in border warfare, and was a Scottish mal- by the apparent fear of the English borderers — a policy which was completely successful. On his northern march, the Earl of Douglas had reached Wooler ere he received intelligence that Hotspur, at the head of a strong army, was barring the way to Scotland, and advancing to attack him. On this he immediately took up a position on an eminence called Homildon Hill ; and though the high courage of Douglas, like that of all the men of HoiniIdon.J MARCH'S EVIL COUNSEL. 73 his race, is unquestionable, his errors as a leader were many and grave. The position he chose was completely commanded by several other eminences, especially by one directly in front of his line ; and of it, by the most singular fatality, he quietly per- mitted the English, on the 7th of May, 1402, to possess themselves, and form in order of battle. The dense ranks of the Scottish spearmen were thus exposed to the point-blank arrows of the English archers, who composed a very large portion scarcely penetrate their files, making it impossible for them to wield their weapons." The Scottish pikemen, most of whom were clad in light armour, fell in hundreds over each other; and many 01 their knights, who still adhered to the old- fashioned chain-mail, found it no defence against the deadly EngUsh shafts. They fell fast from their horses ; and these, wounded, ungovernable, their breasts and flanks bristling with blood-stained arrows, galloped madly to and fro, trampling the THE BATTLE-FIELD OF SHREWSBURY (seepage 7S). of Piercy's army, while the old movement inaugu- rated by Bruce — their dispersion by a charge of light horse — was never thought of. Too well might the archers of England boast that each of them carried twelve .Scotsmen's lives in his belt. With his characteristic impetuosity. Hotspur proposed an immediate charge on the Scottish spears at the head of his mounted men-at-arms ; but the renegade Earl of March, seizing the reins of his bridle, sug- gested that the archers should first empty their quivers. Marching to the front, in obedience to this evil genius of his country, the EngUsh archers poured in their volleys " thick as hail upon their foes, whose ranks," says an ancient Avriter, " were so closely wedged together that a breath of air could dead and the dying together. By the statutes of Robert I., every peasant in Scotland who possessed a cow was compelled to procure a bow and sheaf of twenty - four arrows, or a spear and coat of mail; but with the former weapon they never excelled. Now, at Homildon, the northern bowmen attempted to place the fight on a more equal footing; but, distracted by the confusion and carnage around them, their arrows either fell short of the English ranks, or their flights were in- effectual. It was when the Scots were in this sore extremity that Sir John Swinton of that ilk, an aged knight of distinguished valour, exclaimed: " Why stand we thus, to be shot down like deer ? Where is our wonted courage? Are we to be 74 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [HomilUon. still, as if our hands were nailed to our lances? Follow me, and let us at least sell our lives as dearly as we can !" This brave proposition won him the admiration of Adam Gordon, a young border noble, who had long been at deadly feud with Swinton. Leaping from his horse, he knelt before him, and, in the grand spirit of that chivalric age, he begged forgive- ness for his past hate, and to obtain the honour of knighthood from his sword — " For from a hand more noble than thine, Swinton, can I never receive the honour." Swinton acceded to the request, and embraced his former foe. The two knights then remounted, and at the head of one hundred lances flung them- selves at full speed upon the foe ; but being totally unsupported, the whole of this little band and its two leaders were overpowered and slain. Earl Douglas now made a final effort to retrieve the day, by making, when the movement was too late, a desperate charge at the head of his men-at-arms, with axe. and lance — a step which hastened his own overthrow. Retiring regularly on their cavalry, the English still continued that deadly rain of arrows under which the advancing Scots began to waver, and at last to break and retreat. Then, with a shout, the archers, relinquishing their bows for the short axe and daggers, rushed among them, mingled with the cavalry, and slew or captured many of the invaders. By them the battle was entirely won ; of the men- it-arms under Piercy, scarcely one drew a sword or laid a lance in rest. The loss of the victors was very trifling, but that of the Scots was great. One author (Tindal, in his Notes to Rapin) estimates it at 10,000 men, which is absurd ; but 1,500 of them were certainly drowned in the Tweed. Douglas lost an eye, and was otherwise wounded in four places. Sir John Swinton ; Sir Adam Gordon, of that ilk and Huntly ; Sir John Living- stone, of Callender ; Sir Alexander Ramsay, of Dalhousie ; Sir Walter Scott, of Murdieston ; Sir Walter Sinclair, and many other knights and esquires, lay dead on the field : while among the prisoners of Hotspur were the Earl of Douglas ; Murdoch, son of Robert the Regent Duke of Albany ; Stuart of Lorn ; the Master of Dalkeith ; Logan of Restalrig — in all some eighty nobles and knights, belonging to the first families in Scotland, a most unfortunate capture, as they ultimately proved, for Henry IV. of England. More than ever did the result of that 7th of May prove that the flower of England's feudal infantry were her archers. Made either from yew, ash, hazel, or elm, the bow was put into the hands of every English boy at the age of seven, and it ceased not to furnish him with sport and occupation till years deprived his arm of strength and his eye of skill; and from the Conquest down to the intro- duction of the musket, the use of this weapon was enforced by the English legislature. The following is the description of an English archer, as given by Ralph Smithe : — " Captains and officers should be skilful of that most noble weapon, and to see that tlieir soldiers, according to their draught and strength, have good bows, well nocked, well strynged, everie strynge whippe in their nock, and in the middles rubbed with wax ; braser and shooting-glove ; some spare strynges as aforesaid. Everie man one shefe of arrows with a case of leather, defensible against the rayne; and in the same foure-and-twenty arrows, whereof eight of them should be lighter than the residue, to gall or astonye the enemy with the hail- shot of light arrowes. Let everie man have a brigandine, or Httle cote of plate ; a skull (cap), or hufkin ; a maul of lead, five foot in length ; and a pike, and the same hanging by his side, with a hook and dagger. Being thus furnished, teach them by masters to march, shoote, and r'etyre, keeping their faces to the enemy. Some time put them in great nowmbers, as to battell appertayneth, and thus use them oftentymes till they be perfecte ; for those men in battell or skirmish cannot be spared. A royal and more recent author says, " A first- rate Enghsh archer who in a single minute was unable to draw and discharge his bow twelve times, with a range of 250 yards, and who in these twelve shots once missed his man, was very lightly esteemed." Shrewsbury. Henry IV. received the tidings of the victory at Homildon with the liveliest satisfaction ; but, in consequence of his own pride and imprudence, it led to events which placed his throne in imminent peril. By the laws of chivalry, all captives taken in war belonged then entirely to the victor, who might ransom or retain them at his pleasure. In violation of this law, Henry, on the 22nd September, 1402, dispatched from Winchester a prohibition to the Earl of Northumberland " to dispose of the Scotch prisoners taken at the battell of Humbledon," either by ransom or otherwise, till he received further instructions on the subject. The secret of this order was that Henry had certain designs on Scotland, which the detention of so many noble captives would greatly facilitate ; but it was felt as an insult and injustice by Hotspur and his father. To soften them, Henry, in the plentitude of his folly Shrewsbury.] MEETING OF HOTSPUR AND GLENDOWER. 7?~~^- and arrogance, conferred on the former by letters- patent the Scottish earldom of Douglas. As this would require to be won and held by the sword, it was a kind of joke that Piercy's temper could ill brook, especially as he had another ground of re- sentment against the king, in his refusal to ransom Sir Edward Mortimer, their kinsman, from Owen Glendower, because he was meanly jealous of the superior rights of the house of Mortimer. So the Piercys resolved to dethrone the ungrateful mon- arch whom they had helped to place on the throne, and to exalt in his place the young Earl of March. For this purpose they formed a coalition which seemed almost irresistible. They granted the Earl of Douglas his liberty, on condition that he and all his friends and followers should join them; and they admitted into this strange conlederacy Glendower, who promised to join them with at least 10,000 mountaineers when they drew near Wales ; and they pro- posed to divide Eng- land among them, as if it were already escheated property. Mortimer, on behalf of his nephew, the Earl of March, was to obtain all the country from the Trent and the Severn to the south- east limits of the king- dom ; the Piercys were to have all the land from the Trent to the borders, while the district north of the Severn was to belong to Owen Glen- dower. Save in the case of the latter, these con- spirators were uninspired by any patriotism ; all was grasping selfishness and a desire for vengeance. As for Douglas and the other Scots, they served Hotspur to pay their ransom ; and to fight against the King of England was to fight the common enemy of their country. Fortunately for England, the talents and activity of Henry IV. were equal to this great crisis, and he had at hand a body of troops with which he had been intending to act against the Scots ; and with them he instantly marched westward, by messen- gers directing all his faithful subjects to join him. Mortimer by this time had married the daughter of Owen Glendower, and informed the more trusty of his own retainers that he had joined the Welsh chief in a righteous quarrel, with the view of winning the crown again for King Richard, SADDLE, HELMET, AND SHIELD OF HENRY V. IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. whom he alleged to be concealed among the Scots ; and if he was dead, for the Earl of March. On this Hotspur had hastened to North Wales, where he possessed considerable influence, ac- companied by Douglas and the Scottish knights ; and his uncle, the Earl of Worcester, who was Lieutenant of South Wales, joined him with all the forces he could muster. The archers of Cheshire, a race of men devoted to the late king, answered his summons to a man ; but Henry had marched into Shrewsbury with all his followers, at the very time that the glitter of the insurgents' armour could be descried from its picturesque old walls, and ere a junction had been formed by the troops of the fiery and impetuous Hotspur and those of the wild, gloomy, and enthusiastic Glendower. The former, disappointed by this, but not discouraged, drew up his • troops at Haytleyfield, four miles distant from Shrewsbury, and pre- pared for a battle that was to prove one hi the most severe and sanguinary in the civil wars of England. In the evening, Hot- spur, who was then in his thirty-sixth year, and in the zenith of his military fame, Go- vernor of Berwick, and Warden of the East Marches of England, sent a manifesto to Henry. In that document he renounced his allegi- ance, set the monarch at defiance, and, in the name of his father and uncle, enumerated all the grievances of which he alleged the nation had to complain. He upbraided him with the perjury of which he had been guilty, when, on landing at Ravenspur, he had sworn upon the gospels that he had no other in- tention than to recover the Duchy of Lancaster, and would ever remain a faithful subject to King Richard, whom he had first dethroned and then murdered. He charged him again with perjury, in loading the nation with heavy taxes ; he reproached him with tampering in the Parliamentary elections — acts which had himself before imputed to Richard, and made one reason for his dethronment. This manifesto filled the heart of the king with rancorous fury, and the next day, the 21st of July, 1403, saw the adverse armies, each mustering about 14,000 men, ready to engage among the fields and upland slopes, in view of the people of Shrews- 'y6 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. rAgincoiirt. bury. So doubtful was Henry of the result, that lie sent the abbot of that place with certain proposals of peace, which were rejected by the advice of Worcester. " Then," cried Henry, " banners, advance ! " and the air began to resound with the adverse war- cries of " St. George !" and " Esperance, Piercy ! "— the latter being the motto of Hotspur, whose crest was a lion — and the archers on each side began to discharge their arrows with the usual murderous effect. Piercy and Douglas, who a year before had been enemies and rivals, were now comrades and friends ; and, with thirty chosen knights, rode side by side, as they hewed a way for themselves into the very heart of Henry's host. Douglas had sworn that the King of England should that day die by his hand, and he sought him all over the field. But Henry, acting under the advice of the Scottish Earl of March, had prudently changed his armour, and, as a simple man-at-arms, was doing his duty elsewhere, and had his horse killed under him. He had several gentlemen, however, dressed in the royal insignia of England, and the sword of the one-eyed Douglas rendered this lionour fatal to most of them. Sir William Blount among others. " I marvel to see so many kings rising again ! " exclaimed the bewildered Scot. "Where do they all come from ? " Hotspur and he bore all before then; for a time. The king's guards were dispersed, his standard beaten to the ground, and the Prince of Wales received a wound on the face. Disappointed in their expectations of slaying the king, Hotspur and Douglas were cutting a passage back through those who had closed upon their rear, when the former fell, neither by the hand of the king or Harry of Monmouth, but by a random arrow, '' which pierced his brain at the very moment he had lifted the ventaille of his helmet for air, or to issue an order. This decided the victory, for with him fell the courage and the cause of his followers, who now dispersed in alL directions. In this un- happy strife there fell 2,300 gentlemen alone. Those of the greatest distinction lost under the banner of the king were the Earl of Stafford, Sir Hugh Shirley, Sir Nicholas Gansel, Sir Hugh Mortimer, Sir John Massey, Sir William Blount, and Sir John Calverley. About 6,000 private men fell, of these two-thirds were followers of Hotspur. All the Scottish auxiliaries perished, save Douglas and the Earl of AVorcester. The former was wounded in his knee, and was released with the courtesy due to his rank ; but tlie latter was beheaded at Shrewsbury, and his skull was placed upon London Bridge. Boethius asserts that Douglas slew cer- tainly four that were armed on all points like King Henry, who, according to Walsingham, killed thirty- six men with his own hand. The body of the gallant Hotspur was buried with his permission ; afterwards altering his mind, he barbarously had it exhumed, dismembered, and placed on poles in the highways. The Earl of Northumlerland afterwards fled to Scotland. Returning, after five years of wandering, peril, and penury, he was slain at Tadcaster, in Yorkshire, CHAPTER XIV. AGINCOURT, 1415. The empty title of " King of France " was claimed until recent years by our monarchs ; but Harry of Monmouth was the only English sovereign who ever really deserved the name. Taking advantage of the civil war which convulsed France, after his accession he revived the claim of Edward III., and demanded the fulfilment of the Treaty of Bretigny. In derision of this, there came from the Dauphin for answer a bale of tennis-balls, as a gentle hint that the young King of England was fitter for such sports than the rougher game of war. Stung by this insult, Henry V. prepared for battle. The Duke of Bedford was appointed Regent ; the royal jewels were pawned, loans were raised, and the great barons were called to arms ; and though some delays arose in consequence of a plot in favour of the Earl of March — a plot for- which Lord Scroop and Richard of Cambridge had to die — a fleet bore Henry with an army 30,000 strong (6,000 were horse) from Southampton to the mouth of the Seine. In five weeks he reduced the strong for- tress of Harfleur, on the right bank of the river ; and then, with an army reduced to nearly half its original number by sickness, wounds, and deser- tion, he formed the bold resolution of cutting a pas- sage to Calais by the same route as that pursued by Edward III. when he marched his troops to victory. This daring march of a hundred miles, Agincourt.j tHE NIGHT BEFORE THE BATTLE. 11 through every species of opposition and danger, began on the 8th of October. The English moved in three columns, with cavalry on their flanks. But Henry found the bridges of the Somme broken down, and the fords rendered perilous by lines of pointed stakes, till, after some delay, one undefended place was discovered near St. Quentin. He crossed rapidly, and marched upon Calais ; while the Con- stable of France quietly awaited his approach at the village of Agincourt, on the left of the road from Abbeville to St. Omer. It is strange that in all these operations we hear nothing more of cannon, which the English cer- tainly possessed at home ; for when Henry besieged Berwick, in 1405, we are told that a shot from one great gun so shattered a tower that the gates were instantly thrown open by the alarmed garrison. Hand-guns were not yet invented, and the bow was stiU the king of English weapons. In those days, when men-at-arms encountered each other the slaughter was seldom great : many were unhorsed, when they lay helpless until assisted to rise again ; and in hot weather many were suffo- cated or choked in blood if their visors were not unclasped. Those among them who perished by sword-cut or lance-thrust were few in comparison to the slaughter made when they found an opening in a square of infantry, or came suddenly on unprotected archers. Hence we see that at Bannockburn the yeomanry of the English army perished almost to a man under the lances of the Scottish knights ; at Flodden the Scottish bill-men were cut to pieces by the English men-at-arms ; and at Homildon the Scots, and at Cressy and Poictiers the French, were destroyed chiefly by the volleys of the English archers. In the English military equipment of the time of Henry V., a plume in the apex of the helmet was a leading feature, and the form of the helmet itself was remarkably beautiful, with an orle or chaplet around it. The breastplates had become globular, and the steel gorget was replacing the ancient camail which had hitherto protected the throat. Hanging sleeves of rich cloth were sometimes worn with the armour; the lance-rests were hooks just below the right breast; two-handed swords with heavy blades were introduced at this time; and a pole-axe was usually carried by commanders in the field. Monstrelet, in his Chronicles, describes the English archers as being for the most part without armour, and in jackets, with their hose loose, with- out hats or caps, and often barefooted. Their hatchets or swords hung at their girdle. St. Remy says that they were not bareheaded, and that many of them wore caps of mir bouilli, or boiled leather, and others of wicker-work, crossed over with bars of iron. He was present at the glorious field of Agincourt, and tells us how young Henry of Eng- land, at break of day, heard three masses in succession clad in all his armour save his helmet and emblazoned surcoat. After the last mass, they " brought him the armour for his head, which was a very handsome bascinet with a baviere, upon which he had a very rich crown of gold circled over like an imperial crown." If this means with arches, it is the first instance of an English monarch wear- ing a closed crown. Another historian says, " His helmet was of polished steel, surmounted by a crown sparkling with jewels, and on his surcoat were emblazoned the arms of England and of France." The night before Agincourt was dark and rainy, and to the toil-worn English it was one of hope and fear, for 100,000 French lay there before them; thus the odds against them were as seven to one. Amid the darkness of the October night, and the sheets of descending rain, they could see the whole landscape gUttering with the watch-fires of the French ; and frequent bursts of their laughter and merriment were borne on the passing wind, from those who were grouped about these fires or their banners, as they fixed the ransom of the English king and his wealthy bai>ons. As for the common soldiers, they were all to be put to the sword, with- out mercy. Confident in their overwhelming numbers, they never conceived the possibility of defeat ; yet could they forget that they were posted within but a few miles of Cressy ? As men who. had staked their lives and the war- like honour of England on the issue of the coming day, the soldiers of Henry spent the night in repose, in making their wills and confessions, and preparing for battle with that gravity, order, and decorum which have ever been characteristic of British troops. The king himself took but little repose. He visited the different quarters of the army, and, during a brief season of moonlight sent certain captains of skill to examine the ground ; and, to keep the hearts of the men cheerful, he ordered the trumpets, drums, and fifes to play at intervals during the night ; but history fails to record the airs by which he sought to recall the memory of their homes, or the deeds of other days. So the night passed away; the French watch-fires died out, and the dawn stole on — the dawn of that great Feast of St. Crispin, the 25 th of October, 1415. After solemn prayer, he formed his army in three great divisions, with two wings. The archers, on whom he rested his principal hope, he posted in front of the men-at-arms. " Their well-earned reputation in former battles," says 78 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. tAgincoUrt, Lingard, tersely, " and their savage appearance on this day, struc'c terror into their enemies. Many had stripped themselves naked; the others had bared their arms and breasts, that they might exercise their hmbs with more ease and execution. Besides his bow and arrows, battle-axe and sword, each bore a large, strong stake on his shoulder, which he was instructed to fix obliquely before him victory, it will be plain that we owe it to His good- ness. If He do not, the fewer we are will be the less loss to England. But fight with your usual courage, and God and the justice of our cause shall protect us. A similar burst of courage was exhibited by a Welsh captain named David Gam, who, on being sent to recon- noitre the enemy, reported that "there were VIEW OF HARFLEUR {s£i page 76). in the ground, and thus oppose a rampart to the charge of the French cavalry." As Henry in the morning rode from division to division, and from banner to banner, mounted on a little grey palfrey at first, cheering and exhorting his troops, he chanced to hear a gen- tleman express a wish to a friend " that some of the good knights who were idle in England might by a njiracle be transported to the field of battle." " No," exclaimed King Henry, " I would not have a single man more. If God gives us the enough to be killed, enough to be taken, and enough to run away." The French order of battle resembled the Eng- lish, save that in some parts where the latter were but four files deep the former were thirty. The Constable of France, Charles d'Albret, Comte de Dreux,led the first line ; the Dukes of Bar and D'Alengon led the second; the Lords of Marie and Falconberg led the third. The distance between the two armies at first was about a quarter of a mile, and the ground between them was wet and marshy with the rain of the past night. AglucourtJ, THE MORNING OF AGlNCOURT. 79 So BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SfiA. tAgincoUl't. With the French army were 500 heavily-mailed men-at-arms, and a body, of crossbow-men, sent by John of Nevers, the Duke of Burgundy. Thus .the disproportion between the armies was enormous; indeed, so small. was the force of the English, .that in opposing the three lines of the enemy Henry had literally three battles to fight. Before the action began Henry was surprised to see three French knights ride boldly across to the English lines, desiring to speak with him. One of them, Jacques, the Baron de Helly, Marechal of France, had been a prisoner of war in England, where he was accused of having broken his parole ; and he now took this opportunity of denying the charge, and offering to meet in single combat, and in front of both armies, any man who should dare to repeat it. " This is not a time for single combats," replied the king. " Go tell your countrymen to prepare for battle before night ; and doubt not that for the vio- lation of your word you shall a second time forfeit your liberty, if not your life.'' " Sire," retorted Helly, " I shall receive no orders from you. Charles is our sovereign ; him we obey, and for him we shall fight against you whenever we think proper." " Away, then ; and take care I am not before you,'' cried Henry, stepping forward. "Banners, advance ! " Then Sir Thomas Erpingham threw his warder in the air, and the lines knelt while the men kissed — some say bit — the earth ; and at the distance of twenty paces from the French the English ranks halted and raised a loud cheer. Henry could only form two lines. Edward, Duke of Kent, led the first, aided by the Lords Beaumont and Willoughby and Sir John Cornwall, afterwards Baron Fanhope. Henry in person led the second, mounted on a white hOrse ; near him floated the standard of England, and he was assisted by his brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester; Mowbray, the Earl Marshal ; and the Eark of Oxford and Suf- folk. The men who were armed with spears, bills, and halberds closed the rear, under Thomas, Earl of Dorset, afterwards Duke of Exeter. Prior ,to all this, and while the morning was dusk, the king had secretly detached a body of 400 lances, who concealed themselves in a wood on the enemy's left, while 200 archers were posted in a low meadow and hidden by bushes on their right. Aware that the enemy far exceeded him in cavalry, ind that his infantry, the chief strength of his army, would probably be broken by the first charge, he had commanded some archers who were in the van to plant their stakes in front ; but as the French did not advance, on the signal being made as described by Erpingham, the king cried, " Let us break through them, in the name of the Holy Trinity ! " On this, the archers in front, under the Duke of York, began to pour their volleys upon the French ; and being all chosen men, of great strength and dexterity, they did terrible execution,^ all the more so that the array of the enemy was so close or dense — being thirty files deep — that men could scarcely move. Spurring on their horses, and shouting their war-cries, the French men-at-arms came thundering on, with flashing lance and sword, to cut to pieces the archers ; but the latter retreated quickly to the rear of their stakes, " a wonderful dis- cipline, in which the king had exercised them himself for some days." Floundering amid the wet clayey soil, the mailed cavalry came on, only to recoil from the pointed stakes and that withering shower of arrows ; while at the same moment the archers among the bushes on their flank now rose suddenly and opened upon them. The wounded men and horses discomposed the ranks ; the narrow ground in which they were compelled to act hindered them from re.covering order, and over all the French front began to reign confusion and dismay. Many of their horses sank to their knees in the mud. As they began to recoil, the archers slung their bows, and rushed among them with hatchets and halberds, swords and mallets, and all were now engaged in what the battles of those days always became — a wild and mingled mass of all arms, fighting men and horses. Henry, who had now dismounted and fought on foot, conspicuous alike by his valour, his glittering armour, and golden crown, in attempting to pierce the second Ijne of French, under the Duke d'Alen9on, was exposed to no ordinary danger. The Duke of Gloucester was beaten to the ground by the batde-axe of the Duke d'Alengon, but Henry drove back all about him, and saved his kinsman. Animated by rage and despair, the French prince now turned his weapon on Henry, and clove the gold crown on his helmet. Henry struck him to the ground, slew two of his attendants, and would have slain him, had not he called out — " Hold, I yield ; I am Alen^on ! " On this the King of England held forth his hand, but the duke was instantly killed. Eighteen French knights had registered a solemn vow to slay the former, and some of these who fou|;ht their way to where they saw the royal standard flying actually beat Henry down upon his knees — the chief of these were Brunelet de Massinguehem, and Ganio de Bornenville— but in a few minutes all of them perished to a man. " The French fell in heaps,'' Agincourt ] THE VICTORY. 8i says a writer, "some of these frightful piles reach- ing to the height of a man, from the top or the sides of which the two parties alternately fought, as if these mounds of carnage had been common ram- parts." It was a miracle that Henry escaped, as he was a mark for the weapon of every Frenchman who could reach him. The death of Alenijon so utterly discouraged the troops that, despite all the exertions of the Constable d'Albret, they began to take flight. Their third line, being still fresh and in good order, might certainly have restored for France the failing fortune of the day ; but their hearts were already sinking, and when they saw the 400 English lances advancing at a rapid trot from the wood upon their left flank, they gave way, and, without striking a blow, left to the mercy of an almost victorious enemy the broken troops of the second line, which it was their duty to cover and support. The conflict still continued, for now the English had nothing more to do than kill or cap- ture as they pleased. King Henry, perceiving that the troops of the third line were hovering at a little distance, as if preparing to return, sent to them a herald with a message to leave the field instantly or they should receive n® quarter. This menace succeeded almost beyond his expectation, as they instantly retired, and the battle was won ; but still the slaughter was not over. Word was suddenly brought to Henry that the routed enemy was now in his rear. Astonished by an incident so unexpected, he hur- ried to the summit of an eminence that lay between the field and his camp at Maisoncelles, and saw that the greatest disorder prevailed there. His baggage-guard was dispersed, and seeking flight from some unknown assailants. Supposing the batrie was about to be renewed, he ordered the instant destruction of aU the prisoners save those of rank ; and a new and dreadful slaughter of the de- fenceless and unarmed continued till 14,000 were slain, before he discovered his mistake and stopped it. The broil in the camp was occasioned by a band of 600 fugitives, led by Robert de Bournon- ville, Isambart d' Agincourt, and others ; who having left the battle "betimes," and knowing that Henry's camp was but slenderly protected, betook them to the work of pillaging it, till attacked and put to flight. In this battle, so memorable alike to England and to France, the French lost the Constable d'Albret, the Dukes of Alengon and Brabant, the Count de Nevers, the Duke of Bar, the Counts of Vaudemont, Marie, Roussi, and Falconberg, more than a hundred of different ranks who had banners borne before them, 1,500 knights, and 7,000 sol- diers. Of the EngUsh there were slain only the Duke of York, the young Earl of Suffolk, and, if we are to believe certain English historians, four knights, one squire, and twenty-four soldiers. De Mezeray reckons the loss at 1,600 men, and Mon- strelet at one hundred more than that number. The most eminent among the prisoners were the Dukes of Orleans and Bourbon, the Marshal Bouci- cault, and the-Counts of Vendomeand Richemont. Orleans was found wounded, under a heap of dead, by the archers when plundering on the field ; and perceiving some signs of Kfe in him, they carried him to King Henry, who ordered him to be treated with all care and courtesy. He was author of some of the earliest poetical valentines known, and some written by him when in the Tower of London are now preserved in the British Museum. The king irow sent for Montjoy, a French herald, who came for permission to bury the dead, and said to him — ■ " To whom belongs this victory ? " "To you, sire," replied Montjoy. " And what castle is that which we can perceive in the distance ? " " It is called the castle of Agincourt, sire." " Then let this be called the battle of Agincourt," said Henry. He further added that the sins of France, and not his soldiers, had wrought her defeat, and ordered tlie hymn, "JVbu nobis, JDomine," to be chanted by the whole array. To John Wodehouse, of Kimberly, in Norfolk, for bravery in this field, he granted an augmentation of honour to his coat-of- arms — viz., on the chevron, giittee de sang, (drops of blood), with the motto, " Frappez fo?-t." That shattered host could now achieve no more. Henry at once marched to Calais with his prisoners, and thence proceeded to Dover, where the people, in their joy to welcome a monarch so gallant and heroic, rushed into the water to receive and to bear him ashore. On the 23rd of November, just a month after the battle, and while the hearts of the people were brimming over with enthusiam, amid shouting crowds and waving banners, he made his triumphal entry into London. At Blackheath he was received by the mayor and aldermen, arrayed in orient grained scarlet, " and 400 commoners, in beautiful murrey, all with rich collars and chains, and on horseback."^ At St. Thomas k Watering he was met by all the clergy in solemn procession, with sumptuous vest- ments, crosses, and censers. The then quaint and narrow old streets were gaily decorated. A giant stood on the central tower of London Bridge ; and a St. George, armed on all points, was placed at the gate next the city. The tower of the conduit on Cornhill was decked with scarlet cloth ; the cross BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Bauj^. Chepe was concealed by " a noble castle," from lence came forth "a chorus of virgins, with ibrel and dance, .as to another David coming im the slaughter of Goliath ; and their song of ngratulation was, ' Welcome, Henry the Fifte, ing of England and France ! ' " And amid all !s pageantry the king passed to his devotions in i St. Paul's : and so modest was he in his nature. It he would not permit his bruised and battered Imet to be exhibited, as a trophy of his valour, the people ; but after his death it was hung ove his tomb in Westminster Abbey. There, D, were pla,ced the shield and war-saddle he used that terrible Feast of St. Crispin, at Agincourt, lich put all France in mourning. Subsequent to that event fliere ensued some hting by sea. To retake Harfleur, in which enry had left a garrison under the Earl of Dorset, e French besieged it on the land side, under the w Constable d'Armagnac ; while a squadron, der the Vice-Admiral Narbonne, with a fleet of istilian and Genoese ships, which had attacked )rtsmouth, Southampton, and the Isle of Wight, 3cked it up by sea. Dorset made a brave de- ice, but he had only some 1,500 men, and being duced to the direst extremity, he was on the point capitulating, when a fleet of 400 sail, under the uke of Bedford, having on board 20,000 English, IS seen steering for the mouth of the Seine. Dorset d with him the Earl Marshal, and the Earls of xford, Huntingdon, Warwick, Arundel, Salisbury, id Devonshire. Perceiving that it was impossible succour the little garrison without first breaking rough the blockade formed by the combined ;ets of the Constable, of John II. of Castile (then an infant), and of the Genoese, whose ruler was - Thomas Fregosso, an elective duke, he instantly made the signal for battle, and, being to windward, bore down upon them, grappled, and engaged. Long, bloody, and furious was the engagement; but the three alhes were totally defeated, and 500 sail (among which were five Genoese carracks, ships from their size then supposed to be impregnable) were taken or sunk, with all on board. And as nothing then prevented the Duke of Bedford from throwing succour into Harfleur, the Constable raised the siege and retired. This signal sea-fight is said to have occurred about the end of July. Henry V. was undoubtedly the great restorer of the English navy, and during his brilliant career in France his attention was constantly directed to guarding the coast, and the erection of fortifica- tions at Portsmouth and other places ; and when, on the renewal of the war, in 141 7, he made pre- parations for again returning to the Continent, when he embarked his army of 25,500 men at Dover his fleet consisted of 1,500 ships. Two of these vessels had sails of purple, adorned with the arms of England and France. One was named " the King's Chamber," the other " the King's Hall" — as a kind of proof that-he affected to keep his Court at sea, and considered his ships royal, like his palace. In this force he had no less than 16,000 men-at-arms; and for the first time we hear of a long train of artillery," and other warlike engines, meaning those of the past ages. The shields of the knights on board the ships of those days were all fixed round the gunwale, as a kind of ornament and additional bulwark in battle. CHAPTER XV. BAUj£, 142 1 — CREVANT, 1423— VERNEUIL, 1424. Bauj£. HEN Henry re-landed in France, that country is rent by civil disssnsiojis ; and slowly but surely extended his conquests, until the fall of Rouen, ;er a siege of six months, laid all Normandy at i feet, while his path to the throne of France was lened by an unforeseen circumstance. The foul jrder of the Duke of Burgundy threw all that ince's faction, thirsting for vengeance, on the le of Henr)'. He was thus enabled to dictate e famous Treaty of Troyes, by which the crown France was transferred to the House of Lancas- ter. How true seemed his reply to the Pope's legate, who urged peace shortly before this : — " Do you not see that God has led me hither as by the hand ? France has no sovereign ; I have just pretensions to that kingdom, and no one now thinks of resisting me. Can I have a more sensi- ble proof that the Being who disposes of empires has determined to put the crown of France on my head?" The three leading conditions of the treaty were, that Henry would receive in marriage the French Princess Catherine; that he should be Regent of Bauj^.] THE SCOTTISH LEADERS. 83 France during the life of the imbecile Charles VI. ; and that he should succeed to the French throne on that prince's death, an event easily brought about in those days. But a short visit to England with his bride was suddenly clouded by disastrous tidings, which quickly recalled him to France. Reinforced by a large body of Scots, under the Earl of Buchan, the Dauphin had routed the English at Bauj^, and slain the Duke of Clarence, Henry's brother; and these events came about in the following manner. Robert III., King of Scotland, fearing the power of his brother, resolved to send his son, Prince James, to France ; but the vessel in which he em- barked, being driven in a storm on the English coast, he was somewhat treacherously detained by Henry, who eventually gave the young prince a good education, which, however, failed to enable him to tame the fierce nobles and chiefs of his native kingdom. On these tidings coming to the castle of Rothesay, the old king died of grief Years of a regency ensued in Scotland, and the young king was left unransomed in the hands of Henry. One of the secret springs of action in this affair has been fully explained by Tytler, in his historical re- marks on the supposed death of Richard 11., who was then believed to have escaped into Scotland, where he was fostered and protected by the Regent Albany, as a bugbear to Henry and his family. In the year 141 9, when Albany was succeeded in the regency by his son, Murdoch, and while a war between England and Scotland was raging on the borders, the Due de Vendome arrived as am- bassador from Charles, the Dauphin of France, craving assistance against King Henry, and the request was not made in vain. The Scots, we are told, had beheld with natural alarm and jealousy the signal success of the English arms in France. If her ancient ally fell in the contest, it was just possible that Scotland might be humbled too ; hence it was resolved to send succour : and it is somewhat remarkable that the first signal defeat sustained by the English on the soil of France came from the hands of their fellow-islanders. Under Sir John Stuart, Earl of Buchan, youngest son of Robert, Duke of Albany, it was resolved to send an auxiliary force to France, in shipping that was to be provided by that country, and by Don Juan, King of Castile, and Alphonso the Infant of Arragon, with whom the Scots were in alliance. The two last-named princes promised a fleet of forty sail. Henry, who was at home with his young French queen, on hearing of these preparations, had ordered his brother, Bedford, the Regent of France, to leave no means untried for intercepting Buchan and his Scots upon the sea ; but the order came too late, and in the summer of 1420, the earl, who had embarked with a force stated by Balfour at 10,000, by another at 7,000 men, was safely landed by the carracks of Castile and Arragon at Rochelle, whence they marched at once to the aid of the Dauphin, who was then about to attempt the re- duction of Languedoc, and who by a courier informed the earl that he had been deceived by the pretended reconciliation at Pouilly le Fort with the new Duke of Burgundy. Among the Scottish leaders who came with Buchan, were Sir John Stewart of Darnley (con- stable of the troops), who was slain at the siege of Orleans, in 1429 ; Archibald Douglas, Earl of Wig- ton, aftenvards Lord of Longueville and Marshal of France ; Sir Henry Cunningham of Kilmaurs ; Sir Robert Houston; Sir Hew Kennedy; Sir Alex- ander Buchanan, of that ilk, and Sir John Swinton, of that ilk, both slain at Vemeuil ; Sir John Car- michael ; Sir William Crawford, killed at the siege of Clavell ; Sir Robert Maxwell, of Calderwood, who died of his wounds at Chinon; and others, like them, all well-trained in the ceaseless war- fare of those stormy times. This expedition brings us to the earliest authentic record of an important feature in British history, the influence of the Scots in France ; and in the War Office " Records of the First Regiment of Foot," which now represents in an unbroken line the Scots of Lord Buchan, we find • the following paragraph:—" It is recorded in history that so early as the year 882, Charles III. of France had twenty-four armed Scots, in whose fidehty and valour he reposed confidence, to attend his person as a guard. When Henry V., after having gained the memorable victory at Agincourt, was acknow- ledged as heir to the French throne by Charles VI., the Scots guard appear to have quitted the Court and taken part with the . Dauphin, afterwards Charles VII., in his resistance to the new arrange- ment, which deprived him of the succession to the crown. At that time 7,000 men were sent from Scotland, under the Earl of Buchan, to assist the Dauphin ; and these auxiharies having evinced signal gallantry on several occasions, especially at the battle of Bauj^, &c., Charles selected from among them 100 men-at-arms and 100 archers for the protection of the royal person, subsequently, designated the "Gendarmes Ecossaises." The Scots continued with the French army, and signalised themselves at the capture of AvrancheS, in Normandy, in 1422 ; and at the battle of Crevant, in 1423. An additional force of 5,000 men was sent from Scotland in 1424 ; and the Scots gave proof of personal bravery at the battle of Vemeuil, and in 84 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Bauj^. tie attack on the English convoy under Sir John "astolfe, in 1429 j and after these repeated instances if gallantry, Charles VII. selected a number of Scots entlemen of quality and approved valour, whom e constituted a guard, and to which he gave pre- edence over all the other troops in France, and Ills guard was designated " Le Garde du Corps icossaises." To Buchan and his Scots were first assigned the awn and castle of ChatiUion, in Touraine. Of lieir constitution some information is given us by the ules for war drawn up by the late King Robert III., Dr the regulation of the Scottish and French forces. Pillage was forbidden, under pain of death. Any oldier killing another was to be instantly executed ; ny soldier sti iking a gentleman was to lose his and or his ears ; any gentleman defying another 'as to be put under arrest. If knights rioted, they 'ere to be deprived of their horses and armour ; and 'hoever unhorsed an Enghshman was to have half is ransom." Blows were soon exchanged between lem and the English and Burgundians. Sir Lobert Maxwell was mortally wounded, and expired t Chinon, bequeathing by will his coat of mail to is brother John, "and ten pounds to his little foot- age." Their success in France so enraged King lenry, that he brought over with him in his next xpedition the captive King of Scotland, in whose ame he ordered Buchan and his forces to abstain om all acts of hostility. But to this the earl re- lied, " that so long as his sovereign was a captive, nd under the control of others, he did not feel imself bound to obey him." This so enraged lenry that when he captured Meaux he slaughtered lirty Scotsmen whom he found there in cold lood, on the plea "that they bore arms against leir own king." From the Chronicle of Monstrelet, we learn that le Duke of Clarence, who had been appointed rovernor of Normandy, after being joined by Sir liomas Beaufort and two Portuguese captains of 'ree Lances, marched on Easter-eve towards Anjou, ) attack the Scots and Dauphinois, who were led y Lord Buchan, the Lord de la Fayette, who was eneschal of the Bourbonnois, and the Vicomte de rarbonne, who so lately fought against the Duke f Bedford at Harfleur. Halting on his march to ine, he had barely sat down to table when he was iformed by Andrea Fregosa, an Italian deserter, lat the forces of the Earl of Buchan were encamped venty-two miles eastward of Angers, at the small )wn of Bauje. On this the gallant Clarence prang from table, and exclaimed, " Let us attack lem — they are ours ! But let none follow me save le men-at-arms." He immediately set forth with all his knights and cavalry ; " beside his other gallant furniture and rich armour," wearing round his helmet a royal coronet set with many jewels. The Earl of Salis- bury was to follow at all speed, with 4,000 infantry and archers. The Scots and the Dauphinois were, we have said, at Baujd, situated on the Couanon river, which was there crossed by an ancient bridge, and the battle which ensued there resembles in some of the features the greater one fought at Stirling by Wallace and the Earl of Surrey a hundred and twenty years before. The Couanon was both deep and rapid, and its narrow bridge was the only means by which these foes could approach each other. Under Sir John Stewart, of Darnley, and the Sieur de la Fontaine, Buchan had sent forward a reconnoitring party, who saw in time the glittering lances of Clarence advancing, and fell back duly to warn the camp, where the immediate cry was '■' To arms ! " and Buchan drew up his forces in order of battle in front of the town, on the 22nd of March, 1421. Clarence, we are told, was inspired by hot anger on finding the passage of the river was to be dis- puted by the Scots ; and he might have remem- bered at such a time the old English proverb, which Shakespeare afterwards introduced in his "Henry v.: "— *' There's a saying very old and true — * If that you will France win, Then with Sciotland first begin.' " Salisbury had orders to cross the Couanon by a ford, and turn the flank of the Scots if he could; while Clarence came on direct for the bridge with a glittering array of men-at-arms, all clad in mag- nificent armour. To prevent its passage being forced, its defence was entrusted to Sir Robert Stevyart, of Railston, with only thirty archers ; and just as the skirmish began. Sir Hew Kennedy, son of the Knight of Dunure, who was quartered in a church' close by, rushed forth at the head of 100 Scots, who, in their hurry, had their armour only half-buckled ; but who, by a flanking shower of arrows, drove the English back for a space. The Earl of Buchan now dashed forward, at the head of 200 chosen knights, and in the high narrow passage of the ancient bridge there ensued a dreadful, and to Clarence most fatal, combat. Inspired by the mutual hate and rancour that more than a hundred years of war engendered between them, the English and Scots, now meeting on French soil, fought with the fury of madmen. The former, says Buchanan, " took in it great disdain that they should be attacked by such an implacable eneiny, not only at home, but beyon the seas ; so they Baujf.] THE DEATH OF CLARENCE. 85 fought stoutly, but none more so than Clarence himself, who was well known by his armour." On the other hand, Buchan, a powerful man, in the forty-second year of his age, fought with all the courage and resolution of his race ; but Clarence, being distinguished by his fatal coronet, was the mark of every weapon. In the close mel^e of mounted men upon the bridge, he was almost in- stantly assailed by Sir John Carmichael, ancestor of the future Earls of Hyndford, who, with helmet Scots, who continued the pursuit of the fugitives till night came on. Monstrelet has it that 3,000 EngUsh fell ; Walter Bower says 1,700, while the French lost twelve, and the Scots only two, a dis- parity utterly incredible, as we find in the Chronicle of the former that the Dauphinois lost 1,100 men, among whom were Sir John Yvorin, Garin des FonUines, and the good knight, Sir Charles le Bouteiller. Among the English there fell Gilbert de Umphre- LA ROCHELLE (see page 87). clossd and lance in rest, spurred upon him with such fury that the tough ash shaft was broken to shivers upon the corselet of the prince, who at the same moment was wounded in the face by Sir John Swinton ; then, just as he was falling from his high war-saddle, the Earl of Buchan dashed out his brains by one blow with an iron mace — Gods- croft calls it "a steell hammer"— to which he had resorted after running him through the body with his lance. The fall of so gallant a prince filled the EngUsh knights and men-at-arms with greater fiuy, and they pressed in crowds upon the bridge to avenge him ; in their haste and confusion, jostling and im- peding each other in such a fashion that they were driven back, put to flight, and cut to pieces by the ville, titular Earl of Angus, in Scotland ; the Lord de Roos, of Hamlake; the Lord of TancaiTille; and Sir John Grey, of Heton. Two hundred, with their horses and armour, fell into the hands of the Scots ; among them were John, Earl of Somerset, whose sister, Jane Beaufort, was afterwards Queen-Consort of Scotland, and Henry, Earl of Huntingdon, son of Richard II.'s half sister. Buchan bestowed the dead body of Clarence on the Earl of Salisbury, and John, the bastard of Clarence. They bore it unmolested to Rouen, and thence to England, where it was interred at the feet of his father, in Canterbury Cathedral, as the duke had directed by a will written before the battle, but his coronet was retained by the Scots. Sir John 86 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. rCrevant, Jtuart, of Darnley, purchased it from one of his oldiers for i,ooo angels, and Sir Robert Houston Lfterwards lent him five times that sum upon it. Buchanan, on the authority of the lost " Book of i'luscardine," asserts that it was Sir Alexander klacauslan, a knight of the Lennox, who took the liadem from the helmet of Clarence. Sir John Zarmichael, in memory of shivering his spear on the iuke's breast, added to his arms a hand grasping , broken spear ; though the honour of unhorsing dm was claimed by Swinton and the Laird of ^uchmar. To the shield of Sir Hew Kennedy the iing of France added azure, three fleurs-de-lys or, in nemory of his defence of the bridge, and these are till borne by all of the surname of Kennedy who re descended from him. On the victor, Buchan, was now bestowed the word and office of Constable of France, of which ;!harles of Lorraine had been the last holder. He ras the first stranger to whom such an honour had leen given, and it was followed by other gifts, such ,s castles and princely domains, stretching over all he territory between Chartres and Avranches. The Earl of Buchan, after capturing the castle of he former place, laying siege to the old fortress of Uengon, and repulsing with the loss of 400 men vord SaHsbury, who attempted its relief, was com- lelled to return to Scotland, in consequence of the ;uds which had broken out there. He left Stewart if Darnley commander, or, as he was named, " Con- table of the Scots in France." Crevant. Henry V. was now master of all northern France 3 the banks of the Loire. Save at Bauj^ no leaf ad fallen from the laurels he had won at Agin- ourt ; but just as he had almost won the summit f his ambition he died, and, surviving him by only wo months, Charles VI. of France also passed way on the 21st October, 1422. John of Bedford, le persecutor of Joan of Arc, immediately ordered is young nephew, Henry VL, to be proclaimed Ling of France ; whilst the Dauphin, now, Charles '11. , to whom the Scots adhered, was called in lockery by the English and Burgundians, " King f Bourges,'' as these two powers held all the pro- inces that lay between the Loire and the Scheldt. All the bravest captains in France and all the rinces of the royal blood adhered to Charles ; and e are told by Monstrelet that early in July, 1423, he ordered a large body of forces to cross the lOire, and besiege the town of Crevant. The chief F his expedition was," he adds, " the Constable of cotland," a mistake of the chronicler, for Stewart F Darnley was simply Constable of the Scots, who had soon reason to regret the absence of their former leader, as Stewart, though brave, was desti- tute of military skill. Rapin states that the troops which crossed the Loire were commanded by the Mar^chal de Severac ; but he only led the French. Crevant, which they besieged, lies six miles south- east of Auxerre, and the river Yonne was between them and the united EngHsh and Burgundians, at whose approach, 15,000 strong, Stewart drew up his forces in order of battle on the slope of a hill. The blockaded town was in his rear ; before him rolled the river, which was crossed there by a stone bridge. At Dijon the Duchess of Burgundy had urged that, at all hazards, Crevant should be saved from the Scots and French ; whereupon the Lord de Tou- longeon, Mar^chal of Burgundy, united his forces to those of the Earls of Salisbury and Suffolk, with whom came Lord Willoughby, one of the heroes of Agin- court, and many more brave knights. The armour of the French man-at-arms of this period differed a little from that used by his English rival. Back and breast-plates were worn. To these were attached "a system of articulated lames, or narrow plates, in their contour adapted to cover the figure, and so arranged that each one should slightly overlap the one below it ; thus was formed a species of kilt of armour. Over the flanks, on each side of the figure, to the faudes or taces was appended a small shield, or garde-faude, which would cover the front of the thigh, and, being secured by only buckles and straps, would allow free movement to the limb. These plates appear in every variety of form — square, hexagonal, lozenge-shaped, serrated, &c. In front and also behind, the haubergeon was shown un- covered." "Such," says Boutell, "was the armour worn by the brothers of Charles VI. , the Sires des Fleurs de Lis, when they went to war. Such also was the armour of the famous Duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless, who caused the Duke of Orleans to be assassinated ; and the same armour was worn by the nobles of Armagnac and of Burgundy who, in the fifteenth century, desolated France with such ferocious rapacity." Gauntlets of steel were then recent inventions in France, where previously a strong leather glove had been the sole protection for the hand of the soldier. The troops of Lord Salisbury suffered much on their march, by the weight of their armour and the extreme heat of the sun, especially the gendarm- erie, many of whom marched on foot, leading by the bridle their horses, that the latter might be more fresh for battle. As they drew near Crevant, 120 English and Burgundian horse, with the same number of archers, were sent forward as a reconnoi- VerneuiL') DEFEAT OF THE SCOTS. 87 tring party. Each archer had a pointed stake, to plant in the earth if necessary, to keep off cavalry. In Auxerre the English and Burgundians heard mass celebrated; "drank a cup in much brother-like affection ; and departed to fall upon the Scots and French, who had been under arms all night, and towards whom they advanced in handsome array, at ten o'clock on the morning of Saturday." Sir John Stewart had under his orders 3,000 Scots, with some French under Aumaury, the Mar^chal de Severac, the Lord of Estissac, and the Comte de Ventadour. With their troops in solid array, and with all their armour shining in the morn- ing sun, he and those leaders sat quietly in their saddles, while the adverse forces surveyed each other for three hours ; after which " they tamely permitted the English and their allies to defile across the bridge of the Yonne, and then to arrange their squares of foot and squadrons of men-at-arms, when they ought to have occupied the tHe-du-font with cannon and crossbow-men, or have attacked them when half their strength was over. The most simple lessons of military art and tactics were for- gotten by these leaders, and most disastrous was the result." Then, without striking a blow, nearly the whole of the French, the confidence of whose soldiery had been destroyed at Agincourt, fell back, under the Seigneur de Severac, and left the field to the Scots, who stood firm. A writer asserts that in most of the encounters at this time "the French generally ran away, and left the Scots to fight for them." Overlapped and overwhelmed by the superior strength of the English and assailed them in front and on both flanks, while a sortie from Crevant came upon their rear, the unlucky Scots fell into disorder. Stewart fought desperately to repair his first error, but lost an eye in the conflict, by a sword-thrust through the ven- taille of his helmet ; and becoming thereby blinded with blood, he surrendered himself to a Burgundian noble, Claude de Beauvoir, of Castellux. " Le Connestable d'Escosse," according to "M^moires Historiques," Vol. VII., "descendit k pied, et avec lui plusieurs vaillans Frangais et Escossais, croyons que Severac et les autres deusent ainsi faire; ou au moins frapper k cheval sur les ennemies : il y fut fort combatu, et finalement les Frangais et Escossais furent defaits et y en eut plusiers de tuez et pris, jusques au nombere de deux k trois mille, qui fut un grand dommage pour les Roy de France." Following up the mistake of Monstrelet, it is stated by De Mezeray, that " the Constable de Bouchain and the Mar^chal de Severac were beaten, and 1,000 of their most valiant soldiers lay dead upon the plain, and almost as many were led away prisoners, among whom were the Con- stable and the Count de Ventadour." The latter, who had also lost an eye, suirendered to the Lord of Gamaches ; and John Poton, Lord of Xaintrailles, was also taken. Of the Scots, 1,200 were killed, and among them are enumerated by Monstrelet a nephew of the Earl of Buchan, Sir William Hamilton, and his son, Sir Thomas Swinton, and " John Pillot, a Scots captain, and bastard to the king." Sir William Crawford and 400 were taken prisoners. Among the English who fell were Sir Gilbert Halselle, Sir John Grey, Sir William Hall, and Richard Ap Murdoc. The English and Burgundians offered up solemn thanks in the churches of Crevant for this victory. Sir John Stuart was exchanged for the Lord Pole ; and after being made Lord of Aubigny, Concre's- sault, and Evereux, with the right of quartering the arms of France with his own, he was slain in his old age at the siege of Orleans. Verneuil. Shortly after the battle of Crevant, Rdn^ of Char- tres, who was Chancellor of France, and Juvenal des Ursins, Archbishop of Rheims, the historian of the reign of Charles VI., were sent to Scotland for mere auxiliaries, and another small force took service under the Constable Buchan for that purpose. The Earl of Douglas — he who lost an eye at Homildon, who fought at Shrewsbury, and de- fended Edinburgh Castle with such success against Burgundians, who i King Henry, in 1409 — on being created Duke of Touraine and Marechal of France, joined him with a body of horse and foot. Holinshed states the number of this new force at 10,000 men, but there is reason to suppose they were far fewer. Their leaders were Adam Douglas, afterwards Governor of Tours ; Bernard Lindesay, of the house of Glenesk ; the Laird of Smailholm, who was armour-bearer to Earl Douglas ; two other Douglases, who were the ancestors of the lines of Lochleven and Queensberry ; and a very aged border warrior. Sir Alexander Home, of that ilk. Landing at Rochelle in the spring of 1424, they joined the other Scottish troops, then in Poitou, under Charles VII. At this time the Duke of Bed- ford had laid siege to Ivri-la-Bataille, a Norman town, which a brave knight, named Girault de la Pallibre, was defending, but had agreed to sur- render if not succoured by a certain day ; so Charles resolved to hasten to its relief. With diffi- culty he collected 18,000 men, one-half of whom were Scots, " under the Earls of Douglas, Buchan, 88 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. tVemeuil, and Murray," according to Monstrelet. The French were under De Ventadour, De Tonnere, and the Viscount of Narbonne ; while Buchan, in right of his office as Constable of France, commanded the whole, though Monstrelet, in his account of the battle that ensued, always gives the preference to the Duke of Alengon. The Regent Bedford, with 18,000 men-at-arms and 8,000 archers, with the Lords Salisbury, Suffolk, and Willoughby, having reinforced those troops which blockaded Ivri, the relieving force came too late, or just in time to see St. George's cross waving on the walls, with an English garrison in possession, under a knight of Wales. On this Buchan and Alengon marched several miles further to Verneuil, on the Arve. The old walls by which it was then surrounded still exist, and also the tower into which its English garrison retired on their approach. To this place Bedford now hastened with all his available troops, while about the exact number of the Constable's force no two authors agree. Hall says he had 5,000 Scots and 15,000 French ; Pfere Daniel has it only 14,000 men, one-half of whom were Scots. However, the combined force was marched to Verneuil by the Earl of Buchan as leader, "who then," says Rapin, "was pleased to resign that honour to the Earl of Douglas, his father-in-law, to whom the king sent for that pur- pose (i.e., to command) a patent constituting him lieutenant-general of the whole kingdom, otherwise the Constable could not have acted under his orders." On both sides the forces were apparently pretty equal ; and when within a mile of Verneuil the Duke of Bedford sent a herald and trumpeter to " Le Marechal Comte de Du Glas,'' as the French styled the earl, to say that " he would come and dine with him;" to which Douglas, who had long been wont to ridicule the English regent as " John with the Leaden Sword," sent for answer that " he was welcome, as the cloth was ready laid." Bedford was resolved to wait an attack ; and, knowing the fiery nature of those allies he had come to oppose, he judiciously selected a piece of ground suitable alike for fighting or camping. It was flanked by a hill whereon he posted 2,000 archers, and along his front he planted a row of those pointed stakes introduced at Agincourt for the repelling of cavalry. Douglas drew up his troops in order of battle before the walls of Verneuil. To the Constable Buchan, with the Scots, he assigned the centre ; the command of the wings he gave to the Viscount of Narbonne, and Gilbert, the Marechal de la Fayette. Each wing he covered by 1,000 mounted men-at- arms, completely mailed, with lance, battle-axe, and barbed horses. Those on the right flank were led by the Lords ot Thionville and Estissac, and two Marshals of France, viz., the Seigneur de Xaintrailles, and Philippe de Culant, Seigneur de Jaloignes. Those On the left flank were led by the Lords Laquin de Rue and Valpergue. In his ranks were some raw peasantry, but he had a body of 900 Lombard crossbow-men, who had been sent by the Duke of Milan, and who were all on horseback and in armour. Douglas, after reconnoitring the EngHsh position, urged before a Council of War " that as the Duke of Bedford, instead of advancing, evidently intended to fight with advantage on strong and intrenched ground chosen by himself, no battle should be risked." On this many of the French leaders, but chiefly the Viscount de Narbonne, who was jealous of Douglas, declared that if a battle were avoided the honour of France would suffer. Then the viscount — a fierce soldier, who was among the slayers of the Duke of Burgundy — ordering his banner to be displayed, and, in defiance of all orders and advice, began to march with his own followers towards the enemy. Hall and Pfere Daniel record that " Doug- las was infuriated by this disobedience, but that neither he nor the Constable could avert the pur- pose of those rash French lords. At home in Scotland they would have left them to their fate, or might perhaps have ended the matter more readily by killing their leader on the spot. But Douglas was in a foreign land, and afraid that his honour might suffer if the field was lost by only half his troops being engaged; and so, compelled by this fear, he issued orders for the whole to advance up the hill, and attack the position of the EngHsh." It was at three o'clock in the afternoon of the i6th of August, 1424, that this somewhat impor- tant battle began — a battle all accounts of which are confused, but on the issue of which the fate of Charles VII. and of France seemed to depend; for Bedford had now reduced every town and castle beyond the Loire. The mass of Douglas's army was on foot; and his Lombard crossbow-men had special orders to attack the English archers, two bodies of which pro- tected Bedford's wings, each, as we have said, with a pointed stake before him, planted at an angle of forty-five degrees. In rear of the English men-at- arms were the grooms and pages, with such horses as were unfit for battle, with their collars and tails tied together, so that they could not, if sur- prised, be carried off with ease. Over these was a guard composed of 2,900 archers, Roverai. J THE END OF NARBONNE. 89 Monstrelet records that " the English as usual set up a great shout," which alarmed the French very much. At the time when the centre column of Scots, under Buchan, came to blows with the English, the Lombard crossbow-men had galloped round to their rear, and there — after failing to make the slightest impression on the stake-protected flanks — they had fallen on the baggage-guard, and, after contriving to cut off a number of sumpter horses, deliberately fled. And now the Viscount of Narbonne, inspired by fresh anger and jealousy on finding that the Scots, half- breathless though they were from their up-hill march, had first encountered the enemy, according to some accounts maliciously withheld his division firom supporting them in a proper manner, in that very cgnflict which his rashness had brought about. Though the 2,000 mailed horse who covered the extreme flanks attacked the Enghsh archers, and, forcing a passage beyond the stakes, broke through the ranks and slew or trampled great numbers of them under hoof, their clothyard shafts from other points soon told with deadly effect on the Scots under Buchan, and the column of La Fayette. The centre, improperly supported, began to retire, though all the nobles and knights, forseeing the ruin and disaster that a defeat would epsure, fought with heroic courage, using their s\y;6rds, maces, and battle-axes in the closest conflict:ibr more than an hour : and during that time, choosjng rather to die on the field than survive it with reproach, there fell the Constable Buchan ; his father-in-law, the veteran Earl of Douglas; Hop-Pringle, of Smail- holm ; Sir Robert Stewart ; Sir John Swinton, of that ilk ; Sir Alexander Home, of that ilk ; two Sir James Douglases ; Sir Walter Lindesay ; De Ventadour ; the Viscount of Narbonne ; the Lords Graville and Rambouillet ; the Comte d'Aumale, aud many gallant knights from Languedoc and Dauphin^, with 5,000 men, " the greater part of whom were Scotsmen," says Enguerrand de Mon- strelet, in his Chronicle. Many were wounded, and among them was found by tlie English, who remained masters of the field, the young Duke of Alengon half dead. He states the English loss at 1,600; among these were two captains, named Dudley and Carle- ton. Holinshed, on the authority of Montjoy, the Enghsh King of Arms, who was present, gives the losses at 9,700 French and Scots, and that of the Enghsh at 2,100. Next day Bedford found in Vemeuil the mihtary chest, and all the baggage- of the French, Scots, and Italians. The latter, on being informed that Douglas and the Constable were victorious, had the hardihood to revisit the field, where they were unhorsed and shot down in the twilight by the English archers, who stripped the dead and wounded of their armour, and even of their clothing. As the English marched into Vemeuil, on the 17 th of August, they met the body of Narbonne being borne forth for interment ; and as his sword had been the first to pierce John the Undaunted, at the bridge of Monterreau, they quartered his remains and hung them on a gibbet. The bodies of the Constable and of Douglas were found covered with wounds, and they were borne from the field with honour by the English, and were interred in one grave, in the cathedral church of St. Gratian, at Tours ; and there and at Orleans, so lately as 1643, mass was offered up daily for the souls of the Scots who died in the cause of Charles VII. The survivors of Vemeuil he incorporated in his Garde du Corps Escossais. CHAPTER XVI. ROVERAI, 1429. Prior to the disastrous Wars of the Roses, Eng- land fought no great conflict either by land or sea, save one known in history by the curious title of the " Battle of the Herrings," in which Sir John Fastolfe, with whose name Shakespeare has made us so familiar under another spelling, figured con- spicuously. After the victory at Vemeuil, where more men lell on both sides than in any battle since Agin- court, the power of Bedford in France grew weak ; for the Duke of Gloucester, on his marriage with Jacqueline of Bavaria, claimed a part of the Nether- lands as her inheritance ; the Duke of Brabant, who also claimed to be her husband, opposed him, and was supported by the Duke of Burgundy, who thus became estranged from the English alliance. Subsidies came from London grudgingly, and then the Maid of Orleans came upon the scene. In the 93 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Roverai, ear before this, 1428, the Regent, contrary to his wn wish, was compelled, we are told, by the Council to consent that the English army should ross the Loire and ravage those provinces which wned the sway of Charles, who, since the defeat t Verneuil, had been in ignoble retirement, where e hved with boon companions, contemplating nly flight to Scotland or to Spain. As a prepara- 3ry step, the Regent besieged Orleans, which was 3 situated between the provinces commanded by the bridge, and was looking over Orleans from one of the windows, when a cannon-shot carried away an eye and a cheek, one side of his face ; and he expired a day or two after at Melun, leaving the command to the Earl of Suffolk. This event, together with the duration of the siege, which had now lasted four m.onths, confirmed the Regent Bedford in his first opinion, that the undertaking was a rash one. However, to neglect nothing that was in his power to further the end in THE BATTLE OF THE HERRINGS {Jir /n^c 92). ngland and those possessed by Charles, that it ^ened an easy entrance to either, and being rongly fortified, was one of the most important aces in France. The eyes of all Europe were rned to this scene of action, and numberless ;eds of courage and bravery were performed alike I the besiegers and besieged ; but the blockade a,s enforced so strictly, and the general plan of tack was so vigorous, that Charles of France gave ^er the city for lost, especially after the affair at overai which we are about to narrate. Cannon 5re extensively used in this siege, and by a shot 3m one of these, Thomas Montacute, the gallant irl of Salisbury, fell. At the head of the English 3ops he had succeeded in capturing the tower on view, as the season of Lent was at hand, he sent from Paris an immense supply of fish, chiefly salted herrings, together with a train of artillery, shot, powder, and other stores, in 500 carts, escorted by 1,700 men, under Sir John Fastolfe, one of the bravest and most skilful generals possessed by England at that time, and one whom Henry VI. created Knight of the Garter. Under his orders were Sir Thomas Rampston and Sir Philip Hall, together with 1,000 followers, says Monstrelet, in addition to the troops — ^meaning, probably, wagoners and grooms. King Charles having received notice of the very day on which the convoy was to leave Paris, re- solved to cut it off, and dispatched Louis de Roveral ] THE HERRING CONVOY. 91 52 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Roveral. ourbon, the Count of Clermont, with 3,000 men, 1 the Orleans road for this purpose. With Cler- ont were the cuirassiers and archers of the ;ottish Guard, under the Count d'Aubigny and 3hn Stewart of Darnley (ancestor of the Dukes ■ Lennox), and the lances of the Count Dunois. They came up with Fastolfe's convoy at Roverai, ; seven in the morning of the 12th February, 1429. he glitter of armour and lances had warned istolfe of their approach ; and making a kind of irricade of the wagons and carriages, he formed s men behind it. The French and Scottish m.en- -arms alighted from their horses, and attacked this range entrenchment with sword and battle-axe, bile the yeomen behind it plied their bows. This ovement was prematurely begun by the Scots, ho were eager to avenge the day of Verneuil, and e Counts of Clermont and Dunois had placed me cannon in position, which they hoped would isure a victory. By lance, bill, and bow, the sailants were driven back, and the moment they ,ve way Fastolfe ordered some of the wagons to ; drawn aside, and issuing forth, he charged them rord in hand. After a short but sharp conflict, e French and Scots were routed, and their cannon ken. Stewart of Darnley and one of his sons ;re slain. Monstrelet says the Count of Dunois IS wounded, and that there fell six score of great rds and 500 men. This action was deemed of eat importance in its time, as the convoy con- ined a vast quantity of provision necessary for e English during the season of Lent The istard of Orleans, who had sallied out to assist ermont in cutting it off, preserved sufficient esence of mind in the confusion of the rout to cape Fastolfe and to reach the city with 400 men. le successor of Darnley at the head of the Scottish lard was a native of Dundee, named Robert ttullo, a soldier so famed for his success in many 'airs in Guienne that he was called " The Little ing of Gascony." In the small affair of Roverai, the English proved, in greater fieldS; their vast superiority over the ench. With a love and aptitude for manly ercises, the yeomanry of England were that lich the French were not — sturdy and muscular ; jreover, they were cherished and respected by 3se lords and knights who led them in battle. Nothing," says Froude, in his History, "proves 3re surely the mutual confidence which held to- ther the Government and the people than the :t: that all classes were armed." But very different ,s the state of the commonalty in France, who re then trampled on and despised by the nobles, the latter arrogated to themselves alone the honour of bearing arms. Brantome has recorded" that even in the fifteenth century the French in- fantry was composed of the most wretched class of the people ; and that if any of these unfortunate men chanced to distinguish themselves in battle, they so excited the jealousy of their own gendarm- erie, that they were sometimes charged by them and beaten down as if they were common enemies. " Thus," says Boutell, '' while in one country a martial spirit was earnestly cherished, in the other it was rigorously repressed ; and while the Enghsh archer had his natural manly qualities developed and matured, while he himself was highly esteemed and his services were suitably acknowledged, the French foot-soldier was conscious that for him to possess and exhibit any true military qualities was simply to imperil his own life." Long before the dream of an English empire in France ended, in 1451, when Charles came in triumph from the South, and St. George's cross could be seen nowhere save on the citadel of Calais, the use of cannon had become fully recognised as a necessary institution in battle and siege ; but so de- fective were these pieces, that it was the arrow, the lance, and the sword that still decided all great con- flicts. No man, either on horse or foot, as yet deemed it necessary to disencumber himself of any part of his defensive armour, because a single, and then unwieldy, machine had been invented, against which all armour was useless. The shield was going out of fashion ; but additional plates screwed on certain parts of the armour replaced it. In fact, in Britain until the union of the crowns both cavalry and infantry carried nearly the same weight of panoply that had been worn in the days of Edward and Bruce ; and it was not until the sixteenth cen- tury that, by the improvements in artillery, field-guns could be moved with requisite ease and expedition. The ancient cannon were without trunnions, and could neither be depressed nor elevated, as they lay on a species of slide. Richard II. had no less than 400 such pieces at St. Malo in 1378. Some enormous bomliardes, such as the " Great Lion," 3,000 pounds in weight, cast for James I. of Scotland, in Flanders, in 1430 (Balf , Annales) ; Mons Meg, at Edinburgh; and two of the same caUbre, nineteen inches, at St. Michael, in Normandy, were fashioned in the early part of the fifteenth century ; but these were built of hoops and bars ; and the artillerists of those days could not in their wildest dreams have imagined cannon such as we now manufacture at Woolwich, which will send a steel shot through fifteen inches of armour-plate, or carry a 600-pound ball from Woolwich into the city of London, a distance of seven miles. Blore Heath.] INVENTION OF "HAND-CANNON." Under Henry VI. we find the first sign of an important change in warfare. The Italians conceived the use of a piece of ordnance small enough to be portable ; hence the iron tube called a hand-cannon, fixed to a wooden stock, with a touch-hole on the top, and a pan to hold the powder. So early as 1446 one of these weapons, called then a " gonne," was used in England, as appears from a roll of pur- chases for the castle of Holy Island. We now come to the battles of that time when a cloud, at first no bigger than a man's hand, began to darken round the throne of the House of Lancaster. Henry VI. reigned, but visions of a crown began to rise in the mind of Richard, Duke of York, who sprang by his mother from the second son, and by his father from the fifth son of Edward III. The removal of a faithful minister from Henry's councils gave new colour to the hopes of York, and the cloud soon burst into the flame of a civil war. A son. had been born to Henry VI., amid the rejoicings consequent to the suppression of Cade's insurrection ; but the anger of the people had been excited by the bestowal of the royal favour on Somerset, whom they blamed . 93^ for the loss of Normandy, and the failure of an attempt to recover Guienne ; and at this time, so critical for the country, the king was seized with insanity. The reins of government were then committed to the Duke of York, with the title of Protector. Henry recovered, but York, having tasted the sweets of power, took up arms against him ; and hence began the Wars of the Roses, so called from the badges of the rival armies, that of the House of York being a white, and that of the House of Lancaster being a red rose. The chief supporters of the daring and ambitious York were the Earl of Salisbury and his son, the Earl of Warwick. Essentially a war of the nobles, in which the mass of the people took Httle part, or which they looked on with indifference, it even- tually shattered to its foundation the feudal system in England. In this desolating strife were fought thirteen pitched battles, irrespective of skirmishes and the storming of castles ; and of these battles, those that follow are the chief, and the best calculated to illustrate the mode of warfare and the rancorous spirit of the times. CHAPTER XVII. BLORE HEATH, I 459 — ST. ALBANS; TOWTON, 1461 — BARNET, I471. Blore Heath. There were two battles at St. Albans ; the first was in 1455, when the Yorkists suddenly came upon the troops of the king. Both parties were almost entirely composed of gentlemen, and after a hand- to-hand combat in the steep old streets, the Royalists were beaten and the king made prisoner. After a pretended reconciliation, he was released. Again the war was renewed, and again the Yorkists were victorious, at Blore Healh, in the county of Stafford, and on the border of Shropshire ; after a scuffle and some bloodshed in London, when Warwick had to fly, had renewed the hatred and suspicion of both parties. The Duke of York had summoned his supporters to meet him at Kenilworth, where he and the Earl of Salisbury took measures to execute their pro- jects against the king. They arranged that while the duke was levying an army in Wales, the earl should march at once on London, at the head of a force amounting to about 6,000 men, and openly demand satisfaction for the affront put upon his gon. As these movements could not take place without the knowledge of the Queen Alargaret of Anjou, James Tuchet, or Touchet, Lord Audley, was commissioned to raise troops in the quarter where his power and seigniory lay, to oppose Salis- bury, whom, according to Hall, he had orders to bring in dead or alive. Moreover, he was to move against him with all speed. In a short time Audley was at the head of 10,000 men, and was able to march towards Lancashire, through ; which he supposed the earl must pass ; but found that he was already as far as Shropshire, where Audley halted and encamped on Blore Heath, then an open waste or common, near a little stream, the Dove. Salisbury, though his forces were but half the other's strength, had no thought of retreating or avoiding a battle, but there, on the 23rd Septem- ber, 1459, jn the conflict which ensued, he supplied the defect in his numbers by stratagem ; a. refine- ment of which there occur few instances in the English civil wars, where headlong courage and strength of hand, rather than military tact or skill, were to be found. 94 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [St. Mbani. Feigning a retreat, he retired in the night in uch peouUar order that, when day broke, the loyalists could still perceive his troops, but qnly he rear of them. Audley, an ardent and gallant pirit (whose father. Sir John Touchet, had fallen n a sanguinary engagement with the Spaniards off lochelle), now began to follow him with precipi- ation, but his vanguard had scarcely passed the irook, and become entangled among trees, roots, ocks, and stones, his high-spirited knights, all well nounted and clad in shining armour, with waving )lumes, conceiving that they had nothing to do lut overtake and cut down a flying enemy, than the forkists, who were in no disorder, and only waited or the troops of Audley to fall into the lure prepared or them, wheeled about, and closed in upon them in all sides, with bill and spear. When the conflict legan, some only were across the stream and others rere actually in the centre of it ; yet the battle asted five hours, as the king's troops were con- tantly assisted by the passing peasantry, armed i^ith any weapon they could lay hand on, and in hose days no Englishman was ever without a bow ,nd sheaf of arrows. Owing to the peculiar nature )f the ground, the troops of Audley could not act fiih sufficient strength; moreover, they had per- nitted themselves to be taken by surprise. Lord Audley fell fighting gallantly, together with iir Thomas Dutton, Sir John Dunne, Sir Hugh /■enables, Sir Richard Molineaux, and Sir John ..eigh. His force was completely routed, with the Dss of 2,400 men. In this conflict the Cheshire eomen were the greatest sufferers, as they all wore in that day little silver swans, the Prince of Wales's adge, which the queen had ordered to be distri- cted among the gentlemen of that county. At the head of the stream, a stone was afterwards et up to mark where Lord Audley fell in this attle ; after winning which, the Earl of Salisbury, aving opened a passage for himself by the sword, ushed on to join the Duke of York, who was lising troops in Wales, arid safely reached the eneral rendezvous of the malcontents at Ludlow, 'o this place the Earl of Warwick brought a body f well-trained English troops from Calais, where ley had been serving for some time ; but habit nd discipline made these men loyal, and, to the tter dismay of the Yorkists, who greatly depended pon them, they marched off in the night, under leir leader, Sir Andrew Trollop, and joined King [enry. Every man among the insurgents now listrusted his neighbour. Blore Heath had been on in vain ; for the duke fled to Ireland, Warwick id others to Calais, and their party melted com- letely away. St. Albans. The summons to rise again was given in the fol- lowing year by Guy, Earl of Warwick, Governor of Calais, one of the most remarkable men of his time. His ability in the Cabinet was fully equalled by his intrepidity in the field ; he was fertile in expedients, capable of attempting anything, and, from subse- quent events, became known to England by the sobriquet of "The King-maker." He landed in Kent, where the people loved him, flocked to his standard, and followed him to London, which he entered amid the acclamations of the populace ; and after a conflict at Northampton, Henry became a' second time the captive of the Yorkists under Warwick. Then the crafty and ambitious duke, who had hitherto been struggling for the Pro- tectorship, boldly laid claim to the throne; and Parliament actually agreed that after Henry's death the crown should pass to the Duke of York and his heirs. The maternal heart of Margaret of Anjou re- sented this foul injustice to her son, the little Prince Edward of Wales; and summoning the Lancastrians to her side in Yorkshire, they routed and slew the duke, whose head, garnished with a crown of paper, was placed on the walls of York. His son, Edward, Earl of March, a brave and handsome youth of nineteen, was heir to his father's claim ■ and ambition. The hearts of the people inclined to him, and at Mortimer's Cross he swept the royal troops, under the Earl of Pembroke, before him ; but amid the snow, on the 17 th of February, 1461, there ensued another bloody contest, the second battle of St. Albans, which came about in this manner. The spirited queen was in the field with an army, on her march to London, when she heard of Pem- broke's defeat; but she did not lose heart, con- ceiving that if she appeared before its walls the citizens would expel the Earl of Warwick, who seemed to have something of the same idea, as he preferred to march forth and fight her in the open country, which doubtless he would not have done had he been quite sure of the populace. With an army — if indeed it could be called so— consisting of 18,000 men, according to some accounts, a wild and disorderly force, composed of English, Irish, Welsh, and Scots— the latter being some of the broken men of the borders — and all prone to commit the most savage depredations, she had halted at the loftily-situated town of St. Albans, in Hertfordshire, twenty miles north-west of London, where tidings came that Warwick was on his march to attack her, with a force that was small, though increased by a body of Londoners, who had ..Towton.] FEROCITY OF THE QUEEN. reason to dread the entrance of Margaret's troops within the city, and the battle which ensued was chiefly remarkable for its effect upon the fortunes of the king. In front of the town of St. Albans, they met on the ground called Bernard's Heath, when a fierce and bloody engagement ensued, for the system of retaliation by beheading, which was inaugurated at the strife of Wakefield, had began to impart a sanguinary and vindictive character to the Civil War. Clad and armed alike, the adverse parties could only know each other by their different coats of arms and badges, the red and white roses, the little silver swans of the Prince of Wales, or the white crosses and ragged staves which formed the cognisance of the famous house of Warwick. The latter lord, would have won the battle but for the treachery of Lord Lovelace, of Hurley, who commanded one of his wings, and did not bring it into the field in time. Consequently, after a very sharp hand-to-hand conflict, he was routed with the loss of 2,300 men, among whom the only one of note who fell was Sir John Grey, of Groby, the first hus- , band of Elizabeth Woodville, who was afterwards married to Edward IV. Warwick retired, how- ever, in good order, and by this victory the king, whom he dared not leave behind him in London, was freed ; but Margaret did not use her success with moderation. The Lord Bonville and Sir Thomas Kyriel, a brave old Knight of the Garter, who had covered himself with distinc- tion in the French wars, had been by Warwick en- trusted with the care of the king, whom they had treated with such kindness and respect that they were persuaded to remain with him on his as- surances of pardon. " But what are the assurances and engagements of a frivolous insignificant hus- band," says an old writer, " when the queen, with all the ferocity of a she-wolf, regardless of her husband's honour, comes in and orders both their heads to be struck off at St. Albans on Ash Wed- nesday ? " This double act of treachery, together with the mode in which the troops pillaged St. Albans — "these northern soldiers declaring that they had taken arms only on the promise of having the plunder of the country south of the Trent," and that she had no money wherewith to pay them — deter- mined the people of London to keep her out of the city; and to this they were further encouraged by a knowledge that the Earl of March, now Duke of York, was advancing with all speed against the queen. A great council having declared that Henry VI. 95 had forfeited all title to the throne when he joined his queen, the young Duke of York was at once proclaimed king, with the title of Edward IV. The animosity between the two factions now be- come more deadly and implacable. The queen had retired to the North, where, as great multi- tudes flocked to her standard, she was able in a few weeks to muster 60,000 men, against whom, having now combined their forces, the young king and Wai-wick advanced with 40,000, in full hope to crush the House of Lancaster for ever, for Edsvard issued orders that no quarter whatever was to be shown if a battle was won. In the meantime, Henry and Margaret were at York, and heard with satisfaction that Edward was advancing, as a victorious engagement alone could lead to their restoration. They made the Duke of Somerset general of their army, and waited calmly in York the issue of the battle that was to decide their fate. TOWTON. On Palm Sunday, the 29th of March, 1461, the two armies came in sight of each other between Saxton and Towton, in the West Riding of York- shire, and there ensued, amid a heavy storm of snow, one of the most sanguinary battles ever fought in England. The land was " merry England " no longer now ; it was, says Voltaire, " a bloody theatre, where they were continually erecting scaffolds on the very field of battle." Philip de Comines, in his Memoirs (p. 157), states that "the custom in England is, when a battle is won, to give quarter, and no man is killed especially of the people, for they know every- body will follow the strongest side, and 'tis but seldom are ransomed. King Edward told me that in all the battles which he had gained, his way was, when the victory was close, to mount on horseback and cry out to ' save the common soldiers, and put the gentry to the sword,' by which means few or none of them escaped." But on this day at Towton there was no such reserva- tion made. To evince their own resolution, Edward and Warwick, proclaimed throughout the army "that whoever had a mind to depart, might freely do so before the battle ; but when once it was begun, whoever fled should die." Then the earl drew his sword, and kissing the blade, swore that "though the whole army fled, he would die rather than leave the king." ■ The army of Edward IV. advanced in three lines, at nine in the morning. The first was com- 96 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Towton. manded by Lord Falconbridge, in absence of the Duke of Norfolk, who had fallen ill ; the second was led by Edward in person, the housings of his horse, which are still preserved in the Tower, being of crimson velvet, powdered with suns and white by a keen wind right in the faces of the Lancas- trians, whose van, led by the Earl of Northumber- land, began the battle by a flight of arrows which did no great execution, in consequence of a strata- gem used by Falconbridge. The English in war CROSSBOW-MAN, PAVISAIER, ARCHER, AND STANDARD OF RICHARD, EARL OF WARWICK (FROM A MS. OF THE ISTH CENTURY}. roses, the badges of his family. On his helmet was the lion of England, and in his hand a long lance with a vamplate of peculiar form. Under his orders was the Earl of Warwick. The third line was led by Sir John Wenlock and Sir John Dynham. As the lines drew near, Edward dis- mounted, to fight on foot. The snow, which was falling heavily, was drifted then used two kinds of arrows, one called (he flight and the other the sheaf arrow. The former was lightly feathered, with a small head ; the latter was high-feathered and shortly shafted, with a large head. As the make of these arrows was different, says Spelman, so was their use. Flight arrows were shot at a great distance, and, at a proper elevation, would kill at two hundred and forty yards. Sheaf Towton.] SHEAF AND FLIGHT ARROWS. 97 arrows were for closer fight, required but a slight elevation, and were often shot point-blank. Lord Falconbridge ordered his men to let fly a shower of sheaf (not flight) arrows, with a greater elevation than usual, and then to fall back some paces, and halt. The Lancastrians perceiving now that the enemy was mthin range, and supposing that the van had drawn nearer, though still uncertain of their exact distance, by the thick- ness of the falling snow-flakes, they too let fly a Besides, the two armies are to be considered as trusting more to their own courage than to the ex- perience of their generals." Even King Henry's order of battle is not recorded. While the van, under Falconbridge, with their bows slung, fell on the Yorkists with sword, axe, and maul, the next line came on shooting so fast, at an elevation, into the " rearward " of the York- ists, that after their own arrows were expended they shot those that stuck upward in thousands THE OBELISK AT CHIPPING BARNET {see page 98). flight of sheaf arrows, which consequently now fell far short, and not only did no mischief to the Yorkists, but, by sticking in the ground with the shafts sloping at an angle towards them, greariy incommoded their own movements as they ad- vanced. The whole ground was studded by these useless arrows, as the Yorkists shot so fast that their quivers were speedily empty. As soon as they were thus half-disarmed, the vanguard closed in upon them, and the wildest havoc began. " It would be difficult," says Rapin, " to describe this terrible battle at large ; most of those who have mentioned it, not understanding the art of war, have, instead of representing the several cir- cumstances, given only a confused idea thereof among the snow. A fearful struggle and butchery ensued; both armies were alike brave, and both were inspired by the most rancorous hate. For hours the hand-to-hand m^lde raged, without any great advantage being won by either side. The whole plain was covered with corpses, and the blood lay in great pools amid the snow ; for ten hours the conflict continued, while the rival armies had become two fighting mobs. Just as night was closing in, the sudden appearance of the Duke of Norfolk, with a reinforcement to the Yorkists, caused the adherents of Henry to lose all heart, and take to flight ; and in the pursuit the nobles, knights, and men-at-arms of Edward, who person- ally had displayed the most brilliant valour, exe- 8 98 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. LChipping Bamet. cuted his cruel order to the letter, by giving quarter to none. In their retreat the Lancastrians rallied more tlian once, making the slaughter still greater, as they were always compelled to givfe way ; and at last the fugitives fled en masse towards the bridge of Tadcaster, but, in despair of reaching it, because they were so closely and fiercely pursued, they turned aside to pass a stream called the Cock, a tributary of the Wharfe. 'There, in the hurry and confusion, hundreds fell in the water, and their bodies formed a ghastly bridge for those in the rear. So great was the slaughter there, that even the waters of the Wharfe, far down below that place, were tinged deeply with blood. For three days the slaughter is said to have continued. According to Stow, Hall, Holinshed, and others, there fell 40,000 men in this battle ; and of these, 36,776 were adherents of the deposed King Henry. Among the dead were Henry, Earl of Northum- berland; the Earl of Westmoreland; his son-in-law, Thomas, Lord Dacres, of Gillesland ; Lionel, the Lord Welles, K.G. ; Sir John Neville ;' and Sir Andrew Trollop. AmoUjg the prisoners taken were Thomas Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire, and James, Earl of O^'mond, who were both beheaded, a fate that fell on many more. Sir John de Ormond, brother of the last-named, also fought at Towton for King Henry, but escaped, and died on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The body of the Earl of Northumberland was'bome from the: field to his own mansion in the Walmgate of York, and was interred there in the Church of St. Denys, where his tomb, denuded of its brasses, is still pointed out. Margaret, with Henry and the prince their son, now fled for shelter to the King of Scotland, to whose honour it was that he remained aloof; and did not, like the Edwards of other times, take any advantage of the civil strife in England. The 26th of June saw young Edward crowned in London, Henry pronounced an usurper, and his adherents attainted. Edward further confirmed his power by liberally rewarding his friends, and forming such alliances with Scotland and Frafice that the inde- fatigable Margaret of Anjou, after applying to the Courts of both countries, was unable to procure effective aid from either. But the Wars of the Roses were not yet ended, even after Henry, when, in 1464, he was captured amid what were then the wilds of Lancashire, was cast as a state prisoner into the Tower of London. But that year saw the star of his rival begitl to decline. The young "king's marriage with Elizabeth Woodville incensed the haughty Nevilles, of whom king-making Warwick was the head, and" this jea- lousy deepened till it ended in an open quarrel, Warwick, aided by the Duke of Clarence, raised an insurrection among the men of York and Lincoln ; but both were forced to flee to the Court of Louis XL, where they met Margaret of Aajou, with whom they now made common cause to dethrone Edward IV., and they sought to gather together the broken remains of the Lancastrian party, many of whom were in foreign lands, and in such penury that Philip de Comines relates that he himself saw the Dukes of Somerset and Exeter begging their bread from door to door, till their sufferings excited the compassion of Philip, Duke of Burgundy. The nev/ union was further cemented by the marriage of Margaret's son, Prince Edward, to Anne, daughter of Warwick. Chipping Barnet. After an exile of five months, the King-makqr suddenly landed at Plymouth, without resistance, on the r3th September, 1470, and the Lancastrians, and many of the ancient nobility, who envied the sudden growth of the house of Woodville, flocked to join him. In one day 6,000 men tore the white roses from their caps, and cried " God bless King Harry VI !" Edward, who had to fly, was denounced as a usurper, and the old king was brought from his cell in the Tower. But this revo- lution, the effect of the mere giddiness of a faction, was of short duration. No sooner was Warwick at the helm* of the State than, without being guilty of one unpopular act, he felt his power begin to de- cline. Edward was emboldened to return, and, on being supplied with ships, m,en, and money by the Duke of Burgundy, who had married his sister, he landed at Ravenspur, ill Yorkshire ; and by the time he. reached Nottingham he had under his standard many thousand men who wore the white rose, and 300 Flemings armed with hand-guns. At Chippjpg Barnet, in the county of Hertford, on the ground which is still mairked by an obelisk, the rival hosts drew near each other in order of battle early on the morning of Easter Sunday, the 14th of April, 147 1. The Lancastrian army had encamped the preceding night on Gladmore Heath, a mile north of the little market-town. Edward had under his banner 10,000 men; the Lancastrians were equal in force. Both armies had artillery, but Warwick's was the better served, and as the adverse lines had drawn near each other in the night preceding the action, it played long in the dark on the troops of Edward, but did little or no execution, as all the balls fleW over them and Chipping Carnet.] THE FALL OF WARWICK. 99 fell in the rear, the night being so gloomy and misty that neither leader could clearly see the other's exact position. But with the earliest light of dawn the battle .began, between the hours of four and five in the morning. In Edward's army the first line was led by Richard, Duke of Gloucester, then in his eighteenth year ; and it proves the high opinion entertained of his talent and bravery, though this was the first battle in which he "fleshed his maiden sword." The second line was led by Edward himself, to- gether with the Duke of Clarence, whom he had just recovered out of the hands of Warwick ; and with this line he placed the helpless and hapless King Henry, " having brought him out of the Tower on purpose to be shot at.'' William, Lord Hastings, K.G., led the rear or third line. Ex elusive of these three lines, Edward had a reserve column, for occasional or special service, and it proved of the greatest use. He on one side, and Warwick on the other, encouraged their troops with all the eloquence of which they were masters ; both were as good orators as they were accom- plished swordsmen. In the army of the latter, the right wing was led by John Neville, Marquis of Montague, K.G., and John de Vera, Earl of Oxford ; the left wing by Warwick himself, and John Holland, Duke of Exeter. His centre was composed of a body of archerSj led by Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. Where the artillery were posted is left untold. Having taken up their ground in the dark, Edward's left wing was overlapped or outnum- bered by Warwick's right. Seldom has a battle been fought with more obstinacy and bravery than that of Bamet ; the personal interests and feelings of all engaged were involved in the issue. Each would be treated as a rebel if the other were vic- torious ; and the barbarous rancour now infused in the war made them all aware that the defeated had no prospect before them but exile or death. After a few shots exchanged through the rising morning mist, with shouts and yells of defiance, they rushed to engage at close quarters ; and very speedily victory seemed to favour Warwick, whose example made all his troops determined to conquer or die. He had detached some squadrons from his third line, under the Earl of Oxford, to attack Edward's left wing, which they assailed with such fury that they broke it, routed and drove it fairly off the field, so that many who had been in its ranks fled as far as London with news that the king was defeated. Though this event was discouraging, Edward did not lose that presence of mind which is so neces- sary in a leader. Ordering a body of the reserve, which he kept ready for any special emergency, at once to the front, it fell upon the exposed flank of Warwick, just as the Earl of Oxford was return- ing with his command to his old ground ; and, sin- gular to say, this very movement led eventually to Warwick's defeat. The Earl of Oxford's badge upon his banner, surcoat, and housings was a star, with streamers, and the device of Edward was a sun. The mist which yet lingered about the field prevented Warwick's first line from distinguishing the difference in these heraldic cognisances ; so it furiously "charged these squadrons as they were returning to their post, and put them to the rout before the Earl of Oxford had time to remove their mistake." " Treachery ! " was now the cry, and many, on finding themselves attacked by their own men, fled in their bewilderment to the enemy, and were in- stantly cut down. Others, seeing them running in that direction, thought they were attacked in the rear, and knew not which direction to take, or what to do ; so all became confusion. Then Edward, pushing onward at the head of his troops, who were steady and in perfect order, line upon line, fell mercilessly upon the wavering bands of Warwick. On foot, and fighting sword in hand, the latter did all that valour, all that eloquence could do to remedy the mistake, the disorder, and to animate his men, by hewing a passage among the Yorkists where the press was thickest ; and perished, covered with wounds, under their bills and spears. Anxious to succour or to save him, his brother, the Marquis of Montague, was slain a few minutes after ; and then their forces gave way. As usual, great slaughter followed, for Edward, who was wont to publish before battle generally " that the com- mon soldiers should be spared and the nobles put to the sword, had now ordered that no quarter should be given." The Earl of Oxford and the Duke of Somerset escaped, and the latter went to Wales, where Pembroke was levying troops for Warwick. The earl and some of his followers reached St. Michael's Mount, in Cornwall. Dis- guised as pilgrims, they obtained admission to the castle, and cruelly massacred the whole of the king's garrison. On the field of Barnet there fell on the king's side the Lords Cromwell and Say, the Lord Mont- joy's son, and Sir Humphrey Bourchier. The Duke of Exeter was left for dead on the field, wounded, stripped, and bloody, but crawled to a house close by, whence he found means to reach London, where he obtained shelter in Westminster Abbey. BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [TewkesDury. \.ccording to Hall, 10,000 were slain on both sides n this battle ; Stow reduces this number to 4,000. yi were interred in one common grave on the ield, where a mortuary chapel, for anniversary nasses, was afterwards erected in memory of hem. The body of the gallant and princely Warwick, ind that of his brother, John Neville, Marquis of VIontague, who was also a Knight of the Garter, ifter being exposed to the people for three days in k. Paul's Cathedral, were conveyed to Bisham Vbbey, in Berkshire, and there interred. Warwick vas in his day unquestionably the greatest and nost splendid of the English nobles. " It is said," ;ays Spelman, " tliat any soldier might go to his dtchen and take away as much meat as he could carry on the point of his dagger, which is a strong proof of the hospitality of Warwick and the simpli- city of the age in which he lived. No less than 30,000 persons are said to have lived at his board in the different manors and castles he jjossessed in England." On the afternoon of this memorable Easter Sun- day, King Edv/ard went to solemn prayer in St. Paul's Church, to which he presented his royal banner. The obelisk in memory of the battle was erected in 1740, by Jeremy Sambroke, and the keeper of an inn close by was long wont to exhibit a ball found on the field. It weighed only one pound and a half. The unfortunate Henry was once more replaced in his old prison, the Tower. CHAPTER XVIII. TE^7KESBURY, I471 — BOSWORTH, 1485. TEWKESBURY. Dn the very day the decisive battle was , fought at Barnet, Queen Margaret and herson, Prince Edward, low about eighteen years of age, landed at Wey- nouth from France. With great fortitude, she had litherto sustained the shocks of adverse fortune ; but vhen she received intelligence of her triple calamity —the death of Warwick, the defeat of his army, and he captivity of the king her husband — her courage ailed her, and she took sanctuary in the abbey of 3eaulieu, in Hampshire. Encouraged, however, by he appearance of Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, he Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Devonshire, !^ord Wenlock, the Grand Prior of St. John, and everal other Lancastrian lords, who exhorted her till to have hope for success, she resumed her ormer spirit, and determined to assert to the last he claims of her husband and son to the throne of England. Once more she put herself at the head of an irmy, which increased with every day's march as she .dvanced through the counties of flevon, Somerset, ^nd Gloucester, displaying the banner which on the lext field was fated to fall for ever. The scattered emnant of those Lancastrians who fought at Barnet oined her ; and King Edward, who was by nature .rdent and expeditious, though at a distance, was lot idle, as he was fully apprised of all her move- iients by his spies and others in his interest. He ras anxious to bring matters again to the issue of I battle, before the enemy drew tQO near London ; therefore, with a force that so many preceding battles had made trained veterans now, and which was well furnished with provisions and artillery, he left the city on the 19th of April, and estabhshed his head-quarters at Windsor, vifhere w;ith splendour he celebrated the Feast of St. George, and awaited certain reinforcements that were to join him. The Lancastrians, to deceive the king as to when they intended to commence hostihties, and to cause uncertainty, sent detachments wearing the ■ red rose to various towns. By this they not only induced many to join them, but led King Edward to imagine that they proposed a line of march totally different from that which they had had already determined upon in secret. For this purpose, after leaving Exeter, they sent a party to Shaftesbury, then to Salisbury, from whence it turned towards Taunton, Wells, and Glastonbury. Others they sent to Yeovil and Bruton, as though they had planned their inarch tpwards Reading, and through Berkshire and Oxfordshire to London ; and, at all events, were ready to face the royal army anywhere. Edward, on deliberate consideration, being aware that they were in the south-western part of England, knew that if they advanced on London they must either do so by the way of Salisbury, or by the coast of Hampshire and Sussex. He also was aware that, if they should wish to avoid a battle, they must wheel off towards Lancashire and Salop, to join those Welsh whom Jasper, Earl of Pem- broke, ^Ya3 raising in arms, Therefore, when th^ Tewkestury.j THE HALT AT ffiWKESBURY. lot Lancastrian lords had reached Bath, the king, that he might meet and cut off their line of march un- expectedly, left Windsor on the 24th of April, and moved to Abingdon, where he issued a royal 'proclamation, in which he declared that "his title to the cro\vn was unquestionable — fiist, by reason ; secondly, by authority of Parliament ; thirdly, by his victories, and especially the last, wherein the Mar- quis of Montague and the Earl of Warwick were slain. That, notwithstanding these three firm foundations, sundry persons had taken arms against him; but, to avoid the effusion of more blood, he had thought proper to give his people a list of the names of those persons who were proved traitors and rebels, that their encouragers might not com- plain if mischief befell them." The proscribed persons were " Margaret of Anjou, styhng herself Queen of Englan4 ; Edward, her son ; the Dukes of Exeter and Somerset ; John Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire ; William, Viscount de Beaumont ; John Beaufort, brother of the Duke of Somer^set ; Hugh Courtenay,'' and eleven others. These Lancastrian lords, aware of the inferiority of their troops to the well-armed soldiery of Edward, who had command of the arsenals and wealth of London, determined on his approach to retire into the Welsh mountains, and meet Lord Pembroke's levies which were then on the march ; thus every effort was made by them to cross the Severn before he could come up with them. The king, on learning that the city of Bristol had given Margaret not only men but stores and artillery, believed she meant to meet him at Sod- bury, nine miles from that place, and thither he marched on the istof May, and halted in position; but the insurgents, still anxious to avoid a battle as yet, retreated in the night to Berkeley, and afterwards to Gloucester. But Sir Richard, son of the Lord Beauchamp, of Powick, to whom Edward had previously committed the custody of the town and castle of Gloucester, in obedience to his orders, vigilantly guarded the gates and walls ; and when the queen and her troops, after a long night march, appeared before the place, about ten o'clock in the morning, they were peremptorily denied admittance or permission to cross the river. Compelled thus to resume their march, they pro- ceeded with all speed to the next town upon the Severn ; and that town, wliich was to see the red rose crushed for ever, was Tewkesbury. At four in the afternoon they entered it, after having marched all night, from Sodbury to Berkeley, thence to Gloucester, and thence to Tewkesbury, without food or any refreshment, through what was then a rough and rugged country. intersected by miry lanes, stony ways, and by woods and hedges ; so both horse and foot were worn and weary. So closely were their move- ments followed by Edward, that for a little space the leaders consulted whether they should venture to cross, as they were in peril of having their rear cut off, or intrench themselves between the town and river, till Jasper of Pembroke arrived with his long-expected Welshm.en. But the poor queen, harassed and pursued from town to town, having shared in the hasty retreat by night, the melan- choly and bitter disappointments of the day, anxious for the safety of her son, whom she loved most tenderly, and who was in arms among his adherents, urged the immediate passage of the Severn. The Duke of Somerset as strenuously opposed the idea. He represented the certain destruction of a great portion of their followers if they attempted, in their present exhausted state, to cross the stream with Edward coming on ; and added that defeat would utterly destroy the last hopes of the House of Lancaster. His advice was taken ; they halted at Tewkesbury to refresh and prepare their weapons, and the night was passed in forming intrenc^ments. They took up their ground in a park that adjoined the town, which, with its abbey, lay in their rear. Uneven ground, intersected by thick old hedges and deep water- cuts or ditches, lay in their front and on both flanks. In a meadow called " The Vineyard," vestiges of the trenches cut by those unfortunate adherents to a desperate cause were visible in 1830. Somewhere near there stood Holme Castle, which, but little more than a fortnight before, had belonged, with all the princely inheritance of the Beauchamps and Despencers, to Warwick the King-maker. But neither Holme nor its garrison are mentioned in any of the accounts of the battle that ensued. Edward divided his army into three columns, or "wards," and advanced in hostile array over the moors of Cotswold. The day was hot, and though his men were heavily accoutred, and he had with him more than 3,000 infantry, he marched on that day upwards of thirty miles. On all their route they had been unable to procure provision for man or horse, or even water, save at one small stream, and this was so ploughed up by the passage of the cavalry and artillery in the van, as to be useless for those in the centre or rear. On reaching the little village of Cheltenham (now a populous town), tidings were brought that the Lancastrians were intrenched at Tewkesbury. He ordered a halt, and after serving out certain supplies of food, which 102 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Tewkesbury. with much foresight, he had sent forward to Chel- tenham, he again advanced till he came within three miles of the enemy, when he halted for the night. As dawn drew near, the men-at-arms and knights began to accoutre for the coming strife ; and arming the dagger was hung ; eleventhly, the short sword , twelfthly, the surcoat was put on ; thirteenthly, the helmet ; fourteenthly, the long sword was assumed ; and, fifteenthly, the pennoncel, which he carried in his left hand. Itl|l« SUIT OF FHtL ARMOUR. MIDDLE OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY. vas an elaborate process then, as the knight began vith his feet, and clothed himself upwards. He )ut on first, his sabatynes, or steel clogs ; secondly, he greaves, or shin-pieces ; thirdly, the cuisses, or high-pieces ; fourthly, the breech of mail ; fifthly he tuillettes ; sixthly, the breastplate ; seventhly, he vambraces or arm-covers ; eighthly, the rere- )races, for covering tlie remaining part of the arm the shoulder; ninthly, the gaundels ; tenthly, As soon as the morning was fairly in — the morn- ing of the 4th May, 147 1— -Edward's army advanced in three divisions. . The first was led by his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III. of infamous memory. Edward in person led the second or centre ; and the Marquis of Dorset with the young Lord Hastings led the third, or " rear-ward." In this order they approached the Duke of Somerset, whose position had been carefully recon- ARMOUR OF THE PERIOD. 103 MURDER OF TRINCE EDWARD AT TEWKESBURY (see pncv I Ol). 104 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. ttcwkestui^. noitred by the king, aijd whose forces were also formed in three divisions, behind their intrench- ments. He, in person, led the first, assisted by his brother, Lord John Beaufort. The Lords Wenlock and St. John led the second, under the young Prince Edward, who was considered, from his rank, as commander-in-chief of the whole. Thomas, Earl of Devonshire, led the third. To lure Somerset from his intrenchments, as there was a difficulty in approaching him, owing to the deep hedges, ditches, lanes, and trees that lay around his front and flanks, and being well aware of his impetuosity, Edward desired Gloucester's division to commence the action by volleys of cannon and archery. To these the Lancastrians responded in the same manner, but their artillery was very inferior. This continued for a time, the nature of the ground preventing closer conflict. In obedience to the king's order, and to draw forth Somerset, as a stratagem, the division of Gloucester began to fall back with an appearance of precipi- tation, that led the duke to imagine a retreat had begun. • The rus^ succeeded, and, most fatally for himself, Somerset, thinking to improve the success (according to Hall and Holinshed), sent orders for Wenlock to support him, and passed the lanes or passages left open in his defences downward into an open space, now known as " The Bloody Meadow," or Gaston Field, near Tewkesbury Park. The instant Gloucester saw that the stratagem had succeeded, he wheeled about, and crossing a hedge and ditch that lay between, charged with such un- expected fury, that he drove Somerset's column back to the slope from which they had de- scended: At that critical moment, 200 lances whom Edward had placed in ambush in a wood which the Lancastrians had neglected to occupy, charged suddenly upon their left flank, and threw the whole division of Somerset into confusion. Many were beaten down, speared, and slain. Others fled in all directions, some into the green lanes, some into the parkSj and a few concealed themselves in the ditches and water-cuts. With a few of his men, Somerset fell back on the column of Loid Wenlock, ivho for some unaccountable reason had failed to support hun. Transported with fury, Somerset ipraided him with cowardice and treason, and by jne blow of his battle-axe, through steel and bone, lashed out his brains. By this time the men of Gloucester's column had ;ntered the intrenchments pell-mell with the run- ways, and were making a terrible slaughter. Wen- ock was dead, and the inexperienced young prince vas incapable of giving orders ; equally so was Somerset now, as he was choking with passion and despair : and ere any adequate measures could be taken, the column of the king poured in after that of Gloucester, and all was lost. With his own. hand the king in person showed the example of hewing down the fugitives, who on all sides were mercilessly cut to pieces, or driven towards a mill-pool belonging to the abbey, where hundreds of them, bloody with wounds, and with arrows sticking in them, were miserably drowned. A few effected their escape, and reached the town, the abbey, and its church. Among the latter were the Duke of Somerset, John Langstrother, the Grand Prior of St. John, and fifteen other men of high rank, whom Edward pursued with a drawn sword to the door. There he was met by the abbot, who, with the sacred host in his hands, im- plored him not to violate the sanctuary or defile the church with human blood ; and forbade him to enter it, unless he promised pardon to the refugees. On this Edward promised pardon, sheathed his sword, and entered among them, and remained a short time. What passed between them is un- known ; but on the following day he broke his pro- mise. They were all dragged from the sanctuary mth sacrilegious violence, and executed. Among those who niore happily met their death on the field of battle were the Earl of Devon- shire, Lord John Somerset, Sir John -Delves, Sir Edward Haijipden, Sir Robert Whittingham, Sir John Lewkenor, and some 3,000 men. The boy- prince, Edward of Lancaster, was made prisoner by Sir Richard Crofts, as he was escaping from the town, and his fate set a seal upon this terrible carnage. He was dragged before Edward IV. and other leaders, who were seated, some authorities say, in a tent, others in an ancient house, that was par- tially altered, and is, or was lately, standing in the centre of the town of Tewkesbury. The poor 'young prince is said t© have confronted his captors with calmness, courage, and dignity ; and on being haughtily asked by Edward " how he dared be so rash as invade his kingdom in arms, replied firmly, " I came to recover my father's crown and heritage, descended from his grandfather and father to him, and from him, after his life, to me lineally." Enraged by this boldness, Edward clenched his fist, and with his steel gauntlet barbarously struck him on the face ; and then instantly " the Dukes of Gloucester and Clarence, the Marquis of Dorset, and the Lord Hastings, fell like wild beasts upon the young prince, and stabbed him with theii daggers." Hall and Holinshed tell us that he was buried B jswortk.") MARGARET OF ANJOU. los withotit any ceremony or solemnity ; the latter has it that he "was homelie interred with the other simple corpes in the church of the monastery of the. Black Monks at Tewkesbury." In the choir may still be seen a small brass plate of modern date, bearing an inscription to his memory. In tire same place were interred the Duke of Somerset and several others. The bodies of Lord Wenlock and the Grand Prior were interred among their ancestors elsewhere; but those 'of Sir John Cower, sword-bearer to the young prince, of Sir John Flore, liis standard-bearer, and many others, lie in the churchyard of Tewkesbury. The unfortmiate queen, half dead with grief, fa- tigue and despair, was found in a wagon or " chariot," according to Hall ; dragged from a nun- nery, where she had taken shelter, says Holin- shed ; and brought before Edward, who instantly sent her to the Tower, where she was put in an apartment separate from her husband, who only survived the dreadful news of Tewkesbury a few weeks. Whether he died a violent or a natural death is extremely uncertain, but it was generally beheved that the terrible Duke of Gloucester dis- patched him with his own hand. Margaret re- mained there five years a captive, till her father ransomed her for 50,000 crowns, which he borrowed from Louisi^XI., and gave him in mortgage his kingdoms of Naples and Sicily. The queenly Margaret of Anjou, who had seen " her darling son bruised by the iron glove of Edward, and his young life-blood streaming on the daggers of Clarence and Gloucester," survived these miseries eleven years, and died in 1482. Tewkesbury was the twelfth battle that had taken place between the rival houses of York and Lan- caster; and in these engagements or upon the scaffold many princes of the royal family, half of the nobility and gentry of England, with jnore than 100,000 of the commonalty, had perished. And all this useless bloodshed had accomplished nothing save a change of the crown from Henry VI. to Edward IV. — from an imbecile but amiable monarch, to an able but profligate and sanguinary tyrant. No abuse was redressed, no evil miti- gated. Every man found himself in the same situation as before, save that he had to sorrow for the death of some dear friend or kinsman. "The nature of the Civil War itself, which was merely personal," says Macintosh, "the multi- plicity of its obscure and confused incidents, the frequent instances of success without ability, and of calamity befalling the unknown and uninteresting ; the monotonous cruelty of every party, which Tobbe4 horror itself of its sway over thq soul; together with the unsafe arid unsteady position of most ■ individuals, which repressed the cultivation of every province of literature, more especially repelled men of letters from relating the inglorious misfortunes of themselves and their country. More obvious causes contributed towards the same effect, The general war often broke out in local eruptions and provincial commotions which no memory could follow." BOSWORTH. When Edward IV. died, in 1483, Richard of Gloucester was on the borders of Scotland with an army. He instantly rode southward to York, at- tended by a vast retinue of knights and esquires, and swore fealty to his nephew, young Edward V., a child of thirteen, whose reign was fated to last only eleven weeks. By the Lords of Council he was vested with the office of Protector; but, amid crime and bloodshed, he usurped the royal dignity on the 26th of January, 1483. In Shake- speare's drama Richard is usually made older than his years. " Thy prime of manhood, daring, bold and venturous, Thy age confirmed, proud, subtle, sly, and bloody ! " Born at Fotheringay Castie, in October, 1452, Richard was barely in his prime when bravely and desperately he fell fighting at Bosworth, in his thirty-third year. The 'term of " Crook-back tryant " has fixed for ever in the popular mind the conviction that Richard was deformed ; but in reality he had no defect save that one shoulder was slightly higher than the other. He \«as, how- ever ferocious in spirit and temper, considered a handsome and cotirteous prince, with a pleasing and intellectuai countenance. The old Countess of Desmond, mentioned by Lord Bacon, is said to have danced with Richard III. at a ball, and to have described him as inferior in appearance only to his brother, Edward IV., who was deemed the handsomest man of his time. Sir Thomas More's " History of Richard III," and its continuation by Holinshed, gave Shake- speare his materials for the popular description. In wit and courage, Sir Thomas admits that Richard was equal with either of his brothers, Edward or George ;, but in body he adds that he was far inferior to them, being of short stature, " ill-featured of limbs, crook-backed, his left shoulder being much higher than his right, and hard-favoured of visage. He was malicious, wrathful, envious, and ever forward! . , . None evil captain was he in war, as to which his disposition was more metely than for peace. ... He was close and secret, a deep dissembler, lowly of countenance, arrogant io6 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [ Bosworth. of heart, outwardly companionable where he in- wardly hated." Ten atrocious crimes are laid to Richard's charge — the murder of Prince Edward, of Henry, and of Clarence ; the execution of Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan ; the murder of the two princes in the Tower ; and, finally, the murder of his own queen and cousin, the Lady Anne Neville, whom he had wedded in his twentieth year. The strong party that existed against him after the murder of the children proposed a union of the Houses of York and Lancaster, by a marriage between Henry, Earl of Richmond, and Elizabeth of York. Henry was the great-great-grandson of John of Gaunt, through his mother, Margaret Beaufort ; and Elizabeth was the eldest daughter of the late King Edward IV. : and this union boded evil to the usurper, around whose throne the clouds were lowering^ His gold was spent, his power was tottering, and the fidelity of his adherents was beginning to fail, when news came that Harry of Richmond had unfurled his banner against him. The earl set sail from Harfleur, in Normandy, with a small force, only 2,000 strong, furnished by the King of France ; and Philip de Comines, the quaint old " Lord of Argenton," says that he never saw troops more wretched than those designed to change the dynasty of England. After six days sailing, they landed on the 6th of August, without opposition, at Milford Haven, in Wales, where Richmond, who hoped the people would regard him as a countryman, expected many to join his standard'. Richard III., who knew not in what quarter to expect the invader, had established his head- quarters at Nottingham, the centre of- England, with the intention of marching at once to the point of danger. Sir Rice Ap Thomas and Sir Walter Herbert, to whom he had entrusted the care of Wales, proved faithless to him. The latter made little or no opposition to Richmond, and the former openly joined him, with many men of Wales, on which, says Hall, he was promised the chief governorship of that principality. Thus reinforced, the earl marched to Shrewsbury, where Sir Gilbert Talbot, with his ward, the young earl of that title, joined him with 2,000 men, vassals and retainers of the house of Talbot. In the vanity of his power, Richard had deemed the landing of Richmond a species of bravado, a rash attempt which he should easily crush ; but when he heard that Herbert had suffered him to pass, that Thomas had joined him, and that all Wales was in his interest, he saw the necessity of giving him battle without delay. So abhorred was the usurper, that scarcely a noble or man of dis- tinction was sincerely attached to his interests except the Duke of Norfolk. All who feigned the most loyalty were only waiting a safe opportunity to betray or desert him for ever. The persons of whom he entertained the greatest suspicion were the Lord Stanley and his brother. Sir William. Thus, when he empowered the former to levy troops for him, he retained his eldest son, the Lord Strange, as a hostage for his fidelity. Stanley raised a great body of men in Lancashire and Cheshire, but without openly declaring his poli- tical views ; and though Henry of Richmond had received secret assurances of his friendly inten- tions, he knew not what to infer from his equivocal behaviour. The two rivals at last drew near each other at Market Bosworth, not far from the town of Lei- cester. A quaint gable-ended edifice, with its upper story projecting on beams of timber over the Northgate Street, was long pointed out as being the house in which Richard spent " one or more nights " before the battle of Bosworth. It was locally known as the " Blue Boar," or " King Richard III.'s Inn," and overhanging windows admitted the light into the room where he is said to have had a ter- rible dream on a night before the battle ; " for it seemed to him," says Holinshed, " that he did see divers images like terrible devils, which pulled and haled him, not suffering him to take any quiet or rest. The which strange vision not so suddenly strake his heart with a sudden fear, but it stuffed his head and troubled his mind with many busy and dreadful imaginations And lest it might be suspected that he was abashed for fear of his enemies, and for that cause looked so piteously, he recited and declared to his familiar friends in the morning his wonderful vision and fearful dream." In the corporation records of Leicester, there is still preserved a story curiously illustrative of the darkness and precaution of Richard's character. Among his camp baggage it was his custom to carry a cumbersome wooden bedstead, which he averred was the only couch he could sleep in ; but in which he contrived to have a secret receptacle for treasure, so that it was concealed under a weight of timber. After Bosworth Field the troops of Henry pillaged Leicester ; but the royal bed was neglected by every plunderer as useless lumber. The owner of the house afterwards discovering the hoard, became suddenly rich, without any visible cause. He bought land, and at length became Bos worth.] ARMOUR OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 107 Mayor of Leicester. Many yearfe afterwards his widow, who had been kft in great affluence, was assassinated by her servant, who had been privy to the affair ; and at the trial of this culprit and her accomplices the whole transaction came to light. Concerning this bed, a public print of 1830 states that, "about half a century since, the relic was purchased by a furniture-broker in Leicester, who slept in it for many years, and showed it to the curious; it continues in as good condition, ap- parently, as when used by King Richard, being formed of oak, and having a high polish. The daughter of the broker having married one Ba- bington, of Rothley, niear Leicester, the bedstead was removed to Babington's house, where it is still preserved." On the 22nd of August, 1485, the armies of Richard and of the future Henry VII. appeared in order of battle on the plain then called Redmore, three miles from Bosworth and eleven from Leicester. The site of the battle and most of the surrounding country was then unenclosed. It is undulating, and was then probably scrubby heath. On Richard's left was Stoke Golden, with its church ; and on his right and in front lay Sutton Cheney, with its church. The town of Bosworth was on Henry's left, a morass was on his right, and Shanton lay in his rear. A litde stream, oddly called the Tweed, half encircled the position of both. When Richard marshalled his army at Notting- ham, in the market-place, on the i6th of August, it was 1 2,000 strong. He moved them next day to Leicester, though twenty-five miles distant, choosing rather to rest after a fatiguing march than to fight after an easy one. Their order of march, says Hutton, was five abreast, and Richard was gor- geously dressed, upon a white courser ("White Surrey ?"), richly caparisoned, and attended by his body-guards. On the day of the battle he appeared in the same suit of armour he wore at Tewkesbury; perhaps the same which is now preserved in the Tower of London. The armour of this period was splendid. The knee and elbow-pieces were fan-shaped, £tnd of the most e-labol-ate workmanship. Richard, in his letter from York, expressly orders three coats of j arms " beaten with fine gold, for our own person." The salade and gorget of fine steel were still worn, the former surmounted by the wearer's crest, sur- rounded by a wreath of his colours, with a feather at the side. At Bosworth, Richard wore a crown above his helmet. The sword was then belted so j as to hang almost in front ; the dagger hung where the Scottl-sh Hi^-hlanders still *eat it, at the right hip. Leather jacks, or jazarine jackets, alxd short linen-cloth doublets, the latter generally white, with St. George's Cross on them, with long hose, were the general dress of archers, bill-men, and ghisarm- iers; and their head-piece was a round pot-helmet or skull-cap of iron. Tlie banner of Henry's army was of yellow tire- taine (a mixture of linen and woollen stuff), where- on was painted a dun cow. Richard's camp was the most extensive, and, with the breastwork around it, covered eighteen acres. Henry's covered seven. He had his 2,000 French, 2,000 men that were brought by Talbot, and with those that had joined him under Griffith, Morgan, Ap Thomas, Hungerford, Bouchier, Byron, Digby, Hardwick, and others, his force could not have been less than 7,000 men. Lord Stanley had 5,000 in the field, Sir William Stanley 3,000. These two last leaders, with their 8,000 men, were hovering about the field at a little distance, to the great perplexity of both armies, as it was not quite apparent which they meant to join. They were simply waiting the issue. Sir Simon Digby, having j)enetrated into Richard's camp at night, at the utmost peril of his life, brought Henry word at daybreak that he was preparing for battle. Instantly on this his trumpets sounded " To arms ! " This was at four in the morning ; but so much preparation was necessary in those days of ponderous accoutrements, that Henry's forces were not engaged till ten. Richard marched out first, and left his tents standing. His first line was led by Richard Howard, Duke of Norfolk, a faithful veteran, assisted by his son, Thomas, Earl of Surrey ; the second line he led in person, conspicuous by the royal crown upon his helmet. On the right of this line was a large body, under Henry, Earl of North- umberland. For lack of strength, Henry of Richmond's front was very slender, and spread far out to make a show. His first line was led by John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who had joined him in France. The right wing was commanded by Sir Gilbert Talbot; the left by Sir John Savage; Henry led the second line, assisted by his uncle, Jasper Tudor ; and therein were what De Mezeray calls "the broken companies '' that had served in Normandy ' — the 2,000 French auxiliaries, under Bernard, a Scottish captain of Free Lances. In both armies the order of battle was nearly the same. The archers of each were in front, the bill-men in the rear, the horse upon the wings. Hutton records that Richard was rather small — ■ about five feet four in stature. Henry was in his twenty-seventh year, and measured five feet nine : io8 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Boswoitb. e was slender in form, of a saturnine countenance, rith yellow hair and grey eyes. Richard was brave, nd well versed in war ; Henry was a coward, but ad the best leiders. VVhil'e Lord Stanley was Drming his men, the former, who was by no means atisfied with his mysterious conduct, sent to him lir Robert Brakenbury, with the dreadful message, My lord, the king salutes you. He commands our immediate attendance, with all your forces, or our son, the Lord Strange, dies instantly ! " blew the march of death, and all moved into" the plain." The two first lines sTiot their arrows thick and fast, and then closed together in the shock of battle, with axe and sword, maul and ghisarma. Henry's army fought with spirit and valour, knowing that they must conquer or die, for if the field was lost a merciless fate awaited the survivors; while the troops of Richard were cold in his cause, and forced into his service. ., .-j^fei^-;. PLAN OF BOSWORTH FIELD. Struck with horror though he was, Stanley replied. Should the king stain his honour with my son's lood, tell him I have more. I shall come at my onvenience." Giving up his hostage son for lost, he dispatched Knight of the Bath, Sir Reginald Bray, to press lenry to advance with all speed. In the mean- me, his answer so enraged the tyrant that the itter exclaimed, " 'Tis a false pretence. He is a raitor, and the boy dies ! " The block was rought out, and Catesby was ordered to see the outh beheaded, when Lord Ferrars, of Chartley, LG., interposed and saved him. Richard "re- oked the order, nor had he further time, for lenry now unfurled his banners, his trumpets The Earl of Oxford formed his ranks closer and more dense. In this battle were Sir John Byron and Sir Gervase Clifton, K.B., the latter of whom had been knighted by Richard at his coronation. They were intimate friends and neighbours, both being of Nottinghamshire ; but, by the fatality of the times and variety of interests, B5Ton fought under the banner of Henry, while Clifton served Richard. They had mutually registered a solemn vow that, if either of them was taken or should happen to fall, the survivor was to intercede with the victor for his family. In- the shock of the first lines, Clifton was unhorsed and struck down. Byron saw him fall, and rushed forward to guard him with his shield, and asked him to surrender. Bosworth.1 KING RICHARD'S FURY, 109 "All is over with me," replied Clifton, who was expiring ; " I only beg, my dearest friend, that you will remember our niutual promise — the victory will be yours ?" Norfolk now extended his left with the intention view of the long lines of barbed war-horses, with their riders in gleaming armour, or covered with the dazzling jupbn, and bearing before them their lofty lances and variegated shields." Hume says that "the intrepid tyrant, sensible RICHARD III. AT BOSWORTH (seepage 109). of outflanking Oxford's right; but then Lord Stanley came into action at tW place with his 5,000 men, and the strife became equal. In the battles of those days there was not the majesty of sound produced by the thunder of a powerftil artillery, nor the rattling fire of masses of infantry, but only the tardy din of a few small guns. "Instead, there were the loud war-cries of the combatants, with the counterbalancing advantage of the absence of smoke', so as not to impede the now of his desperate situation after Stanley's open defection, cast his eyes around the field, and, de- scrying his rival at no great distance, drew against him with fury." As they had never seen each other, this is barely probable. Hutton and others tell us that at half-past eleven, after the battle had raged for an hour and half, a scout informed Richard that at that particular moment Henry was posted behind an eminence, with but few attendants. 10 no BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. Fired by the news, Richard galloped up the slope, and on Henry being pointed out to him, he ex- claimed, " I see the man ; let all who are true knights follow me !" He dashed the spurs into his horse, threw away his lance, and resolving to trust to his sword only, drew it, and fell on the group about Henry, who, with all his timidity, was not slow to meet him with terrible fury. One blow of Richard's sword hewed down Sir William Brandon, who bore Henry's private banner, which was a red dragon on green and white silk, the emblem of Cadwalla- der, the last of the Ancient British kings, and paternal ancestor to Henry. He unhorsed by an- other blow a tall and powerful knight, named Sir John Cheney ; and, with the spirit of a hero grow- ing into the fury of a madman, hewed his way to- wards Henry. But Sir William Stanley now came into the field at the head of all his troops, and sur- rounded Richard, who, overwhelmed by numbers, after fighting like a lion, and having the royal crown struck from his helmet in the fray, fell at last covered with wounds, about fifteen minutes after the time he rode up the hill. His troops now gave way, and a general flight and pursuit ensued ; while the crown of Richard, which had rolled under a hawthorn bush, was placed by Lord Stanley on the head of the victor, Richmond, from that day known as Henry VII. With Richard there fell the Duke of Norfolk, who is said to have been warned of the inten- tion of the two Stanleys, by a distich fixed to the [Stoke-Bardolph. gate of the house he occupied in Leicester, and which ran — "Jacky of Norfolk be not too bold, For Dickon thy master is bought and sold. " Immediately after the batde, the Earl of Rich- mond fell on his knees, returned thanks to God, and then to the leaders of his army, for that victory which made him King of England and Lord of Ireland. The loss of the victors was small. Richard's body was found on the field stripped quite nude, pierced with many a ghastly, wound, and rolled in blood and dirt. It was thrown thus, with the head on one side and the legs on the other, across a horse by Blanche Sanglier, a pursuivant-at- arms, conveyed to Leicester, and was there barba- rously and ignominiously exposed in public for two days, during which it was subjected to shameful insults by the populace. It was afterwards, buried privately in the abbey church, where a tomb of variegated marble was erected by the victor above his grave; After the Reformation it was buried among the rubbish of the ruined and defaced abbey. For years afterwards briars and thorns covered the grave, till one day it was discovered, and the stone coffin abstracted, to be converted into a drinkins- trough for the "White Horse" inn, in the Gallow-tree Gate of Leicester. When Hutton, in 1758, made a special journey there " to see this trough which had been the repository of one of the most singular bodies that ever existed," he found that it had been destroyed in the time of George I., and made into steps for a cellar. CHAPTER XIX. STOKE-BARDOLPH, I487 — SEA-FIGHTS, I489, 1490. Stoke-Bardolph. It is very probable that a portion of the camp- defences at Bosworth were pavisades, which were still in fashion. These were mantelets, or great shields, capable of covering a man from head to foot, and of sufficient thickness to resist most of the missiles that were in use up to the middle of the fif- ;eenth century. According to Froissard, pavisades fvere used long before the reign of Philip Augus- ;us ; and Pfere Daniel, the Jesuit, in his " Histoire ie Milice Fran5aise," describes them as bearing the igure of a shield ; but the Chevalier Folard, in his ' Commentaire sur Polybe," informs us that they vere mantelets which were disposed in parallel )r oblique lines from the camp to the nearest work' belonging to the cor/s de place, behind which the soldiers could in safety make a small fosse, which was sufficiently deep to keep them straight and firm. The next form of shield was the rondelle ; but in Talbot's " Ordinances for the Army," in 141 9, it is ordered in England that every " ii yeomen make them a good pavise of bordes, in the beste manner they cane devise, that one may hold it whiles that other doth shute." After Bosworth, England sorely wanted repose and peace ; but there were remnants of contest and disaffection yet to be crushed, and the reign of the victor, then Henry "VII., was a troubled one, and was peculiarly the age of impostures. The Stoke-Bardo'ph.] A PRETENDER TO THE THRONE. most remarkable of these led to the battle of Stoke. Richard Simons, a priest, of Oxford, entirely unknown in Ireland, though a zealous partisan of the house of York, landed in Dublin, bringing with him a boy about fifteen years of age, and whom he presented as his ward to Gerald, the Earl of Kildare, then Lord-Deputy, under the name of Edward Plan- tagenet, son of the Duke of Clarence, and whom he alleged to be that Earl of Warwick who was reported to have been murdered. This boy, Lambert Simnel, son of Thomas Simnel, a joiner, in Oxford, had been well instructed in the royal part he was to perform. In person he was very handsome, and his address and bearing had in them something that seemed to bespeak nobility of descent ; and he could relate plausibly, and with apparent' accuracy, his imprisonment in the Tower, his adventures, and escape. The Butlers of Ormonde, the Bishops of Cashel, Clogher, Tuam, and Ossory, remained steady in their allegiance to Henry ; but the rest of the people, reljdng on the acquiescence of Kildare, admitted the title of the newly-found Plantagenet, and, with- out doubt or investigation, proclaimed the joiner's son by the style of Edward VI., King -of England and France, and Lord of Ireland, and crowned him with a diadem taken from a statue of the Blessed Virgin, as there was no crown to be had in Ireland. When intelligence of this astonishing event reached Henry, he published a pardon, by advice of his Council, which extended to every kind of treason ; and conducted the real Earl of Warwick from the Tower to St. Paul's, that he might be seen by the citizens. The people of England were satis- fied with this prudent measure ; but not so those of Ireland, who maintained that theirs was " the real Plantagenet." John, Earl of Lincoln, son of Eliza- beth, eldest sister of Edward IV., was engaged in this conspiracy. He repaired to the Court of his aunt, the Duchess of Burgundy, and, after consulting with her and Lord Lovel, obtained the aid of 2,000 veteran German lanzknechts, under the command of Martin Swartz, an officer of courage and experi- ence ; and with these he landed in Dublin, where the Irish were so excited and exalted by the appearance of the few foreign troops, that they formed the absurd resolution to invade England. When Henry heard of the departure of Lincoln, he made a royal progress through the counties of Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, where the earl had considerable influence ; and thence he pro- ceeded through Northampton and Coventry to his castle of Kenilworth, where he soon found himself surrounded by loyal nobles who were his friends, with their retainers. There tidings reached him that Lambert Simnel had landed at the Pyle of Fowdry, in Lancashire, and, with the Earls of Lincoln and Kildare, the Lord Lovel, and Martin Swartz, followed by a mixed force of Irish and Germans, was marching on York. Sir Thomas Broughton joined them with a. small force, but no others, as " the English did not like to receive a king at the hands of the Irish and Germans." Lincoln, who commanded the whole, had resolved to avoid fighting, in hope of being joined by many malcontents ; but he hoped in vain : and then, seeing how coldly their cause was viewed by the people, he resolved suddenly to put the issue to the sword at once, and with this view marched towards Newark, to make him- self master of that place before the king should arrive. From Kenilworth, the king had begun his march towards Nottingham, at the head of 6,000 men ; and was also anxious for battle, to crush the invaders, who he thought must have many friends in secret, as he could not conceive that otherwise Lincoln would have dared to raise a banner against him. Two days after he left Kenilworth he was rein- forced by another 6,000 men, under George Tal- bot, Earl of Shrewsbury, K.G. ; the Lord Strange ; Sir John Cheney, K.G., and Knight-Banneret. On receiving this accession, he dispatched several prickers or light horse to reconnoitre Lin- coln's troops, and bring intelligence of his designs ; and then, to prevent him reaching Newark, he marched with such expedition that on the evening of the 5th of June he halted and encamped be- tween it and the Earl of Lincoln, who was coming on at the head of 8,000 men, but had for that evening encamped at a little village called Stoke- Bardolph, on the side of a hill. There next morning, on the 6tli of June, 1487, Henry offered him battle. The narrowness of the ground would not permit the king to extend his front so far as his superior force would have enabled him to do ; but he formed it in three lines. In the first, which was 6,coo strong, he placed all his best-armed and most completely mailed men. On the other side, the Earl of Lincoln had expressly selected that narrow ground, in the hope that if he could break the king's first line or put it in disorder, a victory over those in the rear would be likely to follow. He attacked it with considerable fury; and, curiously enough, it was the only line that was engaged. For- three hours the bill-men and archers 112 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Sea-fights. withstood the charges of the German men-at-arms under Swartz, who fought with singular bravery, by his own example holding the victory in suspense ; till at one time the cause of Henry seemed on the brink of ruin, for his troops began to give way. At last Martin Swartz was unhorsed and slain ; and his Germans, one-half of whom were killed and wounded, lost heart. With their darts and skeans, the wild Irish kernes fought with their characteristic bravery ; but being without armour, and in many instances half-naked, they perished in heaps be- neath the 'arrows of the English archers. At last the whole were put to flight ; but not until the half of Henry's first line had perished where it stood, which shows the obstinacy with which both sides fought. The Earl of Lincoln was slain, with 4,000 of his men. Sir Thomas Broughton, who so rashly joined him, escaped from the field to his manor of Witheringslack, in Westmoreland, where he lived long in safe conceal- ment among his own tenantry, and where he died. Among the prisoners taken were Lambert Simnel, " the new King of Ireland," and Simons, the priest, of Oxford. Henry, either in a, spirit of generosity, or to show his contempt for the Whole affair, made the former a scullion in the royal kitchen, and after a time one of his falconers ; the latter he com- mitted to close prison, and he was heard of no more. It was alleged that he was privately put to death. Francis, Lord Lovel, K.G., was drowned in attempting to escape by swimming the Trent, according to one account ; another gives out that he survived the battle, and spent the remainder of his life in a cavern. However it may have been, he was never heard of again after the battle of Stoke-Bardolph. Sea-Fights. The victor of Bosworth was the first King of England who established a regular standing navy ; and the Great Harry, built by him at the cost of _;^i 5,000, may be considered as the first ship of the Royal Navy. The fame of this great vessel excited his son-in-law, the young King of Scotland, to build a rival ship, of wJiich, fortunately, the exact measurements are preserved by Lindesay of Pitscottie. She was 240 feet long, by 36 feet in the beam, and cost ^^3 0,000. She had sixteen great guns on each side, and many falcons, slings, and basilisks. She was fitted up for 300 mariners, 120 cannoniers, and 1,000 soldiers, with their captains and quarter-masters; and in 15 13 she sailed from Leith with three others, as a preseiit to Anne of Bretagne. Twenty-four years before this period, we find two fights between the English and Scots taking place on the sea. In 1489 the King of England, to profit by the distracted state in which the death of James III. had left Scodand to the young King James IV., sent " five tall ships," the largest of his infant navy, to the Firths of Clyde and Forth, according to some authorities, ostensibly to assist James against the Lord Forbes and other malcontent lords. Tytler asserts that these ships must have been English pirates, as they came in time of truce, and plundered or burned all the Scottish and Flemish merchant ships they could find in those waters, obstructing the commerce, destroying the little towns on the coast, and once chasing a king's ship undeir the guns of Dumbarton. James sent for Sir Andrew Wood, of Largo, an eminent mariner of that age, whose name was well known to the English, Dutch, and Flemings, and who, with his vessels built for fighting purposes, named the Flower and Yellow Caravel, had held sullenly aloof from him and his interests, having been a faithful and devoted adherent of the mur- dered James III. He had originally been a merchant-skipper of Leith, where he had acquired great wealth; and his two ships were the largest, strongest, and best-equipped that had as yet laeen seen in Scotland. On their meeting, the young king urged upon Wood " the shame and dishonour it was that a few English ships should ride under their eyes, committing every outrage and excess;" and he easily succeeded in inflaming the patriotism of the old mariner, who undertook to attack them. Remembering that they outnumbered him, the king advised him to equip and arm some other vessels. " No," he replied, " I shall take only my owiz two — the i%iK'ifr and Yelloiv CaravcV With the first fair wind, on the last day of February, 1489, he dropped down the river Forth to attack the English, who were then cruising off the town and castle of Dunbar. The usual board- ing and grappling ensued ; and after an obstinate and sanguinary conflict, in which two-handed swords and pole-axes were freely used, he captured the five vessels, and presented them, with their crews, to James IV., at Leith. For this service he was nobly rewarded by Parliament, in the following March, with licence "to build a castle at Largo, with gates of iron, as a reward for the great ser- vices he had done, and losses sustained." ' This castle he built by the English prisoners, whom he retained in durance as bondsmen ; and two ships under sail were added to his coat-of-arms. This sea-fight led to another, that was mgre Sea-figIits.S THE "YELLOW CAkAVEL." 113 severe, under Sir Stephen Bull ; and it is from the circumstance of all the English vessels that Wood encountered being termed pirates in liis Crown Charter, that Tyder assumes that they were mere ocean-robbers, forgetting that pirate was the common term in those days for enemies and stran- gers, when the sturdy skippers who traversed the then lonely seas, in their high-pooped and top- hampered carracks and caravels, were not over- scrupulous in distinguishing friends from foes. Henry VII. is said to have resented the capture of those five ships, and the detention of their crews, and offered the then splendid pension of _;^ 1,000 yearly to any of his naval commanders who would capture Sir Andrew Wood, dead or alive. After some delay, Sir Stephen Bull, an English mariner of skill and well-tried courage, originally a mer- chant of London, ofifered, if properly equipped, to capture or destroy the Scottish admiral on his re- turn from Holland, whither they had tidings he was gone. We are told that three vessels, the greatest and strongest of those built by Henry for fighting piurposes, were placed at his disposal. All ships as yet fought their guns en barbette, as port- holes were not known till they were invented by Descharges, a naval builder, at Brest, in 1499. Bull had on board one company of crossbow-men and another of pikemen ; these were led by some knights of valour and birth, who volunteered to serve in this armament, which sailed from the Thames in July, 1490, and entering the Firth of Forth, came to anchor under the lee of the Isle of May. As it contained a lake, his crews obtained a constant supply of fresh water. To prevent the Scottish fishermen from giving Wood an opportune intimation of his vicinity, Bull sank ©r burned all the boats belonging to Crail, Pittenweem, Largo, and other fishing villages along the coast, and kept certain fishermen prisoners on board, who, being well acquainted with the rig and appearance of Sir Andrew's vessels, might, as the ransom of their own lives or liberties, duly inform him when they came in sight. In addition to these precautions, this wary English captain kept several of his own sailors cruizing in large boats out on the German Sea, to give him early intimation of every sail that appeared on the horizon. Wood sailed from Sluys for Leith, without the least idea of the reception that awaited him at the mouth of the Forth. In aspect the vessels of that day were very different from those of the present. They were cut very low in the waist, with towering poops and ^ forecastles, mounted with culverins, Bakers, and falconets. The balls of these were usually of stone ; and there is extant an order from Henry V. to his Clerk of the Ordnance, for making 7,000 stone shot for cannon, at the quarries of Maidstone, in Kent. The hulls' were generally carved and gilded ; and the poops, or after-castles, as they were named, had turrets and great lanterns. On the morning of the i8th of August, continues the memoir of Wood published in 1852, the return of the English scouts caused an alarm to be given on board their ships that two sails were visible at the horizon. Their appearance was communicated by one of the captains to Sir Stephen Bull, who instantly sent his Scottish prisoners aloft, and re- quired their opinion as to whether or not those were the vessels of Sir Andrew Wood. They were then standing south towards the high bluff of St. Abb's Head, and the sun shone fair and full on their white canvas. For a time the Fifeshire fishermen were reluctant to afford information, pretending that they were unable to say whether the two vessels now approaching on the other tack were those of which Bull was in quest ; but when offered freedom on one hand, and threatened with instant death on the other, they acknowledged that these were the Yellow Caravel atid. Flower, with Sir Andrew's pennon displayed — argent an oak tree growing out of a mount in base or, with two ships of the same. They" were then sent ashore. The crews of the gallant Bull received these tidings with cheers ; he ordered several runlets of claret to be broached, and gave the order to make sail and clear away for battle. Sir Andrew's ships were now bearing up the firth, and first perceived the English on their rounding from the leeward of the isle ; and the moment he saw St. George's Cross he gave the order to prepare for battie, and buckled on his armour. In his quaint Chronicle, Lindesay of Pitscottie gives us a very minute and graphic account of the old sea-fight that ensued, with the previous address of the Scottish admiral to his men, in the dialect of the time. " My lads,'' said he, " these are the foes who would convey us in bonds to the foot of an English king ; but, by your courage jind the help of God, they shall fail ! Set yourselves in order ; repair every man to his station — crossbow-men to the t©ps — two-handed swords to the fore-rooms — gunners charge home ! Be stout men and true, for the honour of Scotland and your own sakes! Hurrah!" Cheers responded, and wine was served round to all. Then we are told how the yeomen of the sheets and of the powder-room, the pikemen, cross- bow-men, the cannoniers and fire-casters, repaired to their stations, as the two Scottish ships bore on. Sir Andrew's second in command was Sir 114 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA, S.ea-)ights; David Falconer, a native of Borrowstownness, 1 brave soldier as well as mariner, who was ifterwards killed, when captain of the royal guard, at Tantallon. The sun was now high in the summer sky, and it shone on the great English ivar-ships, displaying their white canvas and weaving streamers, their crowded decks bristling tvith arms and bright mail, " displaying their mag- nitude and force to the eyes of the Scots with a dazzling and enlarged appearance." The gear and care of the ships were totally abandoned; and as they drifted shoreward the people of Crail and other adjacent towns crowded on the headlands, expressing their hopes and fears by shouts and gestures. When the darkness wore on the grapplings were cast off, and the hostile crews parted, lying off a little way, as if by mutual consent, to, refit, to clear their decks, and refit their torn hamper. By daybreak next morning the " blair " of the RUINS OF KENILWORTH CASTLE (seepage III). On their nearing each other the English began > fire their cannon with force and rapidity, but om the greater height of Bull's decks, and the mnon of those days lying . on slides, without unnions or power for depression, the balls went :er the vessels of Wood, whose superior skill labled him to keep the weather-gage, and then s "carthouns, culverins, and pestilent serpentines" )ured in their bullets of iron and stone. Then, ortening sail, the , gunnels and yard-arms were appled— the ships became like, a floating raft, on lich a close and deadly conflict was maintained th arblast, bow, and hand-cannon, sword, and e, for twelve hours, without one party gaining any vantage over the other. trumpets and the admiral's " silver quhissel " sounded on the sea; and the vessels once more stood towards each other, and again all grappled. . Wood "locked the ships firmly with cables of, his own, that all might sink tog.ether but none might flee; and again did these two valiant commanders engage, as if they had the couragfe of two mighty armies." Again their decks became a scene of carnage. Everything was forgotten but honour, glory, and national animosity. Committed to the mercy of the viraves, the wind, and the ebb- tide, the conflict continued till the seven grappled hulls drifted into the beautiful estuary of the Tay, and grounded on a long sand-bank. Sir Stephen Bull, finding then tliat all was over, Sea-fights.] VICTORY OF THE SCOTTISH SHIPS. IIS ii6 BRitlSH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. (The Downs. surrendered to Sir Andrew Wood, who carried the Enghsh prizes into the harbour of Dundee. There the dead were buried, and the wounded committed to the care of surgeons ; and so ended this sea-fight, which spread still more the fame of Sir Andrew through all the maritime towns of Northern Europe. A. few days after, Wood presented Sir Stephen Bull to the king, together " with the commanders of the ships and most distinguished soldiers." With a truly regal spirit, the courtly James, after complimenting squally the victor and the vanquished, sent the latter home without ransom, and with their ships to Henry, their king, as a present, with a message that "Scotland could boast of warlike sons by sea as fvell as land ; and that he trusted England's pirat- ical shipmen would trouble the Scottish seas no more, otherwise a different fate would await them." Henry returned James thanks, saying "he grate- fully accepted his kindness, and could not but applaud the greatness of his mind" (Pinkerton, Buchanan). Wood, who, Tytler says, "was an enterprising and opulent mercliant, a brave warrior and skilful naval commander, an able financialist, intimately acquainted with the management of commercial transactions, and a stalwart feudal baron," per- formed many other services to his country by sea and land. As a monument to his memory, a 32- pounder, raised from the wreck of the Royal George, was placed upon the ruins of his castle of Largo, with a white marble slab, bearing an appropriate inscription. He died in 1540, and was borne to his grave, in Largo Church, by the crew of his barge. CHAPTER XX. IN THE DOWNS, 1511 — OFF BRETAGNE, 1512. The Downs. [n 151 1 there was another sea encounter in the Downs, between certain English and Scottish ships, lie result of which engendered much bitterness, md ultimately led to the battle of Flodden. In hat year the Lord High Admiral of Scotland was Patrick, Earl of Bothwell; and John de Vere, Earl )f Oxford, was Lord High Admiral of England. It chanced, that in the year 1476, a ship belong- ng to Jehn Barton (a merchant of Leith), contain- ng a very valuable cargo, had been seized by a Portuguese squadron. In consequence of this, ames IV. of Scotland granted letters of reprisal to Andrew, Robert, and John Barton, his sons, to etaliate whenever an opportunity occurred. In hese letters the Bartons and their assignees were LUthorised to seize all Portuguese ships until they vere paid 12,000 ducats by the King of Portugal. !n 1506 these letters were renewed, and the Bartons, who were alike bold and enterprising, )ecame very rich. Andrew was knighted by the :ing, and became proprietor of Barnton, one of the mest estates in Lothian. In that year, when a Durnament was held at Stirling, "a blackamoor irl," the first ever seen in Scotland, captured by iir Andrew from the Portuguese, was seated in a riumphal chariot, and adjudged the prize of the ictor. The Dutch, who at this time were sub- lets of the house of Austria, had plundered certain Scottish ships, and murdered their crews. Enraged by those piracies, James dispatched Robert Barton against them to retaliate, which he did effectually, and sent several casks of "Hol- landers' heads " to the castle of Stirling. There is reason to suspect that the Scottish naval officers at this period did not confine themselves to the repression of piratical outrages, or the vindica- tion of their own personal wrongs, but that in some instances, at least, they pushed their retaliation further than either equity or the laws of nations warranted. It is alleged that the Bartons captured a much larger number of the Portuguese carracks than was necessary to compensate them for the in- dividual losses which they had suffered ; .and the merchants of England complained that they de- tained and rifled Enghsh vessels, on pretence of searching for Portuguese goods. Their complaints at last so excited the indignation of the Earl of Surrey that, in order to punish the excesses of the Scottish privateers, he fitted out two large ships of war, and placed them under the command of liis sons. Lord Thomas Howard and Sir Edward, after- wards Lord High Admiral of England, and manned them with picked crews, cannoniers, and bow-men. According to Buchanan and some others, this was said to have been done at the urgent entreaty of the ambassador of Don Emanuel — a prince on whom Henry had just bestowed the Garter— who re-o Off Bretagne.] SIR ANDREW BARTON. 117 presented to Henry VIII. that Barton, a daring and skilful officer, who had inflicted immense injury upon the Portuguese, the ancient allies of England, would certainly, in the event of a war, prove a for- midable enemy to the English at sea, and "could at present be easily taken unawares and destroyed, and the odium of the action averted by stigmatis- ing him as a pirate ; a proceeding by which Henry, never at any time over-scrupulous, would provide for the safety of his o-\vn subjects, and gratify their sovereign, his friend and ally.'' The Howards fell in with Sir Andrew Barton as he was cruizing in the Downs, being guided to the place by the master of a merchant vessel which he had overhauled on the preceding day. The Scot- tish commander had with him only his own ship, the Lion, and her pinance, named the Jmny Pirwen; but the former must have been a large vessel, as subsequently she was found to be only second in size and armament to the Great Harry, and to have carried thirty-six great guns, irrespective of falconets and other means of offence. Considerable improvements had now taken place in shipbuilding, especially for warlike purposes. Port-holes had been introduced, which suggested the use of a second deck and tier of guns ; and hollow iron balls filled with combustibles were not unfrequently used. The royal dockyard at Wool- wich had been founded in the preceding year, and the first ship of war built in it was named the Regent. If we are to believe the ballad of " Sir Andrew Barton," Peter Simon commanded the English gunners, and William Horseley, a gentle- man of Yorkshire, the archers ; history calls him " Hustler," the best bow-man in Lord Howard's ship. The English vessels are alleged to have drawn near Barton with white rods displayed at their bowsprits in token of peace, which is very un- likely, as there was no war then between the two countries. He awaited their attack with courage ; and, distinguished by his rich dress and bright armour, with a whistle of gold suspended by a chain of the same metal at his neck, he ap- peared on deck with his two-handed sword, to en- courage his men. He was assailed by Lord Howard, while Sir Edward attacked and speedily took the pinnace, and then bore down to assist his brother. The contest was long and obstinately maintained. The Lion was furnished with some kind of machinery which suspended large weights or beams from her yard-arms, to be dropped on the enemy's deck when alongside. This con- trivance was well-known to the English, who were apprehensive of the mischief it might do them, and the Yorkshire archer, Horseley, had special orders to shoot every Scot who was seen going aloft to work the machine. When two of his bravest seamen had perished in this way. Barton, confiding in his mail of proof, began to ascend the main-rigging to let go " the beams.'' Then Lord Howard called to Horseley to " shoot him." "Were I to die for it," he replied, "I have but two arrows left." The first he shot rebounded from Barton's armour and fell into the sea ; but as Sir Andrew raised his arm to climb higher, the archer wounded him mortally through the armpit, where the mail afforded him no protection, and he fell heavily on the deck. Still the intrepid seaman continued to animate his crew by sounding his golden whistle from time to time, till a ball struck him in the body, and he expired. Abercrombie, in his " Mar- tial Achievements," 17 15, states that he died o his wounds, in the city of London. The greater part of his crew were slain. The English then carried the Lion by boarding, and she and her pinnace were taken into the Thames. After a short imprisonment in the palace of the Arch- bishop of York, the captive seamen were dis- missed, but the ships were detained and added to the EngHsh navy, in which the Lion afterwards ranked as the second man-of-war, after the Great Harry, which was burnt by accident at Woolwich, in 1553. James IV. sent a herald to demand their restitution, and instant satisfaction for the insult; but the proud and imperious Henry paid little attention to the remonstrance, and merely remarked that " the destruction of pirates was surely no infringment of the Treaty of Peace, or a just cause for war." Off Bretagne. In the year after this event. Sir Edward Howard was made Lord High Admiral of England ; and, in the quarrel that ensued between the Pope, Julius II., and Louis, was sent by Henry VIII. to the coast of Bretagne with a fleet of forty-five armed vessels. For his own maintenance while on this service, the king granted him ten shillings a day; for each of the captains, their diet, wages, and reward, eighteenpence a day. For every soldier, mariner, and gunner, five shillings a month for his wages, and five shillings for his victuals, reckoning twenty-eight days in the month. On board this fleet were 10,000 troops, under the Marquis of Dorset. Five thousand of these, says Lord Herbert, were archers, who, according to Spanish historjr, " carried, besides their bows, hal- lib BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Off Bretagne. berts, which they pitched in the ground till their arrows were shot, and then took up again to do execution on the enemy, an excellent part of mili- tary discipline, and yet not remarked by our English chronicles." These forces remained quietly quartered in Fontarabia, without aiding Louis, further than by the influence of their presence, till, by want and sickness, Dorset had to bring them back to England. Prior to that. Sir Edward Howard had ravaged all the coast of iBretagne, about Coquet and Brest especially. The French fleet, the number of which is variously stated, came forth to meet him, under the command of Admiral Primaguet, an officer of distinguished bravery; but before they met in battle Howard had been joined by twenty-five additional war- ships, which Henry had personally reviewed and dispatched to him from Portsmouth. It was, says Hume, a maxim of Howard's that no admiral was good for anything who was not brave to a degree of madness, as the sea service requires much less plan and contrivance than the land; but the after fate of Howard served to show that even there valour ought to be tem- pered with discretion. On the loth of August, 1512, the battle ensued. The French admiral, in the Cordeliere, carrying 1,200 fighting men, exclusive of mariners, grappled with the Regent, of 1,000 tonsj so lately built at Wool- wich. The latter was to leeward. She was com- manded by Sir Thomas Knevet, K.B., Henry's Master of the Horse. The other captains of note were Sir Charles Brandon, K.G., Sir Henry Guild- ford, K.G., and Sir John Carew. During the hand- to-hand strife that ensued, the English boarders (vere bearing all before them ; and Primaguet find- ing that his ship was about to be taken, set fire to the magazine (or powder-room as it was then named) with his own hand. The flames speedily extended to the Regent ; both ships were blown into the air, and every one on board was de- stroyed. In the j*?!?^!?;;/ 700 perished. ^\\t Sovereign, ;ommanded by Sir Charles Brandon, afterwards Duke of Somerset, was also burnt. These disasters ivould seem to have cooled the ardour on board of 30th fleets, as they drew off" and separated, each ;laiming the victory. To replace the Regent, Henry built another great ihip, called the Henry Grace de Dietc. Armour was now growing still more remarkable or its decoration. A suit of Henry's in the Tower vas found by Sir Samuel Meyrick to have been entirely washed with silver. - The breastplates had low become completely globulair, with puckered omboys of steel in lieu of tasses andtassettes; the soUerets for the feet were square-toed ; the helmet had a metonniere to act as a gorget, with pass- guards on the pauldrons ; and the horse was still completely mailed from nose to tail. Among the weapons of the new period we find the partisan, a variety of the pike ; and the Asiatic art of inlaying steel with gold, called damasquinee, became fashionable. The hackbut had now become common ; and to the matchlock was added a wheel- lock, invented by the Italians. It was a small machine for producing sparks of fire by the rapid revolution of a wheel against a piece of sulphuret of iron, held like the flint of the modern musket, but the cock was on the side where the pan was latterly. The spring which turned the wheel was attached to a chain formed like those in watches, and wound up by a key called " a spanner." The trigger liberated the wheel, and the cock falling upon the pyrites, fire was produced by friction. Hence the name of fire- lock, still given by our soldiers even to Enfield rifles. The pistol, called a dag or tacke, the former stocked with a knob like a sword-pommel, and the latter merely cut off" in a slanting direction, came into use now. Pike-men became the mass of the Enghsh and Scottish armies, from the period to which we have now arrived, down nearly to the time of William III. In an old work called the "Relationes of th& most Famous Kingdomes," pubHshed at London in 1630, we have a curious description of the army which went with Henry VIII. to Boulogne. " In the vanguard passed twelve thousand footmen and five hundred light horsemen, cloathed in blew jackets with red guards. The middle-ward (wherein the king was) consisted of twentie thousand foot- men and two thousand horse, cloathed with red jackets and yellow guards. In the rear- ward was the Duke of Norfolk, and with him an army like in number and apparell, saving that therein served one thousand Irishmen, all naked save their mantles and their thicke-gathered skirts." The arms of the latter force were three darts, a sword, and a skean. They would seem to be the troops referred to as follows in Sir Sibbald Scott's " History of the British Army," wherein he says of an old print, " The appearance of some half-naked men, armed with broadswords and lances, with a bagpipe preceding them, at the siege of Boulogne, under Henry VIII. , in 1544, is one of the few in- stances on record of the Scots in connection with an English army." They are represented driving sheep and oxen to camp. If they were Scots at all, which is very doubtful, they must have come from some of the remoter isles in the West. The Ordinances of War of Henry VIII. are the Flodden.] A SCOTTISH FLEET. 119 first that make mention of a distinguishing uniform in his army ; an Act of the same reign strictly enjoins the wearing of the established dress by all officers and soldiers, and, by way of en- forcing it, the murder of either out of that dress or uniform is not punishable. The prevailing colours were " sadd grene or russet." In the year of the quarrel between Henry VIII. and Louis XII., there was fought in England one of the most memorable battles recorded in British history, that of Flodden. James IV., a young, chivalric, and magnificent prince, had married Margaret Tudor, the sister of Henry, a new con- nection which did not, however, extinguish the national animosities of the two countries, or lessen the partiality of the Scots for their old alHes, the French. James was jealous of his English brother- in-law, and was repeatedly irritated by certain real and many supposed injuries. Among the former was the death of Sir Andrew Barton. He renewed the ancient alliance between Scotland and France, with an additional clause that reciprocally bound each prince to aid his ally against all men what- soever. Henry was already in France when he dispatched his fleet, consisting of the Great Michael^ under Robert Barton, the James, the Margaret, the Great Ship of Lyrme (an EngKsh prize), an fifteen other ships of war, commanded by James Gordon, of Letterfourie, and having on board 3,000 soldiers, under the Earl of Arran, who, on the way could not resist landing in Ireland, and burning Carrickfergus. Scattered by the waves and winds, the ultimate fate of this Scottish squadron was never known. At the same time a Scottish herald sailed to France, the bearer of a letter from James to Henry, requiring the immediate retreat of the English army out of that country. To this demand Henry, then besieging Terouenne, refiised to accede ; whereupon the King of Seotland declared war. Henr/s reply by the herald was coarse and insulting, but it was never received ; for ere its bearer landed, the young King of Scotland, with the flower of his land, lay dead on Flodden Hill. CHAPTER XXI. FLODDEN, 1 5 13. It came to pass now, by the turn of events and of the times, that the same Earl of Surrey who in 1503 had handed to James IV. of Scotland his royal and beautiful English bride, at Lamberton Kirk, in the Merse, was destined to be his opponent and conqueror, ten years afterwards, in that battle which was so disastrous to Scotland, and was long remembered as a calamity so great that its name still recalls something of sadness ; for there was scarcely a family of importance which was not bereaved of a husband, a father, a brother, or a son. In some instances aU the males of a family perished side by side, fighting for their king and country. Though war had been ostensibly declared by the King of Scotland to aid his ally, the King of France, it was undoubtedly accelerated by the brawls and raids of the borderers. Shortly before the declaration,. Sir Robert Kerr, of Cessford, Warden of the Middle Marches, had been run through by a lance and dispatched by Sir William Heron, Lilburn, and Starkhed, three English bor- derers. Henry VIII. gave up Lilburn to the Scots, but Starkhed for the time escaped. The former was sent a prisoner to Fast Castle, with Heron of Ford, a brother of the murderer, and died there ; but Andrew Kerr, son of the slain knight, killed Starkhed, and placed his head on one of the portes of Edinburgh (Ridpath) ; and then followed the sea-fight with Barton, and many other causes of irritation, among which, the mean manner in which Henry VIII. absolutely cheated his sister, the Scottish queen, out of her father's legacy, was perhaps one. Yet the war was not popular with the mass of the Scottish people. However, the king was so beloved by his subjects of all ranks, that when orders were given to assemble the army of the realm on the Burgh Muir of Edinburgh, then the Campus Martins of the Scottish hosts, the appeal was responded to by the muster of one of the best- equipped armies that as yet Scotland had ever seen. La Motte, the French Ambassador, brought the king a ring from the finger of Anne of Bretagne, Queen of France, and a letter, written in an amorous strain, appealing to his chivalry, terming him her own knight, and beseeching him to ad- vance only three steps on English ground, with his army, for the sake of her who considered him her defender. It was in vain that the wisest of 120 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Flodden. his counsellors sought to dissuade James from war, and that his queen, with sobs, tears, and caresses, implored him not to pe-ril his own life by taking the field against Henry her brother ; asking him, touchingly, "why he preferred the Queen of France to her, his wife, the mother of his children, whom he had wedded in her girlhood ? " But James, says Pitscottie, turned a deaf ear to all ; so' an attempt was' made to dissuade him from his expedition, by working upon the emotions of forehead was bald ; long yellow hair flowed upon his shoulders ; he held in his right hand a long pilgrim's staff, and seemed to be about fifty years of age. Approaching the desk where James was kneeling at vesper prayer amid the gloom of the evening, " Sir king," said he, gravely and solemnly, "my mother hath sent me to thee, desiring thee not to pass at this time where thou art pur- posed, for if thou dost, thou wilt not fare well in thy journey, nor any who pass with thee. Further, PLAN OF FLODDEN FIELD. superstitious melanchDly which, partly from con- stitution, and partly from remorse for his rebeUion against his unhappy father, formed a prominent feature in his character. The story of this device is related with great minuteness by Lindesay of Pitscottie, probably on the information of Sir David Lindesay, of the Mount, the Lyon King of Arms, then a very young man, who was present. , In St. Catherine's Aisle of the Chapel Royal of linlithgow (now a parish church), where the king had constructed a throne for himself, with twelve stalls for the Knights of the Thistle, when he was engaged at his devotions there entered by the door a man of strange and solemn' aspect, clad in a blue weed, belted with a piece of linen. His she bade thee meddle with no woman, nor use their counsel, nor let them touch thy body,' or thou theirs, for. if thou dost, thou shalt be confounded and put to shame." Then, adds the chronicler, he vanished away, and slipped through the hands of those who sought to seize him, " as if he had been a blink of the sun or a whiff of the whirlwind, and could no more be seen." The common belief in Scotland is that the whole was a device of Margaret Tudor to deter the king from war. This is made more apparent by the warning given concerning women, as she had good cause to be jealous of his love intrigues ; and the phrase, "My mother sent me," was adopted to make Flodden.] THE ORDER OF SCOTTISH ARMOUR. James suppose his spectral monitor was the adopted son of Mary, St. John the Evangelist. But pru- dence, superstition, and caresses proved unavail- ing. As Margaret had come to him without her father's legacy to preserve her from pecuniary embarrassments, James gave her an order on his treasury for 180,000 crowns, and took his departure for the camp. The high turret in LinUthgow Palace, so well known to tourists as Queen Margaret's Bower, is said to be the place where she retired to son, an order founded on the assumption that if all the others of the family were cut off, he would maintain the females and junior members. Every man had with him provisions for forty days, and all were arrayed according to Act of Par- liament passed in 1491, which ordained that every possessor of ten pounds' worth of land or more shall have a helmet or salade, gorget or pisane, and mail for the limbs, a sword, spear, and dagger. " All other yeomen of the realm, betwixt sextie and sextene, THE BATTLE OF FLODDEN {seepage 1 25). weep, and watch the departure of that fated mon- arch who was to return no more. On the Burgh Muir of Edinburgh, a place then, according to Hawthomden, delightful by the shade of many stately oaks, he met the feudal array of Scotland, and planted his royal standard in the Hare Stone, a large block, a portion of which still remains by the highway leading to Braid, and now becoming a street. There assembled the whole nobility, barons, and burgesses of the realm, " between sixty and sixteen, spiritual and temporal, burgh and land, islesmen and others," to the number of 100,000 men (a force which subsequently dimi- nished), under their chiefs, the male adults of every family, capable of bearing arms, except the eldest sail have sufficient bowes and sheaves, sword, buckler, knife, speare, or ane gude axe instead of a bow;" adding that every man, according to his means, must be accoutred in "white ham ess, "or good jacks, with gloves of plate, and well-horsed, "corres- pondent to his lands and goods." The Scots were then famous for the temper of their sword-blades. " A great armourer arose in the Highlands," says Smiles, in his "Industrial Biography," "one who was able to forge armour that would resist the best Sheffield arrow-heads, and to make swords that would vie with the best weapons of Toledo and Milan." This was the great cutler, Andrea de Ferrara, whose swords still maintain their ancient reputation. 11 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Floddcn. He is supposed to have learaed his art in.tlie Itahan city wlience he was called, and, under the pat- ronage of the King of Scotland, to have practised it in secresy among the Highland hills, as all his genuine blades are marked with a crown ; and be- fore his time no man in Great Britain could temper a sword in such a way that the point should touch the hilt and spring back uninjured. He is said to have worked in a dark cellar, the better to enable him to perceive the effect of the heat upon the metal, and to watch the nicety of the tempering ; as well as possibly to serve as a screen to his secret method of working. Many of his blades, with new basket hilts, are to be found in the Scottish regi- ments of the present day. James had with him a very efficient train of thirty pieces of artillery, which had been cast for him at Edinburgh by the master gunner of the castle there, Robert Borthwick, who was also a bell-founder. Seven of these were guns of great beauty, which were known as the " Seven Sisters of Bortliwiclc" As these cannon were being brought forth in the night, a strange cry was heard at the cross of the city, known in Scottish history as " The Summons of Platcock" (or Pluto), and supposed to have been another ruse of the king's friends to prevent his march into England, as every " earl and lord, baron and gentlemen," in the army was required by name to appear in the world to come within forty days. "Whether," says Pitscottie, "this summons was proclaimed by vain persons, night walkers, or drunk men for their pastime, or if it was a spirit, I cannot tell ;'' but every man whose name was uttered, save one who heard his own given, and appealed to God against the summons, he adds, was slain at Flodden. King James began his march for England at the head of one of the most formidable armies that had ever invaded it; and on the 22nd of August he crossed the Tweed, and encamped on the banks of the Till, near Twisel, where the army remained two days. Then marching down Tweed-side, he captured Norham, Wark, Etal, and Ford, four border castles, but these petty enterprises were only a waste of the time, provisions, and ammimition that should have enabled him to march to Newcastle. AVhen Ford was stormed. Lady Heron, the wife of Sir Wilham Heron, the castellan, who was still a prisoner in Scotland for the murder of the Laird of Cessford, was taken by James ; and, according to the Scottish historians, this beautiful and artful dame had such influence over the infatuated monarch, as to induce him to idle away his time till his forces began to dwindle, and the opportunity for striking an effect- ive blow was irretrievably lost. While he lay thus inactive, his anny suffering the while from scarcity of provisions and incessant rains, and, by the desertion of many Islemen and Highlanders, reduced to 30,000 men and the per- sonal attendants of the knights and nobles, the army of England was mustering, under Thomas Howard, the Earl of Surrey. To him, during his absence, Henry liad committed the defence of England, and he was now busy in Yorkshire, con- centrating the military array of the northern coun- ties, amounting to 26,000 men. In passing through Durham, he received from the prior of the convent there the sacred banner of St. Cuthbert, for the purpose of inspiring the courage of his soldiers. On the 30th of August he was joined at Newcastle by Thomas, Lord Dacre, of Gillesland, K.G. ; Sir William Bulmer, of Burnspeth Castle ; Sir Marma- duke Constable, and others of the northern chivalry; and on reaching Alnwick was met by his son, Thomas, High Admiral of England, with a rein- forcement of S,ooo well-trained soldiers from the English army in France. Nor should we forget worthy John Winchcombe, better known as Jack of Newbury, one of the greatest clothiers in England, who marched with 100 of his workmen, armed and equipped at his own expense, against the invaders. After this, Surrey finding himself the stronger of the two by more than 1,000 men, on the 4th of Septem- ber sent a herald to challenge the Scottish king to fight a pitched battle on the following Friday, "if he had courage to remain so long on English ground." Thomas, Lord Howard, sent at the same time a rude and insulting message, to the effect that, "as Lord High Admiral of England, he 'had come to justify the death of that pirate. Sir Andrew Barton, of which James had so often complained, and that he would be in the vanguard of the English army ; and as he expected no quarter from his enemies, so would he give none, unless to James himself, should he fall into his hands." Jam.es treated the insulting message of the admiral with silence ; but to that of Surrey he replied, " that to meet the English in battle was so much his wish, that had the message of the earl found him at Edinburgh; he should have relin- quished all other business to have met him in the field." James now encamped on Flodden Hill, where it was difficult to attack him, as Hall says there was but one narrow field by which the position could be approached, and at the base of the hill he had placed all his ordnance. On one flank was a marsh, on the other rose the Cheviot Hills. Many of the Scottish nobles were dissatisfied by Flodden.] THE SCOTS OUTFLANKED. 123 the king's ready acceptance of Surrey's challenge. Enough, they said, had been done for honour and to satisfy the claims of France ; and his retreat would compel the English to disperse, as they could not subsist in a district so grievously wasted and plundered already ; that a battle must be against increasing odds, and its loss most fatal to the country. They held a council, over which the vener- able Lord Lindesay, of the Byres, presided, and laid their views before the king, who became trans- ported with anger, and avowed his determination to fight against the English with his own single hand, if none would follow him. He also vowed that if he was spared to see Scotland, Lord Lindesay should be hanged over his own castle gate. And when the aged Earl of Angus charged La Motte, the French Ambassador, with instigating the rashness of the king, the latter said, " Angus, if you are afraid, go home 1 " » Then this grand old lord, whose sword had never been in its sheath when Scotland wanted it, burst into tears at an insult so unpardonable. " If my past life," said he, " does not free me from the suspicion of cowardice, I do not know what can. So long as my body was capable of exertion, I never spared it in defence of my country and king. Now, since age renders me useless in battle, and my counsel is despised, I can but leave my sons and the vassals of Douglas in the field. May Angus's forebodings be unfounded I'l That night he quitted the camp, but his two sons, George, the Master of Angus, and Sir William Douglas, of Glenbervie, with 200 gentleman all of the clan and surname of Douglas, perished to a man in the battle that ensued ; while the aged earl, broken-hearted by the calamities of his house and his country, retired to a monastery, and died in the following year. The Earl of Surrey, with his horse, foot, and cannon, had now advanced to Wooler. The latter are said to have been of inferior make to those of the Scots, but to have been far more numerous and far better served. They were constructed of hoops • and bars, as the first cast-iron guns of English manufacture were made at Buxstead, in Sussex, in 1543, by Ralph Hogge, master founder, who employed as his principal assistant one Peter Baude, a Frenchman. Gun-founding was a French invention, and thus was probably adopted by the Scots earlier than the English. The adverse hosts were now but four or five miles apart. When the English van came in sight of the Scottish position, Surrey reconnoitred it, and saw that he could not attack it with hope of success ; and having succeeded in his former attempt to | pique the romantic honour of the Scottish king, he resolved to try whether he could not lure him from his vantage-ground, and sent to James a herald with a letter reminding him of the accepted gage of battle, and complaining that, instead of remain- ing in the place where the first messenger had found him, "he had put himself into ground that was more like a fortress than a camp, or any indifferent field where battle might be tried." He therefore invited him to come down from the height and meet him in the open field below — the plain of Milfield — hinting that it was the opinion of the English nobles that any delay of the encounter did not redound to the king's own honour. This missive, which will be found among Ellis's " Original Letters," did not succeed in its object completely. According to all the laws of war, ancient and modern, the request was utterly unreasonable ; and James refused to admit the messenger mto his presence. Being now in want of provisions, on the 8th of September, Surrey passed the Till, near Westwood, and, to lure the Scots into action, marched through some rough ground on the east side to Barmoor Wood, two miles from the king's position, and halted for the night. A few cannon- shots were fired by Borthwick at Lord Thomas Howard and a few knights who were seen recon- noitring on an eminence near Ford. Next morning the English resumed their march in a north-westerly direction till near the confluence of the Till and the Tweed, when the vanguard and artillery crossed the former at Twisel Bridge (the beautiful old arch of which still spans the river), while the rear passed at a ford higher up. Having by their detour, with undoubted skill, placed themselves between the King of Scotland and his own country, the English now marched in full array towards Flodden Hill. On this morning two omens of evil were whispered in the Scottish ranks. One was that the mysterious man of Linlithgow had been seen in the royal tent at night ; and that the field-mice had gnawed the lining of James's helmet. The Scots seem to have conceived that their posi- tion was sufficently protected on the east side by the deep and sluggish Till, with its perilous fords, and by a battery of guns near the foot of the slope, ■commanding the bridge of Ford. When the pe- culiar movement of Surrey was first perceived, James IV. imagined naturally that it was the earl's intention to cross the Tweed and ravage Berwick- shire, and in this opinion he was confirmed by an Englishman, named Giles Musgrove, who possessed his confidence, and treacherously urged a descent from his position to attack Surrey. Such is the 124 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. tPIoddca. assertion of Buchanan and Ridpath. While the English -were crossing the Till, with their van and rear apart, the Scottish leaders entreated the king's permission to attack them; and Borthwick, com- mander of the artillery, actually fell on his knees', imploring permission to open fire on the bridge with his guns, and thus throw them into confusion. But the king, says Pitscottie, answered Bortliwick like a man bereft of judgment, threatening to hang him if he fired a single shot, adding, " I shall have all the enemy in the plain before me, and assay them what they can do." As soon as he saw the enemy in order of battle, he fired the streets of temporary huts which formed his camp, and marched out to possess the adjacent eminence of Brankston. The Scots came down in five columns, each a bow-shot apart, in perfect silence and order. This absence of sound has been re- marked by all historians. "They marched hke the Germans, without talking or making any noise," says the gazette of the battle quoted by Pinkerton. Before those columns rolled the white smoke of the burning huts, obscuring the advance of the English, who had crossed the little stream called the Palins- burn, and reached the foot of Brankston Hill, before they perceived the Scots, with all their banners and pennons displayed, at the distance of a quarter of a mile. The Scots we have said were now only 30,000 strong; the Enghsh outnumbered them by 1,000. The moment Lord Thomas Howard saw the Scots, advancing, he dispatched a trooper to his father, with an Agnus Dei which he wore on his breast, as a token, requesting him " to extend his lines with all speed, and to strengthen the van by closing the centre to the left," so as to form the two divisions in one. Exactly at four in the afternoon of the 9th of September, 15 r3, this eventful battle began by a cannonade on both sides, for war was modernising now in its forms and appliances. " Then," says an old writer, " out burst the ordnance with fire, flame, and hideous noise, and the master gunner of the English slew the master gunner of Scotland, and beat all his men from their guns, so that the Scottish ordnance did no harm to the Englishmen, but the Englishmen's artillery shot into the midst of the king's battail, and slew many persons, which seeing, the King of Scots and his brave men made the more haste to come to joining.'' With their long lances levelled at the charge, the Scottish left wing rushed with such fury on that portion of the English right under Sir Edmund Howard that it was overpowered, disordered, and beatijn back, After a desperate resistance, Sir Edmund's banner was taken, he was beaten down, his division routed, and he would have been slain but for timely succour lent him by the bastard Heron, who had joined the English army at the head of a band of wild and reckless outlaws. Sir Edmund, with his routed force, fell back, but Lord Dacres' advance with the reserve of men-at-arms kept Huntley in check ; while Home's force, which consisted of undisciplined borderers, left their ranks to plunder over the field. This enabled Sir Edmund, now reinforced, to attack another division of the Scots led by the Earls of Crawford and Montrose. Long and reso- lute was the conflict, but ultimately both these nobles fell, and their men were routed. On the Scottish right, under Argyle and Lennox, the Macleods, Mackenzies, Macleans, Campbells, and some other Highland clans were severely galled by the archers of Cheshire and Lancashire, led by Sir William Molyneaux and Sir Henry Kickley, till, with a yell of defiance, they rushed forward in wild fury, regardless of the cries and menaces of La Motte, the French Ambassador, and others, who sought to restrain them. With target, claymore, and pole-axe, they flung themselves in a mass upon the enemy. For a moment the shock was tremendous, and the bills and pikes, which had now replaced the bows, reeled and wavered under an onslaught so fierce and unusual. Recovering from the shock, the English columns kept their ranks close, and charging their disorganised assailants in front and flank, routed them, but not without the most dreadful slaughter, amid which the two Scottish earls perished. While fortune wavered thus upon the wings, the centres, under Surrey and the king, were engaged in a fierce, close, and very dubious conflict. Despite the remonstrances of his courtiers, James, inspired by all the hereditary courage of his race, fought on foot like the rest of his division, exposing his person, so conspicuous by the richness of his arms and armour, wherever strife was thickest, and, sur- rounded by his faithful and devoted nobles and knights, charged with such fury that the ranks of the English were broken, and Surrey's standard was nearly taken. It was at this critical moment that the left flank of the Scottish centre was assailed by the columns of Lord Dacre and the Admiral of England, after defeating those of Montrose and Crawford, arid which gave it a terrible. shock ; but Bothwell came gallantly up with his reserve of spear-men, and made the fight more equal : and new fully 60,000 men, gallant Britons all, were engaged in one close and deadly mlle'e, No quarter was asked Ott Moddfn. ] THE FALL OF KING JA^IES. i2S either side, and none was given ; and the ground soon became so slippery with blood flowing from the dreadful wounds and gashes inflicted by axes, bills, and two-handed swords, that many of the combatants took off their boots and shoes to en- sure a firmer footing. By this time Sir Edward Stanley, after the total disorder of the Scottish right wing had been achieved, flung himself with all his command on the rear and right flank of the king's division, which was then surrounded on all sides by over- whelming odds. Resolutely did the Scots maintain the conflict; and, flinging themselves in a circle around their beloved king, with the fervour of passionate loyalty and bravery, repelled on every side the attempts to break their dense array. Well has Scott written of this — ■ ' ' The ICnglisIi shafts in volleys hailed, In headlong charge their horse assailed ; Front, flank, and rear, the squadrons sweep, To break that Scottish circle deep \\Tiich fought around the king. ' ' But yet, though thick the shafts as snow. Though charging knights like whirlwinds go, Though bill-men ply the ghastly blow. Unbroken was the ring ; * ' The stubborn spear-men still made good Their dark, impenetrable wo«d ; Each stepping where his comrade stood. The instant that he fell." At length King James, mortally wounded in the head by a ball from some unknown hand, and pierced by several arrows, fell dead within a spear's length of Lord Surrey; but his faithful subjects, chiefly knights and nobles^ obstinately defended his body, till night and darkness put an end to the carnage. Surreywas yet uncertain as to the issueof the battle, for the Scottish circle around, the dead king was still unbroken, and the division under Lord Home had been victorious. But when day broke on that ghastly scene beside the Till, the Scottish army was found to have quitted the field, leaving seventeen pieces of cannon of various calibre deserted by the side of Flodden Hill. Solemn thanks for the victory were now offered up on the field, and forty knights created. While this was passing. Lord Home's division and banner appeared hovering near the right flank, and another body of Scots, now supposed to have been a rem- nant of their centre, appeared in front, as if about to renew the strife, but were dislodged by the English artillery. Among the Scottish guns taken were the "Seven Sisters of Borthwick," who lay dead beside them. According to the official report of the battle, they were "the neatest, the soundest, the best fashioned, the smallest in the touch-hole, and the most beautiful of their size and length that ever were seen." The loss of the English amounted to about 5,000 men, but few persons of distinction were slain, as the battle was decided chiefly, as usual, by their archers. Sir Brien Tunstall, of Thurland Castle, called, in the romantic language of those days, "Tunstall the Undefiled," either from his white banner or the silver brightness of his armour, as well as from his unstained reputation as a knight, was one of the few Englishmen of rank who fell at Flodden, a battle which spread unparalleled grief and consternation in Scotland. Of the Scots 10,000 men were slain. With the king perished his natural son, a mere boy, who was Legate-k-latere and Archbishop of St. Andrew's, a studenf under Erasmus; the Bishops of Caithness and the Isles ; Sir William Knowles, Lord High Treasurer and Grand Prior of the Knights of St. John ; the Abbot of Inchaffray, and the Dean of Glasgow; twelve earls, ten lords, and 113 knights, and so many chiefs of families that there was none of eminence in Scotland but had an ancestor slain at Flodden. Long and fondly did the Scots hope that their king survived, and would yet return to them; many alleging that he was so handsome that he had been spirited away to Fairyland by the Queen of Elphin, or had gone on a pilgrimage to Palestine. Godwin's Annals record that when James's body was found, it had a deep gash in the neck, and his left hand was nearly hewn off in two places, while many arrow-wounds were on his person. It was recognised by Lord Dacre, was fully identified by the Chancellor of Scotland and others ; and was very oddly sent to London, where it was never properly interred, but was lapped in lead, thrown into a lumber-room at Sheen, and ultimately the bones were, in the days of Elizabeth, buried 'among others taken out of the charnel-house of St. Michael's, Wood Street (Stow's " Surrey"). The sword and ring of James— perhaps the fatal ring sent by Anne of Bretagne — are still preserved in the Heralds' College, London. The tomb of Sir William Molyneaux, in Sefton Church, Lancasliire, still exists, to record how valiantly he led the archers of Lancashire at Flodden, where he took two banners, and was thanked by a letter from Heniy VIII. Save the Selkirk banner, and the pennon of Sir AVilliam Keith preserved at Edinburgh, no relics remain of this field in Scot land, except the memory of it. "No event more immediately calamitous than the defeat at Flodden darkens the Scottish annals," 126 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Haddenri^ says an eloquent writer. " Shrieks of despair re- sounded throughout the kingdom. Wives, mothers, and daughters rushed into the streets and highways, tearing their hair, indulging in all the distraction of sorrow ; while each invoked some favourite name, a husband, a son, a father, a brother, now blended in one bloody mass of destruction. While the pleasing labours of harvest were abandoned, while an awful silence reigned in the former scenes of rural mirth, the castle and the town echoed to the lamentations of noble matrons and virgins ; the churches and chapels were filled with melancholy processions, to deprecate the Divine vengeance, and to chant funeral masses for the slain." The archers pf Ettrick, known in Scotland as the " Flowers of the Forest," perished nearly to a man ; and to the present day the sweet, sad, wail- ing air which is known by that name is almost the invariable Dead March used by all Scottish regiments. THE BATiXE OF ANCRUM MOOR (see pagt I29). CHAPTER XXII. HADDENRIG, 1542 — ANCRUM MOOR, 1545. Haddenrig. Nearly thirty years elapsed after Flodden before any other great bloodshed ensued upon the borders. But the latter years of the life of Henry VIII., one of the most fickle, self-willed, and absolute of English monarchs, now became occupied by the old story of those days, a war with Scotland and with France. Several causes contributed to produce a rup- ;ure between Henry and his nephew, James V. of Scotland. The latter, satisfied with the faith of his fore- fathers, declined to engage in theological disputes ; and the Pontiff, to rivet him more closely to the apostolical see, bestowed a cardinal's hat upon the most favoured of his counsellors, David Beaton, afterwards Archbishop of St. Andrew's, and sent him a Sword of State, sharpened with much cere- mony against England, and now preserved in the castle of Edinburgh. When His Holiness deter- mined to publish the sentence of deprivation against Henry, for his apostacy from Rome, James of Haddenrig. ] A WARDEN RAID. t27 Scotland, the Emperor Charles, and Francis of France, promised to join in their endeavours to convert or punish the pervert ; and these ended in with the French Court. As if to stigmatise the proceedings of that of England, the Scottish Par- liament passed several laws in support of the TUAGHS, OR SCOTTISH BATTLE-AXES, PRESERVED AT EDINBURGH, two conflicts on the borders, and an invasion of the Isle of Wight. Neither Charles nor Francis, however, showed any activity in enforcing the papal bull ; and their idleness induced the King of Scotland to preserve relations of amity with his uncle, Henry. But the latter grew more jealous, both of the religious opinions of James, and of his intimate connection ancient creed, and of the supremacy of Rome ; and in 1542 the usual preliminary forays on the borders began, while twenty-eight Scottish ships were taken at sea. In the month of August, Sir Robert Bowes, cap- tain of the castle of Norham, and warden of the Eastern Marches, assembled 3,000 horse, for what was then termed a " warden raid," and crossed the 2.^ British battles on land and sea. [Ancrum Mtior. frontier into Scotland. He was accompanied on this expedition . by his brother, Richard, Sir John VVidrington, Sir WilHam Mowbray, and several other knights, together with the exiled Earl of Angus, and his brother. Sir George Douglas, both of whom were banished from Scotland. They ravaged all Teviotdale, and were advancing towards Jedburgh, to destroy it with fire and sword, when, a few miles westward of Kelso, their march was stopped at Haddenrig by a force under George Gordon, Earl of Huntley, Knight of St. Michael, to whom James had committed the care of the borders. The dress and arms of the Scottish borderers were extremely simple. Patten, in his account of Somerset's expedition, observes that, in battle the laird could not be distinguished from the trooper, as all wore the same kind of armour, called a jack, the baron only being distinguished by his sleeves of mail and his head-piece. The borderers in general acted as light cavalry ; they rode horses of a small size, but astonishingly active, and trained to move by short bounds through the dangerous morasses that lay along the Scottish frontier. Their offensive weapons were a lance' of uncommon length ; a sword, either two-handed or of the more modern kind; sometimes a speciesof battle- axe, called a Jedburgh staff; and, latterly, dags or pistols. Although so much accustomed to move on horseback that they held it degrading to appear otherwise, the Marchmen occasionally acted as infantry, in forming that impenetrable phalanx of spears of which an old English chronicler says that " sooner shall a bare finger, pierce through the skin of an angry hedgehog,, than one encounter the brunt of their pikes." The encounter at Haddenrig \^as one of border :avalry. AVith lance and sword they closed in with jreat fury, and a close and bitter conflict ensued; br there was not a man on either side who had not some private hate to satisfy, or outrage to avenge. Many were speared, shot, unhorsed; and cut down ; md so steadily was the contest maintained that actory long remained doubtful; till, at a critical noment, George, Lord Home, came galloping up It the head of 400 lances, and fell upon the flank )f Sir Robert Bowes. This sudden access of force inspirited the Scots, vho, after a time, put the English to the rout. The jovernor of Norham was taken, together with Sir Villiam Mowbray, Sir John Widrington, Sir George Douglas, and several hundred others. Aware that le might have to die the death of a traitor if :aptured, the p:arl of Angus fought with blind iesperation only to escape. A knight had already disarmed and seized him; but Angus closing in, dispatched him with one blow of his dagger; and fled at the full speed of his horse. Enraged by the loss at Haddenrig, Henry declared war, and ordered the Duke of Norfolk to assemble a numerous army at York. In the same year, James V. died of a broken heart, his daughter Mary was . born ; and more than ever did it seem probable that Henry, by force or marriage, might make Scotland his own. Ancrum Moor. To revenge the rejection of his offers to marry his son, Edward, to Mary Queen of Scots, then in her infancy, he resolved to invade her kingdom. Two knights of approved valour and distinction. Sir Ralph Evers (son of the first and father of the second Lord Ewrie) and Sir Brian Layton, entered Scotland at the head of 3,000 merce- naries, chiefly Germans and Spaniards, 1,500 English borderers, and 700 " assured Scottishmen," chiefly Armstrongs, Turnbulls, and other broken clans; for it would appear that in those lawless times the Scottish borderers were unable to resist the temptation of English gold, and thus not a few of them are mentioned as assisting most infamously in the forays, and as being particularly active in se- curing plunder. To this they were, probably, the more readily induced by their own hereditary ani- mosities and private quarrels ; and nothing more deplorable can be conceived than the state of the border counties, until the total defeat of the English at Ancrum Moor. On this occasion, Sir Ralph Evers, who was wont to boast that he had " knocked at the gates of Edinburgh," acted with merciless severity ; he burned 192 towns, towers, and farm-steadings in the counties of Berwick and Roxburgh ; killed 403 men, and took 816 prisoners; seized 10,836 cattle, 12,492 horses, 850 bolls of corn, and other plunder to an amount unknown, according to a return made to his own Government. On the march towards Melrose, he burned the tower of Broomhouse, wherein, says Bishop Lesly, there perished an aged and noble lady, with her whole family. The Earl of Angus, who had some time before been recalled from exile, and who had large estates in the ravaged districts, was greatly exasperated against the English on account of the losses he had sustained ; and also because, in the new spirit of the Reformation, they had some time before defaced the tombs of his ancestors in the abbey of Melrose, for which he swore to write a pardon on their own skins. The Earl of Arran, a weak noble, was at Ancrum Moor.] A STRATAGEM. 129 that time Regent of Scotland, during the minority of the infant queen; and the loud complaints of Angus respecting his o^vn losses, and the public disgrace, at lengdi roused him from his timid indolence, and he took the field. Angus, at the head of 1,000 horse, was following Layton's troops, who, after pillaging Mehose a second time, were moving towards Jedburgh, when a great body of Fifeshire men came up, under Norman Lesly, Master of Rothes — the same wild spirit who afterwards slew Cardinal Beaton, and fell at the battle of St. Quentin. The English were probably unwilling to cross the Teviot while these united forces hung upon their rear, and so they accordingly halted upon the moor of Ancrum. This was on the 12th of February, I54S- Angus, with a force so small, was painfully undecided as to whether or not he should risk an encounter with such unequal strength, when he obtained fresh succours, in a strong force of borderers, led by Sir AValter Scott, of Buccleuch, who, like Angus, had many wrongs to avenge, particularly on Sir Ralph Evers, who in the pre- ' ceding year had ravaged all his lands in western Teviotdale, stormed two of his strongest castles, slaughtered some forty of his men, and, as stated in Murdin's State Papers, carried off immense booty. Buccleuch was a border warrior of great expe- rience, who had evinced high courage at the battle of Melrose ; but his military judgment was not turned into rashness by a longing for revenge. His experienced eye saw at once the line of tactics to be followed, and he prevailed upon Angus to draw their combined forces from the eminence they occupied, overlooking the English position, to a piece of level ground called Peniel Haugh, and to send their horses with the camp-boys to another height in the rear. This stratagem, or movement, was intended to make the English beUeve that the Scots were taking to ilight. Sir Ralph Evers and the other leaders readily fell into the snare ; and were eager to pursue, lest the fugitives might escape. The English troops were sorely fatigued by their long march, and by the plunder with which many of them were laden, and were in want of both rest and refreshment ; but " advance " was now the order, and they hurried forward, the infantry at a run and the cavalry at a trot, as they fancied, in pursuit. The trot quickened to a gallop, the men-at-arms believing that all they had to do was to override and cut to pieces a terror-stricken enemy ; but, on reaching the summit of the height which the gcots h^d S9 craftily abandoned, they were greatly astonished to perceive in the hollow below their serried ranks calmly waiting their approach. Con- fident of success, from the superiority of their num- bers, and from the circumstance that their German and Spanish mercenaries were trained soldiers, who had served in many wars ; and believing that these circumstances would make up for their exhaustion and for the disorder into which they had been thrown by the fury of their rush up-hill ; the English leaders resolved on an attack, and continued to advance. At that moment a heron, disturbed by the tumult of sounds, flew up from some adjacent sedges; and the Earl of Angus, in a spirit of elation and con- fidence, exclaimed, laughingly, " Oh, that I had here my white goss-hawk ; for then we should all yoke (join) at once ! " Under Sir George Bowes and Sir Bryan Layton, the cavalry, of which their forces were chiefly composed, charged briskly, but were repelled by the Scottish spear-men, who now began to advance, and hurled them back in confusion on the main body, when many men were trod down by their comrades' horses. This thrust the second line back upon the third. Discharges of arquebuses were exchanged on both sides ; but as the smoke of these was blown by the wind among the English, who had also the oblique rays of the evening sun shining in their eyes, neither leaders nor banners could be distinguished. Charging forward, horse and foot, the Scots fiercely drove the broken ranks against each other. They were thus impeded, and unable to use their weapons effectively, or plant in the turf those long rests over which the arquebuses were fired ; and as each man of the wavering force began to seek an escape for himself from this sudden scene of helpless and fatal disorder, a rout became inevitable. Suddenly amid them there was a cry of "Re- member Broomhouse ! " and then the 700 "assured Scots," the Armstrongs, TurnbuUs, and Halls, with this shout, tore off their red St. George's Crosses, and, making common cause with their already victorious countrymen, turned with axe and spear, in unsparing severity, upon the now broken and flying enemy. The peasantry of the neighbourhood, hitherto only spectators of the brief conflict, now drew near to intercept and cut down the English, who were easily distinguishable by the . red cross on their white surcoats ; and even women, whose hearts had been steeled by their barbarities, joined in the pursuit, and shrieked to the conquerors to " Remember Broomhouse ! " One of these, still remembered as " the maiden LiUiardj" mingled in the fray when she saw her 130 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Isle of Wight. lover fall ; and her gravestone, lately renewed, still lies near the field. The battle became, as usual then, a pitiless slaughter, which lasted till nightfall. Of the enemy there fell 800 men, among whom were Sir Ralph Evers and Sir Brian Layton, to the ihtense satis- faction of the Earl of Angus ; while 1,000 were made prisoners, among whom were many men of rank, whose ransoms proved valuable. One was an alderman of London, named Read, who, having contumaciously refused to pay his portion of a sum demanded from that city by Henry, was sent by him to serve on foot against the Scots, whom, says Ridpath, he found more exorbitant in their exactions than the tyrannical Tudor. The Scots loss was very trifling. They lost no time in following up their victory. The whole camp equipage of the Enghsh was found in Melrose, and the border districts were everywhere cleared of them. The Regent embraced the victor. Angus, and carried him off to Stirling to receive the congratulations of the Queen Dowager, Mary of Lorraine ; and a proclamation was issued that all who had adopted the red cross should be pardoned on returning to their allegiance. The two English knights were honourably in- terred, in Melrose Abbey. The coffin of Evers, an entire stone, was found there in 1813, a little to the left of the great altar. His skeleton was then entire, but speedily crumbled into dust. Shortly after this victory at Ancrum Moor, and the expulsion of the English from the border counties, word was sent to the Scottish Court that Francis I. was about to prove himself a formidable enemy to England on her own soil, and the faithful ally of Scotland, by invading the former, and carrying out a project he had in view ; and this was nothing less than capture of the Isle of -Wight, which he conceived might be fortified, and main- tained as a possession of France. CHAPTER XXIII. ISLE OF WIGHT, IS45. In conformity with his promises, Francis I. began to make preparations, not only for expel- ling the English garrisons from Boulogne, Calais, and other places, but to invade their country in return. With this view, he equipped in several of the ports of France one hundred and fifty great ships, and sixty of smaller tonnage, with ten more carracks hired from the Genoese. He sent orders to Captain Paulin to bring five-and-twenty row galleys fi-om the Levant (in imitation of Louis XIL, who had four from the same place), and to anchor them at the mouth of the Seine; where a catastrophe occurred. Francis gave a magnificent dinner to the ladies of his Court on board the greatest vessel — one armed with a hundred pieces of cannon, and which De Mezeray describes as " the most stately vessel belonging to the sea" — but the cooks by their carelessness set it on fire ; her guns went off in succession, and, singularly enough, seem to have been shotted in harbour, and so did infinite mischief to all the craft around her. At last she blew up — a circumstance "which," we are told, " greatly disordered the feast, and gave an ill presage of that expedition." In this fleet Pfere Daniel states, the French had one ship carrying 100 guns entirely of brags, Francis mustered an army of 40,000 men ; to these he intended to add 12,000 German Free Lances, to block up Boulogne by land, as well as by sea, so that it should be impossible for the English to relieve it. To execute this project he sent a reinforcement to the marshal commanding, Odoard Seigneur du Biez et de Vend6me, ordering him to finish a fort that had been begun at Portet ; and then coming to Havre de Gr^ce in the middle of August, he ordered the fleet to sail for England. On the other hand, Henry VIII. was not idle. To expedite by his presence the naval operations that were being carried on at Portsmouth for the prosecution of the war, he took up his residence there. Burnet states that the ships on both sides in this war were merely hired merchantmen ; but only some could have been such, for the purposes of transport. On the 18th of July the French fleet, stated to be 200 sail, under Claude d'Annebaut, Baron de Retz, created Admiral of France in 1543, was reported to be off St. Helen's, and menacing the Isle of Wight, after having landed some detach- ments at Brighton, then the fishing village of Brighthelmstone, to burn and spoil the country. But the beacon-fires were soon set ablaze on the green downs of Sussex; and Holinshed tells us Isle of Wight.] LANDING OF THE FRENCH. 131 that these detachments were. beaten ofif to their own ships, with considerable loss. Henry at their approach ordered all the ships that were ready — not more than a hundred accord- ing to one account; only sixty sail according to another — to get under weigh, and meet them. The fleet was commanded by Sir John Dudley, Baron of Lisle, Admiral of England in 1543. On their departure from Portsmouth Harbour, the EngUsh, like the French, had a catastrophe. The Mary Rose, one of the largest ships in the navy, carrying sixty guns, was overset by a sudden squall of wind; her lower deck ports being open, and within only sixteen inches of the water. Thus she filled and went down insUntly ; and her commander, Sir George Carew, and every man on board perished. Afoot-note to Schomberg's "Naval Chronology" states that " some authors inform us that she was sunk in the action, and that the Great Harry nearly shared the same fate, but was towed into the harbour." King Henry had dined on board the Mary Rose that day, and had only returned to the shore a few hours before the accident. In the year 1835 some curious relics of this old ship were fished up ; several guns of hoops and rings, the stone shot then in use, with portions of her tim- bers, being among the articles found. Schomberg (" Naval Chronology ") states that the first mention of iron balls for cannon is distinctly made in 1550, when Boulogne was restored to France. It may be mentioned here, that it was in Henry's reign that the Royal Navy first became a distinct profession. The king fixed salaries to admirals, vice-admirals, captains, and seamen ; and since then we have had a constant succession of officers in the service. Though greatly inferior in number, Dudley's fleet met that of D'Annebaut ; but a very indecisive action ensued, as the French did not seem to care much for coming to close quarters. The brunt of the action was borne by the Great Harry ; and there were many sharp engagements between the galleys of Captain Paulin and some of the smaller vessels of the English, which M. du Bellay, a French writer, calls ^^rambarges" but which we name " pinnaces." These were light, long, and narrow craft, for sails and oar.": ; and, being easily handled, were very effective in attacking the galleys, which they put to the rout. The skirmishing — for it was not a close engage- ment — continued for two days, with cannon, hack- but, and bow, but the damage on both sides was very trifling. The English fleet retired beyond or within the sands, seeking to lure the larger French j vessels after them. Admiral d'Annebaut, on con- 1 suiting his pilots as to how they might be at- tacked, was told by them " that it was impossible, because the channel which led to the place where they lay was so narrow that scarcely four ships could sail abreast " (no very sufficient reason), " and that, besides, there was no venturing among those sands without pilots who knew them." Finding that the galleys failed to lure the larger ships out, and that they were beaten off by the smaller; on the land breeze rising, D^Annebaut closed in towards the Isle of Wight, and landed 2,000 troops in three different places, and several villages were burned and destroyed. One of the officers, Pietro Strozzi, a noble cavalier, banished from Italy in consequence of some quarrel with the House of Medici, and who subsequently served against the English in Scot- land, and died a Marshal of France and Lord of Epernay, landed near a little fort, the guns of which had annoyed the galleys. On the approach of his force, it was precipitately abandoned ; but his people killed a few of the retreating garrison, and burned all the houses about it. Another division, led by the Sieur de Tais, who was general of the infantry, and by the Baron de la Garde, landed without opposition ; but had not penetrated far into the isle before the inhabitants gathered in arms, and made some head against them, taking possession of ground where they could attack the invaders with advantage, and where, when they chose to retire, they were safe from pursuit, unless the enemy followed in disorder, and exposed themselves to further loss. The Sieur de Tais, therefore, had to fall back. The Captains Marsay and Pierrebon, who led the third, were both wounded ; and their party found it necessary to retreat to their boats, and pull off with all speed to the ships. Meantime, the other troops who had been left on board, incited by the flames of those villages which Strozzi had fired, and seeing no one on the adjacent shore, landed without leave, to enjoy a little pillage ; but getting among some hilly ground were attacked by both horse and foot, and driven down to the beach. There they rallied, under protection of a fire from the ships ; and, being reinforced, again advanced against the islahders, who in turn retreated, and broke down a bridge to pre- vent further pursuit (Southey's "Naval History"). The admiral now held council how to proceed. In this assembly it was proposed by one " to force a passage into Portsmouth Harbour, and desti-oy the English fleet which still lay there." But the hazard of this enterprise was too great; and the captains urged that by securing the Isle of Wight, in the name of the King of France^ it would 132 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Isle of Wight. Isle of Wight.] AN INVASION BAFFLED. U3 eventually give them possession of Portsmouth. They could always be sure of a passage from the island either to Spain or Flanders ; and the land itself could be cultivated, so as to feed any garrison they might think proper to leave there. " These," says Southey, quoting Du Bellay, " were great utilities, and worthy of profound consideration; but, on the other hand, the difficulties that occurred were not less considerable. The Sieurs de Tais and de Saint Remy, and others who were versed in fleet could not depart till the works should be in a defensible state ; but it was impossible for them to stay there so long, because they had no port to secure them from the winds, neither were they victualled for such a time. The rainy and stormy season was coming on, when the ships would be in danger; and the soldiers on shore would be exposed to the effects of the weather, without tents or covering of any kind. These arguments had such weight that even those who were for taking possession of the isle submitted to LORD GREY OF WILTON'S CHARGE AT PINKIE {see ^a^e 137). such matters, agreed in opinion that it would be necessary to erect their fortress at the same time, on the plans which had been deemed best suited to that purpose. The ground was semicircular in its form, and at the points of the semicircle two forts were required to defend the road and protect their own fleet ; a third was necessary for lodging the troops. The cost of these works would be excessive, It would not be possible to complete them in less than three months, even if 6,000 pioneers were employed ; and the place being, as it were, in the heart of the enemy, less than 6,000 soldiers ought not to be left there, but it was impossible to leave so many now, and retain enough for manning the ships. Nor were these the only objections. The them, and agreed that the intention must be deferred till the king's further pleasure could be known." " For my part," says Martin du Bellay, " without offe nee to the Sieurs de Tais and de Saint Remy, it appears to me that, considering the desire the king had to secure himself against his enemy, the King of England, and the means which he then possessed, an opportunity for so doing was at that time presented which will neither easily nor soon be found again." Admiral d'Annebaut now sailed towards Dover, and made occasional landings for the purpose of pillage; but so resolute and active was the resistance of the people, that the French suffered more loss than they inflicted. .^f- ' 12 134 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Pinkie. Meanwhile, Dudley, who had been reinforced at Portsmouth, joyfully received the king's orders once more to put forth to sea and attack the enemy. His own orders to his captains were, that when a convenient time came for engaging, "our van- ward shall make with their vanward, if they have any; and if they be in one company, our vanward, taking the advantage of the wind, shall set upon the foremost rank, bringing them out of order, and our vice-admiral shah seek to board their vice-adniiral ; and every captain shall choose his equal as near as he may." " The last part of this order," says Creasy, in his "Invasions of England," "reminds us of one of Nelson's before going into action at Trafalgar — ' No captain can do wrong who lays his ship along- side one of the enemy.' " Sir John Dudley overtook the fleet of D'Anne- baut between Brighton and Shoreham, and some manceuvring ensued to gain the advantage of the wind. There were light airs and a nearly calm sea, which contributed greatly to the advantage of the French, who had so many row-galleys, and were independent of the wind. On the isth of August some distant cannonading took place between the fleets ; but next morning, when the wind had freshened, and given Dudley some hope of assailing them with advantage, he saw them in full retreat, as he expresses it, " sailing into the seawards." The previous day's encounter was called the battle of Brighton, or Brighthelm- stone. For the injuries done at the Isle of Wight, Dudley retaliated by crossing the Channel and sacking the town of Treport, -on the coast of France ; and thus the operations which had begun so ominously were concluded honourably for England. CHAPTER XXIV. PINKIE, 1547. The year 1547 found' England and Scotland again at war. In that year Henry VIII. died, leaving behind him a reputation very different from that which his earlier years presaged. He divorced his first wife upon the convenient plea of conscience, that he might marry one handsomer and younger. He murdered the second through satiety, and a growing passion for another. He married a third twenty-four hours after the execution of the second, who, happily for herself, died in a few months. He divorced the fourth, because she was less beautiful than her portrait. The fifth he beheaded, on very questionable evidence ; and the sixth he would have burned at Smithfield as a heretic. And yet, by his will, " he earnestly begs the blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, and the whole company of heaven, to pray to God continually for him " (" Acta Regia," Vol. III.). It was also enjoined by Henry's will that a marriage should take place, if possible, between Edward VI. and the young Queen Mary of Scotland, then in her fourth year. But the Scottish people were all, save a few nobles in English pay, averse to such a measure ; so the Protector Somerset soon evinced, by one of the very first acts of his Govern- ment, that he was resolved to carry Henry's dying wishes into effect. He determined to lead an army into the northern kingdom; and addressed a letter to all the principal nobility, reminciing them of the league by which they had bound themselves to assist the deceased King of England in the accomplishment of his designs. These measures Tvere very unwise, and only cal- culated to increase the rancour of the Scots, and bind them faster to France. The Earl of Arran, who was then Regent of Scotland, though a man naturally indolent, and of unsettled principles, exerted himself to create a vigorous union against the English. He became active in his military preparations ; he laboured to strengthen the defences of the borders, and to have the people trained by wapinschaws to arms. He encouraged the equipment of privateers, as the only substitute for the national fleet which Dudley had destroyed in the last war ; and he anxiously strove to soothe those sanguinary feuds, by which the chiefs and barons wasted the strength of the country, and when there was peace abroad, involved it in all the horrors of war at home. In the summer of 1547 he established a line of beacons upon the hills near and along the coast of the German Ocean and the Firth of Forth, from St. Abb's Head to Linlithgow. Mounted sentinels were stationed to convey intelligence of any hostile appearance ; and all persons were strictly forbidden to leave their residences or remove their goods, as it was resolved Pinkie.] SCOTLAND INVADED. I3S to defend Scotland at every hazard of life and blood. It was of this new and wanton war that the Earl of Huntly remarked in the Scottish Parliament that he " disliked not the match, but he hated the manner of wooing.'' Several acts of hostility preluded the battle to come. Hayward mentions that a small ship, called the Pansy, attacked at sea " the Lion, a principal ship of Scotland. The fight began afar off and slow, but when they approached it grew furious; but the Pansy so applied her shot that the Liotis oar-loop (deck) was broken, her sails and tackling torn, and, lastly, she was boarded and taken," but perished oiF Harwich, with all that were in her. Edward, Duke of Somerset, Protector of England during the minority of Edward VI., arrived at Newcastle on the 27th of August, at the head of 14,000 Englishmen, and many bands of foreign auxiliaries, trained and reckless soldiers, whose trade was war and rapine. He had with him 1 5 pieces of cannon, and 900 wagons laden with stores. Sir Francis Fleming was Master of the Ordnance, and had with him 1,500 pioneers, under Captain John Brem, to clear the way, for the Scottish roads were then rough and steep. Master William Patten, who accompanied this army as Judge-Marshal, has left us a minute account of the campaign, and an accu- rate list of all the commanders in the Protector's army ; to aid which were thirty ships of war, under Edward, Lord Clinton and Say, K.G. (afterwards High Admiral of England), and thirty-two trans- ports, under Sir William Wodehouse, vice-admiral, came to anchor at the mouth of the Tyne. Patten's work, which is extremely scarce, is en- titled " The Expedition into Scotland of the Most Worthy Fortunate Prince, Edward, Duke of Somer- set, &c., made in the First Yere of his Maistie's Most Prosperous Reign, and set out by way of Diarie by W. Patten, London. Vivat Victor ! Out of the Par- sonage of St. Mary Hill, in London, this xxviii of January, 1548." Lord Grey of Wilton, Lieutenant of Boulogne, was High-Marshal and Captain-General of the Horse, who were all cap-k-pie, in full but light armour. Sir Ralph Vane commanded the men-at-arms and demi-lances, who were 4,000 strong. Sir Francis Bryan (in the following year Governor of Ireland) was captain of the light horse, 2,000 strong; Sir Thomas Darcy led King Edward VI. 's band of Gentlemen Pensioners. Sir Peter Mewtas was commander of the German infantry, who were all clad in buff coats, pot helmets, and gorgets, and were armed with arque- buse'and sword. Don Pedro de Gamboa led the mounted Spanish arquebusiers. These trained foreigners, who were accustomed to discipline, and had served in many wars, were the flower of Somerset's army. Many of them were veterans who had served at the siege of Rhey, in 1521, when fire-arms were first used by the Spaniards. Edward Shelly led the men-at-arms of Boulogne, who, like the mercenaries, were well trained, but were Englishmen, who had been long in garrison there, and were clad in blue doublets, slashed and faced with red, and some were entirely in the latter colour. Sir Ralph Sadler, the famous diplomatist, was the treasurer, and , Sir James Wil- ford was provost-marshal of this army, which was in every way the best ordered that had ever entered Scotland. Scotland was at this time full of traitors ; for there was found in the July of that year, in St. Andrew's, a register-book, containing the names of 200 Scottish nobles and barons who had secretly bound themselves to promote the designs of England. " The most prominent among these most infamous traitors," says a recent " History of Scotland," " were the Earls of Bothwell, CassilUs, and Marischal, Lord Kilmaurs, eldest son of the Earl of Glencairn, Lord Grey, and the notorious Sir George Douglas. Bothwell had promised to transfer his allegiance to the English Government, and to surrender to them his strong castle of Hermitage, on condition that he should receive the hand of the Duchess of Suffolk, aunt to the young English monarch. The Earls of Athol, Crawford, Enrol, and Sutherland had been tampered with, and intimated their willingness to join the English faction, provided they were honestly entertained. Glencairn — a veteran in treachery and statecraft — had secretly made overtures to the Protector, offering to co-operate in the invasion of Scotland, with 2,000 of his vassals ; assuring Somerset that, if furnished with money, he would hold the Regent in check till the arrival of the invading army." And it was under the auspices of titled miscreants such as these that the Scottish Commons, ever most loyal and true to their country, now prepared to defend her. Somerset entered Scotlandon the 2nd of Septem- ber, and marched along the shore of the German Sea, keeping in view of his fleet of sixty-four sail, which bore towards the Firth of Forth. Without opposition he reached a place called the Peaths, a tremendous ravine, now crossed by a bridge, perhaps the greatest of its kind in Europe, as it is 300 feet in length and 240 feet in height. "Abrupt, precipitous, and narrow, this ravine formed one of the great passes into Scotland ; and, being of easy 136 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. ! Pinkie. defence, was deemed a kind of sluice, by which the tide of war would be loosened or confined at pleasure." But now the Regent, Arran, had taken no measures to defend it. For a whole day Captain Brem, with his pioneers, and Sir Francis Fleming, with his gunners, toiled, " with much pufifyng and payne,'' says Patten, to drag the cannon and carriages through that savage ravine ; while the Protector sent detach- ments against various feudal fortresses in the vicinity, which were stormed and blown up by gunpowder. Among them were Lord Home's castles of Dunglassand Thornton ; and Inverwick, a tower of the Hamiltons. Before the explosion of the mines, "it would have rued any good housewife's heart," says Patten, " to have be- holden the great slaughter our men made of the brood geese and good-laying hennes which the wives had penned up in the holes and cellars of the castle. The spoil was not rich, to be sure ; but of white bread, oaten cakes, and Scottish ale was indifferent good store, and soon bestowed among my lord's soldiers accordingly. The Earl of Warwick led the vanguard ; Somerset the main body; and Thomas, Lord Dacres, of Gillesland, the rear. Each of these three great columns was flanked in its march by horse, and each had artillery, with pioneers to guard and clear the way before them. Through Haddingtonshire the duke pushed on- ward to the Tyne, which his army crossed by the same old bridge that spans it still ; but not unopposed, as the peasantry and vassals of the house of Hepburn, who had no share in their master's treason, opened a fire of falcons and calivers from his castle of Hailes, while a brisk/ attack was made upon the defiling columns by Dandy Kerr, a famous border marauder, whose troopers, being lightly armed, were driven off by the English cavalry, under Lord Warwick. Laying all the fertile country in flames, they continued their march, till they halted on the 7 th at Long Niddry, where the coast is flat and low, and where Somerset could communicate with his fleet, which had then come to anchor in Leith Roads. He was now aware that a Scottish army was concentrated somewhere in his neighbourhood, as parties of. light horse were seen galloping along- the eminences, hallooing, and brandishing their spears, as if in defiance. Nevertheless, Lord Clinton was courageous enough to come on shore and attend a Council of War, at which it was arranged that he should moor the fleet near the mouth of the Esk, to co-operate with the land forces, which Somerset proposed to halt finally on the green links or downs eastward of the town of Musselburgh ; where on the evening of the 8th he saw the camp of the Scottish army, consisting of 36,000 men, mustered by the Fiery Cross, covering all the long green slope known as Edmondstone Edge, at the base of which the Esk flows into the firth. Somerset pitched his tent near the village 01 Saltpreston, and the whole country around it was laid desolate by fire ; all who failed to escape perished by the sword, and for three entire days the whole landscape was shrouded in the smoke of blazing hamlets, farms, mills, and stackyards. All this was visible from the camp of the exaspe- rated Scots, whose white tents, in four long rows or streets, lay from east to west along Edmondstone Edge. These were surmounted in many instances by the banners of nobles, chiefs, and towns ; and amid these tents the armour and weapons of so many men caused a glitter that seemed incessant to the eyes of the English. As in many other battles which the Scots lost by the treason of their nobles or the imbeciUty of their leaders, rather than any other cause, the first posi- tion of the Earl of Arran was a strong one. The Esk, deeper, broader, and more rapid then thah now, lay in front; its banks were steep, rocky, and covered with wood; the only avenue to the position was the old Roman bridge which still spans the stream, and this Arran had barricaded, planted with cannon, and manned with archers. The left flank, towards the sea, was protected by an intrenchment of turf, mounted with cannon ; while a deep and dangerous morass effectually covered the right. Such was the position of the Scots before the sanguinary battle of Pinkey, or Musselburgh, as the EngHsh named it. It barred the way to Edin- burgh, where the queen-dowager, the mother of the Kttle Queen Mary, anxiously awaited the result. To have assailed it would have been, perhaps, a hopeless task ; and Somerset began to fear that he might yet have to retreat. As the evening closed the Scots could see the English fleet coming to anchor by stem and stern, with their broadsides towards the shore. Next morning 1,500 Scottish light cavalry, moss- troopers, under George, Lord Home, rode along the slope of Fawside Hill, in sight of Somerset's camp. Their horses were strong and hardy; and they galloped to and fro, whooping, and taunting the English by injurious epithets to attack them. At last they ventured so close to the camp that Lord Grey of Wilton obtained permission to try the effect of his men-at-arms upon them. At the head of 1,000 of these, with the demi-lances of Sir t*inkie.j A CARTEL OF DEFIANCE. Ralph Vane, on barbed steeds, he came forth to the attack ; and both bodies of cavalry engaged with a ringing cheer that was heard in each of the camps. They met with lances in the rest, and hundreds were killed and wounded on both sides. It was impossible for the Scottish troopers, whose horses, were, as Patten says, " naked," i.e., without armour, to stand against cavalry who were com- pletely mailed, both horse and man ; they were soon broken, but, though losing all order, they continued the conflict along the whole slope of Fawside Hill. Lord Home was unhorsed, and so severely wounded that he died afterwards of the stab at Edinburgh ; his son, the Master of Home, was struck frorii his horse, and, together with the Laird of Garscadden and Captain Crawford, of Jordanhill, taken prisoner by the Earl of Warwick. This affair, the prelude to the bloodier drama of the morrow, filled the Scots with greater wrath ; and the English, though aware that they must either win a battle or be destroyed, with emotions of triumph which fhey cared not to conceal, for all night long their camp rang with sounds of merriment and acclamation. Somerset perceived that the Scottish camp was commanded by the hill of Inveresk, and by the higher parts of the lane that led to the opposite hill of Fawside; and these places he meant to occupy by cannon, after a reconnaisance about dusk. As he rode back to camp, " he was overtaken," says Tytler, " by a Scottish herald, with his glitter- ing tabard on, accompanied by a trumpeter, who brought a message from Arran, the governor. The herald said his first errand was for an exchange of prisoners ; his second to declare that his master, eager to avoid the effusion of Christian blood, was willing to allow him to retreat on honourable con- ditions. The trumpeter next addressed the duke, informing him that, in case such terms were not accepted, his master, the Earl of Huntly, willing to bring the quarrel to a speedy conclusion, was ready to encounter him with twenty to twenty, ten to ten, or, if he would so far honour him, man to man. To these messages Somerset made a brief and temperate reply. " As for thy master," said he, addressing the trumpeter, " he lacketh some discretion to send his challenge to one who, by reason of the weighty charge he bears— no less than the government of the king's person and the protection of his realm — hath no power to accept it, whilst there are yet many noble gentlemen here, his equals in rank, to whom he might have addressed his cartel without fear of refusal." At this moment the Earl of Warwick broke eagerly in, telling the messenger that he would not only accept the challenge, but would give him a f37 hundred crowns if he brought back his master's consent. " Nay," observed Somerset, " the Earl of Huntly is not equal to your lordship ; but, herald, tell the governor, and the Earl of Huntly also, that we have now spent some time in your country, our force is but a small company — yours far exceeds us — yet bring me word they will meet us in a plain field, and thou shall have a thousand crowns for thy pains, and thy masters fighting enough," So confident were the Scots of victory, that during the night many of the leaders amused themselves with playing at dice for the disposal and ransoms of the prisoners. In reality, Somerset was anxious to come to some arrangement He had wasted the country so much that food had become scarce, and it was lucky for him that the Scots were ignorant of this circum- stance. That night, to make a final effort to avert hostilities, he addressed a letter to Arran, in which he declared his readiness to retreat out of the kingdom on the single condition that the Scots would keep their young queen in their own country until she had reached a marriageable age, and could decide for herself; but this proposal was rejected with disdain. By the dawn of next day, the loth of September, 1547 — a clear and beautiful one — the English army was observed to be in motion. Somerset had sent some of his artillery to the green summit of Inveresk on one flank, and to Crookston Loan on the other, from whence they could open a fire upon the camp of the Scots, towards whom his whole force began to advance in three great columns — • Warwick still leading the first, the duke himself the second, and Dacres the third — but on coming into the fertile plain, which was pleasantly diversified by clumps of trees, and through which a little stream called the Pinkey flows, great was the joy and astonishment of the English to find that the Scots had left their strong position, to meet in the open field his well-trained mercenaries and better- appointed army. Most rashly and unwisely, the Regent of Scotland had mistaken the first movements of the enemy for an intention to seek safety in flight, by a precipitate rush over the sands of Musselburgh towards their ships ; and his sole alarm was lest, after an invasion so uncalled for, and devastations so merciless, they should escape unpunished. Thus he had resolved at once to cross the Esk, to get between them and the sea ; and this movement he executed in defiance of the advice of his most skilful soldiers, and with an army whose chief weapons were those of the Middle Ages, while the English had many of the more modern appUances for war, particularly those 13^ BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Pinkie. in the hands of the Germans, Spaniards, and the men of Boulogne and Calais, who had arquebuses, hand-guns, and pistols. As the Scots, after defihng over the Roman bridge, began to form upon the plain, the English cannon, armed now with iron shot, made many a ghastly lane in their ranks, causing their banners to sway, and their tall ash spears, which an old writer has likened unto a field of ripe corn, to wave to and fro, as if beneath the breath of the wind. in fear of the English Reformation spreading into Scotland more than it had done. Save their armour, which was generally black, they wore white, grey, or red surcoats, with crosses, to distinguish them as Black, Grey, or Red Friars; and they carried with them a standard of white silk, which had been solemnly consecrated by the Abbot of Dunferm- line. Thereon was depicted a woman on her knees before a cross, and over her head was the legend, "AfHictse Ecclesiae ne obliviscaris." INVERESK {see page 140J. The centre was led by the Regent, and consisted of the clans from Strathearn, with the men of the Lothians, Kinross, and Stirlingshire, who were the flower of the Scottish infantry. There, under their own banner, and led by the provost, marched 800 chosen men of Edinburgh. This division was 1 8, 000 strong. The right wing was composed of 6,000 Western Highlanders and men of the Isles, under Argyle and the chiefs of Macleod and Macgregor. On its flanks and rear were artillery. The left wing consisted of 10,000 infantry of the eastern counties, led by Archibald, Earl of Angus, flanked by cannon and light horse ; and with it marched a singular battalion, consisting of more than 1,000 Scottish monks, drawn forth, to battle Patten describes the Lowland infantry as being clad all "alyke in jackes covered with white leather, doublets of the same or white fustian, and most commonly all whits hosen." Why white is some- what singular. The Scottish spears were eighteen feet long; and thus when the infantry, in the old fashion of their country, were formed in squares, the first rank knelt, the second sloped, the third stood erect ; but all three with their weapons pointed at three angles towards the foe. On this day the royal standard of England was borne by Sir Andrew Flammock, a knight of proved valour; that of Scotland was borne by Findlay Mhor Farquharson, of Invercauld, who was killed. Pinkie.] THE STANDARD AND ITS BEARER. 139 140 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. tPinkic. After passing the church of Inveresk, the left flank of the Scots was severely galled by the fire from the English ships. The Master of Graham and twenty-five gentlemen fell, and the Highland archers, under Argyle, were thrown into confusion. This made the Scottish lines -move to the right, with the object of gaining the slope of Fawside Hill, that from thence they might attack the enemy. But the latter, being more skilfully led, had anti- cipated that movement by planting their artillery there in such a manner that they could fire over the heads of their own men full upon the Scots, whose right wing came up the slope at such a pace that, says Patten, they seemed " rather horsemen than footmen." As soon as Somerset perceived this movement of the Scots, he ordered Lord Grey to attack their right wing with the cavalry and the mounted Spanish arquebusiers, and keep them in check till his other divisions were in position on the slope of the hill. The wing halted in the midst of a ploughed field, the squares bristling with spears in the triple order described. Galloping over the soft and heavy ground, the mailed men-at-arms charged the Scottish spearmen again and again in vain, and many were unhorsed and slain by the furious thrusts of the long weapons, while the Scots, according to Patten, taunted them as "loons, tykes {i.e., dogs), and heretics." "Herewith," he continues, "waxed it very hot on both sides, with pitiful cries, horrible roar and thundering of guns; besides, the sky darkened above-head with the smoke of shot ; the sight of the enemy in front, the danger of death on every side, the bullets and arrows flying everywhere so thick, it was deadi to fly and danger to fight. The whole face of the field was to the eye and ear so heavy, so deadly lamentable, and terribly con- fused." Grey and his cavalry could make no impression whatever on those solid squares of Scottish infan- try, while 200 of his men were slain, and among them was Edward Shelly, " Lieutenant of the Bul- leners," R;.tclifr, Preston, Clarence, and other veteran English officers, who were dispatched by " the whinger," which the Scots carried in their belts. Here Lord Edward Seymour, son of the Duke of Somerset, had his horse killed under him, and Sir Andrew Flammock nearly lost the royal standard. He saved the silk, but the staff was torn out of his hands. Lord Grey was severely wounded in the mouth and neck; and, according to Hayward, had some Scottish cavalry come up at that moment, Somerset had lost the day, for the English men-at-arms were uttei-ly defeated. The present farmhouse called Barbauchly marks the scene of this encounter. Unable to pursue Lord Grey, the Scottish left, under Angus, halted, unwilling to advance against the main body of the enemy till certain of support. At that crisis, the Earl of Warwick galloped through the ranks of Grey, disengaged the men-at-arms from the infantry, among whom they had been mingling, and, with the assistance of Sir Ralph Sadler, led forward the Spanish squadrons of Don Pedro Gamboa. These arquebusiers were clad in complete mail ; and galloping close up to the squares, they fired their volleys straight into the faces of the Scottish spearmen. The German foot hackbutiers, under Sir Peter Mewtas, now came to the front to second this attack, and then the EngUsh archers with their shafts, while the cannon from the hill were firing on the right flank. Under this quad- ruple discharge, against which they had nothing to oppose but their spears, the division of Angus fell back, but in good order, upon the main body, under the Earl of Arran. Many of the High- landers, who were dispersed over the field, already plundering, after their usual custom, mistook this necessary rearward movement for a full retreat, and began to fly in all directions. The wretched panic speedily spread to the centre, which was chiefly composed of the burgh troops ; and though they were still a quarter of a mile distant from the enemy, and had never been engaged, they threw down their weapons, and fled in confusion. "They fly ! they fly ! " was the shout of the English. The Scottish left, or vanguard, under Angus, might still have withstood the advance of Warwick had they been supported, but now they would not sacrifice themselves. Those squares which had so lately shown an impenetrable a front to the foe were observed. first to undulate to and fro "like a steely sea agitated by the wind; after a few moments, breaking into a thousand fragments, they dispersed in all directions." All was lost now ; the ground over which the flight and pursuit lay was as thickly strewed with spears as a floor with rushes. Helmets, bucklers, swords, daggers, wheel-lock pistols, banners, and fragments of armour cast away by their owners as impediments to speed, covered all the fields and meadows ; while the English men-at-arms and demi- lances, exasperated by their late defeat and by seeing some of their dead stripped and mangled by the Highlanders, pursued the fugitives at full speed, slaying them thick and fast with sword and lance, crying to each other the while, " Remember Panierhaugh !" referring to the battle of Ancrum. Pinkie.! A SCENE OF SLAUGHTER. 141 They spared none but those from whom a heavy ransom was expected. The fugitives fled three several ways. One mighty mass took the way to Leith by the sands.; another made direct for Edinburgh by the Figget Moor and Holyrood Park ; while by far the most numerous body turned towards Dalkeith, in the hope that the morass which protected the right of their camp might prove a saving obstacle. The autumnal wind bore the noise of the battle at times to Edinburgh ; but when the English infantry reached Edmonds tone Edge, and found themselves amid the plunder of the Scottish camp equipage, the exulting shout they raised could be distincdy heard in the streets of the city, where that day's slaughter made 360 widows. The Scots by thousands threw themselves into the Esk, a deep river then, and perished miserably under the fire of the cannon from the ships, the fire of the Spaniards and Germans, or by the swords of the English when they scrambled to the bank. On the narrow Roman bridge the press of the living and choke of the dead and dying, men and horses, were frightful ; for Lord Clinton's great ship lay broadside on at the river's mouth (a proof of how much the water has shallowed) pointing her cannon on the flying masses ; and there were slain the Lord Fleming, the Masters of Buchan, Livingstone, Ogilvy, and ErskLne, all the sons of earls; the Lairds of Lochinvar, Merchiston, Craigcrook, Priestfield, Lee, and others, till the barricade of mail-clad dead impeded all further passage. Of the battalion of monks, all nearly perished to a man, and their holy banner was found upon the field. The Esk was literally crimsoned with blood, for the mass of the slain perished on its banks, " the EngUsh having vowed that if victorious they should kill many and spare few." The castle of Fawside, near the field, was set on fire by them ; the windows were all grated, and as none within it were suffered to come forth, "for their good will all were burned or smothered within" (Patten). He elsewhere admits that the aspect of the field was terrible — so thick were the corpses ; " some without legs, some houghed and half dead, many with their heads cloven, the brains of sundry dashed out, with a thousand kinds of killing. In the chase, all, for the most part, were killed either in the head or neck, for our horsemen," lie adds regretfully, " could not well reach them lower with their swords ; and thus, with blood and slaughter, the chase continued for five miles, from the fallow fields of Inveresk unto Edinburgh Park, and v/ell-nigh to the gates of the town itself, in all of which space the dead bodies lay as thick as cattle grazing in a full-replenished pasture. The river Esk was red with blood, so that in the same chase were counted, by some of our men who dili- gently observed it, as by several of the prisoners, who greatly lamented the result, upwards of 14,000 slain. It was a wonder to see how soon the dead bodies were stripped quite naked, whereby the persons of the enemy might be easily viewed. For tallness of stature, cleanness of skin, largeness of bone, and due proportion, I could not have believed there were so many in all their country." In the place where the English cavalry were routed he records that they found their horses gored and hewed to pieces, and their slain riders so dreadfully gashed and mangled that then faces were undistinguishable. "Little Preston was found there with both his hands cut off by the. wrists, and known to be him, for he wore on each arm a brace- let of gold. Edward Shelly, that worthy gentleman and gallant officer, lay among them pitifully dis- figured, mangled, and only discernible by his beard." And all this miserable slaughter had ensued to gratify the ambitious spirit of a dead kmg, who from his deathbed had bequeathed, hke the first Edward to his successors, the hopeless task of attempting to coerce a free and warlike people. Somerset did not follow up his success, or seek to pursue Arran, who retreated towards Stirling. To be ransomed, the Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Huntly, and 1,500 other prisoners, were sent on board the fleet; together with 30,000 suits of mail that were found on the field, or packed in cases in the camp. Besides " their common manner of armour" were foimd what Master Patten calls "certain nice instruments for war — nue boardes endes, about a foot in breadth and half a yarde in length, having on the inside handels made very cunningly of two cordes endes. These, O God's name ! were their targettes against the shot of our small artillerie, for they were not able to hold cannon." In the tents, he adds, were found abundance of good provisions, white bread, ale, oat cakes, oatmeal, mutton, butter in pots, and cheese, and in the tents of the nobles good wine and silver plate. Cold in the cause of their country, many of those same nobles, had been among the first to fly " like traitors," as Arran called them ; and hence came the rhyme, by which the Scots sought to console themselves for their defeat — "'Twas English gold and Scots traitors won Pinkie field, but no Englishman." The Highlanders suffered little lo'ss, they threw themselves into one dense circle, and in that strange 142 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Leith. order retired over the most difficult ground, where none could pursue them. After remaining a week near Edinburgh, during which he burned Sir Andrew Barton's house in Leith, set fire to that town, and stripped the lead off Holyrood Church, the Protector Somerset com- menced his retreat for England, having won a battle for no use or purpose ; and the young Queen of Scots became the bride of France. Sir John Hayward's assertion, that Somerset lost only " under sixty men" in the whole sixteen days' campaign, must be treated as absurd. As the English marched home by the field of Pinkie, they found the greater part of the dead still lying unburied. A number had been interred in St. Michael's Churchyard at Inveresk, in graves that were lightly turfed over. Beside several of the bodies, says Patten, there was set " a stick with a clout, a rag, an old shoe, or some other mark," by their sorrowing kindred, to distinguish them when they might come to inter them on the English leaving the country. The day of this defeat was long remembered as the Black Saturday of Pinkie ; but the EngUsh invariably named the battle after the adjacent town. • Thus, in Bunbury Church, Cheshire, there is a monument to Sir George Beeston, who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth for his bravery against the Armada, and who died in i6or, at the age of 102 years. He fought in that great slaughter of the loth of Sep- tember, 1547, as his tomb records, ^'■contra Scotos apud Musselborrow." In the following "acquittance," rendered into English, it is styled the battle of Inveresk : — " I, Walter Scott, of Branxholm, knight, grant me to have received from an honourable man. Sir Patrick Cheyne, of Essilmont, knight, the sum of eight score English nobles — for which I was bound and obliged to content, and pay to Thomas Dacre, of Lanercost, knight, Englishman — taken of the said Sir Patrick, at the field of Inveresk, for his ransom; for which sum I hold me well content and payed. In witness whereof I have subscribed this, my letter of acquittance, with my hand, at Edinburgh, this 2nd March, 1548" (Aberdeen Collections). The result of Pinkie added greatly to the ferocity of subsequent encounters between the English and Scots, and the latter, on the borders, made the most dreadful retaliations, leading for a time to an inextinguishable thirst for blood. CHAPTER XXV. SIEGE OF LEITH, 1560. No military event of importance occurred during the short life of Edward VI. or the subsequent reign of his sister Mary ; and, prior to the exploits of Hawkins and Drake, the defence of the seaport of Leith by a French garrison, under a Marshal of France, until compelled by hunger to eat their horses, when besieged by a mixed force of English and Scots, forms the next prominent occurrence in our warlike history. The ilame of the Reformation, long stifled in Scotland, had now burst forth and spread over the realm with the fury of a volcanic eruption. Eliza- beth, then on the throne of England, had composed the dissensions of that kingdom; and finding her power there firmly established, she naturally turned her attention to Scotland, where the Catholic party would have formed but a minority, save for the power of the Queen Regent, Mary of Guise and Lorraine, and the presence of the French troops, who had been sent there to uphold the authority of Mary, her daughter, the Queen of Scotland and Consort of France. Elizabeth, though anxious enough to make some profit out of tlie troubles of" the Scots, was too cunning, or too politic, to do much that might embroil her with France ; but she supplied the enemies of the Regent with money and encouragement in secret. After the disgraceful demolition of the cathedrals, churches, and monas- teries by the lawless mobs of Scotland, the Regent came to an open rupture -vvith the Lords of the Congregation, as the insurgent nobles termed themselves, and both parties appealed to arms. Powerful reinforcements were expected by her from France, and on the 30th of July she formed a camp on the common still known as the Links of Leith, a town which the French forces — some of whom had been long in Scotland— now began to fortify, by adding to the defences erected there ten years before by Andrd de Montalembert and General d'Ess^ d'Epainvilliers. Leith.] FIFESHIRE RAVAGED. 143 The council of the Protestant lords suspended the Queen Regent from the exercise of her office, but found themselves unable to reduce Leith, where the French soldiers, being veterans of Francis I. and Henry II., gave infinite trouble to the less skilful levies of the Congregation, which blockaded the town in October, 1559. Before proceeding to extremities, they sent a long-winded summons, in the names of " their sovereign lord and lady Francis and Mary, King and Queen of Scotland and France," demanding that all "Scots and French- men, of whatever estate or degree, depart out of the town of Leith within the space of twelve hours." No answer was returned. The Regent, whose power was now over, lay ill on her death-bed, in the castle of Edinburgh, and the assailants prepared to attack the last remnant of her adherents in Leith, which they endeavoured to carry by assault ; but their scaling-ladders proved too short, and the fire of the French repulsed them. The lords were short of money, and on losing 4,000 crowns of the sum sent by Queen Elizabeth for their aid, but which were abstracted, sword in hand, from the bearer by the Earl of BothweU, their troops became disheartened, irresolute, and disorderly, despising alike the threats of the peers and the denunciations of the preachers. In their disputation, they sent certain delegates to England, and a meeting was held at Berwick between the Duke of Norfolk and these persons, who were the Lord James Stuart (afterwards the Regent Murray), Patrick Ruthven (the ghastly Ruthven of the Rizzio murder), James Wishart, of Pittarrow, and three others. With these Re- formers the Duke of Norfolk concluded a treaty, which, with some slight alterations, was confirmed by the Queen of England. The chief object of this treaty was the defence of the Protestant re- ligion and of the ancient rights and liberties of Scotland against the attempts of France to destroy them and make a conquest of that kingdom — in effect, to crush completely the Catholic interest and the power of the House of Guise. While these arrangements were pending, the French troops, under General d'Oisel, the Count de Martigues, and others, were ravaging Fife and destroying the estates of the leading Protestant lords, though closely followed and harassed by a body of cavalry, under Sir William Kirkaldy, of Grange, who sent a challenge to D'Oisel, defying him to mortal combat — an invitation which the French- man declined to accept. When marching eastward, on the 25th of March, 1560, the French ravagers reached the promontory of Kincraigie, in Fifeshire, where they " discerned eight great ships of the first rate at sea;" and concluding that these must have on board the long-expected succours from France, under the Marquis d'Elboeuf; in honour of this arrival, they fired seaward a salute from their great culverins on the brow of the bluff. Their y^z/; dejoie and congratulations were somewhat premature, as the strange barques proved to be the English fleet, commanded by Vice-Admiral William Winter, Master of the Naval Ordnance, sailing up the Firth to assist the Scottish lords in the reduction of Leith. On discovering St. George's Cross, the French, overwhelmed with mortification and dis- appointment, broke into three separate columns, and retreated westward towards Stirling, there to cross the river and regain their shelter in Leith. Death and disaster were the concomitants of this retreat, for Kirkaldy and others followed them closely, till they reached the seaport, harassed, palled with excesses, and minus some of the best and bravest of their comrades, among whom they re- gretted none so much as a Swiss captain named L'Abast, whose skull had been cloven, through steel and bone, by the sword of the Master of Lindesay, near Kinghom. Coligny, the Seigneur d'Andelot, and Paul de la Barthe, Lord of Thermes, and Mardchal of France in 1555, also served in these Scottish wars. In fulfilment of the treaty with England, when the winter snows melted and the season- for action came, on the 2nd of April, 1560, there marched into Scotland an English force, amounting to 1,250 horse and 6,000 infantry, under the veteran William, Lord Greyof Wilton, Warden of the East and Middle Marches of England. The second officer in com- mand was Sir James Crofts ; the Lord Scroope was earl-marshal ; Sir George Howard was general of the men-at-arms, and Bumaby Fitzpatrick was his lieutenant ; Sir Henry Piercy was general of the light horse or demi-lances ; Thomas Huggins was provost-marshal ; William Pelham was captain of the pioneers (Stow) ; and Thomas Gower was captain of the ordnance. The spread of the use of fire-arms had now led to some alteration in the military equipments of this period. Armour now seldom came below the hip, complete suits being only used for tilting ; and knights frequently appeared in the lists without greaves or steel boots. The breastplates were made, however, much thicker, in order to be bullet-proof; the tassettes were now of one plate each, but marked as if composed of several ; the point of the tapul projected downward, like the doublets of Elizabeth's time ; and the morions were frequently beautifully embossed, especially those which came fi-om France and Italy. Carbines, petronels, and dragons are frequently mentioned among the fire- 144 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Leith. arms of the age. The first was so named from having been first used in the vessels called carabs ; the second from being fired with its square butt planted upon the chest ; the third from its muzzle being frequently decorated with a dragon's head ; and hence the troopers who used it came subse- quently to be named dragoons. The wheel-lock hackbut was used in Elizabeth's reign, with the rest for the heavy matchlock. But the powder was now made up in cases, each containing a complete charge, to facilitate the loading of the piece ; and the strap to which they were attached was named a collar or bandolier. The lighter troops, The prevailing colours for the clothing of this time were white and " sadd grene or russet," according to Grose, and red cloaks were worn chiefly by the cavalry. On the 23rd July, 1601, we find that when 1,500 of Elizabeth's soldiers arrived from England to share in the siege of Osl^end, they wore red cassocks. Of these, says Stow, 1,000 were Londoners, and they are now re- presented by the 3rd Regiment of Foot, or Kentish Buffs. On the day after Lord Grey of Wilton's forces entered Scotland, he marched as far as Dunglass, where the infantry encamped, while the cavalry EREECn-LOADING WHEEL-LOCK PISTOL (ABOUT TIME OF HENRY VIII.). STOCK OF rVORY. called demi-lances, were now replacing the heavily mailed men-at-arms, who had figured so conspicu- ously in all wars since the Middle Ages. In a letter of Sir John Harrington's, we find the pay and the clothing of Elizabeth's troops detailed at some length. The following is the outfit for an officer of the English service in 1599 : — ' A cassock of broadcloth jC^\ 7 7 A doublet of canvas, with silk lining and buttons 14 .S Two shirts and two bands ... Q 6 Three pairs of stockings, at 2/4 each ... ... ... ... 7 Three pairs of shoes, at ditto ... 7 One pair of Venetians {i.e, long hose), with silver lace -o IS 4 Total £a o 10. — some of whom had served at Pinkie — were peacefully cantoned in tlie adjacent villages. The next day's march brought them to Haddington. As they had passed the castle of Dunbar, some of the Queen Regent's adherents sallied out; an encounter took place, and some lives were lost. The third day's march brought them to Prestonpans, where they met the Scottish leaders, and had an interview; which is, perhaps, the more important from the fact that now we find, for the first time in history, Scottish and English forces acting together as alhes. Mary of Guise still remained obstinate. She would bow to no terms, and refused to dismiss the French troops without the consent of her daughter and the King of France. The English and Scots now advanced upon Leith, where the operations of the siege were inaugurated by a long and fierce Lelth..l THE FRENCH IN LEITH. MS skirmish, in which 900 French arquebusiers, under the Comte de Martigues, held the lanes and fields about Restalrig for several hours, but were at last driven firom their posts after severe losses, and had to take shelter in Leith, against which the English placed their ordnance in position, first at the eminence known as the Hawkhill, In the skirmish referred to, young Piercy, son of the leader of the demi-lances, is said to have evinced the most dis- tinguished bravery. and colonel-general of the infantry of France; Captain the Sieur Jacques de la Brosse, one of the hundred Knights of St. Michael ; General d'Oisel, and other French officers of rank : but the senior there was the Florentine, Pietro Strozzi, Lord of Epernay (one of whose brothers, Caspar, was killed at the storming of Inchkeith; another, Leon Strozzi, was Prior of Capua and general of the galleys of France at the siege of St. Andrews), and whose diploma as Marshal of INCIDENT IN THE SIEGE OF LEITH {ftefOge I46). The French in Leith were now reduced to 5,000 men, and their orders were to defend the place to the last. The long-'expected reinforce- ments, under Rend, the Marquis d'Elboeuf, uncle of the young Queen of Scotland and general of the galleys of France, never reached its shores. They were chiefly levied by the Rhinegrave's assistance (Camden) ; but a tempest scattered his fleet on the coast of Holland, and the little force in Leith was left to its own resources. It was now led by Monsieur Octavius, brother of D'Elbceuf, who was a peer of the house of Lorraine, and had led into Scotland some of the old Bandes Fran9aises ; the Comte de Martigues, a young noble of the house of Luxembourg, afterwards Due d'Estampes, 13 France was issued in 1554, six years before the siege of Leith. The fortifications of the latter at this time, chiefly made by the skilful French, under General d'Esse, consisted of strong walls and ramparts, with eight great bastions. Towards Edinburgh and the west these works measured about 16,500 feet; on the eastward more than 10,000 feet, and on the northern or seaward line more than 12,500 feet. The bastions, the first of which, called Ramsay's Fort, defended the harbour, were all angular, and well flanked out. The French had also taken possession of the tower of the preceptory of St Anthony, and had slung cannon up to its summit. The English, says Holinshed, began to cut 146 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [L'jith. trenches ; and raised a mound, which they called Mount Pelham, on the south-east side of the town, for a battery of cannon. Lord Grey, with the demi-lances, occupied the little town of Restalrig, and to the north of it the infantry, " with their captains, were lodged in halls, huts, and pavilions." In this camp were the Earls of Montrose, Argyle, Glencairn, the Prior of St. Andrews, and other Reformers, with only 2,000 men (though some accounts swell them up to 12,006), a fact which shows the total dislike of the mass of the people, either to the matter in hand, or to co-operation with English troops. Prior to the siege being opened, the French resorted to a little act of treachery. Strozzi sent a special ■ message to Lord Grey, requesting a " cessation of hostilities," which his lordship granted. Taliing advantage of this, the French issued forth, and flocked in considerable numbers, and all with their arms, about the English encampments at Restalrig, Hawkhill, and Hermit- age, affecting to be lured there by curiosity ; while several concealed themselves in thickets and bushes. Some jostled the English sentinels, to pro- voke a challenge or quarrel ; and when Lord Grey, disliking these demonstrations, ordered them to retire, their reply was that " they should like to know his right to order them off the ground of their mistress, the Queen Regent." They were then told that "had it not been for the cessation of hostilities granted at their own request, they would have been compelled to keep at a respectful dis- tance." This answer irritated the French, who, after defying the English to " do their worst,'' de- liberately fired their arquebuses and pistols point- blank into the faces of those who were nearest to them. A volley of English oaths followed this treacherous attack, and a conflict instantly ensued. Those French who were in concealment now rushed to join their comrades. The English, taken' thus completely by surprise, were thrown into confusion, and were seen running to arms in all directions, and yet none in camp knew whence' came the dreadful uproar. At every turn they were met and slaughtered by the French ; and shouts now mingled with the incessant explosion of arque- buses, till the French were driven in pell-mell through one of the gates of Leith, with the loss of 140 riien killed, and twelve gentlemen and five arque- busiers taken prisoners. The loss of the English is not recorded, but we may reasonably conclude that, as they were attacked unawares, it would , exceed that of th'eir assailants. The position of the English, on the rising ground extending to Hermitage Hill, was sufficiently com- manding and weir chosen, but was -too remote to enable the artillery of those days to injure either the town or its fortifications. They spent the first few days of the Siege in forming bulwarks arid digging trenches to protect themselves from the spirited arid incessant sallies of the French. Whenever they perceived any detachments advancing from the town, an equal ' force was ' sent to meet them.. These parties generally met midway on the Links of Leith, and there many encounters of a san- guinary nature ensued. Tiring of this, and to press the siege, Lord Gr6y' formed batteries nearer the walls — one, namdd Mount Pelham, already mentioned, at the distance of 1,200 feet from the eastern ramparts ; one, named Mount Somerset, at 600 feet distance ; and a third, named Mount Falcon, at 250 feet south- east of St. Ninian's Church — and it is interesting to observe that two of these mounds still remain ; arid from their summits may still be traced the zig-zags, or regular approaches made to the walls by the soldiers of Elizabeth. After a cannonade for several days from eight guns on Mount Somerset, the steeple of St. Anthony, with its cannon and defenders, fell with a mighty crash. This feat, which a single shot from some of our modern cannon would accomplish in one minute, afforded the greatest exultation to the gunners of Captain Pelham, " who actually con- templated with wonder the effect of their prow^s'sl." Admiral Winter's fleet now seconded the efforts oi the besiegers, by sailing close to the pier, where the crews opened a most destructive fire, by which many of the soldiers and of fhe luckless inhabitants were killed and wounded. ' ' Thomas Churchyard, the English poet, was one of Lord Grey's soldiers, and among his "Chips" is a poem entitled " The Siege of Leith ; more aptlie called. The Schole of Warre." It was printed at London, in 1565, and contains many curious details. Qn.the 21st of April, Jean de' Monluc, the learned Bishop of Valence, in Savoy, 'came as ambassador to Scoriand. He was conveyed fii'^ to the English camp, and thence to the castle of Edinburgh, where for two days, he held a confer- ence with the Queen Regent, without effecting the object of his mission — a peaceful reconciliation, with the dismissal of the French troops, who were already suffering from lack of supplies. , On the 4th of May an attempt was made to carry the town by storm ; and the " Orders for Thassalt" {sic), issued by Lord Grey, are curious, as being, perhaps, one of the oldest detailed orders extant, and containing the narnes of some of the earliest l^ith.] DEATH OF THE SCOTTISH REGENT. 147 oflScers in the English army: — "May 4, 1560, vppone Saturdaye, in the momyng, at thri of the clock, God willinge, we shalbe in readynes to give the assalte, in order as followithe, if other ympedyment than we knowe not yet of hyndre us not." For the first assault were detailed Captain Rede, with 300 men ; Captains Markham, Taxley, Sutton, Fairfax, Mallorye, the Provost - Marshal, Aston, Conway, Drury (afterwards Sir William Drury, Marshal of Berwick), Berkeley, and FitzwUliams, each with 200 men, and 500 arquebusiers to be furnished by the Scots. For the second assault, fourteen captains and 2,240 men. "To kepe the fielde," Captain Somerset and eight other captains, with 2,400 men. To be furnished by " the Vyce- Admyralle of the Queue's Majesty's Schippes," 500 men. Captain Vaughan was to assault the town near Mount Felham, and the Scots on the seaward. The attack on four quarters of the town was not made till seven in the morning. The fleet failed to send the required men, thus enabling the French to muster at the points assailed with greater strength. The scaling-ladders proved too short by half a pike's length. Sir James Crofts com- mitted some terrible blunders; and as he had lately had an interview with the Queen Regent, " appeared to act under enchantment." The whole attempt tinned out a failure, and the English were repulsed with slaughter, and driven out of their trenches by the Comte de Martigues, to the risk of having their cannon taken. Pitscottie says 100 of " the English white cloakes '' were slain. Keith has it that, in scouring the trenches, the French slew 600 men, spiked three pieces of cannon — and captured Sir Maurice Berkeley, adds Camden. The siege had contmued nearly a month, without any prospect of a termination ; and hitherto it had been attended with no other effect (exclusive of the daily loss of life, especially as Elizabeth continued to send more troops and ships) than of reducing the garrison to such dire extremity for want of provi- sions, that they were compelled to shoot and eat the horses of the officers and gens d'armes. Yet they endured their privations with true French sang-froid, vowing never to surrender while a horse was left ; "their officers exhibiting that poHteness in the science of gastronomy which is recorded of the Mardchal Strozzi, whose mJttre de cuisine, during the blockade, maintain.ed his master's table with twelve covers every day, although he had no- thing better to set upon it now and then except the quarter of a carrion horse, dressed with the grass and weeds which grew upon the ramparts." The repulse of the assault, in which we are told the French were assisted by their "Scottish par- amours," who fired arquebuses, and threw burning coals, stones, and timber on the stormers, greatly exasperated the English ; but still more did a dis- play of the dead bodies of their comrades, whom the French stripped quite nude, and barbarously arrayed in grotesque order on the slope of the glacis towards Lord Grey's camp — a display which John Knox pretends the Queen Regent could see, and exult over, from the castle of Edinburgh. The unfortunate princess was sinking fast, and now requested an interview with General d'Oisel, her friend and countryman, who was shut up in Leith. This, of course, was denied her. She then wrote to him, " telling him how heavily the hand of death now pressed upon her," and begging certain medicines. But this letter was intercepted by Lord Grey of Wilton. "Here lurketh some mystery," said the wary old veteran, as he viewed the letter in various ways, "for medicines are more abundant in Edinburgh than in Leith." On holding it before a fire some secret writing appeared, on which he threw it into the flames. " Albeit, I have-been thus her secretary,'' said he, " I shall keep her counsel, yet say unto her such wares will not sell until there be a new market." Mary did not live to. see the fall of Leith, as she died in the castle of Edinburgh, on the loth of June, utterly worn out by sickness and grief. Fresh reinforcements having come to enforce the siege (Sir James Balfour states in his Annals that by the time the horses were all eaten, the blockading force of the Lords of the Congregation amounted to "12,000 Scotts Protestants," com- manded by the Duke of Chatelherault, eleven peers, and 120 lesser barons), the queen being dead, and their cause desperate, the French gar- rison began to think of capitulating. A treaty of peace was framed, including England, Scotland, and France, and by this treaty, which was signed at Edinburgh, it was stipulated that the French should be allowed to embark for France, without molestation, with bag and baggage, on board of English ships ; and that the English forces should commence their homeward march on the day the French evacuated the town. It was expressly stipulated that an officer and sixty men of the latter should remain in the castle of Inchkeith, for what use we cannot now see. Accordingly, on the i6th day of July, 1560, the French troops, after plundering Leith of all that they could lay their hands upon, marched out, 4,000 strong, and embarked under Marshal Strozzi, r4S' BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Zutphen, on board of the queen's English ships, after having served in Scotland for nearly fourteen years. At the same hour the troops of Lord Grey began their march for the borders, and were accompanied as a mark of respect by many Lords of the Con- gregation. A solemn thanksgiving was held in the church of St. Giles, where the services were conducted by John Knox. After the conclu- sion of these important transactions, the safety of Berwick became a matter of serious consideration to the English Court, and its garrison was ordered to consist permanently of the strength of 2,000 men. Besides the battery-mounds, which still remain at Leith, and the trenches yet visible, many relics, of this siege are often discovered there. In the Scotsman of 1857 and 1859 are reported the ex- huming of several skeletons buried in the vicinity of these old earthworks ; and many human bones, cannon balls, old swords, &c., have been dug up from time to time in the immediate vicinity of the' street called Wellington Place. Two of the principal thoroughfares were long known by the name of "Les Deux Bras," being so styled by the garrison of Mary of Guise. CHAPTER XXVL ZUTPHEN, 1586. In tracing British military achievements through a series of historiettes, we have now arrived at the epoch of the two cousins, Elizabeth and Mary, an age rightly distinguished as "the Elizabethan;" the age in which the naval glory of England shone out so briUiantly — in which the Portuguese, the Dutch, and CastiUans had led the way to unknown seas and shores, and England was not far behind them; for Sir Francis Drake sailed round the world, Sir Martin Frobisher braved the terrors of the Arctic Sea, Sir John Hawkins traced out the burning coast of Guinea, and Sir Walter Raleigh colonised America, and named his settlement Virginia, in compliment to his queen. Though the latter preferred peace, she was not afraid of war ; and when the United Provinces, in their sore extremity, had recourse to her for pro- tection, she concluded a treaty with them, in con- sequence of which she was put in possession of the Brille, Flushing, and the castle of Ramakins, as security for the payment of her expenses. She knew that the step she had taken would imme- diately engage her in hostilities with Philip II. of Spain, whose bigotry and misgovernment had pro- duced such distress and dissension in the Nether- lands, to the heritage of which he had succeeded, like Maximilian of Austria, as a portion of the possessions of the Duke of Burgundy. But the power of Philip did not alarm her, though such prepossessions were everywhere prevalent of the vast force of the Spanish monarchy that the King of Sweden, when informed that the Queen of England had openly embraced the cause of the revolted Flemings, said, " She has now taken the 'diadem from her head, and placed it on the poirit of a sword ;'' and still more did it look like tlhis when the terrible Armada came to be spoken of. On the loth of December, 1585, the English armament arrived off Flushing, of which Sir Philip Sidney was already governor. It was under the command of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, K.G., who had been rejected by the Queen- of the Scots, and now aspired to the hand of Elizabeth ; a man who in private life was little esteemed, and in his public character detested as the murderer of Amy Robsart. The queen had bound herself to send a fleet of forty ships, the least of which should be forty tons ; but now this fleet consisted of fifty sail, chiefly hired merchant Ships, having on board 6,000 men. With Dudley were the Earls of Essex, Oxford, and Northumberland; Lords Willoughby, Audley, Sheffield, K.B., Burroughs, and North ; Sir Thomas Shirley, Sir Arthur Basset, Sir Gervase Clifton, Sir Philip, Sir Robert, and Sir Henry Sidney, and many other knights, together with a select troop ' of 500 gentlemen. The latter served at their own" expense, as volunteers, and among them was Sir Francis de Vere, one of the most gallant soldiers of the age, and the lineal descendant of Alaric de Vere, who came over with William the Conqueror. By the revolted Flemings, Leicester was received as a guardian angel ; and, by way of expressing their gratitude to his sovereign, they immediately made him Governor and Captain-General of Holland, Zealand, and the United Provinces, investing him with absolute power. He was attended by a noble Zutphen.]* THE ENGLISH IN FLANDERS. 149 guard, and saluted by all men with the title of " Your Excellency," upon which, adds Camden, " he begaai to take upon him as if he were a perfect king." Leicester possessed neither, courage nor capacity to fulfil the trust reposed in him ; and he speedily showed his inability to direct military operations by permitting the Duke of Parma to advance in a rapid course of conquests, and abused his authority by a course of : administration, wanton and cruel, weak yet oppressive. At this period companies of infantry in all Euro- pean armies varied from 1 50 to 300 men, and each company had a colour or ensign, and the mode of formation recommended by Sir John Smith, an English military writer of those days, was that the co- lours should be in the centre invariably, and guarded by the halberdiers ; for under Elizabeth every com- pany consisted of men armed in five different ways. In every hundred men, forty were men-at-arms, and sixty " shot." The former were ten halber- diers and thirty pikemen. Bruce, in his " Military by the Lord of Van Henjert, a Dutchman, says Car- dinal Bentivoglio, in his " History of Flanders," and formed its garrison when besieged by the Spaniards under the Prince of Parma. " The enemy strove to capture the place, and Leicester .prepared to relieve it. For that purpose he sent out a good proportion of horse and foot ; and the king's men were not wanting in making such opposition as was needful, though they had not men ehough to keep the garrison from making excursions, and hinder the designs which the enemy had without. During this uncertainty of the siege on one side, and of the succout on the other, there happened divers actions and skirmishes, one of which proved very bloody. The English intended to reheve the town chiefly by the way of a great dyke that ran along the Maese, and for this purpose had fortified themselves .upon it, and prepared divers barques upon the river. Wherefore, taking their time, they began to march with some squadrons of foot, and advanced boldly. The Royalists {i.e., the Spaniards) were very watchful on their part ; and, resolving to Arquebuses. Archers Muskets. 30 Pikes. P Halberts. 30 Pikes. Muskets. Archer.s. Arquebuses. Law, 17 1 7," says, the tallest men were always "culled out for that service." The "shot" were twenty archers, twenty musketeers, and twenty arquebusiers, and, in addition to his principal weapon, every man carried a sword and dagger. According to the tactics of the time, the formation of a single company in line would appear as above. It was customary to unite these companies into one body, called a regiment, frequently amounting to 3,000 men. The muskets carried a ball weighing one-tenth of a pound ; the arquebuse a ball weighing one-twenty-fifth of a pound. The ancient war-cry was still retained, as it was enacted that all soldiers entering into battle, assault, skirmish, or other faction of arms, shall have for their common cry " Saint George, forward ! " or, " Upon them, Saint .George !" At this time the rank of sergeant-major, ■then the same as adjutant, first appears. No great batde, but. Httle more than a series of skirmishes, some of which were brilliant in their way, distinguished the expedition of Leicester to the Low Countries. He suffered the Prince of Parma to besiege and capture Greve, or Graves, Venloo, and other places, and then to pass the Rhine, after.which he threw succours into Zutphen. At Greve the English infantry were commanded repulse the succour, likewise marched boldly to the encounter. The conflict was very hot for a time, till the English began to give way and retreat, which made the King of Spain's men press forward the more eagerly ; but being too enthusiastic in their pursuit, they fell into disorder, and while in this state were suddenly attacked by u fresh body of English infantry, and routed with great slaughter." The English were commanded by Sir Francis Vere, and the Spaniards were the brigade of Don Juan d'Aquila, who there lost seven captains, among other officers, and 200 soldiers. The English failed to capture another dyke, of which the Spaniards had possessed themselves ; but the repulse of Aquila, a maestro de campo, enabled them to succour their countrymen in the town, by means of some boats on the Maese, and thus pro- tract the defence, a result which exasperated the Prince of Parma, who ordered Altapenna to re- linquish the siege of Nuys, and bring his troops to Greve. Fresh trenches were dug and batteries erected, and twenty-four pieces of heavy artillery were opened upon the town. The Earl of Leicester, on whom the hopes of the beseiged rested, had already advanced to Utrecht, and thence to Amheim. but there he halted. On this ISO BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. fZutphen. " the Lord of Hemert, with some of his captains, being poorly timorous, began to treat for a sur- render. Nor could the prince refuse them any conditions they could desire, that he might the sooner rid his hands of the enterprise." The garrison had made a brave defence, and the pany distinguished themselves at the escalade of Avil. Some brilliant services were also performed by his friend and comrade, Sir Philip Sidney. The latter, on his arrival in Zealand, had formed a close friendship and intimacy with Maurice, son of the Prince of Orange, and in conjunction with SIR PHILIP SIDNEY AT ZUTPHEN (seepage \tfl). troops were permitted to march out with bag and baggage, arms and armour, and with colours flying ; but the Prince of Parma repented that he had not taken them all prisoners of war, for the moment they reached the camp of the Earl of Leicester, that noble, in virtue of his authority as governor and captain-general, mercilessly put the Lord of Hemert, " and all the captains that partook with him in the surrender, to an ignominious death." After the fall of Greve, Sir Francis and his com- him entered Flanders, and took Axel, in Zealand, by surprise. Though local historians always name the prince only in this enterprise, the honour of the contrivance and the execution of it are as- cribed by the English to the gallant Sidney, who revived the ancient discipline of perfect silence on the march, and by this conduct his soldiers were enabled to approach the walls unheard, and to scale them in the night, when no attack was expected. Having succeeded in this, a chosen band made Zutphen/J THE CAPTURE OF AXEL. 151 directly for the court-of-guard, hi. the market-place, took the officers prisoners, and thus the victors be- came masters of Axel before the Spanish comman- dant, who had the keys of the town under his pillow, had the least idea it was taken. Encouraged by this success, Sidney made an at- tempt on Gravelines, but the design failed, through some treachery on the part of an officer named La Motte. On the Prince of Parma, the brilliant Alexander capitulated at the first cannon-shot ; he then marched on to Zutphen. The city had a great earthen fort on the side which faced the river, and two smaller works, which aided in strengthening the place. The commander of the Spanish garrison was John Baptisti di Tessis, an Italian cavalier. He instantly dispatched messengers to the Prince of Parma, requiring succour, as he was short of provisions, and unable to endure a siege. Crossing the Rhine by a pontoon bridge, the THE TAKING OF ZUTPHEN (see page I53). Famese, marching to Rhineburg, which was held by a garrison of 1,200 Englishmen, under Colonel Morgan, the Earl of Leicester began to bestir him- self He, perhaps, felt shame at the conquests of the prince. He reinforced his army as much as he could, says Cardinal Bentivoglio, and resolved to relieve that town, or make some diversion by besieging one garrisoned by the King of Spain. He was on the other side of the Rhine, in the province of Overisel, so called because the Isel runs through it. On the right bank thereof stands Zutphen, a town then of the greatest importance, which Leicester hoped to reduce ; but before doing so he resolved to take Doesburg, a small town upon the same river. It was garrisoned by only 300 Walloons, who prince marched at once towards the English. En route he was informed that 2,000 reiters had been raised on the confines of Germany by the Count de Meurs, to join Leicester, and that there was no time to be lost. He therefore selected 1,500 hors^ mounted a Spanish arquebusier behind each rider, and sent them forward with all speed towards Zutphen, while he followed with his main body. The advanced party fell in with the reiters of the count, who were not expecting an attack, and were easily cut to pieces ; and, thereafter, pushing on, the prince prepared at the point of the sword to succour Zutphen. The Marquis of Vasto was ordered forward with some squadrons of Italian horse, and a body of Spanish, Italian, and Walloon infantry, as 152 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Zutphen. an escort to a long train of wagons laden with provisions for the city. The cavalry, who were in front of this formidable convoy, were suddenly assailed in a fog by those of Leicester, who charged them with so much force and fury that they were disordered and driven back. They rallied, but only to be driven back again by the English. A second time they rallied, and the conflict long remained doubtful. The Marquis de Vasto displayed the greatest valour. The Italian troops, under the Marquis Hanibal de Gonzaga, the Marquis de Bentivoglio and Giorgio Cresso, fought with incredible ardour ; but the last-named leader fell into the hands of the, English, and Gonzaga, an Italian noble, of high family and brilliant reputation, was unhorsed and mortally wounded. During the conflict the Prince of Parma came up, with his whole army in order of battle; upon which the Earl of Leicester, whose forces were no match for the more numerous Spaniards, ordered his trumpets to sound a retreat, and thus permitted Zutphen to be relieved. At a future time he assaulted the earthen forts by which the town was defended, and one of the lesser was stormed and garrisoned by the English, under an officer named Rowland Yorke. It was during one of these conflicts before Zutphen that the episode occurred which made the name of Sir Philip Sidney so remarkable in history. He had signalised himself one day by prodigies of valour, for he was a warlike enthusiast of the highest order. Two horses had been killed under him, and he was in the act of mounting a third, when an arquebuse-shot from the trenches broke one of his thigh-bones. He was unable to manage his horse, but the faithful animal bore him out of the field to the camp, a mile and a half distant. He was in great agony, and faint from loss of blood, and when passing the rest of the army called for water. It was brought him, but as he was putting the bottle to his mouth, he saw a poor English soldier borne past who was more severely wounded than himself, and who gazed at the bottle longingly, and with haggard eyes. " Thy necessity is yet greater than mine," said the gentle and heroic Sidney ; nor would he drink until the soldier had been satisfied. He was then borne to Arnheim, where the principal surgeons were stationed. Hopes were entertained of his recovery for sixteen days ; but as they were unable to extract the ball, and mortification ensued, he prepared to meet death, with a resignation, piety, ind fortitude that corresponded to his past life ; and le expired in the arms of his brother. Sir Robert Sidney, on the 17th of October, 1586, in the thirty- second year of his age. The United Provinces wished to have the care of his- interment, but this was declined by Queen Elizabeth, by whose orders his body was embarked for England with the military honours of the time. It was received at the Tower of London in the same manner ; and, after lying in state for some days, was solemnly interred in old St. Paul's. Besides his fame as a soldier. Sir Philip Sidney has left us an unfading memorial of his genius in his celebrated romance of " Arcadia." His patent to be Governor of Flushing was dated ' at Westminster," 9th Novem- ber, 1585 (Rymer's "Fcedera"). the pedantic King of Scotland was so struck with admiration of Sidney's virtue that he celebrated his memory in Latin verses, which are but little known now. It was in this war that shells were first thrown out of mortars, at the siege of Wachtendonk, by the Count of Mansfeld. They were first invented by a citizen of Venloo, who on a festival celebrated in honour of the Duke of Cleves, threw a certain number, one of which fell on a house and set fire to it, by which misfortune most of the city was reduced to ashes. The Earl of Leicester, a man of gi'eat pride and ambition, is accused by the Dutch historians : of aiming at sovereign power in the provinces he had come to free, and yet failed to achieve anything in their behalf. Colonel William Stanley, a Cathohc, was colonel of an English regiment, 1,200 strong, that garrisoned the city of Deventer ; but, in his zeal for rehgion, and dread of the result of the Babington conspiracy, he gave up the town to Tessis, the Governor of Zutphen, and joined the Spaniards with all his men, an example followed soon after by Rowland Yorke, who held the forts of Zutphen; so loss and treachery soon excited an outcry against Leicester, who was summoned to England, leaving Lord Willoughby to command the English forces in the Low Countries. Colonel Paton, a Scot, who held the town of Gueldres, fearing that his post would be bestowed upon an Englishman, about the same time surrendered it to the Spaniards. "Were these the aids, were these the advan- tages, they expected from England?" exclaims Cardinal Bentivoglio. " Was this the fruit they reaped from the Earl of Leicester's government? On his coming into Flanders he made miracles to be expected at his hands ; but how soon were those miracles turned into shame ! How many places had the Duke of Parma taken, while he has looked on ! And how much to his dishonour had he failed to relieve Zutphen ! On leaving for Eng- land he had become the enemy of the Flemings, Drake's Exploits. 1 THE FALL OF ZUTPHEN. 153 and had placed Englishmen wherever he pleased, in lieu of the native Flemish." Zutphen eventually fell, through the generalship of Sir Francis Vere. Prince Maurice being about to advance towards it, Vere pushed forward with his own corps, sweeping the country of its cattle and forage to straiten the garrison. Adjoining the town stood a strong fort, the possession of which promised materially to forward the operations of a siege ; but which on a former occasion had cost Leicester a heavy loss ere he succeeded in reducing it. Of this fort Vere resolved to make himself master, and he chose the following stratagem for the purpose. Selecting certam young men of his corps, he appareled them like Flemish countrywomen, and sent them forward with well-filled baskets on their backs, but with swords, daggers, and loaded pistols under their aprons and fardingales. They tra- velled towards Zutphen in groups of two and tlu-ee together, to elude observation, and about dawn of day found themselves close to the gate of the fort, where they sat down and deposited their baskets, as if waiting for a ferry-boat. No suspicion that they were other than that which they appeared to be, market-women, arose among the garrison. The Spanish soldiers opened the gates as usual, let down the bridge, and many came forth to converse with the country-people, who now ran to meet them, with loud laughter, till they gained the covered way. Then they drew their weapons, overpowered the barrier-guard, and maintained themselves in the archway till a body of troops, sent forward swiftly and silently by Vere to their support, came up. So the castle was taken, and Zutphen, which depended upon it as a principal bulwark, surrendered after a very feeble resistance (" History of the Republic of Holland," London, 1705). CHAPTER XXVII. EXPLOITS OF SIR FRANCIS DRAKE. By sea, the attempts of Elizabeth to humble the Spaniards were much more successful and brilliant -than in the Low Countries. America was regarded as the chief source of the great wealth of Philip II., as well as the most defenceless portion of his vast dominions; and as a breach had now been made with him, Elizabeth was resolved not to leave him unmolested in that quarter. The great success of the Spaniards and Portuguese in both Indies had excited the emulation of the English ; and as the progress of commerce — still more that of colonies — is slow, it was fortunate that a war at this critical period had opened a more flattering object to ambition and to avarice, by tempting England to engage in naval enterprises. Drake and Hawkins were at this time in the zenith of their fame ; but accounts differ very much £ls to the naval force of England. Some assert that the navy about the year 1578 consisted'of 146 sail, whose guns varied from forty to six. Campbell, in his " Lives of the Admirals," discredits this state- ment ; and the most accurate accounts we seem to have of the navy in the year named make it to consist of only twenty-four ships — the largest being the Triumph, of 1,000 tons, and the smallest the George, 60 tons. " The whole number of ships in England," says Captain Schomberg, R.N., "was estimated at this time at 135, from 100 tons upwards, and 650 from 40 to 100 tons." The queen dined on board the ship, the Golden Hind, in which Sir Francis Drake sailed round the world, and gave orders that it should be preserved as a lasting monument of his own and of England's glory ; but in process of years she was broken up, and nothing now remains of her but a chair, which was presented to the University of Oxford. The dinner occurred at Deptford, on the 4th of April, 1584, and on that occasion she knighted him. Drake, one of England's most eminent naval heroes, was born of humble parents, near Tavistock, in 1545. He was one of the twelve sons of Edmund Drake, a poor seaman, and in his nineteenth year was captain of the Judith, when he fought so gallantly under Sir John Hawkins, at San Juan de Ulloa, in the Gulf of Mexico. Under Sir Francis, a ileet of twenty-one sail was prepared for an expedition to the West Indies. Besides the seamen, 2,300 soldiers, under Chris- topher, Earl of Carlisle, were put on board. Many of the latter were volunteers of spirit and enterprise, and all were led by well-trained officers; for, like the navy, the army was now becoming a regular profession. The land officers were Captain Anthony Powel, sergeant-major; Captains Morgan 154 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Drake's Exploits. and Sampson, "corporals of the field;" and ten other captains. Drake's own ship was named the Elizabeth Bonaventure, Captain William Fenner. The Great Galleon was under Rear- Admiral Francis Knollys ; Carlisle, lieutenant-general, was in the Tiger. This expedition left England in March, 1585 ; and the reader may be able to form some idea of the names, dimensions, and weight of the cannon-shot, and powder of the ancient English ordnance from Sir William Morison, in his " Naval Tracts," written in the time of Elizabeth """ J"*"^" '■ ■ &i &i, £| Names. Bore. ■t6 ^•3 it tl Inches. lbs. lbs. lbs. Cannon-royale 8J 8,000 66 30 Cannon 8 6,000 60 27 Serpentine ... 7 S.SOO S3J 2S Bastard Cannon 7 4,500 41 20 Demi-Cannon 6? 4,000 30} 18 Culverin .Si 4,500 17J 12 Basilisk .S 400 15 10 Salter ?.\ 1,400 5i A Falcon 4 660 2 3i Bombardes were greatly used by the Spaniards and Portuguese on board of their great caracks ; and M. Blondel, in his " Art de Jetter des Bombes," says, they were first used for shelling pur- poses in land war against Wach- tendonck, in Gueldreland, in 1588. The use of the explosive shell had at this time been known t:o the English for more than forty years. Stow tells us that, sbout 1543, Ralph Hogge, the Sussex gun - founder, brought over a certain Fleming, named Peter Van Collet, who "devised, or caused to be made, certain mortar pieces, being at the mouth fi-om eleven to nine inches wide, for the use whereof the said Peter caused to be made cer- tain hollow shot to be stuffed with fyrework, whereof the bigger sort for the same has screws of iron to receive a match to carry fyre, to break in small pieces the said hollow shot, whereof the smallest piece hitting a man would kill or spoil him." Drake's first exploit in this voyage was to plunder Vigo, to the amount of 30,000 ducats, including a cross from the cathedral, of silver double gilt. His DAG, OR PISTOL, FROM ZUCCHERO'S PORTRAIT OF THE EARL OF LEICESTER (PARHAM collection). next was the surprise and capture of St Jago, near the Cape de Verde. There he found plenty of provisions but no treasure, and after setting the town on fire he bore on for the West Indies ; and after losing 300 men by disease at Dominica, in January, 1586, he was off the island of Hispaniola. He landed with 1,200 pike- men and musketeers, and 200 seamen, within ten miles of the city of San Domingo, and when he drew near it there came forth 150 Spanish gentlemen, all well mounted and armed, to oppose him, but they were speedily repulsed ; and then the EngUsh advanced towards the two gates of the city, which then faced the sea. These barriers the Spaniards were resolved to defend, and had manned them both well. In front of each they had planted some pieces of cannon, and placed arquebusiers in am- bush on each side of the way ; but Sir Francis Drake and a cap- tain named Powell, each leading one-half of the force landed, marched resolutely against both gates at once, vowing that, " with God's assistance, they would not give over till they met each other in the market-place." Sir Francis, having received the fire of both the cannon in front and the ambush on his flank, charged furiously to prevent them reloading. He captured the guns, put the Spaniards to flight, and entering the gate with the fugitives, pell-mell, soon cut a passage, as he had sworn, to the market - place, where Captain Powell, whose success at the other gate was exactly sitnilar, met him soon after, with the survivors of his command. There they barricaded themselves, because the town was too large to be overrun by a force so small as theirs ; and about midnight they attacked the gate of the castle, upon which the Spaniards instantly abandoned it. Some of the garrison were made prisoners, and the rest fled seaward in boats. The English having now possession of the fortress, enlarged their quarters, and remained in Drake's Exploits. ] DRAKE IN HISPANIOLA. 155 San Domingo for a month. They were completely masters of the place, which an eye-witness of the expedition, whose narrative is preserved, describes as a city of great extent and magnificence, but which Drake wasted with fire and sword during the whole of January. During that time he sent a negro boy with a flag of truce to the Spaniards. He was met by some officers of a galley which Drake had taken in the harbour, and one of them barbarously ran him through the body with his sword. The boy lived to crawl back and acquaint Sir Francis with this outrage, and then expired at his feet. Upon this, in a very questionable spirit, Drake ordered his provost-marshal to hang two Spanish friars he had taken prisoners ; and sent another to inform the Spanish officers that "until they delivered up to him the officer who murdered his messenger, he would hang two Spanish prisoners every day." ■ The Spaniards thereupon found themselves com- pelled to send the officer ; and Sir Francis forced the escort who brought him to hang him instantly in his presence. These stern measures greatly terrified and ex- asperated the inhabitants of San Domingo, to whom he sent commissioners to treat about the ransom of the whole city from destruction ; and, to make matters more speedy, as there was some delay in the transaction, he employed 200 seamen in the task of deliberately burning the place. But the houses being all of stone, and remarkably well built, they could not consume above one-third of it. At. last the Spaniards agreed to give 25,000 ducats, value five shillings and sixpence each, : that the portion of the city remaining might be 'spared. He carried off a vast quantity of rich .■"apparel, Hnen, woollen, and silk stuffs, with wine, ■ oil, vinegar, wheat, and store of china, biit very little plate, and, save t"he ransom, no money of consequence, as the Spaniards had only copper, for want of hands to work the mines of silver and gold. ' ■ He next appeared off Carthagena, in New Anda- lusia, as it was then named. The harbour had two entrances, the chief of which lay half a league east- Ward fi-om the city, and the other nearer, named La Bbcachico. Both of these have ever been dangerous, on account of the many shallows at the entrance, ciusingthe most careful steerageto benecessary. But though the city was fortified by many " sconces," or batteries. Sir Francis Drake sailed boldly in with his pinnaces, and took it by storm on the land side. He also captured two forts, one of which secured tlje mouth of the smaller entrance together with a bbom. --He tookand plundered 'a great- Franciscan abbey that stood thereby, surrounded with strong walls. Here many of the English perished by wounds from poisoned arrows, and poisoned spikes which were stuck in the earth. He completely pillaged Carthagena, set it on fire, and would have destroyed it completely, had it not been ransomed by the neighbouring colonies for the sum of 1 20,000 ducats. San Antonio and Santa Elena, on the coast of Florida, shared the fate of Carthagena ; and soon after he appeared off San Augustine — a little town with a castle, in the province of Sagasta, near the river May, upon a pleasant hill covered with fine trees. Fort St. John defended the town, which was almost square, with four streets, composed entirely of wooden houses. Fort St. John was octagonal, with a round tower at each corner. Drake instantly attacked it, upon which the garrison fled, abandoning. ;!^2,ooc in a treasure-ship, and fourteen pieces of brass cannon, all of which were sent off to the fleet, which, after pillaging and burning the town, bore along the coast of Virginia, where Sir Francis found the small remains of the colony which Sir Walter Raleigh had planted there, and which had gone to extreme decay. The poor planters implored Drake to take them back with him to England, to which he returned with so much riches that priva- teering became greatly encouraged ; and he brought .such accounts of the weakness and cowardice of the Spaniards, that the spirit of the nation became in- flamed for further enterprise. Even the great mortality which the climate had produced in his fleet — which lost 700 men — the result also of excess and meagre medical arrangements — was but a slender restraint on the avidity and sanguine hopes of young adventurers. Ralph Lane, one of the Virginian colonists who came home with Drake, is said by Camden to have been the first man who brought the tobacco-leai to England. The fleet came to anchor in Portsmouth Harbour on the 28th of July, 1586. Drake brought back with him to England plunder to the value of ;£6o,ooo sterling, with 240 brass and iron cannon ; and the fame of this induced a gentleman of Devonshire, named Thomas Caven- dish, who had dissipated a good estate by living at Court, to seek his fortune, sword in hand, among the Spaniards. He fitted out three ships at Ply- mouth, one of 120 tons, another of 60 tons, and a third of 40 tons, and with these small vessels he haa the hardihood to sail for the southern seas, where he committed terrible depredations. He took no less than nineteen Spanish vessels, richly laden; and iS6 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Drake's KxploiSs. '\ -pit- ''<-^. '%-- ^>ii f,V .; WW- £* iK; i>, iTrake's Exploits. ] DRAKE BEFORE CADIZ. IS7 returning by the Cape of Good Hope, he came to London, where he sailed up the Thames in a kind of picturesque triumph. His mariners and soldiers were all clothed in silk of the most brilliant colours ; his sails were of damask, his topsail was glittering cloth of gold, and the prizes were the richest that had as yet been brought to England. But now Elizabeth, on hearing that Philip of Spam, though he seemed to dissemble, or to ignore the daily insults and injuries sustained by his flag from the English, was equipping a great navy to attack her, ordered Sir Francis Drake once more to prepare for sea. man of the bedchamber, who (Welwood asserts in his memoirs) stole the keys from the pocket of the pontiff while he slept. Bishop Burnet observes that Walsingham's chief spies were priests, and he used to say " an active but vicious priest was the best spy in the world." Drake sailed from the Thames, Strype says, with forty galleys, for the coast of Spain. Four of these were the largest ships of the queen ; the remainder were furnished and equipped for him by the mer- chants of London, in hope of making profit out of the plunder. His chief ships were the Bonaven- ture; the Lion commanded by William Borough, SIR FRANCIS DRAKE. These equipments ultimately developed them- selves as the Great Armada ; but the arrangements were so vast that Sir Francis Drake says in one of his letters, quoted by Strype, that the Spaniards had provisions of bread and wine alone sufficient to maintain 40,000 men for a whole year. And that these preparations were aimed against England was discovered by Walsingham in a very singular manner. On learning that PhiUp had dispatched an express to Rome with a secret letter, written by his own hand, to the Pope, Sixtus V., " acquainting him with the true design in hand, and asking his blessing upon it;" Walsingham, by means of a Venetian priest, retained by him as a spy upon the Vatican, got a transcription of the original, which was abstracted from the Pone's cabinet by a gentle- 14 Comptroller of the Navy; the Dreadnought, Captain Fenner; and the Rainbow, Captain Bel- lingham. After anchoring in Plymouth Sound, he learned from two Dutch vessels which he hailed, that a Spanish fleet, richly laden, was lying at Cadiz, ready to sail for Lisbon, the rendezvous of the intended Armada. He bore boldly for that harbour. Six galleys which endeavoured to make head against him he compelled to run for shelter under cover ol a fire from the forts. In spite of the latter, he plundered and sank or burned more than 100 vessels laden with provisions, arms, and ammuni- tion. Among them were two stately galleons, one belonging to the Marquis of Santa Cruz, the other to the Venetians of Ragusa, mounting 158 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. ITlie Spanish Armada. many brass cannon. Running thence along the coast to Cape St. Vincent, he stormed the castle on that promontory, and other fortresses, and pillaged the towns in succession, till he came to the mouth of the Tagus, when he in vain endeavoured to lure out the Marquis of Santa Cruz to fight him, by plundering and burning all the ships he found there. Sailing thence to the Azores, he met on the way, near the isle of St. Michael, a mighty carack, called the San Philipo, returning from the East Indies, and captured her with ease; and the papers that were found on board of her so fully illustrated to the English the value of Indian merchandise, and the mode of trading in the Eastern Hemi- sphere, that " they afterwards," says Camden, " set up a gainful trade and traffic, establishing a com- pany of East India merchants." The loss of the provisions and stores which Drake destroyed at Cadiz, in what he jocularly termed " singeing the King of Spain's beard," com- pelled Philip to defer his darhng project of invading England for another year, and gave that country time to prepare ; while, by the success of the expeditions of Drake, her seamen were fast learning to despise the great and unwieldy ships of the Spaniards, who ere the year closed had fresh source for disgust, when Rear-Admiral Sir John Hawkins, when lying with a fleet of Her Majesty's ships in the Catwater, fired a shot into the Spanish admiral, who came into Plymouth with the fleet that was to escort Anne of Austria, for not striking his flag, "and paying the usual honours to Her Majesty's colours, which, after much altercation, he compelled him to do " (" Lives of the Admirals "). And now came the year 1588, when Philip II. hoped to have a sure and terrible vengeance for all the past. CHAPTER XXVIIL THE SPANISH ARMADA, 1 588. Undoubtedly the greatest event of Elizabeth's reign was the defeat of the Invincible Armada — the mighty fleet destined by Philip to conquer England. His grand or ostensible object was the destruction of Protestantism ; but he was smarting under a consciousness of repeated insults, of territories ravaged, cities burned, and the loss of many great treasure-ships. His vanity was also wounded by Elizabeth's refusal to marry him, as her sister had done ; and after the death of Mary Stuart, whose execution was deemed by all Europe an outrage on the law of nations, he did not conceal his claims to the double inheritance of the crowns of England and Scotland, which she had bequeathed to him from the scaffold at Fotheringay. His ambassador, Mendoza, thus wrote to him : " God having been pleased to suffer this accursed nation to fall under His displeasure, not only in regard to spiritual affairs by heresy, but also in what relates to worldly affairs, by this terrible event (the death of Mary), it is plain that the Almighty has wished to give your Majesty these two crowns as your own entire possession." John Leslie, the celebrated Bishop of Ross, and the devoted adherent of Mary, wrote in French and Latin and m English, a declaration to prove that Philip II. was lawful heir to the throne of England, the King ofScotland having rendered himself incom- petent to succeed, in consequence of his heresy from Rome. The Duke de Guise was of the same opinion, and consigned to the King of Spain the task of avenging Mary Stuart, and securing Catholicism in England ; and having at his disposal the ships and seamen of all Spain, Portugal, and Italy, with troops deemed then the finest in Europe, with all the treasures of the New World, he seemed to possess resources sufficient for the mighty enterprise he resolved to undertake — an enterprise which he had conceived so early as 1570, and began to execute in 1588. The roadstead of Lisbon was to be the general muster-place of the fleet ; and there, in the spring of 1588, assembled the shipping furnished by Sicily, Naples, Catalonia, Andalusia, Castile, and Biscay. These vessels were of various dimensions. There were caravels, caracks, xebecs, galleys (the general craft of the time), some with sails, some with oars; a number of galleons; and four galeases of enormous size, that towered like wooden citadels amid the lesser vessels of the fleet. Their forecastles were literally fortified, and carried several tiers of guns. This fleet had on board 21,556 troops, who were The Spanish Armada.] THE PREPARATIONS. 159 to land on the coast of England. They were carefully equipped with arms and ammunition of every kind, and had provisions sufficient for a six months' campaign in the field. The Vicar-General of the Holy Office was on board, with a hundred Jesuits and other priests, to work the re-conversion of the island ; and while this vast armament was pre- paring at Lisbon, under the command of the Marquis de Santa Cruz, one of the most successful admirals of the age, the Duke of Parma was concentrating a vast force on the coast of Flanders to follow up the first blow, if successful. That able captain, besides his garrisons, received under his colours S,ooo men from Central Italy, 4,000 from Naples, 9,000 from Castile and Arragon, 3,000 from Ger- many, together with four squadrons of reiters; and he had 800 Englishmen under the deserter Sir William Stanley, with other forces from the Walloon country and from Franche Comte. He felled the whole forest of Waes to build flat- bottomed boats for the conveyance of 100,000 horse and foot down the canals to Nieuport and Dunkirk for transport to the mouth of the Thames, under the escort of the mighty Armada. but the Spanish historians affirm it to have amounted to 132 sail, divided into squadrons, as follow: — The Portuguese Galleons, under the Generalissimo . Biscayan Squadron, under Don Juan Manez de Re- caldez, Captain-General. Castilian Squadron, imder Don Diego de Valdez ... Andalusian Squadron, un- der Don Pedro de Valdez Guipuzcoan Squadron Levant Squadron, under Don Martin Vertondonna Squadron of Hulks, under Don Juan Lopez de Me- dina Squadron of Xebecs, &c., under Don Antonio Men- doza Galeases of Naples, under Don Hugo de Monendo Galleys of Portugal, under Don Diego de Medina... Ships. Tons. Guns. Sailors. Soldiers. la 7739 389 1242 3086 14 5681 302 906 2H7 16 8054 477 1793 2624 II 8692 315 776 2359 14 7192 296 608 2120 10 8632 319 844 2793 23 10860 446 950 4170 24 2090 204 746 1103 4—200 477 744 4 — 200 424 440 Total 132 58940 3148 8766 21556 This number of men is exclusive of 2,088 gaUey- slaves. On board the fleet was a vast quantity of WROUGHT-IRON BREECH- LOADING SHIP GUN, FROM THE WRECK OF THE "MARY ROSE" (TOWER COLLECTION). All manner of machines used in sieges, and of material for building bridges, forming camps, and building fortresses, fascines, field and garrison gun- carriages, were also prepared at a vast expenditure of money and labour ; and Pope Sixtus had pledged himself to advance a million of ducats the moment the expedition touched the soil of England. In a bull intended to be secret until the hour of landing, the .anathema hurled against Elizabeth by Pius V. and Gregory XIII., as a bastard and heretic, de- posed her from the throne. Nor did the scheme end there, for it was confidently expected that the Most Catholic King, who already possessed the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, the Indies, and nearly all Italy, on making himself master of England on one hand, and on the other of Scot- land, would turn the arras of them all against Constantinople, and expel the Turks from Europe. A letter of Sir John Hawkins to Sir Francis Walsingham computes the Armada at 114 vessels; military stores for the land service, consisting of single and double cannon, culverins, and field- pieces, 7,000 muskets, 10,000 halberds, 56,000 quintals of gunpowder, and 12,000 quintals of match. Moreover, the ships were laden with horses, mules, carts, wheels, wagons, spades, and mattocks, and all things requisite for a permanent residence in England. An enormous quantity of saddles and bridles were provided. At Dunkirk 20,000 empty casks were collected, with ropes to make floating bridges ; and to the conquest of England, as in the days of Harold the Saxon, there came nobles and princes from many places, crowd- ing under the banner of Alonzo Perez de Gusman, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who had succeeded the Marquis de Santa Cruz in the command, for which he was quite unqualified ; but he had two able seconds in Juan Manez de Recaldez, of Biscay, and Miguel de Orquendo, of Guipuzcoa. Among these were the Duke of Petrana, from i6o BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [The Spanisli Armada, Spain, the Marquis de Bourgou, son of the Arch- duke Ferdinand of Austria, Vespasian di Gonzaga, of the house of Mantua, a great soldier, who had once been Viceroy of Spain ; Giovanni di Medici, the Bastard of Florence ; Amadeo of Savoy, and many others. Meanwhile the Queen of England and her people were not idle in preparing to resist this mighty armament, the fame of which filled all Europe. Elizabeth summoned her most- able councillors, some of whom, like Raleigh, Grey, Bingham, Norris, and Grenville, had been bred to arms, and pos- sessed military talents of a very high order. It was resolved to equip a fleet adequate to the great emergency, and to raise all the land forces possible ; and for this purpose circular letters were addressed to the lords-lieutenants of the different counties, and the returns showed that there could be raised for the defence of England 132,689 men, of whom 14,000 were cavalry. These levies were exclusive of the city of London, which offered the queen 10,000 men and 30 ships ; and, as Stow records, " The merchants met every Tuesday to practise all points of war. Some of them, in 1588, had charge of men in the great camp, and were called Captains of the Artillery Garden." Their first place of meeting was in Tasel Close, now Artillery Lane, Bishopsgate. Along the southern coast were disposed 20,000 men; under the Earl of Hunsdon, 45,000 men were collected for the special defence of the queen's person; r, 000 horse and 22,000 foot were posted- at Tilbury, to protect London against the Prince of Parma ; and, as Macaulay's noble ballad has it — "From Eddystone to Berwick bounds, from Lynn to Milford Bay, The time of slumber was as bright and busy as the day." In Scotland, the king, who had rejected the proposals of the Spaniards to ally themselves with him, and to invade England by the borders with an army under Parma, took all the necessary measures for defence, by the erection of beacons, and the enrolment of every man above sixteen years of age, capable of bearing arms, in the kingdom ; on which Elizabeth sent Sir Robert Sidney as a special ambassador to thank him, and promise assistance if the Spanish troops landed on the Scottish shores. On the 4th of August, he wrote to EUzabeth from Edinburgh, to the effect that he did not pro- pose to aid the EngUsh as a foreign prince, but as their countryman and her "natural-bom son" (Rymer). The ships of the English navy at this time amounted only to thirty-.six ; but the largest and most serviceable of the merchant vessels were collected from various ports to form a fleet, to man which there came forward 17,472 mariners. The number of ships was 191 ; their total tonnage was only 31,985 ; but there was one, the Triumph, of 1,100 tons, one of 1,000, one of 900, others, smaller, and twenty of only 200 tons. Assistance was given by the Dutch, who sent, as Stow has it, " threescore sail, brave ships of war, fierce, and full of spleen, not so much for England's aid as in just occasion for their own defence." The command of the fleet was given to Lord Howard of Effingham, High Admiral of England, and his vice-admirals were Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Hawkins, and Sir Martin Frobisher, men whose names, even after the lapse of nearly three centuries, are still their country's pride. On the 1 2th of July the Armada put finally to sea ; the orders of Philip to the Duke de Medina Sidonia being' that " he should, on entering the Channel, keep near the French coast, and if attacked by the English ships, avoid an action, and steer on Calais Roads, where the Prince of Parma's squadron was to join him." As these many vessels spread their canvas to the breeze, the grandeur of the spectacle excited the most flattering antici- pations of success, and thousands of hearts beat high with the hope of conquest and visions of coming glory. But the duke having been informed that the English fleet were lying "off their guard," in Ply- mouth Sound, could not resist the chance of de- stroying it there ; and, deviating from his orders, he stood at once across to the coast of England. On the 19th of July the Armada was off" the Lizard, where a Scottish privateer's-man. Captain Thomas Fleming, saw them, and hoisting every inch of can- vas, ran into Plymouth to warn the English admiral. By sound of cannon and trumpet the crews were summoned on board; and though a stiff south-west wind was blowing, the vessels worked out into the offing. Lord Howard that night got clear out to sea with only six of his ships, but between twenty and thirty more came out in the morning ; and with these under easy sail, he stood along shore in view of the cliffs they had come to defend, anxiously looking out for this long expected and terrible Armada. "On the night of that memorable 19th of July, messengers and signals were dispatched fast and far through England to warn each town and village that the enemy had come at last ! In every shire and every city there was instant mustering of horse and man ; in every seaport there was instant making ready for sea; and, especially along the The Spanish m mada. J THE ALARM. i6i southern coast, there was hurrying to join the Admiral of England, and to share in the honour of the first encounter with the foe " (Creasy). Among those who came thus with their ships were the Earls of Oxford, Northumberland, and Cumberland, Sir Robert and Sir Thomas Cecil, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Thomas Gerard, and others. " Upon the newes being sent to Court from Plimouth of their certain arrival]," says Robert, Earl of Mon- mouth, in his " Personal Memoirs," " my Lord Cumberland and myselfe tooke post-horses and rode straight to Portsmouth, where we found a frigat that carried us to sea." With a fleet amounting ultimately to 140 ships, when near the rock known as the Eddystone, the admiral discovered the Armada to the westward as far as Fowey, sailing in the form of a half-moon, seven miles in length. All were under full sail, yet coming slowly up the Channel. " The ships appeared like so many floating castles," says Lediard, in his old " Naval History," " and the ocean seemed to groan under the weight of their heavy burdens. The Lord High Admiral willingly suffered them to pass by him, so that he might chase them in the rear, with all the advantage of the wind ;" in other words, he got the weather-gage of the Duke of Medina Sidonia. The two fleets were sailing thus on the morning of Sunday, the 21st July, when, six miles westward of the Eddystone, Lord Howard, at nine o'clock, sent forward a pinnace named the Defiance, " to denounce war," by a discharge of all her guns — a demonstration which he immediately seconded by the fire of his own ship, the Ark Royal, which opened a furious cannonade on the ship of Don Alphonso de Leva, which from its size he supposed to be that of the Spanish admiral. Shortening sail, he poured a terrible fire into her, and would have destroyed her had she not been rescued by several other vessels closing in. Now Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher vigorously engaged the enemy's sternmost ship, under the Captain-General, Don Juan, the Marquis de Re- caldez, who was on board one of the Portuguese galleons, and did all that a brave man could do to keep his squadron together ; but, in spite of all his efforts, so sternly was he attackgd, that they were r'riven among the main body of the fleet, while his own vessel was so battered in the hull by shot that she became quite unserviceable. The Spanish fleet being somewhat scattered now, the Duke of Medina Sidonia signalled for the ships to close, and, hoisting more sail, sought to hold on his course towards Calais ; and now the battle took the form of a running fight. In this movement a great galleon, commanded by Don Pedro Valdez, being seriously battered in her hull and wrecked aloft, fell foul of another ship, and was so disabled that she was left astern by the rest, just as night was coming on, and the sea running higji ; and the English admiral, supposing that slie had neither soldiers nor sailors on board, passed her in the pursuit. On the morning of the 22nd, she was seen by Sir Francis Drake, who sent a pinnace with orders for her to surrender; but Don Pedro Valdez repUed, " I have 450 men on board, and stand too much upon my honour to yield." He then propounded certain conditions; to which the response of the vice-admiral was that "he might yield or not, as he chose, but he should soon find that Drake was no coward." Don Pedro, on learning that his immediate oppo- nent was Drake, whose name was a terror to the Spaniards, yielded at once, and his ship was sent into Plymouth. Prior to this, Drake divided among his own crew 55,000 golden ducats which he found on board of her. On the same night that Don Pedro was aban- doned, the Spaniards had another mishap. A great ship, of Biscay, commanded by Don Miguel de Orquendo, was maliciously set on fire by a Dutch gunner, whom he had ill used; but other ships closed in, and the crews extinguished the flames, yet not until her upper deck was blown off. "Drake had been ordered to carry lights that night," records Lediard ; " but being in full chase of five German hulks, or merchant ships, which he supposed to be the enemy's, happened to neglect it. This was the cause that most of the fleet lay by (to ?) all night, because they could not see the lights." That night the Spanish fleet bore on by the Start, and next morning they were seen far to the leeward; and Sir Francis Drake, with his ships, did not rejoin the admiral until evening, as he had pursued the enemy within " culverin-shot " till daybreak. The whole of this day was spent by the duke in repairing damages, and putting his fleet in order. He commanded Don Alphonso de Leva to bring the first and last squadrons together ; assigning to each ship its station in battle, according to a plan agreed upon in Spain, and any deviation from whicli involved the penalty of death. Orquendo's great ship had her crew and valuables taken out of her, and was cast adrift. She was found by Captain John Hawkins, with " fifty poor wretches " on board, the stench of whose half-burned bodies was horrible. A prize-crew took her into Weymouth. t62 I?RITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. iThe Rpaiiisli Armaila. After a calm night— the wind being northerly — on the following morning the Spaniards tacked, md bore down upon the English ; who also tacked, and stood westward. After several attempts to gain the weather-gage, another battle en- sued, which was marked only by confusion and va- riety of success. The English ships, being better han- dled and lighter in draught than the unwieldy ar- gosies of the Spaniards, stood quickly off or on, as their captains saw fit. The firing was now ringing over the Channel for many miles ; and while, in one quarter, some ships of London which were com- pletely surrounded by the Spaniards were gallantly res- cued, in another, the latter, with equal bravery, saved from cap- ture their Admiral Recaldez. " The great guns on both sides rattled like so many peals of thunder ; but the shot from the high-built Spanish ships flew for the most part over the heads of the English, without doing much exe- cution." A Mr. Cock, who was gallantly fighting a little volunteer ship of his own, named the Delight, was the only Englishman of note killed. Some officers advised Lord Howard to grapple and board ; but knowing that the Spaniards had 20,000 soldiers on board, he wisely declined to do so, as loss on his side would peril the safety of all England, The Spaniards at first bore down under a press of sail, as if they nteant to board the English ; but seeing that the Ark, the Nonpareil, the Elizabeth Jonas, the Victory, and others, were prepared to meet them, they were content to drop astern of the s';cond - named Sihip. In the mean- time, the Tritimpk, Merch a n t -Royal, Cefiturion, Mar- garet, John, Mary Rose, and Golden Lion, being far to leeward, and sepa- rated from the rest of the fleet, were borne down upon by the great gal- eases of Naples, and a fierce con- flict ensued for an hour and a half, till the Neapoli- tans sheered off, when a change of wind to the south west enabled a squadron of Eng- lish ships to attack the western flank of the Spanish fleet with such fury that they were all compelled to give way ; and so, till the sun began to set, the desultory and running fight went on. Wher- ever the firing was hottest. Lord Howard's ship was seen. In this day's strife a great ship of Venice and many smaller were taken ; and the Mayflower, a merchantman of London, behaved bravely, " like a man-of-war." On the 24th of July there was a cessation of hostilities on both sides, and Lord Howard, being short of ammunition, sent the pinnaces inshore for a supply of powder and ball, as both had failed in BLADE OF THE SWORD OF SIR FRANCIS DRAKE (SIR SIBBALD SCOTT'S "BRITISH army"). sa pw iS' M ■ V Si o o O a w s^ 5^-3?*V _-ii£)ft j-*"[ -• '; *. " "" ' « ^ ( '■C.J t. I. "^ f iiS^ \ *•• ';' l|-i'' 1 1. 176 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Drake's Last Exploits, One of the strange galleys bore down on their lee when the evening sun was setting beyond Cape Corrientes, and fired six cannon-shot at them ; clos- ing in upon their starboard quarter, she next gave them the fire of five brass guns from her bow, but without doing damage, and then endeavoured to board ; but the English fired so briskly with their small-arms that the Spaniards abandoned the at- tempt. They next tried it by the stern, but Nicholson threw a fire-ball among them, so the galley sheered off. While still endeavouring to beat to seaward and escape, they saw the two galleys and a frigate bearing down upon them. Believing themselves lost now, they swore to fight it out to the last man, and, by shouts and derisive cheers, dared the Spaniards to board them. One shot more was fired, but no closer attempt was made ; and thus the swift little vessel continued a running fight with the ships and galleys from seven in the morning till eleven at night. In all that time only two men were wounded in the Co)i- tent, and not a man killed. About two next morn- ing they had a gale from the east-north-east, which proved the means of their escape. When day broke the Spanish squadron was far to leeward ; and though they continued the chase till ten o'clock, the gallant little vessel escaped by her swift sailing beyond all pursuit. In this flying skirmish she was engaged "for fifteen or sixteen hours with three Spanish armados, of 600 tons or 700 tons each, not being above musket-shot from any of them ; and before the sun set there had come up two of the king's galleys to the fight. The armados fired continually at her with their great guns, not less than 500 times ; and her sides, hull, and masts v,'ere literally sowed with niusket-balls. Her sheets, tops, and shrouds were almost cut asunder with their great and small shot. Through her mainsail she had nineteen great shot; through her maintopsail four, through her foretopsail five, and through her mainmast one." If all this be true, we cannot wonder at the sailors of Elizabeth, and those of later times, having a hearty contempt for the gunnery and seamanship of the Spaniards. CHAPTER XXXI. LAST EXPEDITION AND DEATH OF ADMIRALS DRAKE AND HAWKINS, 1595. In England the rumour was universally gaining ground that Philip of Spain had designs of in- vading that country with a fleet more formidable even than the Great Armada of 1588. Hence the queen ordered two squadrons to be fitted out — one to cruise in the English seas, and another for service in America or the West Indies ; while the King of Scotland, now in alliance with her, levied, in conjunction with England, troops against the Spaniards. The foreign squadron consisted of twenty-six ships ; but Sir William Monson only gives the names of the following : — Defiance, 500 tons, Sir Francis Drake, Commander; Garland, 700 tons, Sir John Hawkins ; Hope, 600 tons, Captain Gilbert York ; Bonaventiirc, 600 tons, Captain Troughton ; Foresight, 300 tons, Captain Winter ; Adventure, 250 tons, Captain Thomas Drake. The land forces were commanded by Sir Thomas Baskerville. Sir Nicholas Clifford was lieutenant- general; Captain Arnold Baskerville was sergeant- major ; and there were Captain Nicholas Baskerville and eight other captains over the troops. This West Indian expedition was specially urged upon the queen by the two admirals, Drake and Hawkins, who promised " to engage very deeply in the adventure, both with their substance and per- sons; and such was the opinion every one had conceived of these two valiant commanders, that great were the expectations of the success of this voyage.'' Notwithstanding all the preparations for defence of the coast, and for the annoyance of the foe elsewhere, in the month of July, 1595, a body of Spaniards suddenly landed in Cornwall, under the command of Don Diego Brojen, and burned Penzance, the church of St. Paul, which stood in the fields, and the fisher villages of Newlyn and Mousehole, and all without resistance. Accordin<; to Carew, the inhabitants were infatuated by an old Brake's Last Exploits.; DRAltE At POK.TO RICO. 177 prediction in the Cornish language, to the effect that a period would arrive when " Strangers would land On the rocks of Merlin, To burn Paul's Church, Penzance, and Newlyn ;" but when the prophecy had been fulfilled, they found courage to assemble on the beach, and thus intimidate the Spaniards, who re-embarked, spread their sails to the breeze, and left the coast. In the subsequent month the fleet of twenty-six sail, under Drake and Hawkins, left Plymouth Sound, but whether direct for San Juan de Porto Rico, where the queen was informed that vast treasures were collected for the King of Spain, or for Nombre de Dios, and thence to march to Pa- nama, is uncertain now, for. after putting to sea the admirals would seem to have altered their plans. On the 31st of August they last saw the Lizard, and on the 27 th of September were off Canaria Grande, the chief isle of the Canaries. They made a fruitless attempt to possess themselves of it. Hawkins was averse to landing at all, deeming it a loss of time to do so, and risking the chance of greater success elsewhere ; but Drake and Basker- ville, especially the latter, undertook to reduce the whole island in four days with the pikemen and musketeers. To their importunities, added to those of the seamen, who were already short of provisions, he was obliged to submit; but the attempt proved a failure. Afterwards they sailed for Dominica, one of the Antilles group ; the right of occupancy there being claimed by England, France, and Spain, so that it remained a neutral island till 1759, when it was finally taken by Great Britain. The expedition arrived there on the 29th of October, and as the admirals stayed too long, building pinnaces and trafficking with the natives for tobacco, tidings of their coming spread from isle to isle, and the Spaniards everywhere prepared for defence. On the very day of their arrival at Dominica, five Spanish ships which had been sent out to watch their hiotions, and convey the Plate fleet home from Porto Rico, captured a little English vessel, called the Francis, which had strayed from the fleet. 'S>y cruel and barbarous tortures, the Spanish officers wrung from her master and mariners a confession that the English had designs on Porto Rico; for whicsh place they at once bore up, to give intelli- gence of an expected attack. The result was that the treasures of gold and silver were immediately buried, and small vessels were dispatched to all the isles and sea-coasts to give the Spanish colonists timely notice ; so that when the admirals arrived off San Tuan de Porto Rico, on the 12 th of November, it was so secured that they had little hope of success. As soon as they came to anchor in the harbour — the same harbour where, in the subsequent year, the Earl of Cumberland was so nearly drowned by the weight of his armour — the enemy's batteries opened on them. On the Moro Fort alone were forty pieces of cannon. The fire was sharp and heavy ; and that evening Sir Nicliolas Clifford and Captains Browne and Strafford were all mortally wounded as they sat at supper with Admiral Drake, whose stool was knocked from under him by the same shot, just as he was in the act of drinking a can of beer. The resistance of the Spaniards was desperate and protracted; and during the contest Sir John Hawkins died, it was alleged, of mortification and grief, consequent on some quarrels between him and the other commanders, according to one writer. Another states that he was extremely ill, and upon receiving intelligence that the Francis had been taken by the enemy, knew that the object of the expedition would be made known and frustrated, and that the bitterness of this conviction preyed upon his spirits. The Spaniards had sunk a great ship at the mouth of the harbour, to bar the entrance ; they had, moreover, formed two booms of large masts lashed firmly together thence to the forts, the guns of which protected the approach by a cross fire. Within the haven were five Spanish ships, anchored broadside-on, all ballasted with sand, mounted with great guns, and well manned by cannoniers and musketeers. Undeterred by all these preparations, on the eveningof the 13th, Sir Thomas Baskerville, with twenty-five boats and pinnaces full of pikemen and musketeers, clad in halfmail, or brigandines, pulled boldly into the roadstead, between the forts or castles, whence the Spaniards fired 185 cannon-shot upon them ; and the circumstance of the shots being so minutely reckoned illustrates how slow the process of gunnery was still in war. His men were under a heavy fire of small-arms, too; nevertheless, he boarded sword in hand the five ships in succession (one was of 400 tons, the rest of 200), and set them all in flames. More- over, "he did great damage to the admiral and vice-admiral. The ships had each twenty brass guns and 100 barrels of gunpowder on board. Their loading, which consisted chiefly of silk, oil, and wine, had been already secured, as likewise the treasure, which one of the prisoners confessed to be three milUons of ducats, or five-and-thirty tons of silver." 178 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Drake's Last Exploits, The fight on both sides was obstinate and bloody ; but after various assaults, which were repulsed, with great loss on tlie part of the English, but still greater on that of the Spaniards, of whom many were killed, burned, drowned, or taken prisoners, Baskerville and his squadron of boats drew off to the fleet. Sir Francis Drake now con- cluded that further attempts in that quarter would be futile, and sailed for the coast of Terra Firma. On the ist of December his fleet was off the town of La Hacha, in New Granada, a small place at the mouth of a river of the same name, which he burned and destroyed, though the inhabitants offered to purchase its ransom for 34,000 ducats. He afterwards set fire to La Rancheria, where he took many negro slaves and other prisoners, with a vast quantity of pillage, including a great store of pearls. Advancing towards the Sierra de Santa Marta, he burned all the villages in the province, and also the town of that name. The next place he took was La Nombre de Dios, a place so named by Don Diego Niquero. Last says that at this time it had high wooden houses, " broad streets, and a fair church ; that it lay from east to west, in the middle of a great wood." After a short re- sistance from the forts that defended the harbour, he laid the town in ashes, and destroyed all the shipping, which Hakluyt states consisted of fri- gates, barks, and galiots. He found no money in the town, but in a watch-tower near it, on the sum- mit of a hill, he discovered " twenty sows of silver, two bars of gold, some pearls, money coined, and other pillage." From this place a "body of 750 pikemen and musketeers, under Sir Thomas Baskerville, began their march towards Panama. He proceeded in that direction for several days, and on some of their marches they were sorely galled by sudden volleys of musketry from concealed parties in narrow defiles and dense forests ; and finding, besides, their progress through a pass completely obstructed by the erection of a new fort, which they were too weak in number to storm, they began a retreat to their fleet, on board of which they arrived on the 2nd of January, 1596, many of them wounded, and all half-starved, and harassed with fatigue, and by the weight of their arms and iron accoutrements, after having marched half way to the Southern Sea. Sir Francis Drake now proposed to make his way to Escudo de Veraguas, a small low island near the coast of New Granada, and thence to Porto- Bello. But before he could achieve this, he was seized with a bloody flux, a distemper which was greatiy aggravated by a sense of bad success in the whole details of his voyage ; so this great admiral. the Nelson of the Elizabethan age, died on the 28th of January, to the great sorrow of the seamen and soldiers. "Sir Francis Drake," says Sir Wilham Monson, '• was wont to rule Fortune ; but now finding his error, and the difference between the present strength of the Indies and v/hat it was when he first knew them, grew melancholy upon this disap- pointment, and suddenly, and I hope naturally, died at Puerto-Bello," a mistake for Nombre de Dios. By the latter phrase, he would seem to insinuate a suspicion of suicide. He had no other funeral than that which falls to the lot of those who die at sea., save that his remains were cased in a heavy coffin of lead, and then cast overboard, " with volleys of shot and firing of cannon in all the ships of the fleet ; so he happened to find his grave near the place whence he had borrowed so large a reputation by his fortunate successes." He left a widow, Elizabeth, only daughter and heiress of George Sydenham, of Combe Sydenham, Devonshire. He bequeathed all his lands to his nephew. Captain Thomas Drake, except a single manor, which he left to his old shipmate, Captain Jonas Bodenham. Both admirals now being dead, the command of the fleet devolved upon Sir Thomas Baskerville, who, in unison with the other officers, deemed a return to England their most prudent course. Pro- ceeding on their homeward voyage, near Isla de Finos (or Isle of Pines), off the southern coast of Cuba, from which it is separated by a channel six- teen leagues long and six leagues wide, they sud- denly encountered the Spanish fleet of twenty sail, which had been sent out from Carthagena to inter- cept them, and had been hovering there for some time for that purpose. Sir Thomas Baskerville, in the Defiance, and Captain Troughton, in the Garland, led the van in the engagement that ensued. It lasted two hours, and in the end the Spaniards, finding that one of their largest ships had been set on fire and burned to the water's edge, that several of the rest were severely wounded in their hulls and tattered in their sails and rigging, sheered off, and the English fleet con- tinued its voyage home. It arrived in England in the month of May, after having been out eight months, with but very litde booty ; and the destruction of a few towns and ships was deemed but a poor recompense for the loss of two of the greatest naval commanders in Europe. Moreover, this year proved fatal to the service in that respect, as it saw the deaths of other excellent seamen and com- manders, such as Sir Roger Williams and Sir Thomas Morgan. Capture of Cadiz.J CHARACTER OF DRAKE. 179 " Sir Francis Drake had an insatiable thirst after honour," wrote a gentleman of those days who served under him and Hawkins, and whose letter is quoted by Lediard. " He was full of promises, and more temperate in adversity than in prosperity. He had likewise some other imperfections, such as quick- ness to anger, bitterness in disgracing, and was too much pleased with flattery. Sir John Hawkins had maUce with dissimulation, rudeness in behaviour, and was covetous to the last degree. But they were both alike happy in being great commanders, yet not equally successful. They both grew great and famous by the same means ; that is, by their own courage and the fortune of the sea. There was comparison, however, between their merits, taken in general, for therein Sir Francis far exceeded." CHAPTER XXXII. THE CAPTURE OF CADIZ, 1596. The bad success of the last expedition of Drake and Hawkins led the English people to think of endeavouring to cripple the power of Spain nearer home than the Indies, especially as rumours of hostile preparation in all the Spanish harbours sounded once more the alarm of an invasion ; and such an enterprise, on a grander scale even than the Armada, now filled the mind of PhiUp, who never forgave, even in her shrivelled old age, Elizabeth's refusal to marry him. Firm, resolute, watchful, and self-controlled, the queen, whose policy had ever been to defend her own shores rather than to invade her neighbours', yielded to the suggestions of Lord Howard of Effingham, High Admiral of England, who- urged upon her the prudence as well as the glory of attacking the enemy in his own ports, and at length succeeded, in spite of the opposition of Burleigh, in wringing from Elizabeth a reluctant consent. The King of Scotland was roused by the rumours of the new Armada, and, by a proclamation issued from Holyrood on the 2nd of January, commanded the forces of his kingdom " to hold themselves in readiness to march " (Rymer). An expedition was accordingly prepared at Ply- mouth to avert the coming storm, and, strangely enough, English authors vary very much as to the number of ships employed. Burchett says the fleet consisted of 146 sail ; Camden numbers it at 150, including twenty Dutch vessels, under Admiral John Van Duvenwoord, of Warmond ; while in others the numbers vary still more. The troops consisted of 7,360 pikemen and mus- keteers, of whom fully a thousand were volunteers, who paid their own expenses, and 6,762 seamen and cannoniers, besides the Dutch. Burchett states that the whole of these forces were under the command of Robert, Earl of Essex, the rash and daring favourite of Elizabeth's old age. whom she beheaded five years afterwards, in his thirty- fourth year. He and Howard from their own purses spent vast sums on the equipment of the troops and ships ; and they were assisted by a Council of War, consisting of Lord Thomas Howard, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Vere (the hero of the Low Country wars). Sir George Carew and Sir Conyers Clifford. The admiral was to command at sea, and Essex on the coast of Spain. The fleet was divided into four squadrons. The admiral led the first, Essex the second, Lord Howard the third, and Raleigh the fourth. The officers of the army, under Essex, were Sir Francis Vere, with the proud title of Lord Marshal ; Sir John Wingfield, Campmaster-General ; Sir Conyers Clifford, Sergeant-Major {i.e., Adjutant-General) ; Sir George Carew, Master of the Ordnance. The colonels of foot were Robert, Earl of Sussex, Sir Christopher Blount, Sir Thomas Gerrard, and Sir Richard Wingfield. The captain of the volunteers was Sir Edward Wingfield ; and Andrew Ashley was Secretary at War, to keep a register of the councils : and in these details we see the gradual development of that internal order and discipline which reached such perfection in more modern times. ' -■ The queen's ships numbered only fourteen, and were as follow : — The Ark Royal, 800 tons, Captain Sir Amyas Preston, with the High Admiral on board; Repulse, 700 tons, Captain Sir William Monson, with the Earl of Essex on board; Mary Honora, 800 tons. Captain the Lord Thomas Howard ; WarspHe, 600 tons, Captain Sir Walter Raleigh ; Lion, 500 tons, Captain Sir Robert Southwell ; Rainbow, 500 tons. Captain Sir Francis Vere ; Nonpareil, 500 tons, Captain Sir Robert Dudley; Vanguard, Captain Sir J. Wingfield ; Mary Rose, 600 tons. Captain Sir George Ca.re.^ ; Dreadnought, 400 tons. Captain Sir Alexander Clifford ; Swiftsure, 400 tons, Captain Sir Robert i8o BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Capture ol Cadiz Cross; Aquittance, 200 tons, Captain Sir Robert Mansfield ; CraJie, 200 tons, Captain King ; Tra- montana, captain's name not given. The "Instructions to the Captains of Ships," &c., for this expedition are not without interest, as illustrative of the good order that was to be en- forced. First, God was to be served by the use of the common prayers twice daily ; swearing, brawling, and diceing were forbidden ; likewise " picking and Spain. Every captain had sailed with sealed orders, which were not to be opened until they were past the scene of later days of glory — Cape St. Vincent^- and this is the first record in histery of English ships receiving such orders. On being opened, the general rendezvous was found to be — Cadiz ! The Litness, the Truelove, and the Lion's Whelp, three of the swiftest little vessels in the fleet, were now sent ahead as scouts, under Sir Richard Levi- son and Sir Christopher Blount, who kept pretty \ , pti— iti' THE ENGLISH FLEET BEFORE CADIZ {see page l8l). Stealing ; " provisions were to be carefully issued, ' and weekly returns sent in. The ships were to be washed and cleaned daily ; the fleet to close in at nightfall ; the red cross half-hoisted was the signal of a council on board the two leading ships ; care was to be taken that no jealousy occurred between the mariners and soldiers ; the night-watch to be set by sound of drum or trumpet, at eight p.m. ; guns to be fired and drums beaten in cases of fog ; no man to strike his superior officer, under penalty of death ; and no evil rumours to be raised adverse to the reputation " of any officer or gentleman." On the I St of June, 1596, this well-ordered array sailed from Plymouth, and ere long a breeze from the north-east brought them off the north cape of far from the coast ; but succeeded on the loth of June in capturing three Hamburg fly-boats, which fourteen days before had left Cadiz, where theit skippers reported that all was quiet, and no attack suspected. On the 1 8th they hailed an Irish ship returning from Cadiz, whose master reported " that, the Spaniards lived there in the most tranquil security. He informed them that the port was full of men^of- v/ar, galleys, galleons, and merchantmen, richly loaded for the Indies ; and that there were no forces on the island (DeLeon) except the garrison." Flushed vith the hopes of conquest and spoil, " the fleet bore on, and about daybreak on the morning; of the 20th of June it was off Cadiz, Capture of Cadiz.] A CONTENTION. i8-j where an alarm was speedily given. It had been previously arranged by the Council of War that a landing should be effected at San Sebastian, to the westward of the city; and there the whole fleet came to anchor in four squadrons, attended by their victuallers and other ships. Armour was buqkled and matches were blown, and every soldier wxs prepared to land ; but the wind almost blew a gale, the sea was running high, and four great galleys were lying off the shore to fire upon their nects Cadiz with the mainland of Andalusia. Its castle, built by the Moors, was strongly fortified, and four other great bastions defended the bay, which is several miles in extent. It was considered the key of Spain, and was one of the three towns which the Emperor Charles V. advised his son Philip to have ever a watchful eye upon. A dash into the harbour being determined on, a contention arose, curiously, as to who was to lead the way. Asserting his commission, the Earl of THE STORMING OF CADIZ {seepage 183). boats ; so no landing was made, and the day was passed in sending messages from ship to ship, chiefly borne by Sir Walter Raleigh, concerning the course to be next decided upon ; and, in the end, the leaders came to the resolution of attacking the shipping, and making themselves masters of the harbour before a landing was attempted. The city, it must be borne in mind, is situated on the extrem-ty of a long tongue of land, projecting in a north-westerly direction from the Isle of Leon. At its end the tongue expands a little, and the whole of this expansion is occupied by the city. This isthmus is so narrow that the waves of the Atlantic on one side, and those of the bay on the other, reach the walls of the causeway which con- 16 Essex claimed the honour; to this the admiral objected, being aware that if the rash young earl failed, the expedition would be futile. Moreover the old queen, in her maudlin love for him, had strictly forbidden him "to expose himself to danger, but upon great necessity" — rather odd advice to give to a leader of those sword-in-hand days. It was ultimately arranged that next morning the ships that were the fleetest sailers and drew the lightest draught, under Lord Thomas Howard, Raleigh, Southwell, Vere, Carew, and Cross, with a few others, should dash in and perform this service, by driving from its moorings the Spanish fleet of fifty sail which lay across the bay. With the first blink of dawn and with a favourable l82 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Capture of Cadiz, wind they bore inward, passing the fire of the Muelle de San Felipe, and attacked the Spanish fleet. " Here did every sliip strive to be head- most," says Sir Walter Raleigh ; " but such was the narrowness of the channel that neither the admiral nor any other ship could pass one by another. There was command given that no ship should shoot but the queen's, making account that the honour would be the greater that was obtained by so few." Steering his ship in mid-channel, Sir Walter Raleigh ran the bows of the Warspite with a terrible crash against one Spanish galleon, and, pouting the fire of his forecastle guns upon her, drove her from her anchors. Sir Francis Vere, eager to lead the way on one element as bravely as he had ever done on the other, turned the guns and small-arms of the Rainbow on the galleys; but the latter being anchored under the protection of the city batteries, he was very roughly handled till Essex stood in to his relief. Then it was that several of the Spanish ships sought to escape by creeping along shore to the bottom of the bay, to where the Isle de Leon is joined to the mainland by a bridge, which an old work states to have been 700 paces long. This is called the San Pedro Channel, an arm of the sea with a strong tide running through it. It is from 200 to 300 yards wide, is deep and muddy, and nowhere fordable even at the lowest tide. The bridge, which consists of five arches, is called the Puente de San Pedro ; and the city can never be captured from the land while its inhabitants are masters of the bay. By this .narrow channel many of the Spanish ships escaped, Lediard says, "by the help of a machine," which probably was a draw- bridge, till the entrance was made secure by Sir John Wingfield, in the Vanguard. Meanwhile, many of the great galleons and galleys kept their anchorage at the Puntals, re- ceiving the broadsides of the English, and returning them with interest, till noon ; the Earl of Essex, the high admiral, and his son, being now in the heat of the action, which gradually proved favourable to the English. The Spanish ships became so miser- ably shattered — in some instances masts and bul- warks being shot away, two or three port-holes beaten into one — and so many of their crews were killed or wounded, that they became no longer either tenable or defensible. So their officers set many of them on fire, and scuttled others, sinking them with such precipitation that, though some of their men endeavoured to escape to the shore by boats, by far the greater number flung themselves into the sea, where some were rescued by the English, on their calling for "quarter," but others. especially the soldiers and cannoniers, who were accoutred with back, breast, and head-pieces of iron, were miserably drowned, some being sucked into the vortex of many a sinking ship. Amid this hurly-burly, the San Philipo, of 1,500 tons, the Spanish admiral's ship, was blown up — ^one account says by a revengeful Moorish slave, who fired the powder-room; another by her own officers, rather than let her become the prize of the English — but by the explosion she destroyed three great ships that lay near her. One English ship was burned, and one Dutch, by her own powder, was blown up. ("History of Holland," London, 1705)- The Dutch by this time, under their admiral, Van Duvenwoord, had bravely attacked and carried the Puntals ; while the Earl of Essex landed a body of troops at a point between that place and the city, which the ships were now assailing from the sea- ward. Sir Francis Vere, in his Commentaries, quaintly describes the landing thus : — " On the right hand, in an even front, with a competent distance betwixt the boats, were ranged the two regiments first named " (Essex's corps and his own), " the other three (being those of Sir Christopher Blunt, Sir Thomas Gerrard, and Sir Conyers Clifford) on the left, so that every regiment and company of men were sorted, together with the colonels and chief officers, in nimble pinnaces, some at the head and some at the stem, to keep good order. The general himself, with his boat, in which it pleased him to have me to attend him, and some other boatsful of gentlemen adventurers and choice persons to attend his person, moved a pretty distance before the rest, when, at a signal given at a drum from his boat, the rest were to follow, according to the measure and time of the sound of the said drum, which they were to observe in the dashing of their oars ; and to that end there was a great silence, as well of warlike instruments as otherwise, which order being duly followed, the troops came altogether to the shore, and were landed {i.e.., by rowing to the beat of the drum), and several regiments embattled in an instant, without any encounter at all, the Spaniards, who, the day before, had showed themselves with troops of horse and foot on that part, as resolved to im- peach our landing, being returned to the town." In other words, the troops landed with flying colours, and unopposed, half a mile to the east- ward of Cadiz, and half that distance from the narrow neck of land which connects one portion of the Isle de Leon with the other; while the fleet, under the Howards, was taking, burning, sinking, or driving on shore and utterly destroying, the nucleus of the new Armada of Spain ; work which Capture of Cadiz.] CADIZ TAKEN. ^83 lasted till four in the afternoon, says Sir Walter Raleigh. As the four regiments now landed mustered only 2,000 men, and the city was strongly fortified by walls which extended from sea to sea, it was deemed imprudent to attempt anything further than the occupation of sufficient ground whereon to bivouac ; but as the column advanced inland, a bolder policy, of which Vere is confessed on all hands to have been the suggester, was adopted. Perceiving that crowds of people on foot and on horseback were passing from the island into the the town by a road that skirted the opposite side of the steep promontory, he urged its immediate occupation by a body of troops. Essex instantly adopted the advice, and sent the regiments of Clif- ford, Blunt, and Gerrard on this service, giving them strict orders also " to break down the bridge and the engine which had secured the escape of the galleys ;" and this was all promptly done, while at the same time Essex and Vere continued to advance with something less than a thousand com- batants under their orders. Among these were Lodovick, Count of Nassau (who was afterwards defeated and slain by Don Sancho de Avila) ; the Earl of Sussex ; William Herbert, son of the Earl of Worcester ; Bourke, an Irish chief ; Sir Christopher St. Lawrence ; Sir Robert Drury, and others, all men of rank, and possessed of considerable influence. As they drew nearer Cadiz, the Spaniards were seen ready to meet them, arrayed in front of the ditch, "with cornets, and ensigns displayed, and thrusting out some loose horse and foot, as it were to provoke a skirmish.'' Essex had never conceived that a place so strong by art dnd nature as the city of Cadiz could be reduced in any other manner than by a protracted and vigorous siege ; but some- how the aspect and conduct of the Spaniards led the ardent and energetic Sir Francis Vere to beliejve that the city might be won sooner than they could have hoped. If he could ■ possibly help it, the attempt should be made without delay. "These men now standing in battle before the ditch," said he to Essex, "will show and make the way into the town for us this night if they be well handled." In consequence of this, the manner of "handling" them was entirely committed to lym, and he lost no time in issuing his orders, and planning his mode of attack. TJie approach to Cadiz in the direction pursued by the English was then, and to some extent is still, through the midst of a succession of sandy hillocks, ^ell adapted to the purpose of concealing small bodies of troops, though inadequate to mask the movements of a large column. Vere formed-^hia force into three divisions, the first consisting of 200 men, the second of 300, and the third of 500. Led by Sir John Wingfield, the first was ordered to assail the Spaniards briskly with pike and mus- ket, and engage them in a desultory skirmish. The second, under Sir Matthew Morgan, was to follow in support at a moderate distance, but on no account to close to the fi-ont till the proper crisis should arrive ; while the third and -last, being under the immediate guidance of Essex and Vere, acted as a reserve. Thus it will be seen that Sir Francis Vere had rightly understood the relative positions of besieged and besiegers. When each officer had been fully instructed, Sir John Wingfield led on the first division, which, as Vere expected, was furiously assailed by the Span- iards, and fell back in apparent confusion, drawing on the pursuers till they reached the hillock where Morgan was posted. The second corps instantly charged, upon which the garrison, taken completely by surprise, fled with such precipitation that their officers were incapable of rallying them, even under the guns of the city. They plunged, tumbled, or rolled into the ditch, which, though deep and wide, was dry; they scrambled in scores up the steep face of the unscarped rampart, promptly followed by the first and second divisions ; while the men of the re- serve, coming on at a rush, had also flung themselves into the ditch. One party aided their comrades by scaling a portion of the main wall, while another select band of stormers, under an officer of tried courage, poured silently but swiftly along the ditch till they came to a place destitute of guards, and more than ordinarily accessible. Througli this they made good their entrance, led by Lieutenant Evans, Arthur Savage, and Samuel Bagnal, " who bravely leaped from an eminence of a pike's length, to be first in the town," and boldly advancing to the scene of action, speedily cleared the rampart of its defenders. Pell-mell the assailants now rushed in, with levelled pikes and clubbed muskets; and a fierce hand-to-hand battle raged in all the streets and by-lanes of the city, until the market- place was reached. By this time a body of seamen had poured in, led by the Howards, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir William Paget, Sir Robert Southwell, Sir Robert Mansel (afterwards vice-admiral under James and Charles I.), Richard Levison, and Sir Philip Wode- house, of Kimberley; and with them came Sir Edward Hobby, carrying the colours of England. Both parties now met in the streets, when a heavy fire was maintained on them from the windows and ■I«4 BRITISH BATTLES ON LANb ANt) SEA. [Capture of Cadiz. housetops. The Casa de Ayuntimiento, or town- hall, was now stormed by Vere, at the head of 300 men ; he cleared it of a body of the garrison who had taken possession of it, and the market-place was finally scoured ; but there Sir John Wingfield, who had bravely performed his part in the assault, was shot through the head and slain. Savage and Bagnal, who were covered with wounds and blood, were knighted on the spot. Vere now compelled a more numerous force in the abbey of St. Francis to surrender; and so envi- roned a battalion in Fort San Felipe, that when sum- moned the gates were opened. " Thus, by his good conduct,'' says Vere's biographer, " was a conquest secured, the first attainment of which may be traced to his gallantry; for except the battalion which followed himself, there were not, within ten minutes after the assault, forty men in one mass throughout the entire compass of the city." A contribution was levied Upon the inhabitants, and great booty acquired ; but not a single life was taken in cold blood, and no woman had to com- plain of suffering insult from any English seaman or soldier — a praiseworthy forbearance, rare in those days. Under a guard, all the Spanish women were sent to Santa Maria, a place of safety, in English ships ; and the men, to the number of 5,000, were disarmed and expelled — a treatment of prisoners of war which is worthy of special remark. Many of the ladies quitted Cadiz in their richest apparel, with all their jewels on ; while the Earl of Essex stood in person by the water-side, to see them safely embarked. Sir Francis Vere tells us that "he got three prisoners worth 10,000 ducats; one a churchman and President of Contradutation of the Indies, the others twD ancient knights." This admission shows that the old practice, by which individuals were allowed to ransom their own prisoners, was not, as yet, obsolete. By the capture of Cadiz, the King of Spain lost in shipping, provisions, and stores, destined for a new expedition against England, more than twenty millions of ducats. Besides the merchantmen, he lost two great galleons, which were captured with above 100 brass guns in them, thirteen other men- of-war, eleven ships freighted for the Indies, and eleven for other ports; and Stow has it that 1,200 pieces of ordnance were taken or sunk in the sea. Camden gives the names of sixty English gentle- men who were knighted for bravery on this occasion. All the commanders were enriched by plunder, with the exception of the Earl of Essex, who appropriated nothing but a noble library which he found in a public building. A difference of opinion now arose among the leaders as to what was to be done with their new conquest. Sir Francis Vere insisted on the good policy of retaining the town ; and offered, if left with only 4,000 men, to defend it against all the power of Spain (see his Commentaries). But his wish was not accepted ; and it was resolved in the end to retire, after demolishing the defences and burning the houses. The artillery, stores, and general plunder were put on board of the fleet, which sailed after the troops were re-embarked, and Cadiz was left reduced to a heap of cinders over- looking a wreck-strewn shore ; for the Duke of Medina, the Spanish admiral, while the assault was at its height, and the town was in the act of being captured, had beached a vast number of vessels and destroyed them by fire, to prevent them be- coming prizes of the English. All on fire for further glory, Essex now proposed to steer for the Azores, and there lie in wait for the East India caracks, on their homeward voyage ; but, save Lord Thomas Howard and the Dutch admiral, no officer in the fleet would consent to such a movement. The result of the attack on Cadiz filled Philip of Spain with greater fury than ever. Disappointed in all his projects for vengeance on the English by invasion, he found himself unable to defend even the shores of Spain. To revenge the losses he had last sustained at Cadiz, and to recover in some measure his tarnished glory, he was determined to make another effort ere the year 1596 came to a close, and ordered all his ships to rendezvous in the roads of Lisbon. He hired all the foreign ships that were in Spanish ports, and embarked on board of them a large body of newly-levied troops, together with a nuriiber of Irish refugees, at the port of Ferrol, in order to effect a landing in Ireland or England. But as soon as the fleet sailed, a tempest scattered it, destroying one-half and render- ing the other completely unserviceable, so that Philip had to reUnquish all ideas of aggression for the time; while Elizabeth, the further to secure England against any such attempts for the future, gave orders to strengthen and fortify Sandsfort, Portland, Hurst, Southsea, Calshot, St. Andrews, and St. Maudits. About the middle of August, the troops from Cadiz were disembarked at the Downs, near Sand- wich, and were,, after the fashion of the times, when standing armies were scarcely known, immediately disbanded, save the regiments which Vere had brought from the Low Countries, and these were sent back to their original stations ; the remainder returned to their homes, to tell in many a secluded English village the story of the capture of Cadiz. , Porto R CO.] LANZEROTA. 185. CHAPTER XXXIII. PORTO RICO, 1598. One of the most remarkable occurrences of the year 1598 was the tenth and last privateering ex- pedition of George Clifford, the famous and adven- turous Earl of Cumberland, against the Spaniards. His father had been raised to an earldom in 1525, by Henry VIII., and he was the first Enghsh sub- ject who ever built a ship so large as 800 tons burden ; and this vessel he employed in many actions against Spain, particularly in the West Indian seas. It was in his favour that the venerable Sir Henry Lee, of Ditchley — than whom, perhaps, no knight of chivalry was more thoroughly imbued by the spirit of old romance — resigned, on the 17th of November, 1590, the anniversary of the queen's accession, the office of champion and president of a society which he had formed for promoting the exercise of arms. No European prince ever possessed such vast resources as Philip II., of Spain. In addition to his Spanish and Italian dominions, the Kingdom, of Portugal, and the States of the Netherlands, he was master of the whole East Indian commerce, and reaped the richest harvest of ores from his South American mines. But his mighty armaments against England, his intrigues with France, and his long and aggressive wars in the Low Countries, enriched those whom he sought to subdue ; while the Spaniards, dazzled by the sight of the precious metals, and elated with the idea of vast wealth, neglected the agriculture of Spain ; its ingots and wedges of gold were no sooner coined than called for ; while the interception of his Plate fleets and the plunder of his colonies became the incessant occupation of the English sea-adventurers, until " Spanish " became a term synonymous with money or treasure. Lord Cumberland's expedition in 1598 was the largest he had ever fitted out, and was the greatest that any English subject had as yet set upon the sea. Several of the fleet were his own vessels, equipped entirely by his private purse, and without any assistance from the queen. Including a vessel called The Old Frigate, and two barges for landing troops, the armament consisted of twenty sail. The leading ship, the Scourge of Malice, was commanded by the earl himself as admiral ; the Merchant-Royal was commanded by Sir ^|Ohn. Berkeley, as vice-admiral and lieutenant- general. "There were besides, a noble train of commanders and other gentlemen for the land service." On the 6th of March these adventurers sailed from Plymouth, to improve their fortunes on the high seas and among the Spanish colonies ; and they had not long lost sight of the white cliffs of England before they received intelligence from a passing ship of five great caracks that were speedily to set sail from Spain with more wealthy cargoes than ever before had gone to the Indies, and that they were accompanied by five-and-twenty vessels bound for Brazil. In every ship of the squadron the most active preparations were made for meeting and at- tacking them, but made in vain; for the Spaniards had no sooner heard that Lord Cumberland was on the sea, than caravels of advice ran along the coast to prevent all ships of importance leaving their harbours. So the earl, who does not seem to have been particular as to what flag a ship carried, had to console himself by taking a Ham- burger laden with com, copper, and powder, and a French vessel laden with salt. Finding that it was in vain to wait for the caracks or the Brazilian ships, the earl bore on with his whole fleet for the South Cape, capturing on the way " two Flemmings " laden with com. In a few days he was off the Canary Isles, and effected a land- ing on Lanzerota, which is thirty-six miles long by fifteen broad, and contains several volcanoes. He anchored his whole fleet in the roadstead, which lies on the south-east of the island. In this soli- tary part of the world, a wealthy Spanish marquis had built for himself a strong castle of stone, de- fended by ramparts and brass cannon, flanked, and situated in a good position. In this place he had 200 guards and servants. This retinue enabled him to tyrannise like a petty king over all the in- habitants of the isle and of the adjacent one, ol Fuerte Ventura, from which it is separated by the channel DeBocagna. Sir John Berkeley advanced against this strong- hold at the head of 600 pikemen and musketeers ; and though twenty men might have held the keep against them, as the entrance was in the upper story, by ladders which were drawn in, the Httle garrison abandoned it, " and ran like bucks, leaving it a prey to the English, so terrible was the very name of the English to them at that time." 1 86 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Porto Rico. The arms of the natives were lances and stones. When a musketeer levelled his weapon at them, they threw themselves flat on the ground, and the moment he fired, they sprang up, hurled their missiles, and fled. The town, consisting of a hun- dred houses, roofed with canes and mud hardened in the sun, was pillaged of all that was worth taking; and also "an old tattered church,'' which had an altar at one end, but was without chan- cel or vestry. Sailing thence on the 21st of April, on the 23rd of May the fleet was off Dominica and the Vir- gin Isles, where the earl remained a month. Helanded, mustered all his men, and announc- ed to them that his next desire was to cap- ture San Juan de Porto Rico, the attempt in which Drake had failed so recently, and the in- telligence was greeted by reiterated cheers. On the 6th of June he was off this island, which is the most east- ern of the Great An- tilles, and his plan of attack differed from that of Drake. He landed 1,000 men at a considerable distance from the town ; and, seizing a negro, " who was half frightened to death, for their guide," marched towards it. Both the earl and Sir John Berkeley were in complete armour. Their way, we are told, was by steep cliffs and rugged rocks, till they reached an arm of the sea about a musket-shot in breadth, which separated them from the town, and where they found themselves exposed to the fire of a fort. Opposite, on a slope, rose San Juan, on an isle, or isthmus rather, about half a league long, " fairly built, neat, and strong, after the Spanish manner. It had several large streets, was bigger than Ports- mouth, was more agreeable to the eye, and had a good monastery and a cathedral •■ but what dimin- POWDER-FLASKS AND SPANNERS FOK Dl'KICKKS OF HORSE. THE LOWER FOR INFANTRY (END OF SIXTEEN'tH century). ished from the whole was the want of glass, as they had only canvas or wooden shutters in their windows" ("Atlas Geographus," London, 1717). Its port was deenied by the Spaniards as the key of South America. Cumberland's force was without boats by which to cross the little strait, and for a time he and his other captains were much perplexed, till a communication was discovered between the city and the main- land, by means of a narrow causeway that led to a bridge which was drawn up. Be- yond this bridge was a strong barricade, and higher up was the fort, whence the Spaniards swept the causeway with ordnance and small -arms. This causeway was so rough and difficult to traverse, that the English pre- ferred to wade through the sea by the side of it. A very dark night had succeeded a hot and brilliant day, when the attack was resolved on, "and though the earl was carried away very ill, by a fall from the causeway into the sea, when the weight and encumbrance of his armour nearly drowned him," his sol- diers pressed on with ardour, passed the draw- bridge in the sea, which came up to their waist- belts, and assailed the gate of the barricade with their bills and hatchets ; but so stout was the resist- ance of the Spaniards, and so heavy their fire upon the English, who were compelled to fight in the water, that the assailants were forced to retire. Tiie next attack was attended with better suc- cess; and, flushed with rumours of the gold mines that were alleged to be in the rocky parts of the isle, and the precious ore found in the sand of its rivers, Cumberland's men adjvanced with fresh ardour. While a party of musketeers, levelling their weapons over rocks or their rests, picked ofl i88 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Porto Rico. the Spanish cannoniers at their guns, another, which was composed of pikemen and musketeers, was set ashore on the other side, midway between the fort and town. Finding their retreat about to be cut off, the garrison of the former were com- pelled, after a sharp resistance; to abandon it, and fell back on the town ; but this they soon after deserted. El Moro, a place of great strength, together with the strong castle in the western part of the town, and a third fort between it and the Moro, all surrendered in quick succession to the adventurous earl, who then found himself in undisturbed pos- session of the place. He now resolved to retain it, to increase its fortifications, and to make it a point whence fleets might cruise against the Spaniards, now deemed, as the Scots had been for centuries, the natural enemies of England. This plan met with the warm approval of his followers; and a roll was prepared of those who volunteered to remain there as the nucleus of an English colony and garrison. In furtherance of this great scheme, the earl ordered all the Spanish inhabitants to depart to other isles, notwithstanding the offers they made him of rich goods and gold and silver plate, to be permitted to remain. But an unforeseen misfortune came, in the form of a deadly sickness that decimated his slender force. Of the i,ooo men who landed, Camden records that 700 died, exclusive of those slain by the Spaniards. This mortaUty so scared the sur- vivors, who were led to expect the same fate, that all resolved to quit the island as speedily as possible. The earl wished, ere doing so, to make some profitable terms with the Spaniards for its ransom. To these proposals they pretended to listen, and several messages passed between theta and the earl ; but the negotiations pro- ceeded so slowly that he began after a time to perceive tha:t they were only seeking to delay till death had further weakened his force, and to suspect that they had some treacherous design on foot. While these negotiations were pending, there came into the harbour of San Juan a caravel from Margarita, an island of Venezuela, in theCaribbean Sea, with passengers bound for Spain ; and these were very much surprised to find the island of Porto Rico in possession of the English. In the caravel the earl found pearls to the value of a thousand ducats ; and learning from her crew that the pearl-chest at Margarita was very slenderly guarded, he sent three ships of his fleet to seize it. In the rich pearl-fishery there the Spaniards em- ployed vast numbers of negroes from Guinea ; and Lait records that they forced these wretched slaves to such excessive labour, that many killed them- selves in despair, while others were drowned and maimed by sharks. But great though the prize looked for at Margarita, the earl's ships were driven back by adverse winds, and he, now be- coming more than ever convinced that the Spaniards of the captured island had some ulterior and, per- haps, savage ends in view, sailed from Porto Rico with less than half his fleet, in search of fortune else- where, leaving Sir John Berkeley with the other half of his armament, and full power to act in his absence. The separation took place on the 14th August. The earl hoped to be in time to intercept the Mexican home-fleet, or some of the East Indian caracks off the Azores, but he came there too late, luckily for himself perhaps, as but a few days before his arrival at Flores, no less than twenty-nine large Spanish men-of-war had been there. How long Sir John stayed at Porto Rico after the earl is uncertain, and what terms he made with the colonists are unknown ; but after a dreadful storm, in which all their vessels nearly perished, and were severely damaged, the fleet was reunited at Flores, and eventually returned to England in the month of October. The earl held possession of Porto Rico for only forty days, but in that time he collected and brought away a vast quantity of hides, ginger, and sugar ; eighty pieces of cannon ; some ammunition ; the bells of the churches ; and a thousand duca- toons' worth of pearls. This is the general account given of the results of the expedition ; but it is supposed that, as a matter of fact, he collected a much greater quantity of plunder, in the form of ingots and gold dust. He lost only sixty men at the storming of Porto Rico ; but forty were drowned in T/te Old Frigate, in a storm off Ushant The character of the Earl of Cumberiand, is tersely summarised by an old naval historian, who speaks of him as "a man of admirable qualities, both in civil and military affairs. He knew as well how to fight as to govern, and had virtues capable of rendering him equally illustrious both in war and peace. He was so excellent a person that it can hardly be said what was lacking in him, and yet he had one very considerable want, viz., a steady gale of good fortune; and, considering the vast expenses he was at, in building, hiring, and furnishing ships, it is a question whether his expeditions increased his estate."- His earldom became extinct in the year 1643 The Bay of Cezimbra-j THE GALLEONS. CHAPTER XXXIV. IN THE BAY OF CEZIMBRA, l6o2. The last but one important event in the long and Stirling reign of Elizabeth was the great sea-fight in the roadstead of Cezimbra, between her ships and those of the Spaniards. A rich carack of which the former were in pursuit had taken shelter there. " The harbour," says Hume, " was guarded by a castie ; there were eleven galleys stationed in it, and the militia of the country, to the number of 20,000 men, appeared in arms upon the shore; yet, notwithstanding these obstacles, and others derived from the winds and tides, the English squadron broke into the harbour, dismounted the guns of the castle, sunk, burned, or put to flight the gal- leys, and obliged the carack to surrender. They brought her home to England, and she was valued at a million of ducats ; a sensible loss to the Spaniards, and a supply still more important to Elizabeth." The details of this gallant sea-fight, as given by one of the commanders, and other authorities, are as follow : — To prevent the Spaniards from invading the coast of Ireland, the queen fitted out a squadron of eight ships of war, which she placed under the- command of Monson and Levison, who, since the death of Drake and Hawkins, were deemed the most skilful officers in the English navy. These vessels were the Repulse, Sir Richard Levison, Admiral ; the Garlaiid, Sir William Monson, Vice-Admiral ; the Defiance, Captain Gore ; the Mary Rose, Captain Slingsby; the Warspite, Captain Sommers; the Dreadnought, Captain Manwaring; the Adventure, Captain Trevor ; and an English caravel, Captain Tawkell. The Dutch had promised to aid the queen with twelve ships of war, that together they might scour the seas and molest the Spaniards. The new ex- pedition was prepared in great haste, so much so, that the squadron was not fully equipped either ivith men, ammunition, or provisions ; when, on the 19th of March, 1602, Sir Richard Levison set sail with five vessels, leaving his vice-admiral, Monson, with three, to await the arrival of the Hollanders. Ere the latter arrived, and three days after Levison's departure, Sir William received a dispatch from the queen to go to sea with all speed, as she had received tidings that the Plate fleet was off the Isle of Terceira. Sir William put to sea, with the Garland z.nd two other ships, on the 26th of March, and stood down the Channel. The queen's intelligence had been true, as the fleet had been at Terceira, which is the central island of the group named the Azores, but had shaped its course to Spain. On the voyage they were met by Sir Richard Levison, who, though the Spaniards mustered thirty-eight sail, bravely attacked them with his five. But being without Monson's vessels, and still more the twelve Hollanders, his bravery was exerted in vain, and he was beaten off, while the Plate fleet stood on its homeward course. Levison was naturally exasperated wth the Hol- landers for their delay, by which so much treasure escaped him. He now steered towards the Rock of Lisbon, which had been previously appointed by him as the place where he and Monson were to rendez- vous ; but Sir William having spent fourteen days cruising off the coast of Portugal, and seeing nothing of him, stood around the South Cape, " where he was likewise frustrated of a most pleasing expecta- tion." He came in sight of some ships, which showed the Scottish and French colours. These were merchantmen from San Lucar, where, as the Scottish skippers reported, there were five great galleons ready to sail with the next tide for India. They also told him that three days before two others had sailed, having on board Don Pedro de Valdez, the Governor of Havannah, and his retinue — the same Don Pedro v/ho held a command in the Great Armada, and had been prisoner of war in England in 1588. These two ships were met one night by Captain Sommers, in the Warspite; but, in consequence of the extreme darkness, and perhaps of their own strength, no engagement ensued. This news of the five galleons at San Lucar, made Sir William Monson steer in the direction where he would be most likely to meet with them ; and, in a shorter time than he anticipated, he dis- covered five ships, which he conceived to be, from the size and number, the identical galleons he was in quest of But he was again doomed to disap- pointment, for on coming within gunshot they showed their colours, and proved to be English. Next day he captured a Spanish Indiaman ; "but he had better been without her, for she brought him so far to the leeward that the same TQO BRITISH BATTLES ON LAMD AND SEA, [The Bay of Cezimbta. night the five galleons passed to windward " un- seen, and not above eight leagues off, as he was informed by the skipper of an English pinnace. "These misfortunes," says Lediard, "lighting upon Sir Richard first and Sir William after, might have been sufficient reasons to discourage them; but they, knowing the accidents of the sea, and that For- tune could laugh as well as weep, and having good ships under foot, their men sound and in health, did not doubt that some of the wealth which the two Indies sent yearly to Spain would yet fall to their share." On the ist of June, the squadron, now united, was hovering off the Rock of Lisbon, as that round promontory in which the ridge of Cintra ends is named by seamen. There they, captured two Eas- terlings ; and while overhauling their cargoes, they descried a caravel coming round Cape Espichel, a headland twenty-one miles south-west of Lisbon. She proved to be E^^glish, and reported to Sir Richard Levison that " a large carack, of i,6oo tons, was just arrived at Cezimbra, near St. Ubes, from the East Indies, richly laden ; and that there were eleven galleys in the same harbour, three of them Portuguese, under the command of Don Fred- erick Spinola, to cruise against the Dutch." Her master added that he had been sent with this message by the captains of the Nonpareil and Dreadnought, who were thereabout, looking out for the admiral. With cheers and joy this news was received. Sir Richard immediately signalled Sir William to stand on with him, and, lest the signs should not be discerned, sent the caravel with a message to bear up for the roads of Cezimbra ; but before they had rounded Cape Espichel night had closed in, and nothing took place but the exchange of a few cannon-shot between the admiral and the galleys of Spinola, who is called by Rymer a Genoese. On the 2nd of June, when day dawned, " every man looked out early for what ships of Her Majesty were in sight," and there were but five — the War- spite (having the admiral on board, as the Repulse had become leaky, and been sent to England), the Garland, the Nonpareil, the Dreadnought, and the Adventure, besides the two Easterlings, with prize- crews on board. A council, at which all the captains were present, was held on board the Warspite, and it lasted the most part of the day. Some alleged that it was impracticable to cut out the carack, defended as she was by eleven galleys, and lying close under the guns of the castle of Cezimbra ; but Sir William Monson urged so vigorously that the attempt should be made — an attempt which he affirmed would be crowned with brilliant success — that it was resolved to make an attack next day, in the following manner. He and Sir Richard were to come to anchor as near the carack as they could venture ; the rest to keep under sail, and ply up and down without anchoring. Sir William Monson, we are told, was glad of this opportunity of having vengeance on these same galleys, " hoping to requite the slavery they had put him to when he was a prisoner in one of them." He now sailed a league in front of the squadron, with his colours flying in defiance of the galleys. The Marquis of Santa Cruz and Frederick Spinola, the former general of the Portuguese, and the latter of the Spanish galleys, accepted the challenge, and came out to fight him ; but we are told that, " being within shot, they were diverted (from their purpose) by one John Bedford, an Englishman, who pretended to know the force of the ship, and Sir William, who commanded her." The town of Cezimbra lies at the bottom of a bay which affords excellent anchorage. It was then, as now, built of stone ; and near it was the ancient fort or castle still named the Cavallo, strong, spacious, and then well mounted with heavy ordnance. On the summit of the hill be- hind it was an old priory, the situation of which, with cannon, rendered it impregnable, and able to command the town, the castle, and the roadstead. Close to the shore, and under the guns of the Cavallo, lay the rich carack, which was the object of so much warlike solicitude. The eleven galleys had secured themselves beside a small neck of rock on the western part of the roads, anchored side by side, with the stems out- ward, to play upon the English as they entered ; for each galley carried a very large cannon in her lofty beak, besides four other pieces in the prow below it ; and they were secure from the fire of the English till the latter were under that of the castle and town. So advantageously were they placed that, as the captain of one of them confessed after his capture, their officers confidently expected with their great guns to sink the English easily. The latter saw vast quantities of tents pitched near the shore, and troops, as we have said, to the number of 20,000 men, under the Conde de Vitageria, were mustered there. Boats were seen passing all day long between the carack and the town. At first it was supposed the Spaniards were unloading her ; but instead of this, they were filling her with men and ammunition. At daybreak on the morning of the 3rd of June, the admiral fired a gun and ran his ensign to the The Bay of Cezimbra.1 A PARLEY. 191 mainmast-head ; Sir William Monson responded by another, and displayed his colours at the foretop- mast-head, while the squadron stood in towards the point of attack. The vice-admiral was the sternmost ship ; and each vessel as she entered the roadstead had to fight her guns on both sides at once, as they had to encounter the fire of the town, the castle, the galleys, and the carack. The vice-admiral himself relates that, when he entered the action, he strove to luff up as near the shore as he could, when he came to anchor, plying both his broadsides the while; and by that time the fire of the leading ships had battered the galleys, torn up the benches, freeing in vast num- bers the slaves, who were usually chained there- to, but who were now seen throwing themselves into the sea, and swimming towards the English ships. The battle in the roadstead lasted till five o'clock in the afternoon, and by that time the galleys were rowed from side to side of the harbour, making desperate efforts to avoid the fire of the ship of the vice-admiral, which he had anchored so skilfully that Sir Richard Levison " came on board him and openly, in the view and hearing of the whole ship's company, embraced him, and told him that he had won his heart for ever." Levison's ship was less skilfully handled, for, by the negligence of her master, or some other cause, she failed to anchor at the place intended ; and falling away to leeward, was ultimately carried by wind and tide, not only out of the action, but actually out of the harbour, and could not be brought in again till next day. This circumstance enraged Sir Richard, who put himself on board the Dreadnought, and had an- chored her near the vice-admiral, about two in the afternoon. Three hours afterwards it was resolved to parley with the enemy, and orders were issued to all the ships to cease firing, till the English messenger returned. The man selected for the service was a merchant captain, named Sewell, who had escaped and swum off from the galleys (after having been four years a prisoner in one), as many other Christians and Turks did, when chance shots had freed them of their fetters ; for by this time the galleys, on whose strength the defence had mainly rested, were some in flames, with their wretched crews on board, others were knocked to pieces, and had their benches covered by bloody corpses, and some had slipped their cables and fled. Sewell was to intimate that the English had full possession of the roadstead ; that the fort could not lyithstand their ordnance, nor the carack either. and that unless the latter was given up the Spaniards " were to expect all the cruelty and rigour that a conqueror could inflict upon his enemy." After some conference, the officer commanding in the carack said that " he would send some gentlemen of quality- on board with commission to treat, and desired that some of the same rank from the English might repair to him for the same purpose." The Spanish cavaliers came on board the Dread- nought, where the admiral and Sir William Monson were awaiting the return of Captain Sev/ell; but they had immediately to return to the carack, on board of which an uproar had taken place, as one party there proposed to yield her up, and another wished to set her on fire. On learning this, Sir William Monson lowered himself into his barge, and instantly boarded her. When on deck, he was recognised by several Spanish gentlemen, who had known him when he was a prisoner of war among them. The captain of the carrack was Don Diego Lobo, a hidalgo of noble birth. He came down into the waist, and between him and Sir William there followed a conference in the Portuguese lan- guage. He proposed to give up the cargo, pro- vided he was permitted to retain the crew, with their arms, and the ship with her ordnance, and her colours flying. But these terms Sir William rejected, adding that he "would never permit a Spanish flag to be borne in presence of the queen's ships, unless it were disgracefully over the poop;" a reply the exact significance of which is not very clear in the present day, as it is there the colours are now shown on the jack-staff. It was ultimately arranged to yield her up, and that the castle of Cezimbra should not fire on the English ships while they rode in the bay ; and that night Sir William had the Captain Don Juan and many other Spanish gentlemen at supper in his cabin, where they had music, mirth, and pleasure. In the beginning nearly of this engagement, the Portuguese galleys, under Santa Cruz, took to flight ; the Spanish, under Spinola, fought bravely, on which in very shame the former returned to their stations ; but had the English fleet possessed sufficient boats, they had all been taken or burned. One of them was named the Lna, in which Sir William Monson had been a prisoner in 1591, The loss of the Spaniards in the castle, carack, and galleys is unknown, but they were so full of men that it must have been considerable, while the loss of the English was most trivial— only twelve killed and wounded, chiefly on board the Garland. Sir 192 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [The Bay of Cezimbra. William had the left wing of his doublet carried away by a, ball, from; which we may infer that he did not fight in armour, The next day the squad- ron sailed for England, bringing with it the carack, which had wintered in the Mosambique Channel, where 600 of her crew had died of disease, and only twenty survived to see Europe ; and they had suffered many calamities and misfor- tunes, before they unluckily came to anchor in the harbour of Cezimbra. would have put him to death, had he not, with the aid of his sister, escaped by a window, and fled to Italy ; but his patejixt as Governor of Malacca was confiscated, and he was reduced to penury. Thirteen years afterwards, in 1615, he was wandering about London, when he suddenly be- thought him of Sir William Monson, who inte- rested himself in his behalf with the Archduke and the Infanta, who restored to him his rank and pro- perty ; "the poor gentleman," concludes Sir Wil- ATTACK ON CEZIMBRA (j-^<^/ia^^ 190). Carack, or carraca, was the name usually given by the Spaniards and Portuguese to the vessels they sent to Brazil and the Indies ; they were large, round-built, and adapted aUke fpr.ibattle and bur- den. They were narrower above water than below, and had sometimes seven or eight decks, and were capable of carrying 2,000 tons and 2,000 men. Similar ships were used by the Knights of Rhodes and the Genoese. , , • The Viceroy of Portugal, Don. Christoyal, de Moro, was indignant and infuriated by the capture of this particular carack, under the guns of Cezim- tra, .those of eleven galleys, and in the face of 80,00.0 troops. He made a prisoner ,cf Don Diego Lobo, and Ham, "being thus tossed by the waves of cala- mity from one country to another, and never find- ing likelihood of rest till now (when) Death, that masters all men, cut him short just as he was pre- paring his journey to Spain. And this was the end of an unfortunate and gallant young gentleman, whose deserts were worthy of a better reward, if God was pleased to afford it to him." But Sir William Monson had not seen the last of the roads of Cezimbra. He had barely cast anchor in Plymouth Sound when he was summoned to the presence of Queen Elizabeth, who had a long -conference with him, in presence of the High Admiral, her treasurer, and secretary, concerning the defence of the coast Of Ireland, and certain rhe Bay of Cezimbra.] SIR WILLIAM MONSON. 193 armaments which the indefatigable Spaniards were again collecting at the Groyne ; and it was resolved that he should at once sail, with what would now be called a fleet of observation, to watch that place, and not leave the coast of Spain until he saw the object of those preparations. If they proved to be simply for defence, and not invasion, he was then to join the Dutch fleet at the Rock of Lis- bon. On receiving his final orders, he repaired to Plymouth, and took command of his squadron. It consisted of ten sail, as follows : — The Swiftsure, of 400 tons and 200 men, commanded by himself there she saw the Spanish fleet, consisting cf twenty-four sail ; and her captain learned from the crew of a boat he captured that they were on the look-out for the English. Pursuing a ship, with the Dreadtwught, into the roads of Cezimbra, he cannonaded the castle, and AA'as fired on in return, and captured a caravel, but afterwards dismissed her. Sailing once more to the Rock, he could see nothing of the Dutch fleet, without a junction with which it would have been perilous, with so small a squadron, to engage the Spaniards. MUSKET OF 1620, SHOWING WHEEL AND MATCH COMBINED, in person ; Mary Rose, 600 tons and 250 men. Captain Trevor ; Dreadnought, 400 tons and 200 men, Captain Cawfield ; Adventure, 250 tons and 120 men. Captain Norris ; Answer, 200 tons and 100 men. Captain Bredgate ; Quittatice, 200 tons and 100 men. Captain Browne; Lioiis Whelp, 200 tons and 100 men, Captain May. With these were the Paragon, a merchant ship, and a small caravel. On the 31st of August he sailed from Plymouth, and encountered much rough weather, but pre- ferred to keep at sea rather than return. He reached the Groyne, and found the Spanish squad- ron had left that place, under the flag of Don Diego de Borachero, for Lisbon. He dispatched the little caravel to the Bayona Isles, a number of insular rocks at the entrance of the Bay of Bayonne, off the Galician coast, to gather intelligence ; and 17 On the night of the 26th September he saw a light upon the sea, and, thinking it might come from the fleet of St. Thomas or the Brazils, he gave immediate chase, and on hailing the vessels in the gloom, he suddenly found by their great size and number that he was among the armada of Don Diego, with only the Adventure and Whelp in his company, the rest of his squadron having been scattered four nights before in a storm. He com- pelled a Spanish prisoner to respond to the hailing of his countrymen, but the \^ind was so high tha't they could not hear him. The Advetiture was now discovered to be an English ship ; she was fired upon, and had many of her men killed and wounded ; but she^ with the Dreadnought and. WJielp, passed right throughthe enemy's fleet, with their poop lanterns lighted, and 194 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Cagliari. when day broke they were far ahead of the Spaniards, who immediately made all sail in chase, and their leading ships soon overtook the Whelp and opened their guns upon her. Then it was, as Sir William relates of himself, that, " resolving not to see even a pinnace of Her Majesty's so lost, if he could rescue her with the hazard of his life, though it was much against the persuasions of his master and ■ company," he shortened sail and ordered the Whelp to lie her course, while he prepared to engage the three lead- ing ships of the enemy. On perceiving by this movement how reckless was the bravery of Monson, the Spaiiish admiral, to the astonishment of the English, fired a gun as a signal for his fleet to follow him, and sheering off, stood in shore. Monson now bore up for the South Cape, in hope to meet the San Domingo fleet of richly-laden merchantmen, but it had escaped him by passing two days before; and on the 21st of October, descrying a great galleon of the King of Spain, he gave immediate chase to her, though she steered for shelter in shore, and at length came to anchor under the guns of the castle situated on Cape , St. Vincent, a rocky promontory, forming the most western point of Portugal and at the same time also' of Europe. His boarders were all ready with pike, and bill, and axe, but he failed to board her, "through the fear and cowardUness of the man at the helm, who bore up " when he was ready to dd so ; and the fight that ensued was long, sharp, and dangerous, though not a shot was exchanged till they were only the ships' length apart. The castle, which was one of great strength, was playing upon Monson's ship, and its cannon so battered and rent her that he says "a team of oxen might have crept through her under the half- deck." He had seven men slain by one shot alone. He had others killed and many more wounded, as he had to encounter both the galleon and the fortress; and this unequal conflict he maintained in sight of a Spanish squadron, under Sirriago, that lay to the westward of the cape, and several EngUsh men-of-war that lingered to the eastward, but dared not attempt his rescue, "for fear of the castle.'' He continued the battle till nightfall, and then, to elude the fleet that lay to the westward waiting to capture him, and to seek for better fortune, he sailed for the island of Terceira ; but when within fifty leagues of it he was long becalmed. Then, finding that provisions were failing him, and that one of his masts, which had been wounded, went overboard, with the first suitable breeze he bore up for England; and in this crippled condition reached Plymouth on the 20th of November, 1602, where he found that the Dreadnought, the Adventure; and Mary Hose, with nearly all their crews dead or sick, had preceded him. Sir William Monson tells us that he was the general (by which he means admiral) of the last fleet of Queen Elizabeth, and adds that he had served her from the beginning of the Spanish wars ; having, when a youth, been at the capture of the first Spanish prize that was brought into an English port, and which was taken with the loss of twenty-five men killed and fifty wounded. She was afterwards manned as a ship of war against the Spaniards, and named the Commander. She belonged to Sir George Carew, then Governor of the Isle of Wight. At the death of Elizabeth her fleet consisted of forty-two sail, ranging from the Triumph, of 1,000 tons and 500 men, down to the Fenny Rose, hoy, of 80 tons and 8 men, and the Squint, of 20 tons and 2 men, when in harbour. CHAPTER XXXV. SEA-PIGHT WITH THE TURKS OFF CAGLIARI, 1617. The year 1603 saw the peaceful accession of James VI. of Scotland to the EngKsli throne. This pedantic monarch had none of those qualities that distinguished his ancestors, but the union of the crowns in his person was a great benefit to the people of Great , Britain. Never more on British soil could there be such battles as Bannockburn or Flodden, fought by rival monarchs. Nor was there need for the future to keep watch and ward along the border-side by tower and beacon; while, as subjects of the same king, the moss-troopers of both countries had to cease their raids and predatory warfare. But civil wars were to come, and English- men and Scotsmen were yet, unhappily, fated to CagliariJ ORIGlk OF THE UNION ]ACJL m meet each other in battles that were fierce and bloody, when armies had taken the form, of divisions and brigades, regiments and companies, according to the tactics of the present time. On the 1 2th of April, 1606, the Union Jack — the flag that has waved in so many bloody and victorious battles by sea and shore— first made its appearance. From Rymer's " Fcedera," and the Annals of Sir James Balfour, Lord Lyon King at Arms, we learn that some differences having arisen between ships of the two countries at sea. His Majesty ordained that a new flag be adopted, with the crosses of St. Andrew and St. George interlaced, by placing the latter fimbriated on the blue flag of Scotland as the gauntlets on his hands. The armour of Sir Horace Vere, a plain suit in the Tower, is, however, com- plete from head to heel, and is about the date' q\ 1606. It was now begun to be" found' that good bufi leather would, of itself, resist the ciitdfaswdrd, and was thus adopted as the dress' for lightly-armed cavalry ; so armour was now beginning" to termi- nate " in the same materials with which it began— the skins of animals, or leather " (Grose's " Military Antiquities "). To the rest for the musket or matchlock, there was added to the equipment of the musketeer in the time of James a long blade, for his defence MUSKETEER. PIKEMAN (From an Undated Tract, called " Exercise of the English Militia"— about 1625.^ ground thereof. This flag all ships were to carry at their main-top; but English ships were to dis- play St. George's red cross at their stern, and the Scottish the white saltire of St Andrew. The Union Jack, however, was not adopted by the troops of either country till their Parliamentary union, in 1707. In Munro's account of the expedition with Macka/s regiment in Denmark, he states that in 1626 the Scots in the Danish army persisted in carrying their national flag, and refused to place the Danish cross upon it. The arms and armour of the time of James were little more than a continuation of those of Elizabeth; but the increasing use of fire-arms, and the im- provements thereon, brought mail more into dis- repute, so that by the close of his reign that of the heaviest cavalry terminated at the knees. In Drayton's " Polyolbion," Henry Prince of Wales appears in armour only to the waist, with a plumed and visored basinet beside him, and steel after he had fired. This was called a Swedish feather, or " hog's bristle.'' It was originally a Swedish invention, and was put by the musketeer to the same use that the English archers were wont to put their pointed stakes in the days of Cressy and Agincourt. In this reign we first read of the simple military mourning which is in use to the present day. Colonel Munro, in his "Expedition," mentions that when Captain Learmonth, of Mackay's Highlander died of his wounds at Hamburg, in 1627, "for hii sake, and in remembrance of his worth and valour, the whole officers of the regiment did.weare a black mourning ribband." Save the expedition under Sir Robert Mansell to Algiers — an abortive affair, which covered the Government with ridicule-^no warlike event of importance marked the reign of the peaceful and pedantic James I. of Great Britain ; though there occurred a sea-fight off the Isle of Sardinia, between 1 96 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND ANfi SEA, [Cagliari. one English merchant ship and no less than six Turkish men-of-war, which made much noise, in the year 1616. Two accounts of this spirited battle were pub- lished : one by the English captain, in the following year, and dedicated to Henry Stuart, the young Prince of Wales; and the other by John Taylor, the " water poet," an author now little known, though a note to the " Dunciad " states that " he wrote fourscore books in the reigns of James and Charles I." Towards the close of December, 1616, the ship Dolphin, of London, Captain Edward NichoUs, left Zante, one of the Ionian Isles, with a full cargo for the Thames. She was a craft of 220 tons, or there- about; her crew consisted of thirty-six men and two boys ; and she was armed with nineteen pieces of cast ordnance and five "murderers," a name then given to small pieces of cannon having chambers, and made to load at the breech. They were mostly used at sea, in order to clear the decks when an enemy had boarded a vessel. Her master was "a man of great skill, courage, industry, and proved experience;" and these good qualities were Eoon to be put to a terrible test. On the ist of January,' 1617, the Dolphin lost sight of the Fior de Levante, and on the morning of the 8th sighted the island of Sardinia. The wind being westerly, at nine in the morning she stood in shore for Cagliari, and about noon was close to two small watch-tcwers, from which two cannon were fired, as a signal that the guards there wished to speak with the crew. Their object. Captain Nicholls afterwards learned, was to acquaint him that Turkish war-vessels were cruising off the coast ; but their intention was misunderstood, and tlie Dolphin's course was continued towards the Cabo di Paula, westward of the Gulf of Cagliari. On the 1 2 th of January, at four o'clock in the morning watch, they discovered, with doubt and alarm, a large ship steering towards them. She proved to be a sattie, or Turkish craft, which Captain Nicholls describes as being " much like unto an argosy, of a very great burthen and big- ness," and manned by armed men. Perceiving that she was endeavouring to get between the Dolphin and the island of Sardinia, the master sent a sea- man into the maintop " with his perspective glass," from where he saw five other vessels coming up before a south-west breeze. " He perceived them to be Turkish men-of-war, the first of them booming by himself before the wind, with his flag in the maintop and his sails gal- lantly spread abroad. After him came the admiral and vice-admiral, of greater burden than the first ; after him two more — the rear-admiral, larger than ail the rest, and his companion." Their ports were open, and it was evident they were bent on hostility and mischief; so the Dolphin cleared away for action. Powder and shot were served out for the guns ; the crew armed them- selves and stood to their quarters, while the captain harangued them in the following terms from the poop : — " Countrymen and fellows ! You see into what an exigency it has pleased God to suffer us to fall. Let us remember that we are but men, and must of necessity die, where, when, and how, is of God's ap- pointment ; but if it be His pleasure that this must be the last of our days. His will be done ; and let us, for His glory, our souls' welfare, our country's honour, and the credit of ourselves, fight valiantly to the last gasp ! Let us prefer a noble death 10 a life of slavery; and if we die, let us die to gain a better lifp ! " He then assured those who might survive that, if maimed, they should be maintained as long as they lived, and be secured from want, adding, " Be therefore resolute, and stand to it, for here there is no shrinking. We must be either free men or slaves. Die with me, or if you will not, by God's grace, I shall die with you ! " He brandished his sword ; the crew responded by loud cheers, and the trumpets were sounded, as he was assailed in succession by the sattie and the five other Turkish ships, the size and strength of which vary in the two accounts, but are given thus by Captain Schomberg in his " Naval Chro- nology:'' Two of 300 tons, 28 guns, and 250 men each; one of 200 tons, 24 guns, and 250 men; two of 200 tons, 22 guns, and 200 men each. In the sattie were said to be 1,500 men. The leading Turkish ship got to windward of the Dolphin, one of whose crew was killed by the first shot from her; and in the fight that ensued, her heavy guns so battered and beat down the bulwarks of i\\& Dolphin "that," says Nicholls, "we used our guns clear of the ports," as she was all exposed and open. But so bravely fought the crew of the little English ship, that the ordnance of the Turk was dismounted, nearly half her crew were slain, and the officers were seen beating the others with their scimitars to keep them to their duty. More- over, the Dolphin had given her many dangerous shots between wind and water. By this time she was laid aboard by the 200-ton ship, the captain of which proved to be an English renegade, named Walsingham. He fought his way over her larboard quarter at the head of a gang of ferocious desperadoes, armed with sabres (" which The Isle of RW.] SIX TO ONE. 197 were called faulchions "), hatchets, and half-pikes. The conflict on the poop continued for half an hour, during which the Turks strove to tear up the " nail-board and trap-hatch j " but the well-directed fire from a murderer in the round-house abaft the mainmast swept them away and cleared that portion of the ship ; while theirs was plied by cannon, mus- ketry, and another murderer, that was planted in the trap-hatch, till her hull was shot through and through. She fell away astern, receiving a parting broadside as she passed, and lay to, that her leaks and shot-holes might be plugged ; and this ended " V/^alsingham's part in the fight," which the Sar- dinians on the shore gathered in numbers to see. And now the shattered Dolphin was assailed by two other Turks, of 300 tons each, one of which was commanded by another renegade, named Kelly, probably an Irishman, who carried his flag in the maintop, while the other's ensign was hoisted at the fore. Ranging close alongside, one boarded her on the starboard quarter, the other on the larboard, or, as it is now called, port side. They poured in " thick and threefold, with their scimi- tars, hatchets, half-pikes, and other weapons," and witli loud shouts and yells of fury and defiance. They succeeded in tearing down the British flag ; but the steward of the Dolphin shot the Turk who had it, and he was flung into the sea, while the flag remained on deck. After a conflict maintained for an hour and a half, by sweeping the deck with the murderers, and the vigorous use of their weapons, the ship was again cleared, and the Turks were compelled " to lay their ships by to stop their leaks, for they had been grievously torn and bat- tered ; " but the Dolphin was not yet free, for she was almost immediately assailed by " two more of Captain Kelly's ships." But notwithstanding this overwhelming force, ! that the Dolphiiis crew was lessened by death, and that nearly all who were left to fight did so covered with wounds and blood, "we shot them quite through and through," says NichoUs, "and laid him likewise by the lee, as we had done the others before." But they were boarded again by the other ship, on the starboard quarter, and summoned to yield, with promises of quarter, liberty, and half the cargo. To these offers no attention was paid j by pike and sword they were all tumbled overboard, and the ship again cleared, but ere this was achieved the Dolphin caught fire, balls of burning matter being tossed into her by the enemy. One of these lighted in the basin of the surgeon, as he was in the act of dressing the wounds of the master, who, though injured in both legs, had still to stand by the tiller, and steer. The fire was extinguished, and the sorely-battered Dolphin crept in shore, and was about to anchor, when another ship bore down to attack her. Her appearance so alarmed NichoUs, that he slipped or cut his cable and ran into the roadstead of Cagliari, and took shelter between the two forts whose signals he had some time before disregarded. There he remained for five days repairing damages, attending to the wounded, and burying the dead on shore ; for, after all this boarding and cannonading, his loss was only seventeen killed, but all the survivors were more or less injured. These Turks were doubtless corsairs ; as NichoUs says that three of their captains were Englishmen, who came "to rob and spoil iipon the ocean, and their names were Walsingham, Kelly, and Sampson.'' After encountering a dreadful tempest, during which one of her wounded men died and was cast overboard, in the middle of February the Dolphin came safely to anchor in the Thames. CHAPTER XXXVI. THE ISLE OF Rh£, 1627. To add to the difficulties in which the year 1626 found Charles I. involved at home and abroad, a war was declared with France, and of that war his favourite, the unpopular Duke of Buckingham, was the cause. Bold, presumptuous, and amorous, when employed to bring over the Princess Henrietta, the bride of Charles I., he is said to have paid his addresses to the Queen of France, Anne of Austria, whose nature was as warm as his own. Hence he projected a new embassy to France, which Cardinal Richelieu prevented, by making Louis send a message to the effect th^t he must not think of such a journey ; but Buckingham, in the heat of his romantic passion, swore, says Clarendon, that " he would see the queen in spite of aU the power of France !" From that moment he determined to engage Britain in a war with that kingdom. 198 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [The I sic of Rha He prpcured the dismis,sal.of Queen Henrietta's French attendants, contrary to her marriage treaty ; he encouraged the seizure of French sliips by Enghsh, men-of-war and privateers ; but finding that these injuries produced only remonstrances and embassies, he resolved to second the intrigues of the Due de Soubize, by a military expedition into France, to succour Rochelle, a Huguenot city, the capture and suppression of which was one of the grand objects of the cardinal's government, and his tions of Buckingham : thus an armament was prer pared by land and sea for the relief of Rochelle. Buckingham, says the Jesuit, Pfere d'Orleans, beheved that a war against France, in favour of a Protestant faction, was an enterprise so much to the taste of the nation that, though hated by the English Parliament, he never imagined thi^t body would obstruct him ; but he was somewhat deceived, as the event proved. There was fitted for sea a. fle;et composed of CAGI.IARI, FROM IHE SKA [sec fage I96). troops were dien besieging it. " This Englishman," says Voltaire, " made his master declare war against France merely because that Court had refused him the liberty of carrying on his amour. Such ati adventure seemed more adapted to the times of Amadis de Gaul ; but so connected and interwoven are the affairs of this world, that the romantic amours of the Duke of Buckingham produced a religious war and the taking of Rochelle !" Charles had but small sympathy, perhaps, with the Huguenots, who so much resembled his own sour Puritans in discipline and worship, in politics and religion ; but he allowed himself to be won over by the arguments of Soubize, the Huguenot leader, then in London, and' by the ardent solicita- forty-two men-of-war and twenty-three transports, having on board seven regiments of a thousand men each, a squadron of horse, and many French Protestant refugees ; and it was given out that this force was destined for the recovery of the Pala- tinate. By a Royal Commission, the duke was made Admiral of the Fleet and Commander of the Land Forces, among which Sir James Balfour states there were 3,000 Scots, commanded by William, Earl of Morton, K.G., and captain of the King's Guard. By this time, military training had become more and more the study of the soldier. In a treatise called "England's Trainings," published in 1619, by Edward Davis, we find the mode of handling the matchlock by the English musketeer. BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. iTlie IsleorRlii. "A soldier must either, accustom himself to bear a piece or a pike. If he bear a piece, then must he first learn to hold the same, to accommodate his match between the two foremost fingers and his thumb, and to plant the great end on his breast with a gallant soldier-like grace ; and if ignorant, to the intent that he may be more encouraged, let him acquaint himself first with the firing of touch- powder in his panne, and so by degrees both to shoot off, to bow and bear up his bodye, and so, consequently, to attain to the level and practice of an assured and serviceable shot, readily to charge and, with a comely touch, discharge, making sure at the same instant of his mark, with a quick and vigilant eie." This process is precisely the same as the snapp- ing and aiming drill of the present hour. Davis adds, " His flaske and touch-box must keep his powder, his purse and mouth his bullets; in skirmish his left hand must hold his match and piece, and the right hand use the office of. charging and discharging." A most complete detail of the then elaborate system of drilling pikemen and musketeers, in the first years of Charles's reign, will be found in a quaint folio volume of the Scottish Colonel Munro, pub- lished at London, in 1637, by "William Jones, in Red Crosse Street." Platoon firing was first prac- tised by the Scottish troops ; and Harte says, in his " Life of Gustavus Adolphus,'' that by this new method they spread terror and amazement among the Austrians in the wars of Germany. The musketeers, says Munro, should be fonned in companies with a front of thirty-two men, but six ranks deep ; the first, firing at once, casting about and reloading ; the second rank passing to the front between the files, to give fire next ; then the third rank, and so on ; " all blowing, priming, cast- ing about, and charging all alike, where they stand, till per vices the whole ranckes have discharged, till the enemye turn back, or that they come to push of pike." About this period, the rondelle, or ron- dache, as the French called it, a light shield or target, was pretty generally used by the pikeman. A good example of one of these is still preserved at Warwick Castle. The English would seem to have early adopted a steady rate of marching, but less quick than the French. An old author of 1630, writing on this nubject, says, " I remember to have heard say that upon a time the old Marshal Biron bid Sir Roger Williams bring up his companies faster, taxing the slow march of the English. ' Sir,' said he, ' with this march our forefathers conquered your country of France, and I mean not to alter it ! ' — a memorable answer of an honourable soldier" (" Relations ot ihe Most Famous Kingdoms"). Buckingham's armament sailed from Portsmouth on the 7th of Jure, 1627, leaving eleven sail, which were not quite ready for sea, to follow him ; but they were off the Isle of Rhe before him, as the fleet had spent some time in pursuit of certain Dunkirkers. On seeing the English ' ships, the Rochellers shut their gates to the seaward, fearing some snare or surprise, as they had no tidings given to them previously that relief was coming from England. On the 1 2th of July, the duke sent Soubize and Sir William Beecher to the city with a message, and they were admitted by a small postern gate, to deliver it to the Huguenot leaders. It was to the effect that " the King of England, out of com- passion for their sufferings, had sent a fleet and army to their assistance ; and if they refused his aid, he declared that he was fully quit of his engage- ment of honour and conscience for their relief" The mayor replied, in the name of the inhabi- tants, that " they most humbly thaoked His Majesty for the care he had of them ; but that, being in strict union with all the Protestants of France, they could not receive into the city the offered suc- cours without consulting their friends, and obtain- ing previously the consent of the whole body of Huguenots." By this reply, the duke finding himself shut out of Rochelle, directed his course to the Isle of Rh^, where the officer commanding the French troops was the Marquis de Thoiras, afterwards a Marshal of France, whom Sir Philip Warwick, in his Me- moirs, calls an old and well-experienced soldier, who had in readiness such a force as made the intention of the British alike hazardous and danger- ous. The duke's first blunder, in appearing unan- nounced and unexpectedly before Rochelle, was now to be followed by another ; for, instead of attacking the fertile and defenceless Isle of Oleron, he turned his attention to that of Rhe, which was both well- garrisoned and strongly fortified. It lies opposite to Rochelle, is of irregular form, about eighteen miles long by three broad. Its capital, St. Martin, was defended by a citadel, and on the shore were several forts. The mode of la,nding was arranged by a council of colonels, and the event took place at four o'clock in the afternoon of the 12th, near La Prde, a fort with which some shots were exchanged. The Rainbow, the Vanguard, and two other ships, undeT Robert, Earl of Lindsay, who was Admiral of England and Governor of Berwick, were to lie well in shore, near a promontory, while the Gloie, TheIsleofIUi^.i THE REGIMENT 'OF- CHAMPAGNE DEFEATED. tte Lion, and the Chameleon came to anchor near the islet of St. Martin ; all their sides to be lined with musketeers, to scour the beach while the boats (vent off. The army was formed iu three divisions, and, when landed, the different regiments were to be formed m contiguous battalions, one hundred yards apart; each soldier to have powder, shot, and provisions for two days; a quartermaster (J follow each regiment with ammunition alone. The landing was accordingly effected in this fashion, but not without disorder, as there was a scarcity of boats, and they were fired on by the enemy. Buckingham had only got ashore 1,500 men, with four small pieces of cannon, called drakes, under Sir John Burroughs, Sir Alexander Bret, Sir Charles Conway, and others, when 200 French cavalry, who had been concealed in a hollow, made a furious charge, and "put our men, being un- ranked," to the rout, driving many into the sea, v/here they were drowned. By the example of the duke. Sir William Heydon, Sir Thomas York, and other officers, this disordered party faced about and began firing. They thus repulsed the cavalry, who fell back, with the loss of 120 men, on a body of infantry, whose officers led them on, waving their plumed hats and brandishing their swords. But, after a few volleys of shot, on the advance of the pikemen, now formed in close ranks, they were put to flight, but not until the British had some eighty soldiers drowned and twenty slain, together with no less than thirty officers killed and wounded. Among the former were Sir William Heydon, General of the Ordnance; Sir Thomas York, Quartermaster-General; Sir Thomas Thornhurst, Lieutenant- CDlonel; eight captains, including Wodehouse, Corporal of the Field; Johnson, an engineer ; Netherton, a quartermaster ; three lieu- tenants, two ensigns, and a sergeant. That night Buckingham got the cavalry squadron ashore, and threw up a trench, as another attack was expected ; but none was made, as some dis- cussion or difference of opinion as to the mode of defence had taken place between the Marquis do Thoiras and the Baron de St. Andre, who resented the marquis having assigned to his brother the honour of first attacking the invaders, who had actually defeated the Regiment of Champagne, in whose ranks were many men of the best families in France, and which had been first embodied by Henry II. in 1558, and had ever boasted of its stainless reputation in war; and Buckingham com- mitted a third blunder in not instantly following up the repulse of that corps, which fell back in such disorder that he might with tolerable ease have made himself master of St. Martin. Next morning a French trumpeter came from De Thoiras with a page, to ask if Buckingham meant " to give him a breakfast."' The duke sent them back with twenty-five pieces of silver. He still did not despair of getting quietly into Rochelle, as a message came thence to the effect, says Greenville, that they could show no countenance to the English till the Isle of Rhd was cleared, and until they got' in their wine and coal. The Mar- quis de Thoiras, who was rapidly strengthening all his posts, now sent another trumpeter concerning the burial of the French dead, offering, great ransoms for some of the slain who were of high rank, and who were carried out of the English entrenchments and delivered to the French in carts. The duke was now joined by Soubize, with 500 French Hu- guenot gentlemen from Rochelle ; and the troops marched out of the trenches a few bowshots to the front, but retired again to their bivouac. Buckingham now passed days in unmeaning de- lays. He allowed the wary old soldier, De Thoiras, to amuse him with deceitful negotiations, while he was strengthening St. Martin's to stand a siege ; and he was so negUgent in guarding the sea by his shipping that he permitted a strong French force to steal into the island in small divisions. He marched to La Flotte, a little town, where he halted for the night, and next day appeared before the town of St. Martin's, where a Scottish officer, named Sir William Cunningham (says San- derson, in his " History of Charles I."), "dared any to single combate ; " but the town was abandoned by 400 men, who left twenty pieces of cannon behind them. Buckingham had promised King Charles that he would reduce the citadel of St. Martin in eight days ; yet he was detained before it by De Thoiras till the month of November, for to the old works oi the place were now added many new. Sanderson describes it as being quadrangular, with sloping parapets, and four great bastions, or bulwarks, named after the king, queen, Thoiras, and Antioch. In these were galleries loopholed for musketry, and on their summits were fascines and hurdles of baskets and earth. The trenches, which were of great depth, could be filled with water. It was further defended by other works in the form of half-moons and ravelins, over which the great guns of the central tower could play with ease. On the 20th the duke had a battery erected against the citadel, while he left the regiments of Sir Peregrine Bertie and Sir Henry Sprye with the 202 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [ThelslaofRM. cavalry at La Flotte, to cover or secure a retreat if such became necessary ; and there Sir William Heydon, who died, was buried in the Protestant churchyard, "with a soldier's peal — three or four brave volleys of shot.'' The siege was now pressed with considerable vigour. Some windmills near the citadel were stormed and burned, and thirty French musketeers who were in them captured. The fire of the battery damaged the citadel but little, while the days after, to push the siege, 500 seamen were brought from the fleet under a Captain Weddel, who received the rank of colonel, for which we are told he was " laughed out of employment b^ the landsmen." Buckingham's anxiety to have the place reduced by famine or assault increased daily, as the gathering armaments of France would soon swallow up his little force. Cardinal Richeheu obtained ships from Havre de Grice, and from Spain ; among these were thirty large frigates. All RONDELLE, WARWICK CASTLE, 162O (see page 200). guns of the latter slew many of the duke's men, who were much exposed. Passing the French army before Rochelle at the hazard of his life, Mr. George Monk (the Albemarle of a future time) reached the Island of Rhd from England, with tidings of French preparations by land and sea. The barge of the Triumph captured a boatful of men and provisions, bound for the citadel, and her crew put all to the sword save three, who were " commanders of quaUty," and one of whom is styled as standard-bearer to the King of France. Two other boats were sunk with all on board. On the 8th of August the British trenches were scoured by a party of horse from the citadel, but many of tliese were slain as they retired. A few were filled with armed men ; and the services of Pompeo de Farago, a famous engineer of Dunkirk, were to be employed, for the destruction of the English fleet by fire. On the duke being joined by some Irish auxili- aries, under Sir Ralph Bingley and Sir Piers Crosby, the council of colonels became anxious for more active measures than mere cannonading; but delays, caused by parleys on various pretences — all the scheme of Thoiras to gain time — ensued with the consent of Buckingham, who rapidly lost favour with the troops. An assault, before a breach had been effected, was made on the 23rd of September, when the prospects of starvation or being cut off made the troops doubly desperate ; but they were over- The Isle of Rhe.] THE ROUT AT THE CAUSEWAY. 203 matcVied by the regiment of Champagne. From the ramparts fully a hundred of the British were killed by stones alone; mines were sprung, and the stormers were' repulsed with a loss of more than 400 men, and many prisoners, thirty of whom were taken "in traps which they had made in their trenches." French troops were now pouring into the island every night — on one occasion 1,000 men landed from twenty boats in the face of the fleet — and a retreat or abandonment of the enterprise was urged upon Buckingham by Sir Edward Hawley and Sergeant-Major Brett, in the name of the Military Council ; but he declined, until some of Sir William Cunningham's cavalry, who had been scouting, came in to report that they heard the sound of heavy firing on the mainland. By that time Count Schomberg was on the island, with 7,000 of the finest infantry of France, including the Royal Guard, and the regiments of Navarre and Piedmont, and had possessed himself of La Pree, a fort which the duke had overlooked ; and now, with an army decimated by disease, exposure, and starvation, rather than by the casualties of war, he consented to retreat, and the movement was executed so unskilfully that'it became a fatal rout. The garrisoning of La Pree and other forts on the isle left him no other point for embarkation than the Isle de I'Oye, which is separated from Rhd by salt-pits and a channel, through which lay a long and narrow causeway. Followed closely by the French, the British began to retire, but were not much molested until they began to cross the cause- way to reach the boats of the fleet, and then they were furiously charged by the French, among whom was a body of cavalry, and a dreadful scene of confusion and slaughter ensued as the rear was driven in disorder upon the centre and front. Five men only could pass abreast. The English, under Brett and Rich, and the Scots, under the Eail of Morton (who was labouring like the other two under a severe illness), had begun to defile across with four pieces of cannon, while some other troops, under Courtenay, Hawley, and Bingley, strove to keep a front to the enemy, but in vain ; the army became "like a body without a head," to quote "Strafford's Letters," Vol. I., ''• like a flock without a shepherd. The French falling upon their rear, killed and took prisoners as they would them- selves, helped by our own horse, who, to save themselves, broke, rode over our men, and put all in disorder, which made way for the slaughter They even disbanded, and shifted, there being no word of command given for the making them face about for repulsing of the enemy." The Lord Mountjoy was taken prisoner, and received quarter ; but Sir William Cunningham, who disdained to surrender, was killed. ' ' Vast numbers were drowned on each side of the causeway, others perished miserably by falling into the salt-pits. Sir William Courtenay, "a heavy, dull, covetous, old man, who had been above thirty years a private captain in Holland," fell into one of these, but was saved by one of his soldiers, who next fell in and perished unaided. Sir Piers Crosby, with 800 Irish pikemen, and Sir Thomas Fryar, with a few musketeers, alone made any attempt to cover the flight, and enable the remnant of the survivors to get on board ; and, to do him justice, the Duke of Buck- ingham was the last man who left that fatal island, where, of the 7,000 men he brought from Britain, no less than 5,000 perished. " It was rumoured, however, in England," says Rapin, " that not above 1,500 were lost ; and some even say the king was made to believe it." Fifty officers were killed between the time of landing and the retreat from the Isle of Rh^. " Since England was England it never received so dishonourable a blow. Four colonels lost ; thirty- two colours in the enemy's possession (but more lost) ; God knows how many men slain — they , say not above two thousand of our side, and I think not one of the enemy" ("Strafford's Letters"). The colours were taken to Paris, and hung up as trophies in Notre Dame. The Due de Rohan, who had taken arms as soon as the English fleet appeared off" the coast of France, soon discovered the dangerous tendencies of the Huguenots, without being able to do much mischief The Rochellers, who had been at last induced to join the English on the Isle of Rhd, by sending them small supphes of food, and 500 men under the Due de Soubize, only hastened the vengeance of the king, their master, who came in person with the great cardinal. With their pro- visions exhausted, they were left to endure a long and terrible siege, during which a famine ensued among them. Dogs, cats, horses, hides, and leather were devoured ; and of 15,000 persons, only some 4,000 were surviving when Rochelle surrendered. Such were the fruits of Buckingham's rash and most ill-conducted expedition to the coast of France. He proposed a second attempt, and for this purpose the survivors of the Scottish and Irish contingents were billeted about Portsmouth, "in the country villages, to the great regret of their hosts, that had never felt any such burden before," as Sanderson expresses it ; and Sir William Balfour, a Scottish commander of horse in the Netherlands, 204 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. CXhe Isle of Ehd. afterwards Governor of the Tower of London, received ;^3 0,000 to purchase cavalry horses for the king's service ; but the enterprise, so far as the duke was concerned, was ended by the dagger of Felton, a lieutenant who had been dismissed from the service. The result of the expedition to the Isle of Rhe had raised many complaints and loud murmurs against the duke, who had many enemies — so many had perished there, and among others, Major- but of a sixth rate, only £4 6s. 8d. ; while the sea- men in all classes had 15s. without distinction; and all surgeons had £1 los. per month, but v/ere rated below the ship's steward and cook, who received £1 5s. (Lediard). Troubles were 'now fated to come thick and fast on England, on Scotland, and on their king ; and thus a few explanations are necessary as v.e draw near the battles of the great Civil War. From 1629 to 1640, a period of eleven years, no ' disorder, and rode confusedly to the rear of their infantry, which still continued to advance. With loud yells and cheers, the Cornishmen now rushed on with their pikes, and drove the musketeers of Waller from hedge to hedge, through the woods, down the rough hollows, and up " the Steepy hills back to their main body." The fire of the cannon and the strength of the barricades protected' them, and caused the fight to be protracted, and success for some time, to be very doubtful. Art and nature had made Waller's position very strong. It was flanked and covered by several stone walls, over which his musketry fired as from a rampart, and through which he had cut avenues by which his horse could make sallies at suitable times ; and these openings were closed by barricades and manned by pikes the moment they returned. By one well-managed charge of horse, under fire of his musketry and cannon, he drove the enemy down the hill, over all their own and his dead and wounded; but it was again assaulted, and the old point made good, only to be lost once more. Four times the hill of Lansdown was taken and lost. During this protracted conflict the long July evening deepened into night, and then fell Sir Bevil Grenville, fighting bravely at the hea'd of a "stande " (/.^., company) of pikes. This" was the first occasion on which the cavalry of King Charles had ever been known to recoil ; but they were compelled to give way before a regiment of cuiras- siers led by Sir Arthur Haslerig (a singularly cruel and brutal officer). Sir Ralph Hopton was wounded, and seriously injured next day by the explosion of some gunpowder. Sir Bevil " was slain in front of his men " (to quote quaint old Thomas Sanderson), "with his sergeant-major and captain-lieutenant dead at his feet ; and in earnest I have heard it confest, with as much honour as ever was conferred on an enemy. Then the Cavaliers rallied their horse and drew up their cannon, as it was growing dark ; but they sliot on all sides till midnight, when (to cover their retreat) their adversaries stuck lighted (gun) matches on the hedges, which received volleys from each part of the body ; but instead of answer- ing these, they ran awa)', leaving the field with five hundred muskets, fourteen barrels of powder, a whole stand of pikes," and other arms ; but their cannon they drew off. " The fight lasted from two o'clock in the afternoon till one the next morning." The marquis remained master of Lansdown Hill, while AValler retreated to Bath ; but his losses were so great that his advantage was little. He lost nine brave officers, and many gentlemen of good family. Among others were found dead at daybreak, Mr. Lake, son of the Lord d'Eyn- court, with a standard of the enemy tied about one of his arms ; Lieutenant-Colonel Wall, Sergeant- Major Lawer, and Captains James and Chalwell. The loss was greatest among his cavalry, so many of whom had perished under the fire of Puritans in ambush behind the thick summer hedjgerows Roundway Down. J THE "REGIMENT OF LOBSTERS.' He had been sent into the West to drive Waller thence ; and yet after this battle he found the latter still between the king's army and the western counties,. whither he, the marquis, could not pene- trate without risking another battle, which, without the accession of a new body of cavalry, he was not in a. condition to attempt. This made him resolve to march to Devizes, intending to leave there his infantry, under Sir Ralph Hopton ; and then, with the remains of his cavalry, to cut a passage sword in hand to Oxford, which was only thirty miles distant from that place, to which he hoped to return with a body of horse and dragoons strong enough to enable him to bring off Hopton's force, or still to keep the field. Meanwhile the remains of the gallant Sir Bevil Grenville were sent to Cornwall, and buried in Kilk- hampton Church, where his monument is still to be seen. The Grenvilles were long seated at Stowe, a magnificent mansion, above the village of Combe, in Cornwall ; but a moated site is all that remains of it now. CHAPTER XL. ROUNDWAV DOWN AND NEWBURV, 1 643. Grenville's comrade. Sir Ralph Hopton, was no doubt a kinsman of that Ensign Hopton — if not the ensign himself — who figures in the history of the unfortunate Elizabeth Stuart, the wife of the cowardly Elector Palatine : he who " trailed a pike in, the English band of Sir Horace Vere;" and who carried her on his horse en croupe to Breslau, after the battle of the White Mountain, in 1620; and whose proudest boast it was, " that in her saddest extremity he had served and protected the Scottish Queen of Bohemia" (Memoirs of the Queen of Bohemia and of Sir John Hepburn). Sir Ralph Hopton, left thus in command of the king's infantry at " The Devizes," as the town was then named, was past 'danger, after his scorching; he could hear and speak, says Clarendon, but he could neither see nor stir. With him, however, were left the Earl of Marlborough, general of the royal artillery, and the Lord Mohun. The resolu- tion of the Marquis of Hertford was pursued, but so soon as he left his infantry at Devizes, Waller ap- peared before that, place and invested these troops, then in sore straits owing to want of provisions. Aware that they would not remain long in this condition, he proposed to them a capitulation, which Sir Ralph Hopton, in his feeble and miser- able state of body might gladly have accepted ; and in the uncertainty whether any succour would reach him from Oxford, he commenced a treaty with Waller, which he intended to prolong to the last extremity, resolving not to yield while the shadow of a hope remained : but so confident was Waller that he had them all completely at his mercy, that he sent word to Parliament " that their business was done, and that by the next post he would send the number and rank of his prisoners." Meanwhile a body of only 1,500 horse sent by King Charles, at the urgent request of the Marquis of Hertford and Prince Maurice, was advancing from Oxford under the Lord Wilmot ; and, fortu- nately for Sir Ralph, this force appeared within two miles of Devizes before his capitulation with Waller was signed. This was on the morning of the 8th of September, 1643. Sir William, the instant he learned the advance of these succours, drew out his whole force, without sound of drum or trumpet, on Roundway Down, over which Wilmot's cavalry would have to pass ere they could form a junction with the infantry in the town ; and there, notwithstanding the astonishing disparity of the forces in strength, ensued the most signal defeat of the Parliament during the war. On a good position along the green slope of the down, he drew up four regiments of pikemen and musketeers, six regiments of horse, 500 dragoons, and eight pieces of brass cannon. In Waller's force was still the then famous cuirassier regiment of Sir Arthur Haslerig. Clarendon says that " Sir William Waller re- ceived from London a fresh regiment of 500 horse, under the command of Sir Arthur Hasle- rig, which were so completely armed that they were called on the other side the ' Regiment of Lobsters,' because of the bright iron shells with which they were covered, being perfect cuirassiers, and were the first seen so armed on either side, and the first that made any impression on the king's horse, who being unarmed, were not able to bear the shock of them ; besides, tba' they were 222 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. I Roundway Down. Xt« jtmimxjjtya ^ Josmtt? or y ^J-wniveousotr^. AKQUF,BI)SIKR<; secure from hurts by the sword, which was almost tlie only weapon the others were furnished with." In the succeeding year, in the account of an action at Lyme, we read in the " Mer- curius Politicus," that " the valiant Blue - coats of Sir Arthur Haslerig again routed the enemy;" and by the passage quoted from Clarendon, we may infer that iron pano- ply was somewhat scarce in the ranks of both armies. Sir John Cell's regiment of Grey-coats is men- tioned in the " Me- moirs of Colonel Hutchinson," in 1643. Indeed, the clothing of the En- glish army varied very much. At this time there were the Red Regiment of Westminster, the Yellow Regiment of the Tower Hamlets, and the Blue Train- ed Bands of Lon- don ; and, from Ellis's " Original Letters "(Vol. III.), we learn that the soldiers about this period began to re- sort to jagged bul- lets, from the savage idea that they more surely made mortal wounds. Lord Wilmot, find- ing it impossible to reach Devizes without fighting, halted when almost within musket-shot of Waller's line. WITH SNAP-HANCECARBINFS (KRoM KOR THE CAVAl.LRlIi," 1632J INSTRUCTIONS ENGLISH CUIRASSIER (TIME OF CHARLES I.). There can be little doubt that, with all his cou- rage, and the courage of those who accompanied him, he might have justly deemed that then dis- cretion was the better p.art oif valour, before, with only 1,500 horse, he attacked an army so superior in strength ; but he had no alternative, and the en- counter seemed to the Cavaliers a hopeless one. The fight began by Haslerig charg- ing furiously and rashly at the head of his cuirassiers and other cavalry, confident that they must sweep all be- fore them. Sir John Byron's regiment en- countered the first shock, and he re- ceived many sword wounds. Sharp and short, but decisive, was the hand-to- hand conflict that ensued; but in an incredibly brief space the Cavaliers, in their doublets of velvet and coats of buff, compelled the boasted "Lobsters" — hitherto deemed invincible — to give ground,wheel about, and fall back upon their pikemen and musketeers. The Cavaliers pressed forward ; a universal panic seized the enemy's cavalry force; it quitted the field with Waller, who threw the blame of the whole mishap on Haslerig, as they fled in hopeless rout for Bristol. Wilmot now seized the can- non, and turned them on the infantry, who, finding them- selves left to their fate, and, more than all, attacked in their rear and flank by the troops of Sir Ralph Hopton, who issued with all speed from Devizes, they gave way, and flea on all sides. Of fhp P^vuilans' there yere nearly 6jOoo slain. 224 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. "Vewbury. ind 900 taken prisoners, together with the cannon, eight cavalry standards, and twenty-four infantry colours. To add to the joy, however, of this new and most unexpected victory, the queen, who had re- turned from the Continent on the day it was won, entered Oxford, where the Marquis of Hertford assumed the command of the army; where fresh schemes of conquest were planned, the captures of Bristol, Weymouth, and other places proposed; and where, for his wounds and services at Round- way Down, Sir John Byron, on the 24th of the subsequent October, was raised to the peerage, by the title of Lord Byron, of Rochdale, in the county palatine of Lancaster. He had commanded in the reserve at the battle of Edgehill. Three of his brothers served the king in this disastrous war, viz. : Robert, who was a colonel of infantry; Sir Philip, who fell at the head of his regiment at the storming of York ; and Sir Thomas, who commanded the Prince of Wales's Regiment, under the Earl of Northampton, in the engagement on Hopton Heath, where he was so severely wounded in the thigh that he died soon after. The surrender of Bristol to Prince Rupert after the result at Roundway Down dispirited the Par- liamentarians, and such was the confusion reigning in London that many urged Charles to march on the metropolis at once ; but he resolved first to reduce Gloucester, that he might have the whole course of the Severn under the royal authority, more especially as the queen had brought with her 3,000 infantry, 1,500 horse, and much ammunition and artillery. Hampden had fallen beneath the fire of Rupert's troops at Chalgrove Field; but now a greater soldier and statesman — a captain of horse, named Oliver Cromwell — was becoming prominent as a leader, though he had never encountered regular troops nor foreign armies of long training, but only the raw levies of England, and, latterly, the plough- men and shepherds of Scotland. Sprung from an ancient family in the fenny districts of Huntingdonshire, it would appear that in early life he had fallen into a state of prolonged and profound melancholy, and it is plain from the somewhat rhapsodical and disjointed documents that have come down to us that his mental faculties were impaired. To cure him of this malady he' was advised to turn his attention to agriculture, and this obscure but soothing occupation he did not quit till five years later, when he migrated to Ely, on the death of an uncle who left him property in that cathedral city. Subsequently came those events which led to the Civil War. The melan- choly enthusiasm of Cromwell was kindled, and he beUeved that the time had come when ." he was to put himself forth in the cause of the Lor^," and that cause he identified in his own mind with the cause of the country party in opposition to that of the Church and king ; but though called to Parliament, it was not until 1643 that he began to take his recognised place amid the leaders of the puritanical zealots. Among the members of the Long Parliament h^ was chiefly remarkable for his slovenly dress, of Puritan cut and sombre colour, and for his strange, rambling, and incoherent speeches. He divined the secret of the king's early success, and resolved that the same clownish soldiery of the ParUament should soon be more than a match for the glittering Cavaliers who adhered to royalty. To the sentiment of pure honour, generous love, and blind devotion which inspired the latter, he resolved to oppose the energy which is bom of fervid yet sullen religious enthu- siasm. In six months after the appointment of Essex as general, he was appointed colonel of a regiment of horse, his famous " Ironsides," wWch he was at liberty to recruit for himself; and there can be no doubt that he filled its ranks with brave and resolute, sober, grim, and God-fearing men. From Whitelock we learn that most of them " were freeholders and freeholders' sons, who upon matter of conscience engaged in the quarrel ; and being thus well armed within by the satisfaction of their own consciences, and without by good iron arms, they would, as one man, stand firmly and charge desperately." Cromwell was careful not to take these men into action until he had tried their mettle ; and Heath tells us that at their first muster, which was near one of the king's garrisons, he placed in ambush twelve formidable-looking fellows, who rushed noisily forth, and at sound of trumpet galloped towards them. On this some twenty of the Iron- sides " fled out of fear and dismay." These he did not punish, but simply ordered them to dismount, and deliver up their arms and accoutrements, so that their places might be supplied by better men ; and the spring of 1643 saw his corps increased to 2,000 troopers, all of them devoted to him, and ready at his bidding to do and to die. King Charles had invested Gloucester, the only place of note in the midland counties which ad- mitted the authority of the Parliament; but though the garrison was reduced to its last barrel o) powder, the approach of Essex raised the siege. Yet the latter noble dreaded s. battle with the army of the king, as it was greatly superior in cavalry. Newbury.J FALKLAND'S PRESENTIMENT. 225 and he resolved to reach London, if possible, witjiout risking that contingency. For five days he lay at Tewkesbury, which was his first halt after leaving Gloucester, and then he feigned certain preparations for a movement towards Worcester, while by a forced march in the night he reached Cirencester, and thus obtained the double advan- tage of passing unmolested through an open country, and of surprising a convoy of provisions m that town. Without delay he continued his march towards London ; but when he reached Newbury, a market town near the southern border of Berkshire, in a fertile place on the banks of the Kennet, great was his astonishment to find that the brave and energetic king, by marches still more forced and hasty, was already in possession of the place, and ready to dispute his progress farther with the sword. An action was now unavoidable, and there at Newbury, on the 20th of September, 1643, was fought a battle that was both long and bloody. The Cavaliers were "gentlemen high-spirited and ardent," says the popular historian of the Round- heads ; " accustomed to consider dishonour as more terrible than death ; accustomed to fencing, to the use of fire-arms, to bold riding, and to the manly and perilous sports which have been well called the image of war. Such gentlemen, mounted on their favourite horses, and commanding little bands com- posed of their younger brothers, grooms, game- keepers, and huntsmen, were, from the very first day they took the field, qualified to play their part with credit in a skirmish '' — or, he might well have added, a stubborn pitched battle. The two armies were now too near each other to avoid an encounter, consequently preparations were, made for one on both sides. The troops of Essex were advantageously posted on lofty ground, called Brigshill ; his cannon and cavalry covering his infantry. Among the latter were the Trained Bands of London, who were placed under Major-General Skippon, at their first muster in Finsbury Fields in 1642,- when six. regiments, comprising 8,000 men, appeared under arms. The troops of Essex had been under arms all night, and consequently fought at disadvantage. With those of the king were Robert Dormer, Eari of Carnarvon ; Henry Spencer, Eari of Sunder- land ; and the Viscount Falkland. The last made himself somewhat remarkable on this day. He was then only in his thirty-fourth year, and though Secretary of State, was serving as a volunteer in the cavalry corps of Lord Byron. He was a young man of the brightest parts, of the greatest honour. and most consummate virtue. He had ever assisted the king, his master, with the most salutary advice; and had encountered the greatest difficulties and braved many perils in his service. He had ever used his utmost endeavours to effect a recon- ciliation between the hostile parties ; and when he saw the hope was vain, so much did he love Eng- land, that a pensive sorrow stole upon him ; he grew regardless of his dress, and when with friends would often sigh deeply, and ejaculate the words "Peace— Peace!" On the morning of the battle of Newbury, he appeared to have some presentiment of his ap- proaching fate, and he bestowed extraordinary care upon the decoration of his person, and in selecting his richest Cavalier apparel, saying the while, jocu- larly, to a friend that his body should not be found by the enemy in a slovenly condition. " I am weary," he added, '' of the times, and foresee much misery to my country ; but believe I shall be out of it before night" And inspired by this solemn conviction, he took his place in the ranks. The Royal infantry was led by Sir Nicholas Byron. The battle began by small advanced parties 0/ musketeers skirmishing from behind walls, hedges, and trees, until the lines were so near that Charles found it necessary to engage in general action towards the afternoon. Essex, nothing loth, advanced with his own regiment, and the Lord Robert's brigade of horse. Led by the fiery and impetuous Prince Rupert, the Royal cavalry made a fiirious charge upon that of the Puritans, and compelled that usually solid force to give way. Remembering the error he had com- mitted at Edgehill, he did not pursue them too far, but after he had routed them, sword in hand, he wheeled round his squadrons, now flushed with hope and success, and made a furious rush upon the infantry, in rear of which the routed horse were rallying, blown and breathless. In the first onset fell the fated Falkland. He was mortally wounded in the stomach by a cannon-shot, and fell from his horse to die in about an hour afterwards. Their bridles loose, their horses gored by the spur, the Cavaliers flung themselves in headlong charge against the infantry, but they could not make the least impression upon that serried yet sohd rampart of pikes. " The militia (i.e., the Trained Bands) of London especially, though drawn but s few days before from their ordinary occupations, yei having learned all military exercises, and being ani- mated by unconquerable zeal for the cause in which they were engaged, equalled on this occasion what could be expected from the most veteran forces." 236 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Newbury. With various turns of fortune, the fight continued to rage all over Brigshill, chiefly marked by a succession of futile charges made by the Cavaliers upon the stubborn Puritan infantry, whose muske- teers emptied many a saddle from the rear of that wall of pikes ; and in these attacks there fell on the king's side the Earls of Carnarvon and Sunderland. *rhe latter was killed by a cannon ball ; and the former, who had served his sovereign with great courage and ability, was run through by a sword, and fell from his horse in mortal agony. There fell also Colonels Morgan and Fielding. Carnarvon, according to Clarendon, was slain by the flashing of the fire-arms serving to show each where the other lay, till eleven o'clock, when the king's troops, finding that they had decidedly the worst of the conflict, drew off, leaving the field in possession of Essex, whose soldiery had the pillage of the dead (Whitelock). Essex also marched off. His troops " left their heavy carriages behind, some barrels of shot, a sur- geon's chest, and their dead bodies to the view of the Cavaliers." The loss of Essex was one colonel of the City Trained Bands, a few inferior officers, and a consider- able number of his rank and file ; but the loss oo STEEL SCOTTISH PISTOLS, 163O (TOWER COLLECTION). some straggling troopers, as he was returning after the rout of a body of horse that was opposed to his command. Before the Civil War he had tra- velled through Spain, France, Italy, and Turkey, and was a brave young noble, fond of war and military exercises. " He was a lover of justice, strict in observing his word; and as his life was an honour to the cause which he embr-aced, his un- timely death was a sensible wound to it." The Earl of Sunderland, " whose family of Spencer was ever sound in its root and in all its numerous branches," says the loyal knight. Sir Philip War- wick, was only in his twenty-third year. He left a widow, the Lady Dorothea Sidney, whom Waller addressed as Sacharissa in many an amatory poem. The Lord Andover, Sir Charles Lucas, Colonels Gerard and Ivers, the Earls of Carlisle and Peter- borough, Colonels Lisle and Villiers, and many more gentlemen of noble family, were all more or less severely wounded. Night came on, and still the fight continued, the glimmer of the matches and the king's side in men of rank and influence, and of their retainers, was very great. Both armies received a shock that discouraged them from any fresh trial of strength for a time. Both claimed the victory, and returned thanks to Heaven for it. Few prisoners were taken on either side ; but among those captured by the Puritans, Pfere d'Orleans mentions a son of the French Marquis de Vieuville, whom "they barbarously killed in cold blood." Among the dead next morning was found the body of Lord Falkland, "in his rich apparel;" and no man's death in the Royal cause was more lamented by his party since the war began. This noble was Lucius Carey, son of the first Viscount Falkland (in the peerage of Scotland), Sir Henry Carey, of Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire, who was the first messenger that, in 1603, brought to Holy- vood Palace the tidings of Queen Elizabeth's death. The young viscount, says Clarendon, " was a person of such prodigious parts of learning and knowledge, Mau^on Moor.V CHANGE OF THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 227 of that inimitable sweetness and delight of con- versation, of so flowing and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive simplicity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed war than that single loss, it must be most infamous and execrable to all posterity. ' Turpe mori, post te, solo non esse dolore.' He was wont to profess that the very agony of the war, and the view of the calamities and dissolution the kingdom did and must endure, took his sleep from him, and would shortly break his heart." Ere he marched from Newbury, Essex sent the following order to Mr. Fulk, tlie chief clergyman, and to the constables of the parish of Enbome, in Berkshire, which lies two miles west of the field, but near which many of the slain were lying : — " These are to will and require you, upon sight, to bury all the dead bodies lying in and about Enborne and Newbury Wash, upon your peril if disobeying. The one-and-twentieth September, 1643. " Essex." But the care of thfiL, .king, who, with the Queen Henrietta, had stood ail day upon an eminence and seen the fight — " a harder bout to both sides than that of Edgehill " — was also shown for the dead, and the wounded too, when he issued this mandate from his camp : — "Our will and command is, that you forthwith send into the towns and villages adjacent, and bring thence all the sick and hurt soldiers of the Earl of Essex's army ; and though they be rebells, and deserve the punishment of traytors, yet, out of our tender compassion upon them, as being our subjects, our will and pleasure is, that ye carefully provide for their recovery, as well as for those of our own army, and then send them to Oxford. The one-and-twentieth of September, 1643. " To the Mayor of Newbiuy." "And so they were buried on both sides the dead," adds Sanderson. "Many colours of the king's comets — i.e., troops of horse— were brought to London ; amongst these was one with a draught of the Parliament House, having the heads of the two Gunpowder traytors set upon it, with this motto, 'Ut extra, sic intus ;' and being concluded to be of Colonel Spense's (corps), he and his posterity were voted to be extirpated out of the kingdome; and yet 11 proved not (to be) his colours." Finding the ground clear and the way open, on the day after the battle Essex continued his route to London. The indefatigable Prince Rupert followed him, and among the narrow lanes about Reading attacked and harassed his rear, killing and captur- ing many ; but this did not prevent the earl from continuing his march and reaching London, where he was hailed with acclamations as a conqueror, and was publicly thanked for' his great services, his' countess hailing and embracing him in the street with the words, "Welcome, thou man of God !" The loss on both sides in the battle of Newbury, and the advanced period of the season, obliged both armies to retire into winter quarters, while the two Houses of Parliament and the Assembly at Westminster agreed to adopt the Solemn League and Covenant, to invite the assistance of the Scottish people, and form an alliance with them against their mutual sovereign. At a subsequent period, Newbury was the scene of another encounter between the troops of the Parliament and the king. On that occasion his head-quarters were at a place called Shaw; and in the wainscot of one of the rooms is a hole said to be that made by the shot ot a musket, fired through one of the windows at Charles who stood near it. CHAPTER XLL MARSTON MOOR, 1644. In writing of the affails of England and Scotland, after the time of James and Elizabeth, some per- plexity, till the middle of the eighteenth century, is apt to occur concerning dates. This arises from the circumstance that, in 1599, James VI. of Scot- land issued an edict, similar to that issued by Charles IX. of France, in 1564, to the effect that the Christian year should begin on the ist of January ; but, with a curious obstinacy and adherence to old custom, the 25 th of March continued to be New-year's-day in England until 1752; hence some singular confusions seem to occur in the order of historical incidents. Under the terms of the Solemn League between 228 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SE^V. tMarston Moot. the Parliaments of the two kingdoms, an armament was prepared in Scotland, and of this force very- particular accounts are preserved. The Scots rejoiced that by forcing their Covenant upon the English they had thus, through the Puri- tans, avenged the attempt of Laud to overthrow the Kirk ; hence their clergy were unwearying in their incitements to war agg,inst the king. By an illegal and self-summoned convention of the Estates, which met at Edinburgh on the 22nd of June, Alexander Pennicuik, of that ilk, formerly chirur- geon to General Sir John Banier, in the Swedish wars. Such was the zeal of the General Assembly that a regiment of Black-coats was levied, under Sir Alexander Erskine, of Scotscraig, and every minister furnished one able-bodied man (Guthrie). Each regiment of horse consisted of the usual number of field-officers, with one surgeon, eight captains, eight lieutenants, eight comets, eight quartermasters, twenty-four corporals, eight trump- ( ^ k^.' ENTRY OF ESSEX INTO LONDON {seepage 227). 1643, a levy of 21,500 horse and foot was ordered to assist the English Parliament in ciTishing the king and the Cavaliers ; and oblivious of an oath which he had sworn at Perth "never again to draw a sword against His Sacred Majesty," Field-Marshal Leslie, now Earl of Leven, re- ceived the command, and bent all his talents and energies to organise this new force upon the nu- cleus of that which last returned from England. The camp was formed at Hairlaw, near Berwick. There were 18,000 infantry, under Lieutenant- General Baillie; 3,500 horse and dragoons, under Major-General Sir David Leslie (afterwards Lord Newark) ; a train of artillery, under General Hamil- ton ; and a very efficient medical staff, under Dr. eters, and six hundred troopers. Each regiment of foot had five staff officers, one drum-major, one scrivener, one provost-marshal, ten captains, ten lieutenants, ten ensigns, twenty sergeants, thirty corporals, ten captains-at-arms, ninteen drummers and fifers, and one thousand pikemen and mus- keteers. In addition to their arms, the latter were furnished with Swedish feathers of tempered steel. to repel cavalry. Attended by six halberds and a drum, the ensign of each company always took post in front of the centre. The brigades were marshalled by beat of drum ; " and generally gave a salvo of musketry before advancing with clubbed musket or at push of pike, when the cfficers fell in with the front Marston Moor.] CAMPrBED OF 1645. 229 rank. When the army halted or bivouacked, the artillery were always in front and the baggage in the rear; guards were placed on the colours, and the pikemen stuck their pikes in the earth, in order as they stood in line." All petards, ammunition, scaling-ladders, and flying-bridges were carried with the train. The pike was ever the favourite weapon of the Scots, and Colonel Munro writes of it with enthusiasm, as the best ever gentleman handled. " My choice," humidity of the earth; the which from its quality," continues the author, " I call a ventikt, signifying a bed of wind ; for being of neat's leather, and six foot square, the wind being let out, it will be of good use to cover a sumpter, and so earn its carriage." Lord Leven sent letters to France, Holland, Denmark, . Sweden, and Brandenburg, inviting all Scottish soldiers of fortune serving in those coun- tries to join his standard ; but many joined that of VIKW Of YOUK \sa jagi 230,. says this prototype of Dugald Dalgetty, " in the day of battel, and leading a storme, or entering a breach with a light breastplate and good head- piece, being seconded by good fellowes, I would choose a good halfe-pike to enter with," Officers in action exchanged their bonnets or plumed hats for a head-piece. About this time we read of air-beds being recom- mended for camps. In a work on fortification, published by Richard Royston, " at the signe of the Arigel, in Ivie Lane," 1645, we have a dia- gram of one. It represents two officers, in long boots, cloaks, beavers, and gorgets, sleeping on a bed made of leather, wind-tight, "and blown up. to bear them from the damp and unwholesome 20 the Jcing, who, in the "Eikon Basilike," bitterly censured the course then pursued by his countr}'- men. " The Scots," we read, " are a nation upon whom I have not only common ties of nature, sovereignty, and bounty, with my father of blessed memory, but also especial and late obligations of favours, having gratified the active spirits among- them so far that I seemed to many to prefer the desires of that party before my own interest and honour. But I see that royal bounty emboldens some men to ask and to act beyond all bounds of modesty and gratitude." On the 19th of January, 1644, in defiance of a more than usually inclement season, their army. 23° BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. tMarston Moofi crossed the Tweed, and leaving six regiments to block up Newcastle, while closely watched by the English Royalists, 14,000 strong, under the Marquis of Newcastle, it marched on Sunderland, where the Earl of Leven halted on the 4th of March. This sudden appearance of a Scottish army in North- umberland and Durham, at a moment when the scales of battle were pretty evenly balanced between the Parliament and the unhappy king, could not fail to operate most fatally for the interests of the latter. " To retrieve their sinking fortune," says Wellwood, in his Memoirs, " the Parliament was obliged to call in the Scots to their assistance, which so far turned the scale that the king lost ground every day after ; and the defeat of his army at the battles of Marston Moor and Naseby put him out of capacity to keep the field, and broke entirely all his measures." In the South of England the Earl of Essex was meeting with many defeats, but when the Scots made their appearance Charles had then two armies to meet instead of one; yet his gallant heart did not fail him. Before the Marquis of Newcastle could attack the Earl of Leven, lie received intelligence of the return of tlie Parliamentary general. Sir Thomas Fairfax (son of Fairfax, of Denton Castle, whom Charies had created a peer of Scotland), with his forces fresh from victories in Cheshire ; and, afraid of being enclosed between two armies, he retired to York. Leven having joined Lord Fairfax (elder brother of the preceding), with their united forces they invested the city. Edward Montagu, Earl of Manchester, an active and successful Parliamentary general, soon after came in with an accession of ■force; and thus York, though vigorously defended by the Marquis of Newcastle, was so closely besieged by these combined armies, and so reduced to dire extremity, that the three leaders flattered themselves they should have a rapid and easy conquest. The spirit of the energetic Prince Rupert' was roused by tlie importance of the emergency, and the necessity for relieving York. By the most vigorous exertions among the loyalists in Cheshire and Lancashire, he collected a considerable force; and on being joined by Sir Charles Lucas, who commanded the horse of Newcastle, he hastened to relieve York at the head of 20,000 men, hoping to scatter and destroy alike the English rebels and their new Scottish allies. Immediately on his approach, the Scottish and . Parliamentary generals abandoned the siege of ' York, and drew up their united forces on Marston Moor, five miles and a half north-east of Tadcaster, where a battle ensued on the 2nd of July, 1644. On the preceding evening the three combined armies — that of the Scots Covenanters, under Leven ; that of Manchester, which was led by Oliver Cromwell, his lieutenant-general ; and that under Lord Fairfax — had formed their camp oil the moor. "The same night," says Menteith, in his " Troubles," " the Marquis of Newcastle and General King went out of the town, in order to discourse {i.e., consult) with the prince about what was to be done. He ordered them to return, and to march out the next morning with the garrison, which consisted of about 6,000 men, and with all the inhabitants that he could induce to take arms, declaring to them that he was resolved to fight the enemy, though some were of opinion that a relief ought rather to be thrown into York." Next morning by break of day the armies of the prince and of the allied Puritans were drawn up in order of battle, facing each other, with a long hedge between their main bodies, but the ground was clear in front of the wings on the right and left of each respectively, thus they were fully in sight of eacli other's flanks beyond the hedge described. Three miles from Green Hammerton, on the old post road to York, a rising ground, covered by several clumps of trees, marks the scene of this memorable encounter. The army of the Parlia- ment was drawn up on the slope of an eminence called Marston Field, then covered with rye, and its front extended from Marston to Tockwith, a distance of three miles (Vicar's " ^'arliamentary Chronicle "). The right wing was led by Sir Thomas Fairfax ; it consisted of all his cavalry and three regiments of Scottish horse. The left wing was commanded by Cromwell and the Earl of Manchester. The right centre of infantry was led by Ferdinando, Lord Fairfax ; the left centre of infantry was under the Earl of Leven. A Scottish division, consisting of two brigades of infantry, formed the reserve and supports ; and Whitelock says, obscurely, " the main body of the rest of the foot was commanded by General Leven.'' He says the right wing of the prince's army was commanded by the Marquis of Newcastle ; Rush- worth has it that Rupert led the right wing (and Sir Charles Lucas the left), which is the more pro- bable arrangement, from what followed. The main body was led by General Goring, by Sir Charles Lucas, and General Porter; while the left wing was under the Marquis of Newcastle and Sir John Urie, a Scottish oflicer, called Hurry by the English. The strength of the Royal army on this day was only about 9,000 horse and 14,000 foot, with Marston Moor. ] RUPERTS 0?.Di:R Of BATTLE. 231 twenty-five pieces of cannon. So much alike were all these forces in their general equipment and appearance, that the distinction for the king's troops was to be without either band or scarf; and for that of the Parliament, the simple badge of a piece of white paper or a handkerchief tied round the hat or helmet (Vicars). A broad and deep drain as well as the hedge lay along the front of the latter; towards their right and Rupert's left, the ground was considerably broken by hedges and copses, and intersected by those narrow and shady lanes which are so peculiar to England, and so suggestive of rural peace and solitude. The other flank of both arniies rested on ground totally without cover, the face of the country assuming in that quarter the aspect of a barren heath, , In general the ground was flat, with here and there an 'undulation, not inconvenient for the disposal of a few guns. " Independently, therefore," says the author of " British Military Commanders," " of tlie tactics of thg age, which seem to have arbitrarily planted the cavalry oh th'e wings in all armies, such disposition of that arm appears to have been on the present occasion judi- cious, as was also the establishrrient of a reserve of horse in support of the second line of infantry.'' Though the troops had begun to form early in the morning, noon had passed, so slow were the tactics of those days, ere they were all in position. The brave and fiery Rupert is said to have been somewhat overawed when he saw the overwhelming columns of the enemy deploying into their places ; and, "being somewhat restrained by the languid movements of his own rear, could only gaze on these formations without attempting to moles'; them.'' General Ludlow tells us that if the prince, instead of fighting at Marston Moor, had simply relieved York and retreated, the reputation that movement would have gained him must have caused his army "to increase like the rolling of a snow-ball." So soon as his cannon came up, he ordered several pieces to open fire on the enemy's line. There was a prompt response from thence, and one of the first shots slew a young Cavalier, the son of Sir Gilbert Houghton ; but, contrary to all prece- dent, the prince evinced no disposition to assume any further initiative in the action. Thus, till half-past six in the long and warm July evening, these two armies, in splendid array, continiied quietly to face each other; but at seven the Pailia- mentarians began to quit their ground ; the battle began, and rolling from flank to flank, the fire of musketry and cannon enveloped all the moor in smoke, and the carnage deepened fast; for the number of combatants in the field is roughly esti- mated by Hume at 50,000, and every man of them was animated by the most resolute courage, and the most bitter political hate and religious rancour. So confused and contradictory are the accounts of this engagement, that Rapin, who was a veteran soldier, and saw much service at the Boyne Water and elsewhere, says in his history, " I shall not undertake to describe this battle, because in all the accounts I have seen I meet with so little order and clearness that I cannot expect to give a satis- factory idea of it to such of my readers as under- stand these matters." The circumstance of then being in the field two generals of the name ot Leslie and two of the name of Fairfax has added to this confusion of statements. In the first shock that ensued when the cavalry ' charged each other, the armies would seem to have ' almost wheeled on their centres ; biit so many and such con tradictorj' accounts of this important battle have come down, that it. is. far from easy to offer a minute or almost rational description of it. That it was contested with peculiar obstinacy on both sides, is the soHtary point on which the various historians agree. It is even doubtful where the strife began, whether on the proper right, left, or centre of each army. Prince Rupert wOuld seem to have strongly occupied the trench or drain that intersected the moor by posting there four brigades of infantr)-, supported on their right by a body of horse ; and against these the first movements would seem to have been made by Lord Manchester's infantry, charging the ditch in front, while the cavalry of the left -wing swept round at full gallop to clear the plain of the squadron, and attack the ditch in rear. These cavalry consisted of the Ironsides and four other regiments of horse (all or mostly Scots), led by Oliver Cromwell, " who advanced with them to the charge from the Cows Warren at Bilton- breame, where he was posted." As long as this force could not come into play — and they were under the necessity of makmg a long detour — the battle beside the ditch was maintained with great obstinacy. Secure in its rear, the Royal musketeers planted their forks in the bank, and poured a ceaseless and well-directed fire upon the advancing column, while a brigade of light field- guns in their rear sent their shot plunging deeply and terribly into the ranks of the Puritans, scattering death and disorder among them. Two guns were brought to the front to answer this cannonade, but were brought in vain. The enemy fell beside them in heaps, " and brave as the officers con- fessedly were, not all their exertions availed to 232 BRITISH Battles on lA'ND and sea. [Marston Moor- carry on the survivors beyond the first line of fire." But a very different result ensued when Cromwell, with his tremendous Ironsides and brigade of Scottish cavalry, came thundering down on the flank and rear. Having cleared all the broken ground and gained the open sweep of the moor, they speedily routed the flanking force of cavalry, charged the cannon, and slew the gunners; then, after pausing for a minute to breathe their horses, with swords uplifted and reins loose, they rode in excellent order towards the drain. But tlie infantry stationed there, seeing how affairs had gone with the cavalry on their flank and the gunners in their rear, did not wait to receive the shock, but began to retire, thus suffering the Republican pikemen to cross, and endured great loss as they retreated across the plain, though firing over their forks to check the repeated charges of the cavalry. Beside that fatal drain one body of Royal infantry stood without flinching, and perished almost to a man. These were the Marquis of Newcastle's White-coats, so called from their white woollen doubtlets. Popularly they were known as his " lambs." " They stood likea wall," says the Cavalier Warwick; " yet he' (Cromwell) mowed them down like a meadow." Another writer says, " Resolute to conquer or to perish, they obstinately kept their ground, and maintained by their dead bodies the same order in which they had first been ranged." On the other wing the Parliamentary army not only failed to make any impression ; but sustained a most signal reverse. The ground on which they were posted, though favourable to men acting on the defensive, militated against them in a forward movement, for they could only advance through narrow lanes and woody alleys in slender columns, to be swept away by the fire of the Royalists when deploying into line ; and it was at this juncture, when his infantry had been thus repeatedly driven back, that a Parliamentary leader, said by some to be Sir Thomas Fairfax, ordered the cavalry to charge, wheeling first by sections to the right and left, for the foot to pass rearward through the openings. Closing in, they galloped gallantly forward, but received a fire so heavy, close, and well-directed, that horses and men fell over each other in heaps, and their ranks became wildly confused, till Crom- well with his cavalry came up and charged this portion of the Royal infantry in front, and gave the advancing troopers time to reform. P'airfax and his major-general used all their exertions to disentangle their men from the corpse- strewn ground, and from the kicking and maddened horses, whose wounds rendered them unmanageable,, and once more returned to the charge. Menteith of Salmonet says that a portiop of the left wing of the Royalists, led by Colonel Goring, broke bravely through the Scottish Covenanters' right wing, where Major-General Sir David Leslie commanded, and threw it into confusion. The latter, he adds, prognosticating no good from the general results of the day, rallied some squadrons of horse, and crying aloud that rather than be defeated he would die on the field, was advancing at their head, when Sir Adam Hepburn, of Hailes (a Lord of Session, who was near as one of the Committee of the Scottisli army), with clasped hands begged him not to hazard his person rashl)', which so enraged Sir David at such a moment that Lord Leven with difficulty prevented him passing his sword through Hepburn's body. While in this part of the field so much confusion reigned. Prince Rupert with his cavalry broke " like a storm of irresistible fury into the right wing of the Scots," and drove them fairly out of the field, his cavalry firing their pistols, then flinging them at the foe, and charging home with the sword. Sir Thomas Fairfax, with a regiment of lancers and 500 of his own horse, made a stand for some time, but ultimately he was wounded and put to the rout, leaving his brother dead behind him. Rupert still leading the way with a mingled force of horse and foot, penetrated down the lanes before mentioned, and forming in order at the other end, advanced, and in ten minutes that wing of the Republicans was as decidedly defeated as their other, under Cromwell, was victorious. " The fight was very sharp," says Menteith. " All the generals of the Covenanted army fled ; Leslie (Leven?) I0 Wetherby, and Fairfax to Cawood, there being no- thing but confusion and disorder on all sides " ("Troubles," 1725). " According to vulgar accounts of the battle," remarks Gleig, " the two hosts changed ground ; but this is manifestly an error, they merely faced round, the one side wheeling upon their centre to the left, the other making a similar evolution to the right. Unfortunately, however, the impetuosity of Prince Rupert led him, as usual, too far in tlie pur- suit, while Cromwell not less cool than daring, held his men steadily in hand ; yet when the victors on both sides did meet, the meeting was stiff and stern. In the first shock Cromwell was wounded, and his men reeled and wavered. Had there been any adequate support at hand, even now the day might have been retrieved ; but ere Rupert could recall or form the troops which he had permitted to scatter in the chase, a second and still fiercer Marston Moor.j THE LOSSES AT MARSTON. onset followed. The attack, was made by General Leslie, a Scottish officer of merit and reputation, and it proved eminently successful. Rupert's cavalry were instantly swept from their ground ; while his infantry, at all times the least efficient of the Royal forces, gave (then) but a single fire, and fled in the utmost confusion. The whole of the artillery, prodigious quantities of small-arms, tents, baggage, and the miUtary chest, all fell into the hands of the victors. Nothing but the vicinity of York saved even a remnant of the Royalists from destruction." The aspect of the field, when he returned from his usual fast and fiery pursuit, is said to have struck dismay even to the impetuous heart of Rupert. Lord HoUis again strangely affirms that at Mar- ston Moor Cromwell behaved with the utmost cowardice (see his Memoirs, p. 15), and that those who did the best service were the Scottish generals, Leslie and Crawford, with Sir Thomas Fairfax. The Scots cavalry claimed the victory for themselves ; and thus, partly upon private grounds and partly upon public, was created a breach, which each successive military operation between those jealous allies, no matter how well conducted, continued to widen. The Parliament and General Assembly of Scotland directed a universal thanksgiving throughout all that kingdom for so great a victory. It was late in the evening when Rupert with the jaded remains of his army reached York, and ap- peared at the Micklegate Bar, where there ensued a scene of confusion, rage, and suffering — as so many were severely wounded — beyond all description, as none were permitted to enter the city save the soldiers of the garrison, an absurd and pitiful dis- tinction at such a crisis. This caution made the admittance slow and tedious ; while hundreds of the soldiers, fainting under wounds, fatigue, and anxiety, filled the air with cries of pain and sounds of distress (Slingsby's Memoirs). The Parliamentarians remained on the field, where the fanatical Earl of Manchester rode through their ranks, thanking the troops for their gallant con- duct, and exhorting them to ascribe their success to the Lord of Hosts.- He added that it was impossible at that late hour to administer to any of their wounds or necessities ; but that at daybreak every requisite attention should be paid to friend and foe without distinction. Cromwell spent the night amid the dead and dying, and to him it was one of keen anxiety and suspense. His horse were exhausted, and he knew not the moment that the Prince Rupert might attack him with his usual fury ; but with morning came the pleasant tidings that he had hastened by a circuitous route to York. When day dawned, the vast heath, the drain, tlie hedgerows, and all the adjacent green lanes, exhibited a terrible spectacle of suffering and slaughter, and the peasantry were ordered to bury the dead. In Whitelock's Memoirs (London, 1682), it is reckoned that in the battle and pursuit were slain " 7,000 Englishmen ; all agree that above 3,000 of the prince's men were slain, besides those in the chase, and 3,000 prisoners taken, many of their chief officers, twenty-five pieces of ordnance, forty- seven colours, 10,000 arms, two wagons of carbines and pistols, 130 barrels of powder." Lord Claren- don informs us that the unfortunate king, previous to receiving the true account of the battle, had been informed by an express from Oxford " that Prince Rupert had not only relieved York, but totally defeated the Scots, with many particulars to confirm it ; all of which was so much believed there, that they had made public fires of joy for the victory.'' The peasantry counted, it is said, 4,rso for whom they made graves ; " two-thirds of these were gentlemen and persons of quality. The principal persons slain on the king's side were the Lord Kerry, Sir William Wentworth, Sir Francis Dacres, Sir William Lampton, and Sir Charles Slingsby, knight, who was buried in York Minster ; Colonel John Fenwick, whose body was never found ; Sir Marmaduke Luddon, Sir Thomas We- tham (Captain of the Yorkshire Gentlemen Volun- teers), Sir Richard Gledhill, and Sir Richard Graham, of Norton Conyers, a gallant and active Cavalier, who received no less than twenty-six wounds, and yet reached his own house on the . night of the battle, only to die about an hour after ; and Captain John Baird, a Scot ("England's Black Tribunal"). There were taken prisoners Generals Sir Charles Lucas, Porter, and Tilliard, and the Lord Goring's son, with 1,500 others. Sir Charles was requested to point out such bodies aniongst the slain as he wished to select for private interment. In performing this mournful office, he singled out the body of one Cavalier who had a bracelet of silky hair about his wrist, and desired it to be taken off, "as he knew an honourable lady who would thank- fully receive it " (Vicars). The principal persons slain on the side of tlie Parliament were Major Fairfax, and Charles, brother of Sir Thomas Fairfax, aged twenty-three, Captains Micklethwaite and Pugh, with about 300 subalterns and privates. The wounded were only Cromwell's nephew, Captain Walton, and about twenty others. But these lists were all irrespective of the Scots, 2.- 4 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Marston Moor. some of whose regiments suffered severely. That of Alexander, Earl of Eglinton, lost its lieutenant- colonel, major, four lieutenants, and many rank and file. The earl's soii, Robert, lost an arm. Among the colours taken were Prince Rupert's standard, with the arms of the Palatinate thereon, and one with a red cross in the middle, and a yellow coronet in the centre of a lion couchant, at vvith an uncommon disease, and to have been con- sumed with vermin, as a mark of l)ivine vengeance for his multiplied crimes and treasons." Fifteen days after the battle, York surrendered on honourable terms, the garrison marching out v/ith drums beating, colours flying, "matcheo lighted, bulletin mouth, with bag and baggage^'' and Lord Fairfax was appointed govenioi". liUFF COAT WORN liY COLONEL FAIRFAX AT NASEUY, 1645. which a mastiff seemed to be snatching; on aJabel at his mouth was the word " Kimbolton ; " at his feet were little beagies, and before their mouths were written, " Pym, Pym, Pym." From , the mouth of the lion proceeded the words, " Quous- que tandem abutere patientia nostra ?" The little beagles must have referred to the famous Pym, who died in that year,,and,who Hume says was "a, man as much hated by one party as respected lay, the other. At London he- was considered the.victirii to national liberty, who hacl,. abridged, his life by incessant labours for, the interests of his country. At Oxford he was believed to have been struck It is strange that two survivors of Cromwell's famous Ironsides were alive later than the middle of the last century. These were Alexander Macculloch, residing near Aberdeen at the time of his death, in 1757, aged one hundred and thirty; and Colonel Thomas Winslow, pf Tipperaiy, in Ireland, where he died at the extraordinary age of one hundred ahd forty-six years. He held the rank of captain when accompanying Oliver on the famous ex- pedition to Ireland in 1649. . But' perhaps the most remarkable . relic of that period transniitted to our own time was the son of one 'of Oliver's drummers, which ^6n was living 'near Manchester 236 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. TNaseby. SO recently as 1843, at the age of one hundred and twenty. The Manchester Guardian, which we quote, calls this old man James Horrocks. The graves of those who were slain in the battle of Marston Moor are still discernible near Wellstrop Wood. A curious circumstance, adds a local writer, which seems to be well attested, relative to that day's strife, occurred within these few years. On cutting down the wood belonging to Lord Petre at the side of Marston Moor, the. sawyers found many bullets in the hearts of tire trees. CHAPTER XLIL NASEBY, 1645. Though commander-in-chief of the king's army, the Marquis of Newcastle had served simply as a species of volunteer under Prince Rupert at Mar- ston Moor. Considerable recrimination took place between them, and the prince also used strong language to Sir John Urie. The result was that the latter joined the Parliament, and the former, enraged and mortified to find that all his labour in the Royal cause proved abortive, and crushed by the prospect of having to continue this hopeless struggle against overwhelming odds, left England in despair, and landed at Hamburg with his whole family, and some eighty more exiles, among whom Avere his brother. Sir Charles Cavendish, the Lords Falconbridge and Widrington, Colonel Basset, and Sir William Vavasour ; and many of these, like the marquis himself, saw England no more till the Restoration. Prince Rupert retreated to Lancashire. York had fallen; and now further to increase the troubles of the king, another Scottish army, nearly 10,000 strong, under Lieutenant-General the Earl of Cal- lender, entered England on the 10th of August, and blockaded Newcastle, and carried it by storm after a ten weeks' siege, conducted on the most approved Scoto-Swedish principles. On the after- noon of the igth of October, 1644, the engineers having breached the walls in several places, the general ordered an assault on the king's ganuson at dusk ; and the details are curious, as showing how regular these troops had become. " The regiments of the Lord Chancellor and the Earl of Buccleuch entered by the mine at the Close Gate ; the regi- ments of Edinburgh and the General of Artillery by the mine at the White Tower ; Lieutenant- General Baillie, with the regiments of Waughton, the Lord Cupar, the Earl of Dunfermline, and the Viscount Dudhope, assailed the New Gate. Those of CassiUs, Wedderburn, and Marshal as- sailed a fifth point ; those of Sinclair, Aytoun, and Niddry, and of the Master of Cranston, a sixth point." Under Lord Crawford and the Mayor, Sir John Morley, the garrison made a noble resistance, but the Covenanting battalions stormed the breaches with pikes in front. Crawford, Reay, and Max- well, three Scottish lords who adhered to the king, retired into the castle with 300 men, and after a desperate and useless resistance, were captured and sent to Edinburgh. The stormers rifled the town hutch, and destroyed the deeds of the corporation, and many Scottish prisoners were released. It is said, in Syke's " Local Records,'' that before the assault all these had been placed in the spire of St. Nicholas, so as to prevent the Scottish general from beating it down by cannon-shot, which he had threatened more than once to do if the town did not surrender. Before narrating the king's last battle at Naseby, it may be necessary to glance at the remodelling which the armies of Roundheads and Cavaliers underwent about this time. When hostilities first broke out between these two factions, England was unprepared for war. Not so the Scots, who always kept their weapons employed against each other in reuds and quarrels. But in the South each party was on fair terms ; at first the undisciplined troops of the king met the equally undisciplined troops of the Parliament ; but each army rapidly improved its organisation while that of its adversary went on. Had there been on either side, at the beginning of the war, any con- siderable force of regular troops, such as then existed in France and' Spain, the contest must soon have been decided. The Independents, an offshoot of the Puritan party, had been for some time gathering strength in England. Of these Cromwell was the recognised chief. In religion they held that every congrega- tion formed an independent church of its own, Naseby.] THE ARMIES REMODELLED. 237 owing obedience to no synod or assembly. In politics they were Republicans; and by an Act called their "Self-denying Ordinance," passed in April, 1645, these sour fanatics forbade all mem- bers of Parliament to hold command in the army. So the Earls of Essex and Manchester were re- moved. Sir Thomas Fairfax, afterwards third Lord Fairfax of Cameron, was appointed com- mander-in-chief, while Cromwell was soon called, with the rank of lieutenant-general, to lead the cavalry, and became, even prior to 1650, in reality, though not in name, general of the entire English army; and now was organised that strange force by the means of which he achieved all his victories. He recruited it from a superior class, con- demning the admission of "tapsters and serving- men," into the ranks; and urged his officers to engage none but "honest and God-fearing men," which probably necessitated a higher than ordinary rate of pay. "I had rather," he wrote, "have a plain, russet-coated captain, who knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call ' a gentleman,' and is nothing else." Elsewhere he wrote, " A few honest men are better than numbers. I have a lovely company — you would respect them did you know them — they are no 'Anabaptists;' they are sober, honest Christians, and expect to be treated like men " (Carlyle's " Letters of Cromwell"). By a russet coat, he referred to the colour then much worn by the English troops. There were, no doubt, many savage hypocrites in his ranks; but a spirit of sincere religion pervaded every regiment. In their tents and barracks, officers and men met regularly to pray; they neither gambled, drank, nor swore. On their muster-rolls appeared a most ridiculous adoption of Scriptural names, and they sang hymns as they marched into action. In 1644 the weekly pay of a lieutenant-colonel of foot was £,^ 3s. 4d. ; of a captain, j[,2 los. ; of a private, 3 s. 6d. The weekly pay of a lieutenant- colonel of horse was ;^6 ; of a captain, ^^5 ; of a trooper, los. ; of an artillery gunner, jQ\ los. (" Archseologia," Vol. XI V.). But we find in Rush- worth that at this period Thornhalgh's Notting- hamshire Horse state that they had served five years, and received barely six shillings a week in all, and that there was ;^4o,ooo due to them. The king's army was also remodelled. Desirous of casting ridicule on the fanaticism of the Par- liamentary armies, the Royalists failed to see how much they had to apprehend from its fervour. The forces now assembled by the king at Oxford, in the West, and other places, were equal if not superior in number to their adversaries, but were actuated by a very different spirit. That licence which had been introduced by want of pay had risen to a great height among them, and rendered them as formidable to their friends as their enemies. In very contrast to their gloomy opponents, they affected a gallant and picturesque costume — a doublet of brilliantly coloured silk, satin, or velvet, with loose sleeves, slashed and braided ; a vandyke collar, and short mantle worn on one shoulder; wide boots ; a broad-leaved Flemish beaver, with plume and hat-band. A Spanish rapier hung in a magni- ficent baldrick, worn scarfvvise over the right shoulder. In some instances a buff jerkin without sleeves was worn over the doublet. In battle many contented themselves with a cuirass over a buff coat ; and some regiments of cavalry, from being thus accoutred, acquired the name of cuirassiers. Prince Rupert, fond of splendid apparel and of the soldiery on one hand, despised the people on the other. In their malignant hatred of the Cavaliers, the Puritans actually accused them of cannibalism. When Charles I. appointed Sir Thomas Lunsford Lieutenant of the Tower of London, the celebrated John Lilburn takes to himself the credit of excit- ing pubUc hatred against him and Lord Digby, as bravoes of the most pitiless description. Of Sir Thomas, in particular, it was reported that his favourite food was the flesh of children, and he was painted like an ogre, cutting a child into steaks and broiling it. He was killed at the siege of Bristol. Lord Wilmot, a man of loose manners, promoted that spirit of wild and gay disorder which the licen- tious Gerrard, Sir Richard Granville, and George Goring, surnamed " The Gallant," now carried to a pitch of enormity. In the West, where he com- manded, havoc and rapine were the order of the day. Despoiled of their substance, the country- people in many places flocked together, armed with clubs and stones, and slew the soldiers of both parties. " Many thousands of these tumultuary peasants were assembled in different parts of England, who destroyed all such straggling soldiers as they met with, and much infested tl]e armies.'' Such was the state of the two forces when Charles committed his fate once again to the issue of a battle. In the midsummer of 1645, the new-modelled army of the Parliament, under Fairfax and Cromwell, was posted at Windsor, 20,000 strong ; yet Charles, in spite of their stern vigilance, effected the relief of Chester, which had long been blockaded by Sir William Brereton, and in his return southward he took Leicester by storm, after a furious assault, and 238 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND, SEA. [Naseby. there 1,500 prisoners and much plunder were taken. Alarmed by this double success, Fairfax, who, in absence of Charles, had received express orders to besiege Oxford, immediately left that place and marched to Leicester, intending to give the Cavaliers battle. In the meantime, Charles was hastening • towards Oxford, in order to raise the siege and relieve his loyal and favourite city ; so that the two armies were placed within a few miles of each other suddenly. Charles called a Council of AVar, in which it was rashly resolved, through the influence of Prince Rupert, and the fiery spirit of the nobles and gentry, to engage Fairfax immediately, though the Royalists had the prospect of being soon reinforced by 3,000 horse and 2,000 foot, under officers of experience. They accordingly advanced upon the Parlia- mentary army, which, on the 14th of July, they found drawn up in order of battle, on rising ground, near the village of Naseby in Northamptonshire. It was a peculiarity of the Cavaliers, that whenever the Roundheads, whom they loathed and ridiculed, were near, they would never listen to the most common dictates of prudence. It is related that " it was like the sudden burst- ing of a thunder-cloud " to Charles, when informa- tion reached him on the 1 2th that his rebels were in full march towards him, and that they were actually approaching Northampton with a force of cavalry and infantry to him overwhelming, as liis strength is computed by Clarendon at only 7,400 men of all arms. At first he had issued orders for a retreat; the retrogression began at midnight, and by daybreak on the following morning his advanced guard entered Market Harborough, on the southern border of Leicestershire. Closing up, the whole column was compelled to halt, in consequence of repeated attempts made by the enemy's horse to harass their rear, by Ireton, who charged the king's outposts, and cut off some prisoners, from whom, by fierce threats, exact infor- mation relative ta'the numbers and disposition of the Cavaliers was extorted. In consequence, it was resolved upon by Fairfax and Cromwell to bring on a decisive battle on the morrow, and to this end all their energies were directed. An hour before dawn on the morning of the 14th, that day so' sorrowfully eventful for the unhappy king, the whole Republican army fell into its ranks, and began its march in profound silence and in the best possible order. No hymn or psalm vi'as sung, and no drum or trumpet was heard. They had proceeded as far as Naseby, when a corps of cavalry bearing the royal standard of Britain was observed advancing. This assured them of the vicinity of the king ; and, satisfied that he " had doubled back upon his pursuers, and was determined to give and not receive the battle, Cromwell recommended that advantage should be taken of the strong ground on' which they then stood, and that the line should be formed at once, so that the troops mi^ht be fresh -and steady when the critical moment should come." Sir Thomas Fairfax immediately adopted the suggestions of his lieutenant-general, and formed his army in order along the ridge, with the infantry in the centre, cavalry on the wings, and twenty pieces of cannon judiciously posted, so as to com- mand and sweep every avenue of approach. The right wing he assigned to Cromwell, the left to Ireton; the centre he reserved for himself, with Major-General Skippon. The reserves were under Colonels Rainsborough, Hammond, and Pride. All having with great earnestness sung a psalm, they sat composedly down in their ranks, and awaited the approach of the " Moabites," as they named the Cavaliers. Meanwhile, Charles, who had also selected a favourable position, just in front of Harborough, where he had established his head-quarters, was persuaded by Prince Rupert to quit his ground of vantage under an idea that the enemy were retreat-" ing, and " that one fierce attack would utterly rout them." The king's infantry did not exceed 3,500 men. His cavalry, 3,900 strong, were formed in two corps on each flank, and here the usual discrepancies occur in detail between the accounts of Rushworth. and Clarendon ; but Prince Rupert would seem to liave led the right wing, and Sir Marmaduke Lang- dale, of the Holm, the left, together with Sir George Lisle, and Sir Henry Baird, of Staines, after- wards created Viscount Bellamount, who is men- tioned in the Marquis of Westminster's Apoph- thegms as a brave commander. Sir Jacob Astley, lately created Lord Astley of Reading, led the main body of infantry; and Charles in person led a small reserve of horse. With this feeble array, the luckless monarch was lured to the attack of a far superior force, composed of men now long inured to victory, carefully trained to arms, and wild and dogged in their fierce rehgious enthusiasm, and sense of civil equality. Nor was the order in which he began the battle more to be commended, says a writer, than the precipitancy with wliich he cast away the great advantage of fighting on ground of his own choice ; and, it may be added, the facility with which lie Naseby. ] COURAGE OF THE KING. 239 permitted himself to fight at all before .the succours under Gcrrard joined him, as these would have made the encounter more equal. No way tamed or sobered down by his reverses and fatal experience at Marston Moor and else- where, the reckless Prince Rupert, at the head of 2,000 brilliantly-accoutred cavalry, " with slackened reins, and spurs plunged in the horses' flanks," rushed to the charge with headlong fury against the division of Ireton. As usual, ■saddles were emptied in scores under pistol-shot and sword-cut ; Ireton's troops were over- whelmed by the furious shock, routed, and chased from the field in all directions. Then, as on previous occasions. Prince Rupert permitted his troops, with loud and exulting cheers, to disperse over the fields and meadows in wild and reckless pursuit of the fugitives, till their horses were blown and their vigour was wasted. Six pieces of cannon were captured. Ireton had his horse shot under him ; he was run through the thigh by a sword, wounded in the face by a pike, says Whitelock, and taken prisoner, but afterwards found means to escape. Boiling with ardour, Rupert continued the chase of the Republican right wing close to the town of Naseby. In his precipitate fury, he lost a chance for capturing the whole of Cromwell's artillery. Ultimately, in returning to his position, he did summon it to surrender ; but the train being well protected by a strong force of musketeers and a covering guard, he was unable to master it. During this scattered movement, a very different issue occured on the othor flank, where Sir Mar- maduke Langdale, in imitation of Rupert, made a charge, despite the disadvantage of a hill and a heavy fire of cannon. So resolutely was he met by Cromwell and the Ironsides, whose war-cry was " God with us !" that his division recoiled from the double shock. At this momentous crisis, Cromwell, who had kept two squadrons in reserve, wheeled them round by a great half-circular sweep on Lang- dale's left flank. Furiously they came on, and taking the Royal horse, who were already over- matched in front, at disadvantage, they totally routed Ihem, and drove them out of the field for a quarter of a mile. Leaving these two squadrons to watch and oppose Langdale should he retu?n or rally, Crom- well with the rest of the division rode furiously against the king's infantry, which was now warmly engaged with the centre under Fairfax and Skip- pon, and which had came on with such spirit, with volleys of musketry and charged pikes, that the Republicans were falling into disorder. Fairfax had his helmet beaten off, and rode up and down his lines bareheaded. Colonel Charles d'Oyley told him that he exposed himself too much to danger, and offered him his helmet ; but Fairfax declined, saying, " It is well enough with me, Charles." Then he ordered the colonel to charge a body of the king's troops which presented an unbroken front, while he should attack in the rear, so that they should meet in the heart of them. This they achieved. In the charge, says White- lock, Fairfax slew a young ensign, from whose dead hands one of D'Oyley's troopers wrenched away the standard, and went about "bragging that he killed the ensign, for which D'Oyley chiding him, Fairfax said, ' Let him alone ; I have honour enough — let him take that honour to himself.' " Old General Skippon was wounded in the be- ginning of the action, and advised to quit the field ; but he replied that" he would not stir so long as a man would stand !" Philip Skippon was a rough blunt veteran of the Low Country wars, yet he had shown great tact and skill in disciplining the Trained Bands of London. He had ;^i,oo6 per annum settled on him by Parliament out of the Duke of Bucking- ham's forfeited estate ; and it is averred by Walker that in the Low Countries he had acted as wag- oner to Sir Edward Vere. Fairfax's charge in front and rear, together with Cromwell's movement on the flank, caused the total rout of the king's infantry, who were cut down like grass the moment their close ranks were broken by the charging horse. Multitudes were slain, " and multitudes more cast away their wea- pons, calling for quarter,'' till they were scattered beyond all possibility of rallying ; and at the head of the reserve Charles saw with mingled courage and despair the tide of battle turning against him. "The king," says Sanderson, "kept close with his horse, himself in person rallying them, as men use to doe, for their lives' blood ; " and Rupert, now sensible of his errors, on leaving his futile attack on the artillery, joined him, with all the horse he could collect. Charles, with his sword drawn, exhorted this body of cavalry not to despair. " Gentlemen," he said, " one charge more, and we recover the day ! " But they could by no means be persuaded to advance. Their little force of infantry had been destroyed ; and Fairfax, Skippon (the latter bleed- ing with a musket-shot in his side), and Cromwell, instead of pursuing the fugitives, held their men well in hand, dressed their ranks, and prepared alike to receive or to charge the remnant of the king's cavalry. 240 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. INaseby, Then it was that Robert Dalziel, Earl of Carn- wath, a Scottish noble of great honour and pro- bity, seeing that Charles was resolved to charge, rode up to him, and said, imploringly, " Sire, will you go upon your death this instant?" In his loyal anxiety and energy, he grasped the bridle of the king's horse, and caused the animal to swerve round to the right. On perceiving this, his cavalry conceiving it was the first movement pre- paratory to flight, broke their ranks, and galloped seeing the transaction, fled in the utmost confu- sion." By this time vast numbers of riderless horses, some of them splendidly caparisoned, were also flying from the field in all directions, to become the spoil of whoever could catch them. Never was rout more hopeless or victory more complete than the battle of Naseby. Charles had 800 men slain (of whom 150 were officers),' and 5,000 taken prisoners. Among the CHAKLliS 1. AT NASEUV (seepage 239J. in all directions. " They rode on the spur without looking behind them." Another account says, " It was to no use that Charles put hipiself at the head of his body- guard, a chosen regiment of 300 horse, and cheered them on to the rescue. He himself, ac- companied by a few attendants, dashed forward, and getting intermingled with Cromwell's men, had well-nigh been taken prisoner ; but a panic seized his guard, and instead of following and supporting their royal master, they galloped precipitately from the field. Then it was that the Earl of Carnwath seized the king's reins, turned his horse suddenly round, and carried him forcibly to the rear ; and then, too, the whole of the centre and left, latter were eight colonels ; eight lieutenant-colonels ;, eighteen majors, seventy captains, and other offi- cers to the number of 500 in all. With these were, taken seventeen of his household servants, twelve, pieces of cannon ; 100 pairs of colours, including the royal standard ; 8,000 stand of arms ; forty barrels of powder; 200 horses; 200 carriages; and his own coach and cabinet, with all his private letters. Of these the coarse Republicans made a cruel and indelicate use. " Copies of his letters to the queen were after- wards wantonly published by the Parliament, ac- companied with many malicious comments. They, are written with delicacy and- tenderness ; and at most only show that he was too fondly attached to Nascby.] THE CASUALTIES. 241 a woman of wit and beauty, who had the misfor- tune to be a Papist, and who had acquired a dan- gerous ascendant over him" (Note to "Russell's Modem Europe"). In a letter written from Market Harborough to the Speaker of the House of Commons, Cromwell, regardless of the respect due to Fairfax as his general, hastened to communicate officially " how the good hand of God" had wrought for them. This proceeding, says his biographer, " was in all observable in the discipline ofthe king's troops and those under Fairfax and Cromwell. Even when the former succeeded in a, charge, they seldom rallied again in good order, or could be got to make a second charge the same day; whereas, the other troops, even if beaten, immediately rallied again, and reformed in their ranks, till they received new orders. Prince Rupert rode to Bristol to prepare it for a siege ; while the king retired into Wales, and made VIEW OF PERTH. respects agreeable to the crafty and designing cha- racter of the man; and it did not fail, as he had anticipated that it would, to make its own im- pression." The casualty-roll sent to Parliament stated that their loss was 1,000 slain. Among the wounded were General Skippon, Cromwell's son- in-law, Commissary-General Ireton, and Colonels Cook, Butler, and Francis. Ludlow asserts that Skippon was wounded by one of his own men. Among the king's wounded were the young Earl of Lindsay, K.G. (whose father fell at Edgehill), the Lord Astley, of Reading, and Colonel John Rus- sell, brother of the Earl of Bedford, and, after the Restoration, Colonel of the Enghsh Foot Guards. On the battle of Naseby, Lord Clarendon makes the remark that a difference was always some stay at Raglan Castle, his high spirit and indomitable energy giving him hope of being able to form yet another army in the loyal districts. Naseby was chiefly fought in a large fallow field on the north-west side of the town, about a mile broad. There the holes in which the dead men and horses were buried were visible for years after. On the 17 th of June, the day after Parliament received tidings of the victory, both Houses were feasted by the City of London in the Grocers' Hall, where they sang hilariously the 46th Psalm, and then separated. An oval medal was struck in commemoration of the battle. The captured standards were hung in Westminster Hall, and the prisoners were penned up like sheep in the artillery-ground near Tothill Fields. 21 242 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA, [Kilsythe. CHAPTER XLIIL KILSYTHE, 1645. Collaterally with the strife we have been nar- rating in England, another of a similar nature was being waged in Scotland, where some of the. loyal Highland clans, under James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, upheld the cause of the king against the Scottish Parliament and Government. Over the troops of the latter he won in succession six pitched battles; and the last of these, which nearly laid all Scotland at the feet of the king, was fought at Kil- sythe, exactly two months after the field of Naseby. Descended from a long line of illustrious an- cestors, celebrated by the Cavaliers as comparable to the greatest heroes of antiquity, and branded by the Covenanters as a malignant and traitor, James, the first Marquis of Montrose, was a man inspired by the most enthusiastic loyalty, the most lofty courage, and a deep love for the royal cause. He was, says- Cardinal de Retz, " the only man in the world who has ever reminded me of that descrip- tion of heroes who are no longer to be found except in the lives of Plutarch. He sustained the interests of the King of England in his own coun- try with a degree of magnanimity which in that age was unrivalled." The victory of the English Puritans over Charles I., at Naseby, afforded some consolation to their compatriots, the Scotch Covenanting Government, at that time smarting under five successive defeats, won over their numerous forces by a mere handful of Highland swordsrnen, and, though an epidemic was ravaging Edinburgh, whither it had been brought by the English prisoners taken in New- castle, the Covenanting leaders were still resolved to oppose the great marquis, who threatened by his continued success to overwhelm them. The Par- liament, in consequence of the pestilence, met in Stirling, instead of the capital, and confirmed in the command of its army Lieutenant-General William Bailhe, who had led a Dutch regiment in the Ger- man wars, and had more recently served with the Scots in England. He fixed his head-quarters at Perth, while Mon- trose was coming on by the way of Aberdeen and Angus. To increase their army to 10,000 men, a force which they deemed sufficient to oppose the marquis, the Scottish Government issued edicts to all the Lowland counties to raise every fourth man capable of bearing arms, and dispatch him to Perth on or before the 25th of July, 1645. The plague having now made its appearance in StirHng, "for it seems to have followed as a faithful attendant wherever those at the helm of affairs against the king migrated," the Ministry removed to Perth, to the annoyance of its Cavaher citizens, while a four days' fast was appointed throughout the land for the sins and misfortunes of the people. " Now," says a Scottish writer, " when it is con- sidered how these most unnecessary fasts were then kept with all the rigidity of a Jewish sabbath, and the people allowed te do nothing from morning till night but Hsten to long homilies, sermons, and exhortations, delivered by one preacher after another in quick succession, it is obvious that, in the circumstances of the Covenanting leaders, these were just so many precious days utterly lost, while they were reducing the whole country to a state of absolute idleness, rendered more so by the in- fluence of religious zeal." After gaining the battles of Auldearn and Alford, the Marquis of Montrose had marched to Aber- deen, to bury his lamented friend. Lord Gordon, after which he planned an expedition against the I Covenanting garrison at Inverness, when tidings I of the king's, defeat at Naseby and of the muster I at Perth reached him, and he was induced for the time to give up the thought of everything but marching south, in the cause of the king his mas- ter. Leaving Aberdeen, he marched to Fordoun, a small town in Kincardineshire, where he en- camped till his active friend. Sir Alaster Maccoll, joined him with some recruits. Maccoll was, properly speaking, Alaster Macdonald, of the family of Colonsay, a branch of that powerful and nume- rous Highland clan whose head was the Lord of the Isles in ancient times. Though brave, and well qualified to lead irregular troops like the High- landers, Sir Alaster permitted his desire for ven- geance on the Campbells of Argyle to divert him frequently from the proper objects of the war. General Stewart, of Garth, in his admirable work on the character and manners of the Highlanders, gives, as one reassn among many for the strong attachment of the Highlanders to the House of Stuart, " the difference of religious feehngs and prejudices that distinguished them from their brethren of the South. This diff'erence became striking at the Reformation, and continued during the whole of the subsequent century. While many Kilsytbe.] THE CASTLE OF GLOOM. 243 Lowlanders were engaged in angry theological dis- putes, or adopted a sour and forbidding demeanour, the Highlanders retained many of their ancient superstitions, and, from their cheerful and poetical spirit, were averse to long faces and wordy dis- putes. They were, therefore, more inclined to join the Cavaliers than the Roundheads, and were on one occasion employed by the .Scottish Ministry of Charles II. to keep down the republican spirit in the West of Scotland. The same cause, among others, had previously induced them to join the standard of Montrose." With Alaster Maccoll, there came into Mon- trose no less than 700 men of the surname of Mac- lean, from Argyleshire and the Hebrides, all well skilled in the use of their weapons, and inspired by a ferocious hatred of the Campbells, who were the ruling spirits of the Covenanting War. Sir Alaster had also brought in the whole of clan Ranald, 500 strong men, under Ian Muidartach, a warrior whose memory is still renowned in the Highlands. The Athole Highlanders came in strong force, under the cousin of Montrose, Colonel Grahame, of Inchbrakie ; as also the Macgregors, the Mac- nabs, the Stewarts of Appin, and the Farquhar- sons of Braemar; and each tribe as it arrived, with pipes playing and colours flying, was warmly welcomed by the marquis, who disposed each clan by itself, as a corps under its own chief and his duinewassals. He now found himself at the head of between 5,000. and 6,000 men; but he was greatly de- ficient in cavalry to protect his infantry when they descended into the Lowlands. Leaving the Earl of Aboyne in Aberdeenshire, and the Earl of Airlie in Angus, to negotiate with the loyalists of these districts for a supply of horses, he marched through Blairgowrie, crossed the Tay at Dunkeld, and encamped at Amulrie, a small village in Perthshire. He had at first intended to march direct upon Perth, and scatter the Covenanters at once, but the want of cavalry compelled him to abandon so bold a project, though the enemy's army lay in considerable force on the southern side of the Earn, and 400 of their cavalry lay near Perth ; but aware that all their most trained troops were absent in England, under the Earls of Leven and Callendar, and in Ireland, where Leslie of Pitcairly commanded eight regiments, to defend the Ulster colonists, he never for a moment des- paired of ultimate success. One day he rode close to the gates of Perth, accompanied by the only mounted force he pos- sessed, 100 Cavaliers on horseback ; he also crossed the Earn among the beautiful woods of Dupplin, and reconnoitred their infantry encamped in the long green strath or vale through which the river flows ; yet, though they might easily have cut him off; they sent no party against him. " The denizens of Perth " (to quote a Scottish Episcopal historian), " especially the fair maids, would gladly have seen the long-visaged and solemn-looking Covenanters superseded by the handsome Montrose and his gay CavaUers; but they were kept in sore restraint by a phalanx of ministers, who held forth several times a day on the subject of the Covenant, the alleged tyranny of the king, the malignancy of Montrose, as they termed his loyalty, and other favourite topics for clerical vituperation." Montrose was now joined by Lord Aboyne, with 200 completely-armed cuirassiers, and sixty other troopers, who were mounted on coach-horses, but as some of these men had contributed to win his past victories, he deemed them second to none in spirit. After levying 200 cattle in Athole, he resolved at once to break down into the Low- lands, in the hope, wth the claymores of his faith- ful Highlanders, to cut a passage to the king, then struggling feebly with the overwhelming forces of England and Scotland, under Cromwell and Leven. On Charles defeat and disaster of every kind had pressed severely, and although in Scotland victory had followed victory, and the swords of the clans had swept away the armies of the Kirk as a storm sweeps the thistle's head, the royal banner had gone down rapidly since Naseby. The Scottish army had ovemin Yorkshire ; one of its columns captured Pontefract, another besieged Carlisle, Brereton blockaded Chester, and the power of the Independents was everywhere growing, even as that of Charles waned. As the troopS of Montrose, " with their tartans waving and weapons glittering, poured down the long winding vale of the Devon, where the hoarse brattle of their drums and the yell of their war-pipes awoke the echoes of the Ochills — that dark and magnificent range of mountains, whose shadows shut out the sun from many a secluded village for three months of the year — they came in view of Castle Campbell, an ancient and beautiful residence of the Earls of Argyle, which rises on that abrupt range of heights. Crowning a wild, precipitous, and almost inaccessible rock, it was one of the strongest of Scottish feudal castles. On one hand it overlooks a wilderness of foaming torrents, on the other a wide extent of sombre and solemn forest. A princely dwelling of the Campbells, (this famous ' Castell of Gloom ') presented an object too tempting to the vengeful Macleans, who 244 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Kilsytlie, remembered all that they and their fathers had endured from the race of Diarmed. They left their line of march, and ascending to the fortress by its precipitous stair, which is hewn out of the solid rock, six feet wide and one hundred feet in length, they burst open the gates, crossed the inngr fosse, expelled the inmates, and gave the rpaiision to the flanges. All the other property of Argyle in Muckart and Dollar was destroyed. For these outrages Montrose gave no warraiit ; but the flames of the fortress, blazing high upon the mountains, as they reddened the waters of the Sorrow and Care, which unite in the profundity of a chasm below it, must have filled the heart of Argyle with anger, as with Baillie's army he came down Glendevon, and was only one day's march beyond Montrose " (Memoirs of the Marquis, 1858). General Baillie and Argyle, now a species of self-made dictator, crossed the Carron at Denny, by the old bridge which was built by the Templars, and encamped at a place called the Hollanbush, two miles from Kilsytlie. Hearing of the near approach of his chief, John Grahame, of Tamrawer, near that town, mustered and armed his followers to join the king's banner, but was accidentally killed three days before the battle on a hill near his house, where the place is yet marked by a rough cairn. Passing the Forth by the deep and dangerous Ford of Frew, at the confluence of the Teith, eight miles above Stirling Bridge, Montrose passed in view of the castle at the head of 5,000 foot and 500 horse, with some pieces of artillery in front. He was anxious to attack the levies of the Cove- nant before the Earls of Eglinton, Cassilis, and Lanark, with their feudal forces, joined Baillie. Though a brave officer, the latter was most un- willing to encounter Montrose, jvhile his actions were controlled and his plans canvassed by certain ignorant and officious nobles and divines, who formed what was called the Field Committee, a body which formed the bane of every Scottish general in those days. With the clan Campbell, Argyle, after occupying Stirling for a night, crossed the Carron by a ford which still bears his name, and rejoined Baillie again. The thirty years' warlike experience of the latter, and of his major-general, Holbourn of Menstrie, Or of his adjutant-general, Leslie • — • experience gained on the plains of Germany in the greatest battles Europe as yet had seen — availed them little now ; for their Field Committee directed and con- trolled them in everything, chose the routes of the army, the plan of operations, and the very ground pji Avhich th? b9-ttle was to be fought. They determined that Montrose should be attacked on the morning of the 15th of August. To this General Baillie was quite averse. After their recent forced marches, in following up the rapid movements of the marquis and his High- landers, he urged that the troops required rest; that the junction with the Western Covenanters, under Qassilis and others, should be waited for ; but compelled to yield to their noisy dictates, enforced by many texts from Scripture and much un- musical psalm-singing, this able but unfortunate officer put his troops in motion, and, at the head of 800 horse, 7,000 infantry, and a considerable train of guns, began his westward march against the lieutenant-general of King Charles, who was then in position near Auchincleugh, two miles eastward from the straggling village or little town of Kilsythe. The immediate scene of the encounter was the district around the artificial lake or reservoir of the Forth and Clyde Canal — ground so broken and irregular that no man viewing it with a military eye could imagine it to have been the place chosen for a battle. The day of Kilsythe was a bright and beautifCil one; but the heat was intense, as many of tile Lowlanders, in their buff coats and iron trappings, found to their cost when the strife began. Trammelled and directed by the Field Committee, Baillie and his troops were seduced over soft bogs, up steep banks, through thick hedges and fields of ripening grain, till they reached Auchincleugh, where the deep and broad morasses impeded all further advance; but there, though his spirit revolted against the interference and folly of his maladvisers, he drew up his lines in the best order, to await the approach of Montrose, who was beholding this injudicious movement with astonish^, ment. At this time the Lowland infantry of Baillie were armed exactly as we have already described those of Leslie and Cromwell to have been; but the equipment of Montrose's Highlanders was some- what different, and retaining their ancient dress, they looked with' contempt upon tlieir southern countrymen as Sassenachs and " bodachs in breeks." Their arms were the claymore, now basket-hilted, and the dirk or armpit dagger; a target, with a pike in its orb ; a pair of steel pistols, and fre- quently a long-barrelled Spanish musket ; a skene in the right garter was the last weapon to resort to, if under a horse's belly or grappling on the earth with the foe ; and in addition to these were still occasionally used the pike and the tremendous Lochaber axe, and even th§ bow and arrow. KUsythe.] TllE GREAT Al^D LifTLE KlVt. i45 which were barely yet out of fashion in the more remote districts; for the Highlanders, even after formed into regiments, in the use of their weapons, adhered with wonderful tenacity to their ancient modes of fighting. Hence the claymore and Loch- aber axe were still among the arms of the Highland corps in the time of George II., the axe being borne by sergeants, and by the armed police of Edinburgh till 1818. Our best example of the Highland dress about the time of Kilsyvhe will be found in the descrip- tion of coat-armour granted to Cluny Macpherson, in 1672, having for supporters "two Highlanders, in short tartan jackets and hose, with helmets on their heads, dirks at their left sides, and targets on their exterior arms, their thighs bare, and shirts tied between them." This refers to the use to which the Scottish , clansman put his lenicroich, or saifron shirt, after casting aside his belted plaid, which contained in one the kilt and shoulder-plaid, by simply with- drawing the, waist-belt and shoulder-brooch in the mode about to be described. The kilt as worn at present, apart and distinct from the plaid, is simply the re-adoption of a still older fashion, which is found depicted on many of the medisval crosses and memorial slabs in the West Highlands, in the churchyard of Kilkerran on two crosses older than 1500; on the cross of MacmiUan in Kilmorie and elsewhere ; the kilt alone, neatly plaited from the waist to the knee, is distinctly shown, thus proving that the great belted plaid of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies was the more modem garment of the two (Proceedings of the Antiquarian Society of Scot- land, 1872). The chequer still worn on the bonnets of the Highland regiments was first adopted by the clans under Montrose as significant of the fesse cheque of the Stuarts. Wheel-lock fire-arms had not yet quite gone out of use among the Scots. Father Blackball, under date 1643, says, "I had behind my saddle a great cloack bagge in which were my new cloathes — and at the bow of the saddle two Dutch pistolettes with wheele-workes, and at my side two Scots pistol- ettes with snap workes " (Spalding Club). General Baillie had scarcely got his troops into position, when the timid and querulous Argyle, with the nobles and divines of the Field Committee, surrounded him as he sat on horseback in front of his main body. Among the former were the Earls of Crawford and Tullibardine, the Lords Elcho, Burleigh, and Balcarris. They clamorously pointed to a hill on their right, as being what they chose to consider a much more favourable position. "My lords, I consider that ground to be very objectionable,'' replied Baillie, whom it cost no small effort to control his temper ; " for if we move, the -enemy who lie beyond may easily anticipate us in taking possession of it." However, the Committee had made up their minds, and despite the angry warnings of Baillie, and ultimately, on reflection, of Alexander Lindsay, Lord Balcarris, who was general of the horse, they resolved thattheyshould take possession of it. "Then it was that Montrose, with a joyous heart, beheld their blue-bonneted regiments, with their pikes sloped in the sunshine, their matches lighted, drums beating, and colours flying, deploying, but in evident confusion, to his left, as they took up the new alignment. Decoyed thus from his first position, Baillie, though he saw probably that the day would be lost, did everything that an able tac- tician could think of to secure the new ground, and brought up his artillery to sweep the valley that lay between him and Montrose ; but again he was baffled by the timidity of Argyle and the presump- tion of his abettors, who ordered many of the regi- ments to assume other positions than those he had at first indicated." BaiUie, who, in his official report to the Scottish Parliament (by whom he was ultimately exculpated from blame), has left us a most complete detail of all that ensued, tells us that these new orders of the Field Committee were believed by the colonels of regiments to emanate direct firofn him. Hence they were at once obeyed, and when breaking through turf-dykes and fences, en echelon, to gain the summit of the hill, the utmost confusion ensued ; and the unfortunate general, who had ridden for- ward to reconnoitre the clans, found his troops in this state when he returned; while a crowd of mounted officers surrounded him, clamouring for new orders and explanations of others that puzzled them. " Where shall I post my corps of horse ?" asked the Lord Balcarris. Baillie replied, " On the right flank of the Lord Lauderdale's regiment ?" "And what shall I do?" next asked the major commanding Argyle's regiment, bewildered by the contradictory orders he received on all hands. Baillie's orders were that he was to " draw up on the left flank of Lord Hume's regiment." But the latter — a dragoon corps — had already left its position, in obedience to new orders from some one else ; and BailUe, now quite exasperated, saw it trotting leisurely forward to some walls and enclosures which he knew to be lined by the musketeers of the marquis. 246 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Kilsythd. Such was the state of Baillie's army ; but not so that of Montrose. Quietly, resolutely, and deliberately, he mar- shalled the few clans that composed his little army on the ground that faced the enemy. Between him and the hill which the latter were seeking to occupy there extended a little glen, the sides of which were clothed with underwood: a few thatched cottages, with rude garden walls, clus- tered at its foot. Be- yond these could be seen the Covenanters toiling toAvards their new ground, their weapons and the plate-armour of their cavalry, " who were all accoutred with back, breast, and pot, steel gloves and tassettes," glittering in the sun; and the general completeness of their equipment oc- casioned some specula- tion and doubtful mut- tering among the men of Montrose, who was not slow to perceive its origin. He rode along the line, and pointing down the glen with his rapier, exclaimed — "Gentlemen and com- rades, you see these cow- ardly rascals whom you have beaten at Inver- lochy, at Tippermuir, and Auldearn ? I assure yeu that their officers have found it impossible to bring them before us again without first casing them, up in complete coats of mail; but, to show our contempt, we shall fight them, if you please, in our shirts !" I With these words, the marquis, who was one of ' HIGHLAND TARGET (WARWICK CASTLE). UPPER FIGURE, INSIDE, WITH GRASPS AND SPIKE SHEATHED. siasm ameng the ardent spirits he commanded. A wild shout of defiance and assent spread from clan to clan, and everything was cast aside that might encumber motion. Many unbuckled their baldricks, and let slip their belted plaid {i.e., the kilt and plaid in one piece), and then being literally stripped to their shirts, they tied these between their legs, exactly as we are told by Famiano Strada that in Flanders the Scots fought naked — " Scotu nudi pugnan- tis in prselio Mechlin- enis" (Edition 1578). Patrick Gordon, of Ruthven, in his quaint work called " Britain's Distemper," says that " for cognisance" the marquis ordered every man to wear a white shirt over his upper gar- ment — a useless dis- tinction, as their tartans alone sufficed — but the above is the account given by Menteith of Salmonet, and Bishop Wishart, who accom- panied the marquis in all his battles ; and this new aspect of his sol- diers struck such terror into the* wlligs of Fife, 3,000 of whom formed Baillie's reserve, or second line, that to this day their descendants still preserve a tradi- tional horror of Mont- rose's " naked soldiers." The garden walls and cottage windows already mentioned were now all lined by Highland marks- men lying m perdue, and the marquis sent a cartel to Baillic, inviting him to come on- — that the troops of the king were ready. .1 ^ .-> J the handsomest men of the time, threw off his ! A shout, like a roar of hatred and defiance, greeted cuirass and richly-laced buff doublet, and again rode along the line, sword in hand, waving his plumed beaver. Like wildfire spread the fierce and high enthu- his solitary trumpeter ; and in a few minutes after the conflict began by the skirmishers firing on Hume's regiment as it blundered to the front. Then, without Baillie's orders, a ef Kilsyttie.] CHARGE OF THE HIGHLANDERS. 247 S4S BRITISH BATTLES ON LAisTt) AND SEA. tRilsytfie. cavalry, with swords brandished, rushed down the bush-encumbered glen to attack the advanced mus- keteers of Montrose, whom Adjutant Gordon had posted, as we have described, in security, and who, without receiving a shot in return, peppered the troopers point-blank from the cottage windows, the. garden walls, and other. impromptu defences which had been cast up to bar the way; and the insanity of this movement precipitated the ruin of the Covenanting forces. , Repulsed with loss, and so with many a saddle empty, their cavalry fell back through the glen, while three regiments of infantry (one of which was named from its dress the Red-coat Musketeers), flanked by tvvo troops of horse and one of lancers, advanced to the attack, though many of them were short of matches. Then it was the Macleans of the Isles and the Macdonalds of the clan Ranald, whose fierce military ardour no orders ceuld longer re- strain, rushed through the hamlet to the front. In the headlong fury of a Highland charge, alike to them were horse and foot, musketeer or cuiras- sier; with claymores and dirks, and with heads down — that is, stooped behind their targets — they swept on. With shrill hurrahs, hoarse high war- cries, and the din of the pibroch in their ears, they were led, like a living tide, through the na.rrow glen (the whole length of which was swept by a, brigade of cannon), and Sir Lachlin of Diaairt and John of Moidart were at their head. Furiously they fell, with their keen claymores and long dirks, upon the Covenanters, hewing down horse and foot with equal faciUty, many of tjie forrrier having their thighs shorn off close to the saddle-lap; and in a few moments the foe became an inextricable mob. Conspicuous in this charge was young Donald, the son of John of Moidart, who, as Neil Mac- vurich, the bard of his house, has recorded, emu- lated Donald Maceachin Oig Maclean, in his eager- ness to reach the foe, and actually broke through the ranks of the Macleans, who were in front of his clan. Foot to foot, and hand to hand, the Covenanters met them for a time, and none amid, the ranks of the latter distinguished himself more than the gallant Captain Paton,' of Meadow- head, who ha'd served in the German wars, and who was afterwards a major at Bothwell Brig. The Mac- gregors, under Phadrig Caoch, their chief, and Sir Alaster MaccoU, with his musketeers and the clay- mores of the Isle's, also swept forward. A steady front presented by some Lowlg,nd pike- men, from the rear of whom some 2,000 muskets poured a withering fire, repelled their advance for a time; and, moreover, they were in danger of being attacked by some troops of Baillie's horse, which had not yet been engaged, and which, under Major- General Holbourn, were wheeling on high ground, for a flank movement. Thus it became evident to Montrose that unless the four tribes in the glen were well seconded they might ultimately fail, before the greater masses of the Covenanters. The sudden and disordered charge they had made greatly irritated him, yet he galloped to the aged Earl of Airlie, who was on horseback at the head of his mounted Ogilvies, and exclaimed — " You see into what a hose-net these poor fellows have fallen by their own rashness ! My lord, unless relieved, they will be trod down by the enemy's horse. The eyes and hearts of all men turn to your lordship, and I know of none more worthy to bring off our comrades. Forward, then, in the name of God ! " The earl, who was then in his seventieth year, having been born in 1575, when Mary Stuart was still a prisoner in England, and thirteen years before the Great Armada had been dreamed of, prepared instantly to advaiice. By his side rode John Ogilvie, of Baldovie, formerly colonel of Scots in Sweden. Filing along the glen, the Ogilvies formed line, and making a furious charge upon that portion of BaiUie's troops which were short of matches, enaljled the four clans to keep the ground they had won ; but on the cry being raised for "more horse," the young Lord Aboyne exclaimed — " Messieurs, let us go to assist our distressed friends. God willing, we shall bring them off in good order, so that they shall neither be lost, nor our army be endangered by a sudden flight" (" Britone's Distemper "). At the head of his troop, he charged the lancers who flanked the Red Musketeers, in rear of whom he drove them. He then was daring enough to charge the infantry ; " but finding them all formed in close order, with their long pikes at the charge, with nimble resolution, he reins his horse a little to the left hand, and broke right through the Red Regiment of Musketeers, after receiving three vol- leys of shot froin their triple ranks." The conflict had now become general, and the clangour of steel blades on steel, and on the knobs of rdund brass-studded bucklers, informed Baillie that the Campbells were resisting to the last ; but ere long they were swept away, and their best men lay dead or dying on the turf. Baillie now galloped to the rear, where the Fife- shire brigade of three regiments, under Arnot of Fernie, Erskine of Cambo, and Fordel Henderson, were posted ; but these corps no sooner saw the Kilsythe.] FLIGHT OF THE COVENANTERS. 249 horse and foot in their front recoiling before the resolute advance of the four clans, than, deeming the day lost, they broke from the ranks, and in- spired only by the terrible memory of their defeat and slaughter at the battle of Tippermuir, in the September of the preceding year, they fled withQut firing a shot. Colonel Sir Nathaniel Gordon, of Ardlc^e, now spurred on with eight troops of Cavalier horse, and, united in one charging mass, the clans rushed forward; the dirk and claymore, the pike and Loch- aber axe, the clubbed musket, did their work of slaughter; and though General Baillie, Major Inglis, of IngUston, and a captain named Maidand, made several energetic attempts to rally the Fife men, the panic their cowardice raised became uni- versal; the whole army of the Covenant melted away from its colours, and dispersed in every direction over the open and irregular country in its rear. Among the leaders slain were Erskine of Cambo, Dunbarrow, and many gehtlemen of good family. Among the prisoners taken were Sir William Murray, of Blebo, Lord Burleigh's brother, James Balfour, major of horse, and afterwards lieutenant- colonel under James VII. of Scotland; Lieutenant- Colonels the Lairds of Fernie and Westquarter, Dick, Dyer, and Wallace of Auchans, one of the best and bravest of the Covenanters, and many others, including some preachers. All the pri- soners were released by the marquis, on giving their parole of honour. Immediately on the Covenanters' giving way, there ensued the most dreadful slaughter among them, and this event neither the voice nor presence of Montrose could arrest. Fierce, fleet, and active, and more than all, inspired by political and hereditary hate, the Highlanders continued what was not in- aptly named the killing for fourteen miles Scots, or eighteen miles Enghsh. The cavahy, the nobles, and the mounted officers alone escaped. The Bishop of Dunkeld and Bishop Wishart, in their Memoirs, say that 7,000 dead covered the field. If so, the number must include the slain of both parties. One portion of Baillie's army, the reserve of Fifeshire men, nearly all perished; few or none ever saw their homes again. On that day, says the old " Statistical Account," were 200 women made widows in the then small town of Kirkaldy alone. With a traditionary horror, this battle is still remembered in Fife, where the people, zealous Covenanters then, are not less zealous Presby- terians now. "There are few old inhabitants of this parish," says the statistical reporter of An- struther, "who do not talk of some relations that went to the field of Kilsythe, and were never after- wards heard of. Ever since the people here have had a strong aversion to miUtary Hfe ; and in the course of twenty-one years there is only a single instance; of a person enlisting, and he went into the train of artillery." It must be borne in mind that this person wrote about the beginning of the present century. While the slaughter was in progress, a poor Covenanter rushed to the venerable Earl of Airlie, and clinging to his stirrup, sought pro- tection; but while he clung there a passing trooper clove him down. Many of the peasantry perished in the confusion; thus, an unfortunate farmer, and his four sons who surrounded him, were hewn to pieces in mistake for Covenanters, and were all buried in one grave, which, says Robert Chambers, the peasants of Kilsythe still regard with pity. "It was a braw day, Kilysthe, for at every stroke of my broadsword I cut an ell o' breeks," was the exulting remark of a veteran who fou^t under Montrose, to the late Sir John Sinclair, of Ulbster, who knew him in early life. When attempting to cross Dullater Bog, which lay to the right of their position, many of the Presbyterian cavalry perished; "and there both horses and men," says Nimmo, in his "History of Stirlingshire," "have been dug up within the memory of people yet alive." Nimmo wrote in 1777. As the moss is endowed with a remarkable antiseptic quality, these remains are usually un- decayed. One trooper was found in his saddle and stirrups, with all his accoutrements on, just as he and his horse had sunk together. In other places, the hilt of a sword, part of a saddle, a number of coins, and a gold ring with an escutcheon upon it, have been turned up in later years. Generals BaiUie and Holboum, with a few dragoons, reached their garrison in Stirling Castle ; Lord Aboyne pursued others with his horse as far as Falkirk; Lord Balcarris fled into Lothian, and, accompanied by twelve dragoons, never drew bridle till he reached the village of Colinton, in a deep wooded hollow near Edinburgh. The Earl of Crawford-Lindsay fled to Berwick ; every officer of his regiment save himself and his major perished. All the baggage, colours, drums, am- munition, and cannon were taken; among the latter was one called by the Covenanters " Prince Rupert," from whom they had taken it near York — ^probably at Marston Moor. The Marquis of Argyle was one of the first to fly from this encounter, during which he had been 25° BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. fKilsythe. careful to keep his pious and precious person as far as possible beyond range of musket-shot. Such was his terror that, not conceiving himself to be safe on the land, he rode in breathless terror to the Queen's Ferry, where, with some of his clerical friends, he threw himself on board of a ship, cut her warps, and sailed to the Scots garrison in Berwick, which is about eighty miles from the field of battle. By this time it is computed that the Scottish Cavaliers had destroyed, in open and fair fight, about 16,000 soldiers of the Covenanting armies. \ About Kilysthe, every hill and hollow bears to this day some record in their name of that day's victory, " which would have been truly glorious to Montrose, but for the blood in which his soldiers steeped their laurels." There are localities still . called Kill-the-many Butts, the Bullet and the Baggage Knowes, the Slaughter Howe, and the Drum Burn. In the second of these, the " Statis- tical Account" tells us, balls are constantly found ; in some places that three or four may be picked up without moving a step ; and that for miles along the Slaughter Hollow the skeletons are yet laid bare by the spade and the plough. The places where the slain are lying in any number may easily be known, for there the grass is always of a more luxuriant growth in spring, and bears a yellower tinge in summer ; but, as some palUation for the slaughter, the reader must bear in mind that had the Highlanders been defeated, every man of them would have been, by a previous doom, consigned to instant death by the sword or scaffold ; for they were considered by the Scottish Government as rebels, and a price was set upon the head of their leader, though he was commis- sioned as the lieutenant-general of the reigning sovereign. A banner borne by the men of Fenwick, in Ayrshire, at Kilysthe, and afterwards at the battles of Bothwell Bridge and Drumclog, is still preserved with praiseworthy care. This last victory seemed to lay all of Scotland that was adverse to the king at his feet, and to give Charles high hope of maintaining his authority there, even if England was lost to him ; but this hope was destined soon to fade. As a reward for his services, Montrose was ap- pointed Captain-General and Lieutenant-Govemorof Scotland ; and as such he summoned a Parliament to meet at Glasgow in October, 1645. At this time, Lord Leven, then besieging Here- ford, sent home 6,000 of his cavalry, under Major- General Sir David Leslie, when Montrose was intent: on entering England to succour the king. and ett route, with a very diminished force, had halted at Philiphaugh, a beautiful plain which extends a mile and a half from the copse-clad hiU called Harewood Head to the level ground below, near Selkirk. It is a quarter of a mile broad, and is washed on one side by the river ; on the other it is sheltered by the green uplands. " The Scottish language," says Sir Walter Scott, " is rich in words of expression of local situations. The single word " haugh " conveys to a Scotchman all that I have endeavoured to explain by circumlocutory de- scription." Not a trumpet was blown or a kettledrum beaten, as, in silence and obscurity, and shrouded by a dense mist, the 6,000 cavalry of Leslie, guided by Brydone, a Covenanting shepherd, whose des- cendants are still in Ettrick, rode softly along the southern bank of the Tweed, to where the troops of Montrose bivouacked on the bare sward, pro- tected only by a little trench, which can still be seen. Forming them into two bodies, they drew up in close columns of squadrons at each end of the haugh. James, Lord Somerville, who saw these Scotch cavalry, has recorded "that nothing could be more impressive than the silent, steady, and resolute aspect of the eleven regiments, all clad in helmets, cuirasses, and back-plates of steel." Taken thus at disadvantage, by surprise, and in the dark, the troops of Montrose were routed, trampled under foot, and slain, or taken. One half were destroyed ; the other, on the promise of quarter being given to Adjutant Stuart, of Maccoll's musketeers, threw down their arms in sullen despair. Montrose, with forty mounted cavaliers, fought sword in hand in a desperate circle, with the royal standard flying above the wreck of all their fortunes, surrounded by that living sea of cavalry. Then through them, by stern dint of sword, they hewed a bloody way; many a man and horse went down; but, followed by the Lords Crawford, Erskine, Fleming, Napier, and a few others, he escaped, and fled at full speed up the lovely braes of Yarrow, and over the lone wild mountains towards Minchmoor. Sir William Kay, who had borne the king's banner since the battle of Alford, saved it by rending it from the staff, and tying it scarf-wise over his cuirass. And now for the quarter accorded by the victors. General Leslie, incited by the clergy, deliberately marched his prisoners two miles up the Yarrow side, and enclosed them in the courtyard of the stately old castle of Newark, where they were The "Unlawful Engagement."] PHILIPHAUGH. 251 told to look their last upon the sun. Dismounted dragoons, with carbines unslung, poured volley after volley on the helpless prisoners, until the last was butchered in cold blood. " A more atrocious out- rage," says Alexander Piterkin, in his "Records of the Kirk of Scotland," ".against all the usages of civilised warfare, was never committed, save in the modern times of Spanish barbarity; and these helpless men, it must be remembered, were taken prisoners while bearing arms under the commission and in the cause of their lawful sovereign. If in the future turns of fortune the Covenanters became the victims of a bloody persecution, let it not be forgotten that diis system of wholesale murder originated in the massacre at Newark Castle." They were all interred at the place now called the Slain Man's Lee ; and when, in 1 8 1 o, the ground was opened for building purposes, their bones and skulls were found in vast numbers. Principal Baijlie records in his " Letters" that 1,000 bodies were in- terred after the massacre, and of these only fifteen were of Leshe's dragoons who had fallen on the field. But the slaughter did not end at Newark. Eighty fugitives fromtliat dreadful scene, women and children, were overtaken by the Covenanters at Linlithgow Bridge, when they were flung into the foaming Avon, fifty feet below ; there all were drowned, for a few who reached the banks were thrust back by pikes and destroyed. " Thus, man and woman, infant and suckling perished, for again and again were the conquerors told that the curses which befel those who spared the enemies of God would fall upon him who suffered one Amalekite to escape.'' Then followed a Reign of Terror in Scotland, and Montrose escaped to the Continent; while in England, the unfortunate Charles left Oxford at midnight, and thence, in despair, fled to the army of the Covenant — Cromwell's allies — at the siege of Newark-on-Trent, and by that army he was ultimately deUvered to the Parliament of England, in a manner that resounded little to its honour, if it did not cover it with the blackest infamy. CHAPTER XLIV. THE "unlawful ENGAGEMENT," 1648. Now came those events which led to Cromwell entering Scotland, and to the battles of Dunbar and Worcester. Charles ill deserved the treatment he encountered so ungenerously at the hands of the Scots, although, through the evil advice of Laud and Strafford, he had at one time sought to inter- fere with their mode of Church government ; for, as his own countrymen, in the more prosperous years of his reign he had ever favoured them, to the exclusion even of the English. A quaint work, called " A Just Defence of the Royal Martyr, printed for A. Roper, at the ' Black Boy,' in Fleet Street, 1695," has the following on this subject : — " Now although King Charles looked .more narrowly into his revenue than his father, and would not suffer them to be their own carvers of what he had more urgent occasions for, yet, as to places of profit in Court and elsewhere, the Scotch carried all before them, to so vast a disproportion, as 'twas generally concluded there were three to one Englishman. Dr. Heyhn observes that once at a full table of waiters in Whitehall, each of them had a servant or two to attend him, while he and his man were the only English in the company. And in the Church so many of that nation were beneficed and preferred in all parts of the country, that their ecclesiastical revenues could not but amount to more than all the rents of the Kyrk of Scotland. And as the whole revenue of that crown was spent among themselves at home, so did several of their grandees live in more state here than any of their former kings, to support which they had not only the best places, as Master of the Horse, Captain of the Guards, Privy Purse, Warden of the Cinque Ports, Lieutenant of the Tower, &c.'' When Charles was surrendered, in his misery, by the Covenanters to the Enghsh Pariiament, they stipulated expressly for his safety and freedom; and the English expressed great indignation that they should be suspected of any evil designs against their anointed sovereign. Hence it is but due to these Scottish Presbyterians, with all their callous disloyalty, to say that when they gave up Charles, they had not the faintest suspicion of the dark and bloody crime which it was intended to perpetrate in Whitehall Yard. But the network round the victim was woven 252 BRITISH BAITLES ON LAND AND SEA. [The "UnlawM Engagement" rapidly. Acting under secret orders from Cromwell, a band of horse, under a Puritan named Cornet Joyce, seized Charles at Holmby House, in North- amptonshire. He found means to escape and reach the Isle of Wight, in the hope of reaching his queen on the Continent ; but being forced to take refuge in Carisbrook Castle, he was more closely guarded than ever by a ruffian named Major Rolfe, who once declared he was ready to have shot the king with his own hand ! There Charles now and who, though a brave noble, was yet an inex- perienced soldier, as events proved. One who knew him well has recorded that he was somewhat hard-visaged, and less graceful in person than the old marquis his father ; that he wore his hair cut short like the Puritans, and covered by a Uttle calotte cap. A sombre expression hovered on his countenance and in his keen eyes ; and though a thorough courtier, he affected something of the soldier, and was fond of quoting his royal leader, CHARGE OF THE MACLEANS [see tage 248J. abandoned himself to complete dejection of spirit, so as even to neglect his person, permitting his long flowing hair and pointed beard to remain undipped and uncombed, "till his appearance became at last savage and desolate in the extreme." And now some of the Scots becoming alarmed at the fast-growing power of the Independents, sqme inspired by remorse for the fate to which they had brought their king, and others by that wild, passionate, and unthinking loyalty that never dies in the North, prepared, when too late, an army for his relief The command of this force was bestowed upon James, first Duke of Hamilton, K.G., who had commanded 6,000 Scots in the service of Gustavus, Gustavus Adolphus, and using High Dutch camp- phrases and proverbs. In the Parliament of Scotland he had protested against the delivery of the king to the English, and a portion of his speech is remarkable in its pro- phetic spirit. "Will Scotland now quit her possession and interest in her sovereign, and do it to those whose enmity to him and to us doth so visibly appear ? Is this the result of all your protestations of duty and affection to His Majesty? Is this the keeping of your covenant, wherein you have sworn to de- fend the king's person and authority? Is this a suitable return for the king's goodness, both in con- senting to all your desires in 1641, and in his The " Unlawful Engagement."] OPPOSITION OF THE CLERGY. 253 recently trusting his person with you ? What cen- sures will the world pass upon this action! AVhat a stain will it be on the whole reformed religion ! And what danger may we not apprehend from the party that now prevails in England !" (Crawford's " Officers of State"). The duke obtained a vote from the Scottish Parliament to arm 40,000 men in support of the king's authority in England, and to call over from Ireland a considerable force under Major- Winton could give him but jCi,ooo (Lord Kingston's " History of the House of Seyton "). Guided and influenced by Argyle, the General Assembly beheld with dread a movement that, if successful, would restore the monarchy without securing Presbyterianism in England; and they thundered anathemas on all who obeyed the Parlia- ment. Hourly they reviled the malignants, as they styled this new army of Cavaliers, and their expe- dition was denounced as " The Duke of Hamilton's PEMBROKE CASTLE. General Robert Munro, author of the "Expe- dition," who had long served with distinction at the head of Lord Reay's Highlanders in Germany, and who commanded the Scottish forces in Ulster. Although the duke, impelled by necessity, openly protested that the Covenant was the foundation of all his measures, he entered into a secret corre- spondence with Sir Marmaduke Langdale and Sir Philip Musgrave, who were levying considerable forces for the king in the North of England. Many peers who, by age or otherwise, were unable to accompany him, gave the duke money ; and so much had the land become impoverished by ten years' of civil war, that the princely Earl of Unlawful Engagement." In consequence of the hostility of the Church, only 1,000 horse and 10,000 foot could be mustered, nor were these ready until the month of July, and by that time the best moment for action in behalf of the captive king was lost. England was convulsed in every shire, and full of discontent ; and had the force originally proposed by Hamilton crossed the Border, its success can scarcely be doubted. Impatient of delays ■ on the part of the Scots, which they failed to under- stand, the English Royalists had already taken up arms in Wales, Kent, Essex, Suffolk, and Nor- folk, and other districts. The people found them- selves loaded by taxes, hitherto unknown, for 22 2S4 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [The "Unlawful Engagement." the support of a standing army wliich tyrannised over them ; while every office in 'the nation was bestowed on "a base populace exalted above their superiors, and hypocrites exercising ini- quity under the vizor of religion." But there was no concert observed in these numerous insur- rections. Even the English fleet, of which we have heard little or nothing since the expedition to the Isle of Rhe, in 1627, when anchored in the Downs, revolted from the Parliament, in consequence of the Independents superseding their old officers, and particularly in placing over them a colonel named Rainsburgh. With all his officers above the rank of boatswain's mate, he was put ashore by the seamen, who sailed for Holland, with the intention of declaring the Duke of York their admiral. Soon after Vice-Admiral Batten de- serted with another squadron, consisting of some of the best ships in the navy, and sailed to Calais. The squadrons united and reappeared off the mouth of the Thames, with the Prince of Wales on board ; and the latter was blamed for lingering there, when he might have sailed for the Isle of Wight and res- cued his father, then pining in the castle of Caris- brook, before that superior fleet which sailed against hiin under the Earl of Warwick drove him again to the coast of Holland, where he was com- pelled to take shelter under the cannon of Hel- voetsluys. The insurgents in the neighbourhood of London were defeated by Fairfax. Unable, to cope with the Parliamentary army, a body of 3,000 horse and foot threw themselves into Colchester, which was imme- diately besieged by Fairfax and Ireton, and cap- tured after an obstinate defence. At Kingston, the Earl of Holland was routed and taken prisoner. Cromwell, in person, was compeUed to march against the Welsh insurgents, under Powell, Poyer, and Langhorne, his former comrades. The latter had taken Chepstow and besieged Carnarvon ; but Poyer, in spite of the most furious assaults, defended the castle of Pembroke for six weeks. Such was the convulsed state of England when Hamilton's army, now increased to 15,000 men of all arms, indifferently equipped and disciplined, crossed the borders in the month of July, 1648. The important fortresses of Berwick and Carlisle had been previously seized by Sir Marmaduke Langdale (afterwards Lord Langdale of the Holm, a title extinct in 1777) and Sir Philip Musgrove, who had agreed to co-operate with the Scots in the North of England, and the Royalists of North- umberland and the adjoining counties immediately flew to arms. In two days after he crossed, Hajnilton (whose lieutenant-general was the Earl of Callander) was followed by Major-General Munro, with 1,000 cavalry and 2,000 infantry from the Scots garrisons in Ireland, thus making his total strength 18,000 men. The English Royalists were not permitted openly to join the Scottish army ; and, to save appearances, Langdale, at the head of 4,000 men, kept a day's march in advance of it, but acted in concert with the duke, from whom he received all his orders; while Munro continued to follow a day's march in the rear. "The duke himself marches in the van," says Sanderson, "with his trumpeters before in scarlet coats with silver lace, and much state; his life- guard, proper persons, well cloathed ; his standard and other equipage prince-like. In this van marched four regiments of horse, seven colours to a regi- ment ;' in all the van about 2,000." Led by Lieutenant-General the Earl of Middle- ton (once a pikeman in the regiment now called the Royal Scots), the whole cavalry made a fine appearance. The infantry had ten colours per regiment, one to each company. We find some accurate details of the Scottish troops in King Charles's time given in a quaint and pedantic little quarto, entitled, " Pallas Armata; or, Militarie In- structions for the Learned and all Generous Spirits who affect the Profession of Armes : containing the Exercise of the Infanterie, wherein are clearly set downe all the Postures and Motions belonging to Battalions of Foot. By Sir Thomas Kellie, Knight Advocate, Captain, and Gentleman of His Majes- ty's Privie Chamber. Printed at Edinburgh, by the Heires of Andro Harte." "The armes," says Sir Thomas, "which our pikemen are accustomed to carrie are, a head- piece or morion, a gorget or craig-piece, a corselet, with tasses. I have seen some weare pauldrons or arme-pipes, and those are defensive. His offen- sive armes are a sword, and pike of fifteen feet long, shorter than the Grecian. The armes of a musketeer offensive are a musket, the barrell of the length of four feete; the bore of twelve bullets to the pound. The musketeer upon a march is always to have his musket shouldered, and the rest in his right hand, his left upon the butt-end or head of his musket; though I have seen many souldiers (and chieflie the lazie Dutches) to carrie their musket with their hand upon the barrel, which is an unseemlie posture, and verie unreadie for service." It soon became evident that Hamilton had undertaken an enterprise for which his abilities were altogether unequal. His reserve, says Lord The " Unlawful Ensngement."] RIBBLEDALE. 255 Clarendon, made him appear a wise man, while his, "having been in command under the King of Sweden, and his continued discourse of battles and fortifications, made him be thought a soldier; and both these mistakes made him be looked upon as a worse and more dangerous man than in truth he deserved to be." A rapid march on London might have crushed the obnoxious Independents and saved the king; for Fairfax was still busy with the siege of Colches- ter, while Cromwell had his hands full at Pembroke; but the duke loitered away forty days on a march of eighty miles ! He drew Musgrave's English garrison out of Carlisle, and replaced it by Scots ; and instead of advancing through Yorkshire, as Major-General Baillie urged him to do, he marched through Lan- cashire, where the population were hostile ; and his forces, instead of being concentrated, were scattered over many miles of country, so far apart as to be incapable of supporting or communicating with each other. Thus, when his main body reached the banks of the Ribble, near Preston, Langdale was far in advance of it; while Munro, with the oldest trained soldiers in the army, was thirty miles off, at Kirby, in Westmoreland ; and so defective was the duke's intelligence, that he remained in ignorance alike of the surrender of Pembroke, of the approach of Cromwell at the head of his vic- torious troops, and of his junction with those of Major-General Lambert, until their united forces fell on those of Sir Marmaduke Langdale on the 17 th of August ; and the latter obtained no support froin the Scots, of whose leaders Patrick Gordon, of Ruthven, says as follows : — The duke "was fitter for a cabinet counsell nor for a counsell of warre ; he could have been president in the gravest senat that ever sat in the Vatican; yet he knew not what belonged to the leadinge of ane armie. . . The Earl of Calen- dare, can more hardlie be excused for those errours, who, from his youth had bien bred up in the best academie that the world could afford for the Airt Militaire, under the command of that Mars of men, the Prince ot Orange, under whom he had been a commander-in-cheefe ; and he had also many years' experience, to the enlargement of his honour, having followed the warrs in Germanic." The Prince of Orange referred to was Henry Frederick of Nassau, who was born on the 23rd of February, 1584, and died in March, 1647. He fought many battles with the Spaniards both by sea and land. Ludlow says, "The House of Commons declared the Scots who invaded England to be enemies, and ordered the lieutenant-general to advance and fight them ; but the Lords, in this doubtful posture of affairs, declined to concur with them. Yet both q{ them, with the city of London, joined in driving on a personal treaty with the king in the Isle of Wight, and to that end revoked the votes for non- addresses, whereby the king seemed to be on sure ground ; for if the Scots army failed, he might still make terms with the Parliament." Cromwell was at the head then of only 8,000 horse and foot when he fell suddenly on Sir Mar- maduke Langdale, near Preston, in Lancashire, after holding a Council of War at Hodder Bridge, on the Ribble. He had thrown forward 200 horse and 400 foot, whom he styles his "Forlorns" in his dispatch to Parliament. These were briskly en- countered by the advanced posts of Sir Marmaduke, who, after his main body was engaged, sent pressing messages to the Scottish army for support, but without effect. Cromwell pressed onward at the head of his whole force, over wet miry ground, and charging furiously through a lane, after a four hours' dispute with pike and musket, drove Langdale, with the loss of many men slain or taken prisoners, back upon Preston. In this affair, called the battle of Ribbledale, it is stated by Noble that one of Cromwell's sons, Henry, a captain in Harrison's regiment of horse, was slain. At this crisis the Duke of Hamilton arrived with a few Scottish cavalry, but brought them up in such disorder that they only served to add to the confusion of Langdale's retreat. Their presence, however, caused a renewal of the conflict in the streets and at the bridge, where the Royalists made a most determined stand. " Then ensued," says Cromwell, " a very hot dispute betwixt the Lancashire regiments, part of my Lord-General's (Hamilton's) and them being at push of pike ; but they were beaten from the bridge, and our horse and foot following them, killed many and took divers prisoners. We possessed the bridge over the Derwent, and a few houses there, the enemy being drawn up within musket-shot of us, we not being able to attempt further upon them, the night preventing us. In this position did we lie most part of that night " (Rushworth, Vol. VII.). Superior in number to their united assailants, the Scottish troops might and should have made a vigorous resistance ; but " head and heart seemed alike to have failed the unfortunate duke." In the course of the night, to the surprise and s.itisfaction of Cromwell and Lambert, he began a hasty retreat, over execrable roads, under torrents of BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [The "u„hv.f.i Engagement.' rain. By disheartening his troops with this move- ment, the greatest disorder and unmeaning dismay were the result. The artillery, ammunition, and baggage were left behind, and fell into the hands of the enemy. Some of the Scottish cavalry rode towards Lancaster, closely followed up by the English, who had now the double advantage of possessing all the ammunition. A ten-mile skirmish ensued, of which Cromwell states, " We possessed in the fight very much of the enemy's ammunition ; I beheve they lost four or five thousand (stand of) arms. The number of slain we judge to be about i,ooo, the prisoners we took about 4,000 In this prosecution that worthy gentleman, Colonel Thornhaugh, pressing too boldly, was slain, being run into the body, thigh, and head' by the enemy's lancers. Our horse still prosecuted the enemy, killing and taking divers all the way ; but by the time our army was come up they recovered Wigan, before we could attempt anything upon them." Then darkness caused a cessation of hostilities for the night, save an occasional skirmish, and in one of these, Major-Generals Sir John Urie and Van Druske and Colonel Innes were taken. Daybreak found the Scots retreating towards Warfington. Two miles and a half from that place they took possession of what Cromwell calls " a pass," which they maintained by musketry, with the greatest resolution, for four hours ; but, he adds, " our men, by the blessing of God, charged home upon them, beat them from their standing, killed 1,000, and took, as we believe, about 2,000 prisoners.'' At Warrington, they took possession of the stone bridge across the Mersey, with the intention of making another resolute stand ; but being now without cavalry, baggage, cannon, or ammunition, Lieutenant-General Baillie, seeing the futility of resisting, and losing more lives, sent a drummer to Cromwell offering to capitulate ; "to which I yielded," says the future Protector, " and gave him these terms : that he should surrender himself and all his officers and soldiers prisoners of war, with all his arms, ammunition, and horses, upon quarter for life, which is accordingly done. Here are took {sic) about 4,000 complete arms, and as many prisoners ; and thus you have their infantry ruined." Such was the result in an army where there prevailed a degree of disunion and party spirit that would have paralysed the operations of the greatest military genius, and how much more so those of a Jeader so talentless as the Duke of Hantilton, At the head of 3,000 cavalry, the latter retreated to Nantwich, where 500 were cut off by the gentle- men of the district, who were in arms, and killed all who fell into their hands. Cromwell dispatched a body of horse, not less than 3,000 strong, under General Lambert, Lord Grey of Groby, and Sir Edward Rhodes, to cut off the retreat of the duke, who was in hopes of reaching Munro, who, ivith the horse and foot of the Scoto-Irish garrisons, was still hovering in Cumberland, Many more prisoners were gleaned up, "besides what," as Cromwell ungrammatically has it, "are lurking in hedges and private places, which the country (people?) daily bring in or destroy." In short, after three days' retreating and fighting, the duke was finally overtaken by Lambert at Uttoxeter, in Staffordshire, and there he very tamely capitulated to Colonel Wayte, an officer of the Leicestershire horse, delivering his scarf, his George, and sword. The latter, says Ludlow, he desired the colonel to keep carefully, as it had belonged to his ancestors. He was then sent prisoner to Lord Loughborough's stronghold at Ashby-de-la- Zouche, whence he was afterwards transmitted to Windsor. Of the Scottish Cavalry at Nantwich none escaped, save one resolute corps under the Earl of Callander, an officer of tried courage and old experience. These, exasperated at the conduct of their general, and disdaining an ignominious sur- render, broke through the enemy's cavalry sword in hand, and cut a passage back to their own country. Munro and Hamilton's brother, the Earl of Lanark, also fell back into Scotland, whence the former returned to Ireland, for the protection of the Scottish colonists; and so ended the last hopes of Charles, for the defeat of the Scots was followed by the fall of Colchester, where many prisoners were taken, and Sir George Lisle and Sir Charles Lucas were most- barbarously shot to death by their hypocritical captors. The number of prisoners now in the hands of the Parliament proving troublesome, a committee was appointed to treat with merchants for their con- veyance abroad, "for foreign service, and not to return back in artjis. The Scottish ensigns, colours, and comets were brought to Westminster Hall, where," says Sanderson, in 1658, "they hang as trophies of the English victories against the Scottish nation." In the museum at Warrington is still preserved a basket-hilted claymore, a relic of the strife we have narrated, and most of the Scots who were slain thereabout are lying in the burying-ground of Hill Cliff Chapel, A little thatched house, called t)unW.i CROMWELL'S AMBITlO>f. 25? " Cromwell's Head-quarters," stood in a street leading to the Rectory Church. The few survivors of this unfortunate army, on their return to their native parishes, were subjected to fines, imprisonment, and every kind of humilia- tion, by the petty ecclesiastical tyrants who in each district had constituted themselves not only a Kirk Session, but a High Court of Inquisition, before which all those who followed the banner of Hamil- ton were arraigned like criminals ; and many officers and soldiers, though still suffering from severe wounds and sickness, were degraded by severe captivity and insulting penances, having to appear in absurd canvas frocks at the doors of the churches, " like the most pitiful criminals, for such was the light in which they were viewed by the Scottish fanatical bigots at whose mercy the fortune of war had cast them." The English Parliament, on the illegal quibble that the Duke of Hamilton bore the Enghsh title of Earl of Cambridge, tried and beheaded him as a traitor, on the sth of March, 1649. On the same day there died with him Henry Rich, Earl of Holland, and Edward, Lord Capel. Evelyn has it thus in his " Diary : " — " ;jiA March. — Now were the lords murdered in the Palace Yard." In the autumn subsequent to the rout of Hamil- ton, the Marquis of Argyle, a species of self-made dictator in Scotland, invited Cromwell to Edin- burgh, where he entertained him with more than royal munificence in the hall of the castle ; and "they held several meetings at the Lady Home's house in the Canongate, where the necessitie to take away the king's life was openly discussed and approved of, for which concurrence the dictator afterwards lost his head." So Charles perished before Whitehall. His ancestors, James I. and James III. of Scotland, died by the daggers of assassins. Since the Con- quest five Kings of England had so perished, and three had died of injuries received in battle ; but once only did a King of England perish on the scaffold, and this page tells the dark and bloody tale. We must ascend 300 years higher than our era, says Voltaire, to find an example of such a catastrophe, in the person of Agis, King of Sparta, who was strangled by. the public executioner. CHAPTER XLV. CROMWELL IN SCOTLAND — DUNBAR, 1650. The moment " the grey discrowned head '' of the royal victim fell on the scaffold at Whitehall, a proclamation was read in Cheapside, declaring it treason to give any person the title of king without the authority of Parliament. This, of course, referred to England ; but when the Scottish Parlia- ment received news of the king's execution, the Lord High phancellor, attended by the members, pro- ceeded at once to the cross of Edinburgh, and there, with the heralds in their tabards, by sound of trumpet proclaimed Charles, son of the slain prince, King of Scotland, England, France, and Ireland ; and the Earl of Cassillis, with four new commis- sioners, was appointed to proceed to Holland and invite him to occupy his father's throne, movements which Cromwell, if he would secure his own power at home, lost no time in resenting. Concerning the ambition of the Protector, in " The Just Defence of the Royal Martyr " already quoted, a curious anecdote is given by the author, who states that Cromwell's inducement to the assumption of almost regal power was " a dream he had of being king, whilst a young rake in Sidney College, Cambridge— for so he really was — which he frequently declared to his companions, and was not a little proud of; and it made a deeper im- pression on his mind than any learning he got there. Give me leave to add this odd passage. When he was Protector, I knew an old man who in his younger days had been serving-man to his uncle. Sir Thomas Stewart, and had more especially charge of the cellar, where, he told me, he and Cromwell had tossed the pot many a time ; and when his natural enthusiasm was assisted by a good dose of liquor, he would thus vent himself : — ■" ' Well, James. I may yet be a great man before I die. I had a lucky dream at the college, and I have a young daughter— a shrewd girl she is— who will be often telling me, "Father, you will be a great man ; indeed, father, you will be great as the king.'" "This the, old man told me he would be often repeating over his cups, several years before the war broke out ; which, 'as he laughed at then, so asS BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. tDunbai'. he had thought upon it a thousand times with astonishment since he came to be Protector." Another version of this story is given by Sir PhiUp Warwick, who says the prophecy of future greatness was made to Cromwell by a spirit. The entire Scottish nation loudly condemned the execution of Charles I., as uncalled-for and bar- barous. They had taken up arms, they asserted, not to overturn the throne, but to maintain the Presbyterian religion, so dear to their forefathers. Scottish army, would be joined by the exasperated Royalists, the Puritan Parliament determined to carry the war into Scotland. This resolution was founded simply on policy, as England had no cause to complain of the Scots, who in crowning the son of their late king in no way injured England. After this resolution, Cromwell was ordained to act as leader of the army destined for the invasion of Scotland. It amounted at first to 20,000 men; and the 22nd of July saw him crossing the borders " MONS MEG'' (seepage 260). Young Charles II. disliked that form of religion, and sent the Marquis of Montrose from Holland to attempt a rising independent of the Covenanters, who defeated and. put him to death in a cruel and ignominious manner. Charles had no course left but submission now. He signed the Covenant, landed at the mouth of the Spey on the 23rd June, 1650, and was joyously welcomed by the Scots, who crowned him at Scone as " King of Scotland, England, France, and Ireland," and raised an army to defend his power and authority. As was his custom, .Oliver lost not a day in taking the field against this new enemy to his usurped authority. As it was very probable that the king, if he entered England with this new with his host, "in high-crowned hats, collared bands, great loose coats, long tuckes (swords) under them, and calves'-leather boots." The first night found them encamped at Mor- dington-in-the-Merse, only three and a half miles from England, where he established his head- quarters in the mansion house. " Here," says Captain John Hodgson, in his Memoirs, " the general made a large discourse to the officers, showing that he spoke as a Christian and soldier, and showing the inconveniences we should meet with in the nation as to the scarcity of provisions; as to the people, we should find the leading part of them soldiers, veiy numerous, and maybe unanimous ; and much to that puq^ose : and Cunbar.] CHARLES SIGNS THE COVENANT: 259 ¥ BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [ttuntal charged the officers to double, nay, treble their diligence, for be sure we had hard work before us." His hearers responded by, cheers ; he further proclaimed through the camp";;.that ndne, on pain of death, should offer violence or injury to the persons or goods of any in Scotland not in arms, and that no soldier should presume without special licence to stray half a mile from the army ; and it is but historical justice to admit that the bearing of Cromwell, his officers and soldiers, during the whole of their Scottish campaign, was gentle, just, and honourable. On that night the beacons were fired, and over all Scotland, from the German to the Atlantic Sea, the people knew that, as of old, another English invasion had come. The Scottish Ministry and Parliament had not been slow in taking measures for their own defence. The imperial crown and other regalia, to save them from the destruction that had fallen on those of England, were sent to the castle of Dunottar, a strong baronial pile, situated on a rock, and insu- lated by the sea. The castle of Edinburgh was strengthened, victualled, and ganisoned, under Colonel Walter Dundas, of that ilk. A thousand bolls of meal and malt and a thousand tons of coal were placed there for the use of the soldiers, with fifty pieces of brass cannon and seventeen of iron (including " Mons Meg "), 8,000 stand of arms, and vast stores of field-pieces and ammunition ("Memorials of Edinburgh Castle," 1850). Balfour at this period frequently mentions the "four- tailled coats " of the Scottish infantry and artillery, which must have been something like the doublet now worn by our Highland regiments. Thirty thousand men were raised for the defence of the country; and numerous forts were built, and many ancient castles were strengthened and garrisoned. The venerable Earl of Leven was nominally the commander of these forces ; but the actual moving spirit in the field was his younger namesake. Sir David Leslie, of Pitcarlie. The regiment of Argyle, which had been origi- nally raised in 1641, now commanded by Lord Lome, was made the Royal Foot Guards ; and there was also one of Horse Guards, composed of the sons of the leading Covenanters. To retard the march of Cromwell, all that fertile and beauti- ful tract of country which lies between Berwick and the capital was laid waste by the patriotism of the people, who drove off their cattle, and so the English in their progress found the district deserted for nearly fifty miles. At Ayton and other places none but the aged and decrepid remained ; while the women are ungallantly described by Cromwell's Puritans as "sorry creatures, clothed in white flannel, bemoaning the fate of their husbands, whom the lairds of the towers had forced to ' gang to the muster.' " On Friday the EngHsh were at Dunbar, receiv- ing a supply from their ships, which had come from Newcastle. On Sunday, Cromwell was'falsely informed, when at Haddington, that the Scots were preparing to fight him on Gladsmuir. His drums beat at daybreak, and his whole force marched in haste to reach that place before them ; but as no Scots appeared, Major-General Lambert and Colonel Whalley were dispatched to the front with a party to reconnoitre as far as Musselburgh, within seven miles of Edinburgh. That night the division to which Captain Hodgson belonged lay in the fields near the village of Longniddry, in a level district near the sea. The night proved a most tempestuous one, of wind and rain. The soldiers were drenched, their matches destroyed, and their arms rendered for the time unserviceable ; and while in this condition a Scottish scouting- party fell upon them. "About eleven o'clock," says Hodgson, "we wanted our bread and cheese, and drew off towards Musselburgh ; and the van of our army marching too fast, as if we had been at a great distance from, the enemy, they came swarming out like bees, horse and foot, and fell upon our rear of horse, who were sore put to it, at Lichnagurie (Longniddry), cut and hewed Major-General Lambert, took him prisoner, and were carrying him off to Edinburgh ; but the valiant Lieutenant Emson, one of (Colonel) Hacker's officers, pursued with five or six of our soldiers, hewed him out, and brought him back to his own regiment.'' Lambert's horse was shot under him, he was run through the body by a lance, and through the arm by a sword. Hacker was the ruffian who com- manded the guard at the king's execution. This affair, more fully detailed by Sir James Bal- four, was more important than Hodgson makes it. The Scottish army, 21,000 strong, lay skilfully intrenched behind a ditch and breastwork that ran parallel with the road leading from Edinburgh to Leith. Their right flank was defended by the Calton Hill, which was strengthened by redoubts of earth, platforms, and fascines, with brass field-pieces and iron mortars; their left flank was defended by cannon on the walls of Leith and the old Port of St. Anthony. At the gorge between the Calton and the Craigs of Salisbury, and everywhere to the southward, troops, intrenchments, and guns de- fended the avenues to the city, and many houses were demolished at the Portsburgh and elsewhere, Dunbar.] EDINBURGH DEFENDED. 261 that tlie cannon might play freely. On the north the city was protected by water. Everywhere its walls were defended by cannon, and the thirty-three banners of the armed trades were displayed above its gates; while the citizens followed their daily avocations in shop and booth in their buff coats and cuirasses, with sword at side and matchlock close at hand. General Leslie's head-quarters were in the village of Broughton, now incorporated with the city of Edinburgh. While Cromwell, in sore straits for provisions, was hovering about the borders of Haddingtonshire. Charles II. landed at Leith from Stirling, and pro- ceeded on horseback along the line of the trenches to Edinburgh, where his appearance "bred grate confusion and neglect of dutie in campe." ^Vith him came his life guards, under their colonel, the Earl of Eglinton, popularly known as " Auld Grey- steel," magnificently armed and mounted, and having on their standards and kettle-drums the mottoes, " Nobis haac invicta miserunt," and " Fro religione." Cromwell, at the head of his whole army, made a furious attack on the Scottish position. Exas- perated by the result of a sortie made by Major- General Montgomerie, who, at the head of 2,000 select Scottish dragoons, in the night nearly routed his whole force, by breaking into the camp, when they killed and wounded six field officers and 500 men, his army came on with ardour, while twelve English ships opened their broadsides on Leith. As the English advanced, the rising sun of the July morning shone full on the long line of helmets that glittered above the Scottish trenches, and the regimental standards that, waving at intervals, marked the different corps. Immediately on their clearing the lake and rocks at Restalrig, and advancing over the dead level ground, the field-batteries on the Calton and the cannon from Leith opened a simultaneous fire upon them, while a rolling fusilade ran along the whole Scottish line from flank to flank, poured closely and securely throwing them into confusion, and compelling them to retire in disorder, with the loss of two pieces of cannon and many killed and wounded. A strong column of English infantry, with a brigade of horse and two pieces of cannon, encircling Arthur's Seat, made an attempt to turn Leslie's flank, by forcing an entrance to the city at a southern suburb known as the Pleasance. On perceiving this movement, Colonel Camp- bell, of Lawers, brought his regiment of Highland musketeers at a double march up the ravine by the base of the Craigs, and lining the walls and hedges about the ruins of St. Leonard's Chapel, opened from thence a fire so deadly that the Enghsh in- fantry fled, throwing aside their muskets, pikes,_ and collars of bandoleers, abandoning even their cannon, which, however, were brought off by the brigade of horse. On this second repulse before the city, Cromwell sounded a retreat, and retired to Musselburgh, where he made stables of the churches and firewood of the pews. These were the preludes to the great battle of Dunbar, and they occurred in a season that was rainy and moist (Balfour's " Brieffe Memorialls of Church and Staite," &c.). In a skirmish on the 26th of August, a Scots dragoon fired at Cromwell with his carbine and missed him, on which the Protector called to him, tauntingly, " If you had been one of my soldiers, I had cashiered you" (Whitelock). The situation of Cromwell was now become most critical. Repelled, out-generalled, and foiled in their attempts on Edinburgh by General Leslie, he had no provisions save such as he could obtain from his fleet with difficulty, or in insufficient quantities. The autumn became inclement, sick- ness broke out among his troops, and it was clearly impossible that they could remain in their present situation. On the evening of Saturday, the 31st of August (Old Style), they fired their huts, and marched towards Dunbar. LesUe, under whom old Field- Marshal Lord Leven was serving as a volunteer, immediately quitted his trenches, and, for the purpose of harassing the retreating enemy, hung upon their skirts closely with his horse — dragoons and lancers. Marching along the skirts of the Lammermuir, he took up a strong position on the Doon Hill, which overhangs the town of Dunbar, thus most skilfully and completely intercepting the retreat of the English. Regiment after regiment, the Scottish army seemed to gather and increase on the adjacent hills, " thick like a cloud, menacing such a shower to the English as would wash them out of their country, if not out of the world ; and they boasted that they had them in a worse pound than the king had the Earl of Essex in Cornwall." Cromwell's army was now reduced to r 2,000 men, who were drawn up along the base of the peninsula on which the town of Dunbar stands, in a line extending from Belhaven Bay on the west to Broxmouth on the east, about a mile and a half from " sea to sea." Directly in their front, on the summit and slope of the Doon Hill, 500 feet above the water, with the dark barren heaths of the Lammermuir behind, 262 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Dunbar. lay the Scots, now 23,000 strong, and in the highest spirits, for it was impossible to attack them save at the most terrible risks. On the east the English were hemmed in by an appalling- ravine or savage pass, called the Peath, where, according to Crom- well's own description, "ten men to hinder is better than forty to make way ;" and that place Leslie had occupied by two battalions of Lord Duffus's regiment, the brigade of General Bicker- ton, and a battery of cannon ; thus when Cromwell sent nine regiments of infantry to force it, they signally failed. On the I St of September the rain was pouring in torrents when the Scots took up their position. Among the Harleian MSS. in the British Mu- seum is preserved a "List of ye Scottish Army at Dunbar,'' dividing it into nineteen regiments of horse, and only fifteen of infantry. From the singular mis-spelling of the Scottish names, it is evidently written by an Englishman ; but may be given as follows : — "the horse at DUNBAR BATTAILE." "The regiments of the Earl of Leven, Lieu- tenant-General Sir David Leslie, Major-General Sir Robert Montgomerie (Sergeant-Major of his father's, Eglinton's, regiment in 1644), Mid-Lothian (Colonel Sir John Browne), Charles Arnot (of Fernie), Colonel Craige, Colonel Archibald Strachan (who in 1651 deserted to the enemy), the Master of Forbess, Colonel Scott, Sir James Halkett, James Campbell (Lord Mauchline), George Lord Brechin, Arthur Erskine (of Scotscraig), Sir Robert Adair (of Balamena, Co. Antrim), John Earl of Cassilis, Robert Halkett, Gilbert Kerr, Adjutant-General Bickerton. "the FFOOTT at DUNBAR BATTAILE." " The regiments of Lieutenant-General Sir James Lumsdain (of InvergaUie), Major-General Hol- bourne (of Menstrie), Lindsay of Pitscottie, Campbell of Lawers, Innes (son of Lord Inver- markie?), Sir John Haldane (of Gleneagles), ' Tallifield ' (?), John Maclellan (Lord Kirkcud- bright), Lindsay (Laird of Edzell), Hugh Master of Lovat, George Buchanan (of that Ilk), Sir Alexander Stuart, the General of the Artillery (VVemyss), Louis Home (of Wedderburn), ' Ffree- land '(?)." This list, which is defective, omits the Life and Foot Guards, the regiments of Towers, Duffus, Kirkness, and others. The details of Cromwell's forces, as they first crossed the borders, are given by Colonel Mackinnon, in his "History of the Coldstream Guards," thus ; — • " ENGLISH REGIMENTS OF HORSE AT DUNBAR." " The Lord-General's (Cromwell's), 663 men ; the Major-General's (Lambert's), 663 men ; Colonel Fleetwood's (Lieutenant-General of the Horse), 663 men; Colonel Whalley's (Commissary-Gene- ral), 663 men ; Colonel Lilburn's, 663 men ; Colonel Hacker's, 663 men; Colonel O'Key's Dragoons (afterwards Horse), 663 men (O'Key had been a drayman and chandler at Islington, and was hung at the Restoration). Total, officers and men, 5,415- " THE ENGLISH REGIMENTS OF FOOT AT DUNBAR.'' " The Lord-General's (afterwards Lieutenant- Colonel Goffe's,) 1,307 men ; Colonel Pride's, 1,307 men; Major General Bright's, 1,307 men; Mali- verer's, 1,307 men ; Sir Charles Fairfax's (afterwards slain at Ostende), 1,307 men; Daniel's, 1,307 men. Monk's regiment (now the Coldstream Guards) — five companies of Sir Arthur Haslerig, 550 men; five companies of Fenwick's (the Governor of Ber- wick), 550 men. Total officers and men, 10,249." The artillery train consisted of 960 men. The fortune of war seemed decidedly against the English. Their leader, however, in the words of one who knew him well, "was a strong man — in the dark perils of war, in the high places of the field, hope shone in him like a pillar of fire when it had gone out in all others." -A.fter the repulse of his nine regiments in their attempt to force the passage of the Peaths at Col- brand's Path, on Monday, the 2nd of September, he wrote thus to Sir Arthur Haslerig, the Governor of Newcastle : — " We are now upon an engagement (enterprise?) very difficult. The enemy hath blocked up our way at the Pass of Copperspath, tlirough which we cannot get vvithout almost a miracle. He lieth so upon the hills that we know not how to come that way without great difficulty,' and our lying here daily^ consumeth our men, who fall sick beyond miagination. I perceive your forces are not in a capacity for present release ; wherefore, whatever becomes of us, it will be well for you to get what forces you can together, and the South to help what they can. The business nearly concerneth all good people. If your forces had been in readiness to have fallen upon the back of Coppers- path, it might have occasioned supplies to come to us. But tlie only wise God knows what is best. All shall work for good. Our spirits (minds ?) are comfortable, though our present condition be as it IS. And, indeed, we have much hope in the Lord, of whose mercy we have had large experience '' ("Cromwell's Letters," &c., Vol. III.). Dunbar.] INSOLENCE OF THE CLERGY. 263 While seeking to comfort himself by canting in his usual fashion, Cromwell, in his desperate extremity, had thoughts of embarking his infantry and artillery on board his ships, and with his cavalry attempting to cut a passage through the Scots, and escape into England ; but the folly of the clergy, who hovered likf ravens of ill-omen among the ranks of the latter, and their national precipitancy, ruined the clear prospect of success, and extricated the invaders from their position of doubt and peril. They were under the impression that Cromwell actually had embarked half his men and half his guns, whereas he had only shipped off his sick and wounded, therefore that he would not fight, and fearing only that " the Blasphemers " should escape, the Committee of the Kirk urged a descent into the plain, to attack the English in their supposed retreat. These wild plans they urged in utter defiance of General Leslie, "whose authority was as dust in the balance when' compared with that of the fanatical preachers. These," says Mr. Gleig, in his " Life of Cromwell," " proclaimed aloud that the Lord had delivered Antichrist into the hands of his people. They exhorted the soldiers at morning and evening exercise to march down in the might of the Most High ; and, reminding them how Gideon had wrought salvation for Israel, and assuring them of a like result, were not sparing in their abuse of the over-caution of Leslie, whom they accused of lukewarmness in the cause of the Covenant." Most bitter must all this have beeil to Leslie, who had served with distinction under the great Gustavus, and who could avail himself of the great practical skill of the grand old soldier, Leven, the conqueror of the Poles at Dantzig, of the Austrians at Frankfort, who had been " commander in West- phalia, and governor of all the cities on the Baltic coast." Spurring their shaggy ponies from regiment to regiment, the clergy urged an attack with furious harangues, exactly as they had done at Kilsythe, and declaring, says Whitelock, "that God would no longer be their God if he delivered them not from the Sectaries." By these means the Scots became inflamed to the highest pitch of fury. Shouts rang along the hnes, colours were waved and weapons brandished. No calm reasoning on the part of the general was listened to; .they insisted on attacking Cromwell where he lay, instead of waiting quietly till the famine and sick- ness which prevailed in his camp should compel him to surrender at discretion. Nor was this all, says Gleig. In the exuber- ance of their fanatical zeal, they not only sent the king to the rear, but, to have an army entirely of saints, they insisted upon " purging it of all malignants," and those who had been ''en- gagers" under the Duke of Hamilton, to the number of 4,000 men ; in other words, prohi- biting any of the oldest and most experienced soldiers— the rough but gallant Cavaliers who for ten years had been serving the crown— from taking part in the action. Never was folly more egregious, and never was its punishment more prompt or deservedly complete. An advantage having offered itself on a Sun- day, says Hume, they hindered the general from making use of it, lest it should involve the nation in the sin of Sabbath-breaking ! " The ' purga- tion ' referred to," says the editor of the " Me- morials of the Montgomeries," "led to the dis- missal of the Earl of Eglinton and many of the flower of the Scottish army, and proved most dis- astrous to the cause of Charles. It took»place almost in sight of Cromwell and his troops, and to it in a great measure may be attributed the dis- astrous defeat." Their object was to seize Cromwell's head- quarters, Broxmouth Park, then ' the seat of Henry Earl of Roxburgh, and then pass the brook which has its source in the Lammermuir Hills, and, skirting the Doon Hill, falls into the sea to the north. Its course is through a rugged glen, forty feet deep, and as many broad ; and from the base of the Doon Hill*to the sea it formed the boundary of Cromwell's position. The morning of Monday saw his army ranged in order of battle along the left bank of this moun- tain burn and rugged glen. Compelled by the Committee to leave his position, Leslie sent his cavalry before sunrise to occupy the other side of the brook, and about four in the afternoon his artillery came down, followed by his whole army, moving to the front and to the right in successive brigades. The ground between the Doon Hill and the sea was' at that time a low and uneven 1:ract, only partially cultivated, in many places marshy and covered with the rough grass called bent. On this space there was but one solitary thatched farmhouse, the occupants of' which were scared by the arrival of Cromwell's cannon, which at first he had placed in the church of Dunbar. Shots were first exchanged at a small shepherd's shealing, which stood nearly opposite the centre of the Doon Hill, at a place where the brook was passable for carts. Therein Colonels Pride and Lambert had placed an out-picket of twenty-one men, who:.i 264 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Dunbar. Leslie's horse drove out with the loss of three. About a mile to the east of this spot, and a little to the ^\-.:st of Broxmouth Park, was the only other pass acrosi the Broxburn (a name which means the "Brook of Badgers"), where now the road to England lies; and from its southern bank the ground gradually slopes up into high table-land, out of which the Doon Hill rises ; and on this ground the brunt of the battle ensued. In the afternoon of this eventful Monday, hence hampered in the narrow sloping ground between the hill and the brook, could neither manoeuvre nor deploy. This defeat of the right wing, he assured himself, would result in the defeat of the whole. Lambert and General Monk, who came up at that moment, cordially approved of the plan, and it was resolved to put it in execution next morning early. The night proved wet and tempestuous, and the ^3>^^-" .^ BOOT WORN BY CAPT. LENCH AT WORCESTER, 1651. Cromwell was walking with General Lambert in the grounds of Broxmouth House, when, to his astonishment and joy, he perceived these unex- pected movements among the Scots, and their abandonnlent of a splendid position. A small mound westward of the house, whereon he stood at that time, is still called Cromwell's Mount. He closed his telescope, and exclaimed, with a burst of genuine fervour, " They are coming ! They are coming down! The Lord hath delivered them into our hands 1" He remarked that it would give them great advantage if the English became the assailants, by crossing the brook and attacking the Scottish right wing in front and flank with such overwhelming force as to drive down upon it the centre, which, Scots, as they lay on the bare earth, suffered severely from the storm ; but they lay in their ranks, every officer and trooper beside his charger, the gunners by their cannon. About three o'clock in the morning, by command of Major-General Holbourn, an order was passed along their lines to extinguish all matches save two per company, from which to light the rest when the drums beat to arms ; and cowering under the corn-shocks and whin-bushes, they endeavoured to obtain a brief sleep and shelter. One hour later the English cavalry were in their saddles, and moving through the wind, the rain, and the darkness towards the pass over the brook. There were six regiments of horse under Lambert, with three and a half of foot as supports. Owing Dunbar.] THE WATCHWORDS. 265 to some delay on the part of Lambert, the attack did not take place till six o'clock a.m., or half an hour after the sun had risen from the German Sea, instead of at daybreak, as Cromwell had intended. There was so much mist that the light as yet only served to give the English troops a few imperfect glimpses of the dark and long-extended lines of the Scots, as they stretched away in undefined masses through the grey vapour which '■ sheer dint of lance and horse, swept the first i brigade of English cavalry away. I Though taken thus at disadvantage, the Scottish right wing made a gallant resistance, as Cromwell I himself admits. Their horse, "with the lancers in ] front," charged, he says, desperately, and drove the ' English back across the hollow of the brook, but ! the charge was renewed by the latter with great enthusiasm, as the regiments of Fleetwood, Whalley, ; and George Twisleton (Governor of Denbigh Castle) CROMWELL AT DUNBAR (see page 266). was now rolling up from the low ground, under the influence of the autumnal morning. The watchword of the Scots was " Scotland and the Covenant;" that of the English, "The Lord of Hosts." Perceiving the English moving on their flanks by regiments attired alternately in scarlet and buff doublets, the Scots were nothing loth to meet them. The attack was begun by a heavy regiment of Scottish lancers ; and with that weapon, which the Comte de Montecuculi called " La reine des armes pour la cavalerie," and accoutred with back, breast, and pot, buff coat, pistols, and Hangers, aided by a fire from their artillery, these made a furious charge down the sloping ground, and, by came up, and then ensued a close and bloody contest at the point of the sword, neither party giving ground for nearly an hour. Cromwell — or Agag, as the Scottish , preachers termed him — directed his whole strength to assail- ing the right wing, to the end that it might be hurled upon the already hampered centre, and ere long it began to fall back as he had foreseen. Then, says Captain Hodgson, " the general himself comes in the rear of our regiments, and com- mands to incline to the left, that is, to take more ground clear of all bodies, and we did so ; and horse and foot were engaged all over the field, and the Scots all in confusion." From a cloud at that moment there was a S3 266 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Dunbar. burst of sunshine on the sea in the Enghsh rear. Then, continues Hodgson, " I heard Noll say, ' Now let God arise, and his'enerriies be scattered!'" There is something almost poetical, says a writer, in the employment of such 'language, and at a moment so critical ; " and that it had its full effect upon the enthusiasts whom Cromwell commanded admits not of a doubt. What a subject for a painter acquainted with the wild scenery of that coast ! " Monk fought bravely on foot, pike in hand, against Sir John Tower's regiment, which made a steady resistance until one of his sergeants slew Captain Campbell, a favourite officer, on which it gave way. Whalley had two horses shot under him, and received a severe sword-wound, by which a hand was nearly hewn off, yet he did not quit the field. Slinging their lances by leathern thongs, the Scottish lancers, now at close quarters, betook them to their swords and pistols, and fought with incredible resolution ; while two of the regiments of infantry (according to Burnet) stood their ground against the English horse till they were cut to pieces in their ranks. One entire brigade of Highlanders, who had no share in the vile fanati- cism that inspired their comrades, is said to have perished on the spot, as not a man would turn his heel to save his life ; while the regiment of Kirkness lost no less than thirty officers, including its colonel, who was slain, as he lay wounded and helpless, in a thicket near Broxmouth House, where his gravestone, bearing his name, is still to be seen. Cromwell states that a charge of " the stoutest regiment " the enemy had was repelled at push of pike by his own, under Lieutenant-Colonel Goffe and Major White. " The horse in the meantime did, with a great deal of courage and spirit, beat back all opposition, charging through the bodies of the enemy's horse and foot, who were, after the first repulse given, made by the Lord of Hosts as stubble to their swords." Formed in five corps or divisions, the Scottish army was led by Lieutenant-General Lumsdaine, Major-Generals Holbourn and Lindsay, and Colonels Campbell and Innes ; but we have no further details of their order. For a time the battalions of the main body presented a steady front, bordered by fire and glittering steel ; but the loss of the " malignants," the 4,000 old soldiers and trained Cavaliers, was soon felt by these raw levies, when the ruins of their right wing were hurled upon their centre in such confusion that their own horse then began to tread them under foot. Then, on seeing the right wing routed and the centre in confusion, the left gave way at once, as did the reserve, which Holbourn was tardy in bringing into action, for ere the head of his column reached the scene of operations the whole Scottish line had given way, after a disastrous and bloody conflict of *^wo hours, and, as Cromwell had fore- seen, all v/as over ! A total and irremediable rout ensued ; but the moment it began the English trumpets sounded a halt, till the army sang the 117th Psalm and the cavalry could be gathered for the pursuit, which lasted eight miles, with a result so bloody that the battle of Dunbar was long remembered by the people of Scotland with acrimony as the "Tuesday's Chase," the battle having taken place on that day. Of all the victories won by Cromwell, Dunbar was the most complete. Between the Doon Hill and Broxmouth Park the wreck of the army covered all the narrow plain. Colonel Louis Home, of Wedderburne, the elder, and Lieutenant-Colonel Louis Home, the younger, father and son, lay dead side by side ; Colonels Sir William Douglas, Sir John Haldane, Maxwell of Calderwood, Montgomery, Kerr, Wemyss, Scot, Grey, and Stuart; Major Cockburn; Rittmasters CoUesse and Lidington of Saltcoates, were slain ; and more than 3,000 killed ' and wounded covered all the field. Thus far one account, while Claren- don's says the slain were between 5,000 and 6,000. Of the wounded no exact lists were ever made up, but 1,000 of them were sent next day in country carts, a mock present to Elizabeth of Herries, the Countess of Winton. There were taken upwards of 10,000 prisoners, among whom were 18 field officers (one of these. Lord Liberton, was mortally wounded), 47 captains, 7 captain-lieutenants, 204 subalterns, and 15' sergeants. There were also taken 200 stand of colours, 15,000 stand of arms, 32 pieces of cannon, and all the tents, ammunition, and baggage. One body of the Scots retreated to Belhaven; another only to the town of Dunbar ; a third was pursued by Colonel Hacker as far as Haddington, and, in the words of Clarendon, '' no quarter was given, till the pursuers were weary of killing." Pecuhar severity was exercised upon the clergy, many of whom were cut down in the act of bawl- ing out assurances of victory. Others were de- signedly slashed by the Sectarian dragoons in the face, with the view of disfiguring them. Many of the prisoners who were wounded Cromwell dis- missed on the field, the remainder he marched towards England. Had Leslie been permitted to act on his Dunbar.] THE SCOTTISH PRISONERS. 267 original plans, the possibility of fighting under such disadvantageous circumstances as those which occurred would never have been afforded ; and Cromwell spoke the truth when he denied that any share of the merit attaching to the achieve- ment belonged to him. General Leslie, enraged by the defeat of his army, through the interference of the mad zealots and insolent clergy, resigned his baton; but being prevailed upon to resume the command, he made Stirling his head-quarters, and there he remodelled the army, which, apart from forces under Middleton, was now reduced to 16,000 infantry and 7,000 horse (lancers and dragoons), with 14 pieces of cannon. Attired in a black periwig, plumed bearer, and suit of buff, " which," says an old writer, " sets off the blue ribbon and George suspended from his person," the young King Charles II. rode daily through their ranks. If we may credit some accounts, the loss of the English was so trifling that Major Rokesby and a comet were the only commissioned officers who fell, with forty private soldiers ; an assertion which, from the number of slain among the defeated, carries falsehood in its front, for Whitelock says there were 4,000 Scots killed on the field and pur- suit, and Cromwell has it about 400 English. Cromwell spent the day after the battle at Dun- bar writing letters to the House of Commons and to his wife regarding his victory, tidings of which were brought to London in three days by Sir John Hipsley. At that time. General Ludlow tells us, "it was my fortune, with others of the Parliament, to be with the Lord Fairfax at Hampton Court, who seemed much to rejoice at it." On the day after the battle, Cromwell issued the following pro- clamation : — " Forasmuch as I understand thare are several soldiers of the enemy's army yet abiding in the field, who, by reason of their wounds, could not march from thence : these are to give notice to the inhabitants of this nation, that they may have free liberty to repair to the field aforesaid, and with their carts, or in any other peaceable way, to carry the said soldiers to such place as they shall think fit ; provided they meddle not, or take away any of the arms there ; and all officers and soldiers are to take notice that the same is permitted. " Given under my hand, at Dunbar, 4th Septem- ber, 1650. "O. Cromwell. " To be proclaimed by beat of drum." The colours taken were ordered to be hung in Westminster Hall, and medals of gold and silver were struck in honour of the victory, and distri- buted to the officers and men. These were oval, and bore on one side a representation of West- 1 minster Hall, with the Parliament all seated, with steeple-crowned hats on. The other bore a pro- file of Cromwell, with a battle in the distance, and this legend : — "Kar' The Lord of Hosts. y^'^Tsl" The " History of Dunbar " mentions that " human bones and pieces of scarlet cloth " have been fre- quently found at Spottdean, where the dead were Interred. From this we must infer that many more than forty-two EngUsh were slain, as many of Cromwell's troops were clad in russet, buff, and blue. In 1773 silver coins to the number of 290 were found in a hole on the field, where, as they were all of EUzabeth's reign, they were supposed to have been hidden by some thrifty English Puritan who fell in the battle. Heriot's Hospital at Edinburgh was filled with the wounded of Cromwell's army, and with his sick. Most miserable was the fate of the Scottish prisoners of all ranks. By their guards, under Sir Arthur Hesilrig (or Haslerig), they were stripped of most of their clothing, their rings, purses, watches, and sleeve-buttons ; and on the march beyond Berwick were repeatedly beaten with musket-butts and sword-blades, and otherwise ill-used. They were more than 5,000 in number, yet no food was pro- vided for them. They had entered the action before breaking their fast, and already they were near Morpeth without tasting bread. Weak and faint, many were then raving with the agonies of hunger. At Morpeth, daring alike the swords and carbines of Haslerig's cavalry, they burst fi-om the highway into a field of cabbages, which they de- voured raw, amid the laughter and derision of the military saints who guarded them. Even the leaves of the trees and twigs of the hedgerows were taken by these unfortunates; and such was the effect of such sustenance, after all they had undergone, that they perished in hundreds by the wayside. Hasle- rig, in his letter to the English Parliament, admits, with fiendish sang-froid, that they had then been eight days without food. Only 3,000 lived to reach Newcastle — cold, naked, weary, footsore, sick, and sinking — and were thrust into the great church of St. Nicholas. When the trumpets sounded for the next day's march, 143 were found past ever marching more. Many more died by the way on the march to Durham, and many were shot. Haslerig admits to being " necessitated to kill about thirty, fearing the loss of them all ; for they fell down in great numbers, and said they were not able to march." 268 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [rnverkeithing. He also admits to burying 60 officers and i,6qo men, chiefly about Newcastle and Durham, where their terrible march ended, and where some pottage, beef, and qatnieal were given to the survivors, "most of which are in probabiUty Highlanders, they being hardier than the rest." Of these, 600 were in health in the cathedral and 600 dying in the castle. The story, in many of its terrible details, reminds one of Napoleon's affair at Jaffa. Among the many charges against this infamous and ferocious Puritan, found after his death by the Attorney-General (Sir Jeffery Palmer), was one to the effect " that he used the Scots prisoners taken at Dunbar in such a barbarous and horrid manner that they perished for hunger, and were not admitted to have any relief." Ludlow (Vol. II.) describes I him as " a man of a disobliging carriage, sour and morose of temper, liable to be transported with passion, and to whom liberality seemed to be a vice." Two hundred who survived all their miseries were sent to Virginia — which was, considering the wretched state of Britain, perhaps the best fate that could befall them. Cromwell, who had always a superstition that September was a fortunate month to him, after having been so successful in the war of the sword, took up the pen against the Scottish ecclesiastics, to maintain the chief points of the Independent theology. He took care, likewise, to retort upon them their favourite argument of Providence, and asked them "whether the Lord had not declared against them.'' But the ministers thought that the same events which seemed to their foes as judgments were to them but trials; and they replied, in the Judaical phraseology of the time, " that the Lord had only hidden His face for a time from the sons of Jacob." Then Cromwell declared that the appeal had been made to God in the most solemn and explicit manner, and that on the battle-field of Dunbar His award had been signally made in favour of the EngUsh army ! CHAPTER XLVI. CROMWELL IN SCOTLAND — INVERKEITHING, 1 65 1. Before the next pitched encounters took place between the Scottish Royalist army of Charles II. and that of the English Republicans, at Inverkeithing and Worcester, several sieges and affairs of minor importance occun'ed. Edinburgh and Leith were taken, but the castle of the former was defended vigorously. With 1,600 foot, a squadron of horse, four guns, and a mortar, Monk proceeded to attack Dirlton Castle, near Haddington. The vast and gloomy ruins of this feudal fortress rise above the flat and fertile district from what seems a gentle elevation, but on near approach is found to be an abrupt per- pendicular rock. The walls and towers are of enormous strength, and rise from the latter with a parabolic curve, the stories being vault upon vault. In the curtain between two towers is the gate- way, and there is a circular aperture through which, in the wars of old, arrows, stones, and molten lead were poured upon assailants. It was garrisoned by moss-troopers. The horse surrounded it, under Lilbum, to prevent the escape of the garrison. Soon the drawbridge and gates were destroyed by j cannon-shot. " The lieutenant of the moss-troopers j was killed and his body smashed, when they called i for quarter.'' ] Monk's soldiers then entered by ladders. The I governor, Major John Hamilton, and sixty men, were taken prisoners, while a captain and other two were shot upon the spot, for no reason given, on the 8th of November. Five days after, Rosewell Castle, near the Pentland Hills, capitulated to Monk, while Colonel Matthew Thomlinson took the castle of Borthwick. After a stout resistance, through bribery, the casde of Edinburgh was surrendered on the igih of December, by Colonel Walter Dundas, and the garrison marching out with the honours of war, one red ensign flying and drums beating, repaired to the royal camp at Stirling, while all the cannon and stores fell into the hands of the enemy. February saw Monk before Tantallon, the famous old stronghold of the Douglases in East Lothian — a cluster of round and square towers, connected by enormous crenelated curtain walls, Inverkeithing.j THE ENGLISH AND SCOTS ARMIES. 269 rising amid a scene of rugged wildness, on rocks of the darkest iron hue, against which tosses the ever- restless German Ocean. He had with him three regiments and a train of guns and mortars, against which its garrison, numbering only ninety-one officers and men, defended themselves for several days. At last, the writer of the account says, " after bat- tering the place and playing with our granadoes, it surrendered upon mercy. Our mortars had played forty-eight hours; but when our battering guns began, they beat a parley, but would not be heard." The governor then hung out a standard, and next a white sheet, in token of truce, but both were fired upon. He then appeared upon the walls, " and entreated that he might be heard ; he desired terms. Mercy was the only terms offered him." On the 29th of March, Monk reduced Blackness, the garrison of which marched out with drums beating, but without their arms ; and during these operations Cromwell was so dangerously ill at Edinburgh that the rumour — a pleasing one to the Scots Cavaliers — went abroad that he was dead. In May, Lord Fairfax sent his coach from London, with Doctors Wright and Bates to attend him ; but as his health improved next month, and he was able to take the field again, they returned to England. In April his army Consisted of fourteen regi- ments of horse and twelve of infantry, besides 8,000 men who were landed frohi boats to march from Fife towards the camp and castle of Stifling; and on the 3rd of July they were as follows : — Horse. — i. The Lord-General's ; 2. Major-Gene- ral Lambert's; 3. Lieutenant-General Fleetwood's; 4. Commissary-General Whalley's ; 5.- Colonel M. Thomlinson's ; 6. Colonel Twisleton's ; 7. Colonel Hacker's ; 8. Colonel O'Key's ; 9. Colonel lid- cot's ; 10. Colonel Berry's; ir. Colonel Gros- venor's ; 1 2. Major Husband's (six troops of dragoons); r3. Colonel Alured's; 14. Colonel Lilburn's. Foot. — I. The Lord-General's ; 2. Major-Gene- ral Lambert's ; 3. Lieutenant-General G. Monk's ; 4. Majop-General Dean's; 5. Colonel Fairfax's; 6. Colonel Pride's ; 7. Colonel Goffe's ; 8. Colonel West's; 9. Colonel Cooper's; 10. Colonel Ash- field's; II. Colonel Daniel's; 12. Colonel Reade's. Foot, &c., on the Fife coast. Colonel Overton's forces. At Leith were Colonel Fenwick's and Colonel Syke's regiments ; at Edinburgh, on the 19th of July, Major-General Harrison's horse. Major Mercer's dragoons, and Colonel Ingoldsb/s regiment of foot. Many of Cromwell's oflicers were men from the lowest classes of society. Hacker, we' have said. was originally a drayman ; so was Colonel O'Key, who was subsequently stoker to a brewer at Isling- ton. " He was," says Caulficld, " eminently gifted with all the enthusiasm and cant of the times, and became first a Puritan, afterwards a Presbyterian, then an Independent and Anabaptist, and finally settled himself as a Fifth Monarchy man." Colonel Robert Lilburn was undoubtedly a gentleman ; he was the son of Lilburn of Thickly-Puncharden, in Durham (a family old as the time of Henry VI.), and had imbibed early a rooted dislike to the Court party and Star Chamber. His brother Henry was killed at Teignmouth, in the king's service. The colonel died a prisoner in the Isle of St. Nicholas, near Plymouth, in 165 1. The king's forces were encamped under the guns of Stirling Castle, and were as follows : — ■ Horse Regivients. — King's Life Guard, Colonel the Earl of Eglinton ; Ludovic, Earl of Crawford's (he died in Spain) ; Edward Massey's (mixed, Scots and EngUsh. He was a deserter from the Parliament) ; Alexander, Earl of Bakarris's ; Sir George Buchanan's, of that Ilk; Sir George Wemyss', Bart., of Bogie ; James, Lord Carnegie's (afterwards Earl of Southesk) ; James, Lord Ogilvie's (son of Airlie) ; James Elphinstone, Lord Coupar's ; The Laird of Ardkinglass ; Gilbert, Earl of Errol's (colonel of horse under Duke of Hamilton) ; Strachan, die Laird of Thornton's. Foot Regiments. — King's Foot Guards, under Lord Lome, raised on the i8th of March, 1641 (Stuart of Ardvoirlich, who murdered Lord Kil- pont, was major of this regiment, which was re-embodied in 1660, and is now represented by the Scots Fusiher Guards) ; John, Earl of Rothes' (captain of Scots Life Guards in 1663) ; John, Lord Erskine's (afterwards ninth Earl of Mar) ; James, Lord Drummond's ; Alexander, Earl of Kellie's (a colonel under Hamilton) ; James Mercer's, of Aldie (afterwards colonel of horse) ; Browne's ; James, Earl of Home's (a colonel under Hamilton) ; James, Lord Sinclair's (colonel of Fife Horse, under Hamilton) ; James, Lord Douglas's (son of Angus). There were seven other regiments, commanded by chiefs and lairds, and fourteen pieces of cannon, with the brigade of artillery. The Scottish preachers, who infested the camp and tyrannised over the unhappy young king, whom they sickened and nauseated by rebukes and hours of daily preaqhing, attributed their recent reverses not to their own officious and impertinent interference, but to the anger of the Lord, bfecause of the presence of malignants among them. Leslie thus lost many of his best officers, and was crippled zyo BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Inverkei thing.' in the execution of complicated manoeuvres by the absence of such .subordinates as he could trust. Nevertheless, about the 3rd of July he took up a strong position amid the openings of the ancient Torwood, which enabled him to command both the approaches to Stirling and the great road into the western counties; and there he remained, ready to give battle, or to thwart any attempt to cut off his supplies. Cromwell having tidings of a proposed invasion j resistance. Captain James Rose, of Monk's I regiment, fell in this affair, and only thirteen Scots were living when the house was taken, Galbraith i and sixty-two of his party being slain. They were ! buried in the lawn, where their bones were found recently. Cromwell, finding that most of the supplies for the king's army came from the fertile county of Fife, resolved that a strong force, under Lambert or Overton, should be sent there to cut them off MONK'S SIEGE OF TANTALLON {see page 268). of England, sent General Harrison with a force into Cumberland; and marching from Edinburgh, moved along the beautiful northern slopes of the Pendand Hills towards Linlithgow, at the head of the troops given in the preceding list, under date 3rd of July. He was desirous to lure the Scots from their position between Stirling and the Torwood, and, after keeping his men under arms during a burning summer's day at Carmuirs, he drew off in hopes that they would follow him ; but they kept within their own lines. After an artillery duel on the 5th, he retired again towards Kilsythe and Glasgow, after carrying off 4,000 oxen and sheep, and storm- ing Callander House, in which a little garrison, jnder a Lieutenant Galbraith, made a brave permanently, and this force was conveyed from Leith by boats and the pinnaces of his fleet in the Forth. Much about the same time that he came to this resolution, the citizens of Perth, by order of the king, mustered on the South Inch a chosen body of men, under three officers, named Butter, Davidson, and Dykes, whose orders were to march to Burnt- island and watch the motions of the Republicah fleet and army. On their way they were joined by a detached column of the Scottish army, 3,000 strong, under Major-Generals Sir John Browne, of Fordel, and Holbourn, of Menstrie (Governor of Stirling Castle), sent by the way of Dunfermline for the same purpose, but they arrived somewhat later. Invcrkeithing.] CROMWELL'S MARCH. 271 O < 272 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA, [inverkeithing. Above the north Queen's Ferry there is a pro- montory called the Cruicks, chiefly noted for a project entertained by some wealthy Jews, in the reign of Alexander III., to fortify and erect upon it a new Jerusalem. Near that promontory Colonel Overton had already landed 1,400 foot and some squadrons of horse, with guns, and encamped un- checked by the peasantry, and shortly after Major- General Lambert joined him, with more horse and foot, making in all 8,000 men. These were composed of the foot regiments of Overton, Fenwick, Sykes, and Ingoldsby ; with Harrison's horse and Mercer's dragoons. On the evening of the i6th of July there was some skirmishing among the broken and rocky ground near which s^tands a tall, square, isolated tower, called the castle of Rosythe, which since the days of Robert III. belonged to that family of Stuart one of whom was the mother of OUver Cromwell; and in an upper room of that tower she was born, her family having accompanied James VI. to England, and settled in Ely ("Short View of the Troubles of England," Oxford, 1681). Thus the old tower had a peculiar interest for Cromwell, who passed a night in it. Lambert's forces far outnumbered those of Hol- bourn, for Cromwell had resolved to proceed there with strength, aware that if the expedition to Fife failed, nothing short of some new infatuation among the Scots themselves could save him from destruction ; his army, originally less numerous than that of Leslie, being now so weakened by the forces detached into Cumberland and elsewhere, that had he been attacked by the whole power of the king he must have been overwhelmed, and had to retreat into England, over a country now desert and wasted, and even that movement, in the pre- sence of a victorious and infuriated enemy, might have been impracticable. But here again the fortune of Cromwell did not forsake him. On the 17 th a closer and more severe engage- ment took place. It was begun near the pic- turesque old town of Inverkeithing, at a place called Hillfield; but in consequence of the Scottish infantry, under Brown, having to fall back when treacherously abandoned by their cavalry, under Holbourn, it was chiefly fought upon the opposite bank of Masterton. All Scottish historians a.gree in the misconduct, if not treachery, of Holbourn on this day, as he was believed to have been — like the Governor of Edinburgh Castle — corrupted by English gold. So strong is this impression, that the people of Inverkeithing have to this day a tradi- tionary story to the effect that he 'betrayed his trust by standing on the East Ness, at a point still poiiited out, and directing the English in their crossing, by means of the speaking trumpet which was then used in all large armies in the field, and was last used at the siege of Gibraltar by General Eliot, Lord Heathfiel,d. In' the battle that ensued a battalion of Macleans, 500 strong, after firing a volley, flung aside their matchlocks, and led by Sir Hector Maclean, of Duairt, flung themselves like a living torrent, sword in hand, upon a regiment of English infantry, which had along its front a stand of Swedish feathers, over which its fire was securely levelled. This minia- ture stockade the Highlanders strove to uproot or wrench away, and flung themselves upon it again and again, with flashing swords and wild tumultuous shouts. In these attacks their aged chief had the grief to see six of his sons fall by his side in suc- cession, and then the clan gave way. " The Laird of Maclean, with most of any a.ccount of his name, was killed," says Auchmar, "as also a vast number of the name of Buchanan." George, Earl of Pan- mure, at the head of the Forfarshire regiment, fought with great bravery, and had a severe wound, while his lieutenant-colonel, nlajor, and many other officers, were slain. Sir John Brown,' at the head of the Midlothian regiment, made a stern resistance against both horse and foot, though he was severely wounded ; and though the conflict had continued for some time, there was no appearance of Holbourn suc- couring the outnumbered infantry with his cavalry reserve. At last they were seen to cross the hollow which ■is threaded by Pinkerton Burn, as if to menace Lambert's flank, when suddenly six pieces of Eng- lish cannon, of the position of which Holbourn was said to be perfectly cognisant, opened upon them from the summit of a slope, and mowed them down in heaps, both horse and man. Holbourn then wheeled them off, and retreated without firing a shot, " leaving three regiments of foot to the mercy, or rather the merciless rage, of the enemy, and they, after a yaliant resistance, were in the end overpowered and cut to pieces." Sir John Brown's force was utterly destroyed. Cromwell, in his official account, says the Scots lost 2,000 men (including the Lairds of Balcomie and Randerston), who were slain, and 500 taken prisoners. Lambert estimated the slain at the same number, but maintains that the prisoners exceeded 1,400, while he limits the English loss to eight (?), "so easy did the Lord grant that mercy;" but, in fact, no confidence can be placed in many of tha statements issued by the contending parties Worcester,] THE FOOT GUARDS. 273 in those wars, and this is evident by a comparison of the official returns of the casualties sustained by each in. this and other engagements. The rill called Pinkerton Burn " is , said to have been coloured with blood for three days in consequence of the great slaughter;" and in the figurative language of the old people Of Inver- keithing, the plain was like " a hairst field " with corpses— meaning, a field thickly strewn with sheaves of newly-cut grain (" Scottish Wars," Vol. I.). Major-General Sir John Brown and Colonel the Laird of Buchanan were among the prisoners ; and there were found on the field sixty standards, fifty- two drums, and several sets of bagpipes. Over- come by shame and grief, emotions which caused his wound to gangrene. Sir John Brown died a few days afterwards in the citadel of Leith; but General Monk interred him among his ancestors, in the church of Amgask, with all the honours due to his bravery. Holbourn, who escaped to StirUng, was there cleared of the grave charges alleged against him ; but as the united voices of the army were against him, he was compelled to resign his com- mission. Cromwell — the gate thus opened for him — now passed the Forth with the main body of the army, and he and Lambert lay one night in the fine old tower of Fordel, where they somewhat spitefully turned all their horses loose "among General Brown's standing corn ;" and next day they ap- peared before the walls of Perth, which Cant, the local historian, states surrendered on honourable terms. Finding by these movements that his supplies were cut off, and his position at the Torwood turned, Charles embraced a resolution worthy alike of the race he sprang from and of a young prince contending for empire. He resolved instantly to march into England, where — like Charles Edward in'later years — he fondly expected that all his friends and those who were discontented with the present Government would flock to his standard. He easily persuaded his generals to adopt the same views; and his army, little over 14,000 strong, prepared for the great expedition which was doomed to end so fatally at Worcester. The west and south of Scotland and more than all the Highlands were still open to him ; but now the summer was far advanced, and Cromwell, for himself, admits that he seriously dreaded another winter campaign, as being likely to prove " the ruin of his soldiery, for whom the Scots are too hard in respect of enduring the winter difficulties of the country,?' besides " the expense of the treasure of England, in prosecuting this war" (Letters and Speeches, Vol. III., " Cromwelliana," 1642 to 1648, &c.). CHAPTER XLVIL WORCESTER, 1 65 1. Some months before they marched, the Scottish troops were preparing vigorously for a transference of the war to Enghsh soil. In Balfour's "Memorialls of Church and Staite," we find that in January, 1651, a surgeon-general, named Wyseman, was appointed to the army; that each company of infantry was ordered to consist of 120 men, and the price of arms was regulated by Parliament — " muskets to be sold at nine pounds the piece, with bandoleers ; the pike at three pounds ; the pair of pistols, with spannes and holsters, to be sold at fourteen pounds." In the same month an English'ship was captured, bound from London with stores for Cromwell. Among these were 10,000 pairs of 'shoes, 6,000 pairs of boots, 5,000 saddles, a month's rations of t)iscuitj and " ten tuns of London biere." In the following month another prize was made, on board of which were found 1,100 ells of broadcloth, 700 suits of clothing, 700 red coats, and 750 muskets and carbines, with matches and powder, all of which were given to Sir John Smith, Com- missary-general of the army. On the 22nd of July, new colours were presented in state to the King's Foot Guards — the regiment of Argyle — in the court of Falkland Palace, and the Lyon King at Arms thus describes them : — "For the Colonel : In a blue field His Majesty's coats of arms, viz., Scotland, England, France, and Ireland, quartered, without any crown over them ; on the other side, in great gold letters, these words — ' Covenant, for Religione, King, and Kingdomes.' " Lieutenant Colonel : Azure, a unicorn argent ; the other side same as first. 274 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Inverkeithing, " First Captain : Three fleurs-de-lys in an azure field. " Second Captain : Or, a lyon rampant ; gules in the middle of an a?ure ensign. "Third Captain: Azure, three lioncells,gradient,or. " Fourth Captain : Azure, a harp, or, fringed, argent." All these standards bore the same motto. The severe service this regiment had encountered during the first ten years of its existence had by that time reduced it to only four companies, with fifteen officers. It had been at the storming of Carrickfergus, in 1641 ; at the battle of Benburb, in 164s, when the Scots lost 3,423 men; and in many of the actions against Montrose. The Life Guards were commanded, we have said, by the Earl of Eglinton, with James Living- stone, Viscount Newburgh, as lieutenant-colonel. A new commission, dated at Perth, 31st -March, 165 1, styles him, " Captaine-Generall of the Horse Guards- for our person," with power to regulate the corps in troops, to hold courts-martial and councils of war, and to punish all misdemeanours and offences (" Memorials of the Montgomeries," Vol. II.) ; and on the 7 th of May, when a march for England was first thought of, before the batde of Inverkeithing, the following order was promulgated in the Scottish camp : — " The division of the army of horse into brigades, as they are to go upon service. " First Brigade, Lieutenant-General Sir D. Leslie : Earl of Rothe's Regiment, Lord Brechin's Regi- ment, Colonel Craig's Regiment. Second Brigade, Major-General R.. Montgomerie : Earl of Linlith- gow's Regiment, Earl of Dunfermline's Regiment, Lord Cranston's Regiment. Third Brigade, Major- General Sir J. Brown : Earl of Balcarris's Regiment, Sir Walter Scott's Regiment, Charles Arnot's Regi- ment. Fourth Brigade, Lieutenant-General Middle- ton : Earl Marischal's Regiment, Lord Ogilvie's Regiment, A. Erskine's Regiment, Mercer of Aldie's Regiment, Reserve of Horse. Fifth Brigade, Major- General Massey : Earl of Errol's Regiment, Lord Drummond's Regiment, Colonel Stuart's Regiment. Sixth Brigade, Major-General Van Druske : Lord Mauchline's Regiment, Lord Erskine's Regiment, Lord Forbes's Regiment, Colonel Innes's Regi- ment. Seventh Brigade : The Duke of Hamilton's Regiment (K.G.), Duke of Buckingham's Regiment (K.G.), Earl of Home's Regiment. " The King's Guards to be upon the right of the right wing." Buckingham was an exile in Scotland ; but, like Cleveland and other English fugitives, was sup- ported by the Scottish Treasury. On the 6th of August the army entered England by Carlisle, and advanced into Lancashire ; but the king was entirely disappointed in his expecta- tion of recruits, or assistance of any kind from his English subjects. The movement was so totally un- expected by them that the most zealous and ardent of his partisans were ignorant of his approach, and hence were totally unprepared to join him. Crushed and dispirited by a long series of bloody disasters, exactions, and extortions; loaded, too, by the taxations of the Republican Government; they were moreover deterred from offering their services by a proclamation which the inevitable and irrepressible Committee of Ministers — irrepressible in their work of mischief— issued, to the effect that no Englishman should be permitted to join the Scottish army who would not first subscribe the Covenant ! This was a pill which the English Cavaliers were somewhat loth to swallow ; and their Presbyterian fellow-subjects, though tolerably favourable to the Royal cause, were unwilling to risk their lives and fortunes in such a desperate enterprise, without some security that their principles would be main- tained ; and an intercepted letter from Charles to Major-General Massey (who commanded the ad- vanced guard of cavalry, the Fifth Brigade), ordering him to suppress the declaration of the clergy for a time, showed them that small confidence could be placed in the sincerity of a king whom their reverences had so frequently disgusted by their prayers and rebukes. The Scots began to lose heart. They found themselves in a hostile country, where all men's hands were against them, and where the peasantry barbarously murdered every straggler. Captain Cecil Howard, son of Lord Howard of Escrick, joined them, however, with one troop of horse (Phillips). Charles had certainly been on the march some days, (though Clarendon has it but one whole day) before Cromwell had notice of a movement so startling. Though taken by surprise, his measures were characterised by his usual promptitude and vigour. "If he followed with his whole army," says Lord Clarendon, " all the advantages he had got in Scotland would be presently lost. . . . If he followed but with part, he might be too weak when he overtook the king, whose army he knew could bear the fatigue of a long march better than his could do so." Hence his position in Scodand was for a third time most critical. He dispatched an express -to the Parliament, to prevent them being surprised or alarmed by news of the Scots advancing, and reminded them that a much more Inverkei thing.] MARCH OF THE SCOTS. 275 considerable army, and " unfoiled," had invaded England when her power " was much more un- steady than now," and they had but a weak force to resist it, and yet this army (the Duke of Hamil- ton's) was singularly overthrown ; whereas, , " the present movement of an enemy heartsmitten by God was not out of choice on their part, but by some kind of -necessity, and it was hoped would have the like issue." Leaving a garrison in Perth, he dispatched Monk with 7,000 men to block up the castle of Stirling, and he ordered the EngUsh militia to assemble and harass the enemy. It chanced that at this time, Thomson, one of his commanders, occupied New- castle with nine battalions of pikemen and muske- teers, and a few guns. Cromwell, while following himself with all speed, ordered the whole of his cavalry to proceed by forced marches on the same point, and instructed the generals, the moment a junction was effected, to throw themselves boldly in the king's way. As he had entered England by the western road, no difficulty was experienced in obejfing these commands, while the second was accomplished just as the Scottish Cavaliers were about to cross the Mersey. Canying along with them all the militia they could muster and arm, the two Republican generals had their first brush at Wigan with the Earl of Derby, who, in obedience to a letter from Charles, had left the Isle of Man, where he had hitherto maintained a kind of petty independence, and had levied some forces in Cheshire and Lancashire. These, to the number of only 1,200, were defeated by Colonel Lilbum, with ten troops of horse, after an hour's conflict. Lord Widrington, Sir Thomas Tildesley, and many others were killed, while 400 were taken. " The Earl of Derby was wounded," Ludlow tells us, "and escaped to Worcester, bringing not above thirty tired horse with him ; so the townspeople began to repent of their revolt against the Parliament." After this a dash was made by Lambert and Harrison to destroy the bridge of the Mersey at Warrington; but too late, for the Scots were already in possession of it, nor were they more successful m an effort to arrest the progress of the king by a show of giving him battle. A few charges of cavalry alone took place ; from these no great result accrued to either party, and it was not the wish of Charles or Sir David Leslie to have their forces weakened by fighting so far from London. They took no notice what- ever of the menacing displays made by the Repub- licans ; and, finding the road open to the front, marched steadily and rapidly, keeping their rear well covered by cavalry and a few pieces of cannon. Save Captain Howard's slender troop, not a man joined him ; and some desertion, with the recent cavalry encounters and the murders of stragglers, had weakened the force of Charles. In spite of the successful passage of the Mersey, the sagacious General Leslie, who from the beginning had seen the desperate nature of this projected march on London, now presaged its disastrous termination. Several towns were summoned as the army proceeded, but without effect ; the friends of royalty, either repressed by the high attitude of its enemies, or weary of the long Civil War, hung back on all hands ; and now, in a state of sullen despair, the usually volatile Charles II., on the 22nd of August, turned aside, and entered the loyal city of Worcester, where he was immediately proclaimed king, amid the genuine rejoicings of the gentry, and where, partly that he might rest his army— wearied by long marches and occasional skirmishes with the enemy — and partly in hope that the Welsh might join him, he halted finally. But not a Welshman ever came. Some have deemed the halt unwise, and have written that had the Scots pushed on and taken possession of London, fortune might have turned in favour of the king ; but the truth was that the native hardihood which had so long sustained both officers and men was beginning at last to give way. Around them they saw a population either totally indifferent to the king's cause, or bitterly hostile to it and to themselves. Of all the hopes held out to them — as to the little Highland army of a later age — not one had been realised ; and now the means of retreat in case of disaster became, alas ! more anxiously considered than those of obtaining victory. The Scottish leaders had em- barked in a desperate game, and now their very existence depended on playing it to the very last card. The house occupied by the king was an old wooden one, having four overhanging gables, in the Cornmarket, and there Eglinton's Life Guards and Lome's Foot Guards mounted their sentinels daily. Of the advantages of Worcester as a mili- tary position. Lord Clarendon writes thus : — " It was a very good post, seated almost in the middle of the kingdom; a good city, severed by the river Severn from all the adjacent counties ; Wales behind it, from whence levies might be made of great numbers of stout men. It was a place where the king's friends might repair, if they had the affection they pretended to have ; and it was a place where he might defend himself, if the enemy 276 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Worcester. ■would attack him, with many advantages, and could not be compelled to engage his army in a battle till Cromwell had got men enaugh to en- compass him on all sides ; and then the king might choose on which side to fight, since the enemy must be on both sides of the river, and could not come sud- denly to relieve each other. And the straiten- ing the king to this de- gree would require much time, in which there might be an opportunity for several insurrections in the kingdom, if they were so weary of the present tyranny, and so solicitous to be restored to the king's govern- ment as they were con- ceived to be, for nobody could ever hope for a more secure season to manifest their loyalty than when the king was in the heart of the king- dom, with a formed army of about 15,000 horse and foot (for so they might be accounted to be), with which he ^night relieve those who were in danger of being op- pressed by a more pow- erful party. These con- siderations produced the resolution to provide in the best manner to ex- pect Cromwell there, and a hope that he might be delayed by other diver- sions; and there was like to be time enough to cast up such works upon the hill before the town as might keep the ene- my at a distance, and their own quarters from being suddenly straitened ; all which were recom- mended to General Leslie to take care of, and to take such perfect view of the ground that no advan- tage might be lost when the time required it." Clarendon, in the above paragraph, overrates the strength of the Scottish troops, which on their WHITE DOESKIN CAVALIER GLOVE WORN BY CAPT. LENCH AT WORCESTER, 1651. entry to Worcester were barely 13,000 in number. The original number was miserably below what the nation ought to have furnished, but it must be borne in mind how it was rent by ecclesiastical disputes. The forces of the western counties, disclaimed the autho- rity of the Scottish Par- liament, and would not act in concert with Les- lie's army, which admit- ted Hamilton's "enga- gers" or "malignants" into its ranks. They called themselves Pro- testers, and the other party were styled Reso- lutioners ; two distinc- tions which rent the Lowland portion of the realm with theological hatred, out 'of which Cromwell did not fail to make military profit. On the -2oth "the latter was at Doncas- ter; two days later he marched through Nottingham, and pro- ceeding by Coventry and Stratford-on-Avon, he entered Evesham on the 27th," and from that place his patrols or advanced parties opened a communica- tion with those corps under Lambert and Harrison, whom the Scots had repulsed at Warrington Bridge; and he soon found him- self within two miles of Worcester, and at the head of 30,000 men, thus outnumbering Lieutenant General Leslie by fully 17,000 horse and foot. He now matured his plans to bring on a general action, and as the Scots no longer possessed any means for avoiding one, their generals stood ready to accept the gage ot battle when offered. On approaching Worcester from the east, Cromwell saw himself cut off from giving an Worcester. ] CROMWELL'S "LUCKY DAY." 277 immediate attack by the river Severn, along the right bank of which the city lay. He found, moreover, that by Leslie's foresight the bridges above and below it had been cut or destroyed, and that every boat and punt had been sunk or taken away, and that the Scottish officers jealously watched the whole course of the stream. By night an extensive line of fires informed him that the heights around the town were occupied in force, and the information afforded to From Stratford, from Warwick, and other places on the Avon, cobles and other boats were conveyed- overland upon cars, till a sufficient number were procured for the end in view ; while a column of horse, under Lilburn, rode up the Severn, seized Bandley Bridge, and established posts of observa- tion along the main line of retreat which the Scots would probably pursue to the North. At length came the 3rd of September, deemed by the superstitious Cromwell his lucky day, and WORCESTER, FROM ST. JOHN S. him by the peasantry warned him to expect a ■ desperate resistance ; but aware how far he out- numbered the Scots, Cromwell did not care much for that or fear the issue. He was daring enough to conceive the idea of crossing not only the Severn, but the Teme, and by approaching the city from the high grounds which overlook it on the north and west, to cut off all chance of retreat for the Royalists if defeated ; and the plan succeeded beyond even his most sanguine expectations. Between the 28th of August and the 3rd of Sep- tember, the time was devoted on one side to the con- struction of a pontoon bridge ; on the other, by the Scots, in strengthening the fortifications of the city, and completing those works which they had begun. the anniversary of his victory at Dunbar ; and on this day, as on that, he was greatly excited. " Cromwell," says a note to Warwick's Memoirs, " retained during his whole life symptoms of trans- port or ecstasies, which were imputed, according to the temper of his observers, to an overstrained imagination, to the inspiration of the Deity, or to an infernal possession. Before his memorable victories of Dunbar and Worcester, his eyes were observed to sparkle, his frame becam^ violently agitated, and he burst out into strange and violent fits of laughter. In a word, he was not himself altogether free from that fanatical frenzy which he knew so well how to excite and to direct in others." A portion of the Scottish army was stationed at 24 278 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Worcester. the suburb of St. John, on the western bank of the Severn, at some distance south-west from Worcester, which stands itself on the left or eastern bank of the river, and was then defended by an intrench- ment of the Scots, named by them Fort Royal. The suburb of St. John was connected with the city by the Severn bridge ; , and a simultaneous attack on both sides was resolved on. The night of the 2nd saw Lambert's division crossed to the western bank of the Severn, and then there was but the Teme, a tributary of the latter, between him and General Massey. While Cromwell diverted the attention of the Royal army, by a display of troops and standards opposite the town. General Lambert suddenly led a division »l infantry towards Upton, the bridge of which had only been partly broken down, while its defence was intrusted to Massey, with the fifth horse brigade, and a body of foot. Lambert attacked this deserter of the Parliament with rancorous fury. A single plank only was placed across the stream. By this his pikemen pushed steadily on, forming up shoulder to shoulder as they passed, while his cannon and musketeers swept all the space before them, and his cavalry sought a passage by swimming on each flank of the crossing infantry. Massey felt that he held the key of his royal master's position, and he held it resolutely, like a gallant soldier, till he received a severe wound, and was borne from the field. A kind of panic, on his fall, seized his troops, and, after having repeatedly hurled the Republicans by pike and musket into the river, their steadiness forsook them ; they retired in confusion, leaving the bridge in possession of the enemy, Lambert promptly and efficiently repaired the half-broken arch ; and before many hours elapsed 10,000 men were established along the course of the Teme. Charles, alarmed by this important movement, ordered the immediate destruction of all the bridges on the latter. At an early hour on the morning of the 3rd of September he was obeyed ; but the order had come too late to be of value. Cromwell, whose calculations were accurately made, and their results usually certain, now directed Fleetwood, to whose guidance the advanced corps of 10,000 men was entrusted, to repair these bridges at all hazard ; and, though the Scottish musketers, by firing on the workers, did all in their power to retard the operations, Cromwell's orders were obeyed, and the Teme was crossed at every point. Finally, the pontoon bridge was thrown across the Severn, about- half-a-mile below Worcester. Direct lines of communication between the extended wings of the Republican army were thus estab- lished, while that of the king lay exposed either to risk a disastrous battle, or endure the tedious process of reduction by blockade. "We have given the numbers of Cromwell's army," writes one of his biographers, " inclusive of militia and trained bands, at 30,000 men ; that of the king scarcely came up to 13,000 ; and the reader will naturally ask why, with such a vast superiority, the Parliamentary general should have scrupled to adopt the more safe as well as the more humane process of ending the war by blockade?" Though lust of blood usually goes hand in hand with gloomy and hypocritical fanati- cism, he adds, " it is not hard to account for the future Protector's decision. In the first place, the militia, unaccustomed to protracted operations, might desert to their homes ; in the next place — and this to him was by far the more influential reason of the two — Cromwell was not ignorant that the existing Government exercised its prerogatives in direct opposition to the wills of a great majority in the nation. Not only the Episcopalians, but the Presbyterians, with the Catholics, and all except the Independents, were heartily disgusted with the new order which things had assumed, and scarcely concealed their intention of bringing back the son of their murdered sovereign, and reinstating him in the authority which his fathers had wielded." Cromwell was aware that all was at stake. Womanish pity was not among his failings ; and, in the resolution to maintain his power, he had no remorse for relentless slaughter. At an early hour, then, on the morning of the 3rd, -Fleetwood's division began to advance from its position. Driving in by a fire of musketry the Scottish outposts, and gradually ascending the eminences in front, it could be seen by Charles, who had stationed himself for a time in one of the towers of the cathedral, where he was able to com- prehend the nature of this movement ; and then he — or, more probably, Leslie — ordered to the front strong reinforcements of horse and foot, to protect the retiring pickets. The hedgerows were lined by the Scottish musketeers, who stoutly disputed every fence and barrier, while their squadrons made many most brilliant and effective charges through the gaps and other openings, and none gave way, till fresh masses of the English 'pouring across the Severn, and led by Cromwell in person, came on "at push of pike;" and then, oyerborne by the weight and number of the enemy, they were com- pelled to fall back before that weapon which they deemed their national one, till ultimately the whole ridge in front of Worcester was lost, or left in possession of the dead and wounded alone. Worcester. ] COURAGE OF CHARLES II. 279 The retxeat of the outposts became both rapid and disorderly ; nor was it till some garden walls and other enclosures about the town afforded temporary cover for skirmishers that they again faced the and attack that portion of the enemy's forces which had been left on the eastern bank of the river, in the hope of being able to overpower and cut them to pieces before others could support them. musketeer's sword (time of citari.es I.; assailants, and again the conflict became long and fierce. Meanwhile, the young king and his Council of War, from the summit of the cathedral, saw with eager eyes and anxious hearts this bloody struggle, and the pickets, amid clouds of smoke, being gradually driven pell-mell into the town ; and a resolution was made to sally out sword in hand, To meet this unexpected movement, Cromwell hastily crossed the river by the bridge of boats, at the head of some of his best troops, and then the deadliest portion of the battle began, and there Charles II. gave many proofs of courage and bravery. Fighting with the most desperate fury, Leshe's trained Scots swept away the whole of the first line of the enemy, which was composed almost 28o BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Worcester. entirely of militia ; but the more veteran battalions, many of which had been in arms since the war began, closed up, arid closer and deadlier grew the strife, as the pikemen crossed their crashing pikes, and the musketeers fired point-blank in each other's faces. The Scots swept away a pet corps of Cromwell's, which he vainly termed his "Life Guards," and for some time obtained possession of the Eng- lish artillery, which they omitted to spike ; but corps after corps came pouring against them, and the guns were retaken and wheeled round, once more to belch destruction on the Scottish line. " My lord general," says an eye-witness, " did ex- ceedingly hazard himself, by riding up and down in the midst oi the fire ; riding himself in person to the enemy's foot, to offer them quarter, whereto they returned no answer but (volleys of) shot." For three hours the battle raged at this point with ever-varying success. Cromwell asserted that it was " as stiff a contest as' he had ever seen ;" but at last the Scots were compelled to give way to the numbers that overwhelmed them, and driving them within the walls, threatened them even there. The redoubt called Fort Royal, which com- manded the main approach to the city, after being battered by cannon for half-an-hour, .was carried by storm, and 1,500 Scots who had thrown themselves into it died on the spot. Other works were car- ried in rapid succession, and their guns turned on the fugitives, or on all that still continued to line the walls and hedges. Fleetwood following up his success, soon converted the retreat of these into a rout, and menaced the city by Friar Street. Ludlow asserts that the Cheshire Militia, led by General Harrison and Colonel Caxton, entered the place at the heels of the fugitives. These were heard crying aloud for the cavalry supports to charge and clear the streets; but, by some strange mistake, that arm, so important at such a juncture, was not brought into play till the time for using it was past. At last an effort was made to charge ; the young Duke of Hamilton fell mortally wounded (he died four days after, and was buried in the cathedral). Encumbered by the crowds of broken and disheartened infantry, and exposed to a plung- ing fire of cannon from the captured works, the cavalry could make no effectual charge, nor was their reluctance to do so even overcome by the impassioned exclamation of their young king : " Shoot me through the head, and let me not see the sad consequences of this day !" By this time the sun had set, and the autumn evening was darkening into night upon the spires of Worcester and the windings of the Severn ; but yet the battle raged with unabated fury. On one hand, the Repubhcans fought but to conquer and destroy ; on the other the Scots fought with the courage of that despair which is without hope. Every street was contested, till they were strewed with dead, and at last the market-place was threatened, and the escape of the king became imperilled. Absolute overthrow was at hand, and the courtieirs of Charles urged that he must instantly provide for his own safety. A Scottish officer rallied and formed a body of cavalry, and led them through the streets, and with wild cheers they made one headlong and des- perate charge. For a brief space it was success- ful ; many a foam-flecked horse, and many a loyal Scottish dragoon perished under the fire of the Republicans; but under cover of the charge Charles effected his escape by the gate of St. Martin (Pere d'Orleans calls it the Sudbury Gate), attended by a throng of fugitive horsemen. The survivors of the cavalry,'under Leslie, with Viscount Dudhope (afterwards Earl of Dundee), Sir Alex- ander Eraser, of Durris (the king's physician), and others, cut a passage out and escaped; but the city, with all its stores, materiel, and fully 8,000 prisoners, fell into the hands of Cromwell, who was wont to term this bloody 3rd of September his " crowning mercy." The dying Duke of Hamilton (who, when ex- piring, "expressed only triumph that he died in the cause of King Charles "), Gavin, Earl of Carn- wath, the Earls of Lauderdale, Rothes, Derby, and Cleveland, five other peers, and 150 persons of rank, were among the captives. Though severely wounded, Derby was afterwards executed at Bolton. Major-General Montgomery, who had been with Massey at the defence of Powick Bridge, was taken prisoner, and sent back to Edinburgh Castle. Massey, whose wound was serious, escaped, but afterwards surrendered himself to the Countess of Stamford, mother of the Parliamentarian Lord Grey, of Groby, "who caused his wounds to be carefully dressed, and sent notice of his surrender to the army " (Ludlow). - Somewhere about 3,000 of all ranks escaped from Worcester, but every fugitive whom the peasantry could slay was instantly butchered.' On the side of the conquerors it is not easy to tell how many perished, for Cromwell seems to have been to the full as well versed in the art of concealing his own losses as Bonaparte; yet, making due allowance for his systematic mis-statements, " we' shall probaby not exceed the truth if we put it down at less than 500 men. Nevertheless, had it doubled this amount, the loss must have been tbs Sack of Dundee.] STIRLING REDUCED. 281, accounted light indeed, seeing that with the great victory at Worcester ended . all the hopes and attempts of the royal party " (" British Military Commanders," Vol. I.). Ludlow and Whitelock say his loss was Quarter- master-General Mosely, Captain Jones, and 100 privates killed; two captains and 300 privates wounded : that of the Scots there were taken 600 officers and 10,000 privates, the king's standard, 158 other colours, all the artillery, ammunition, and baggage. Of the Scots of all ranks more than 3,000 were slain. The captured nobles were ordered to be detained for life in the Tower. The common soldiers who survived their "wounds, and the feverish horrors of the overcrowded prisons, were transported to the plantations, and sold as slaves to the Dutch and American planters ("Crom- welliana," &c.). After many escapes and disguises, and once hiding for a long September day among the branches of an oak, through the green leaves of which he saw Oliver's buff-coated troopers search- ing for him, the young king ultimately embarked for France at Brighton, in a vessel which the com- mander is said to have brought up the Thames after the Restoration, and anchored opposite Whitechapel. Intercepted in his retreat through Newport in Cheshire, at the head of a slender squadron of cavalry, Sir David Leslie was captured by Lilburn's regiment of horse, and committed to the Tower, where he remained with many others till 1660, and was fined ;^4,ooo by Cromwell's Act of Grace. For his sufferings in the Royal cause he was created a peer of Scotland by the title of Lord Newark, and died in 1682, leaving a son and six daughters ; but the title is now extinct. From the day of Worcester, Cromwell advanced steadily to the supreme power by overcoming those factions by which the Royalists and Anti-royalists were divided, till at last he dissolved the Long Par- liament, and took the government entirely into his own hands, yet with all his ability he could not succeed in forcing his troops into the expression of a desire that he should mount the triple throne his daring and his artifices had rendered vacant CHAPTER XLVIIL THE SACK OF DUNDEE, 1651. Three days before Cromwell achieved his "crown- ing mercy " over the Royalist Scots at Worcester, Monk captured the busy and industrious town of Dundee, amid a scene of bloodshed and horror never witnessed before on British soil. He had been left with only 7,000 men, in addition to his own regiment, to occupy the Lowlands of Scotland, and the extreme smallness of this force \s a proof that the Scots, like the EngUsh, were weary of the war, and that but for this sentiment, and the collusion of the powerful Argyle, the artful Warriston, and others, with Cromwell, his troops must inevitably have been cut off. Moreover, the Highlanders were some- what indifferent, and many prefered the English to their own countrymen. On the nth of August, Monk's batteries opened against Stirling Castle ; thirty of the garrison were killed, while the loss on his side was only one artillery-man. On the 14th he wrote to Cromwell "that the guns had been playing on Stirling Cattle, and the enemy had craved leave to capitulate." The garrison was entirely compoised of Highlanders, who were unable to haiadle the guns with which the batteries were mounted, and who, moreover, were terrified by the explosion of shells, missiles with which they were as yet totally unacquainted. A mutiny against their officers was the result, and a forced capitulation. They marched out 300 strong, with their drums beating; and permission to go where they pleased. Mr. Wilham Clarke, Monk's secretary (who was knighted after the Restoration, and became the first Secretary at War), in a letter to Lenthall, the Speaker, states that there were in the castle 40 pieces of cannon, twelve months' provision for 500 men, 5,000 new muskets and pikes, a vast quantity powder, claret, and strong water, the throne and clothes of state, the Earl of Mar's coronet, gold stirrups, and robes, the king's sword, and other furniture, and, more than all, the records of Scotland. The latter were sent to England in eighty casks, and were afterwards most unfortu- nately lost at sea. On the 27th of August it was ordered that the Regalia of Scotland should "be brought to 282 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [The Sack of Dundee. England, and placed in the Tower of London " 1 (Journals of the House). Doubtless, the intention was to have them destroyed, as those of England I had been ; but loyal hands secured them even from Cromwell, and they are now deposited in the castle of Edinburgh. Immediately on the reduction of Stirling, Monk marched towards Dundee, which was expected to make a vigorous resistance. He left in Stirling Colonel Read's regiment, and took with him nine companies of his own regiment, nine of Colonel Ash- field's, five troops of Colonel Berry's, Colonel Grosvenor's and Colonel O'Key's regi- ments ; two troops of Mor- gan's dragoons, nine battering guns, and one mortar. On the night of the 21st of August, he halted at Dun- blane. On the 25 th he was at Blackford, midway between Stirling and Perth, and next day he encamped within two miles of the last-named city. In swimming his cavalry across the Tay, some were drowned ; but he advanced into Angus with 4,000 horse and foot, ac- cording to Ludlow, and was joined by Alured's horse and some more dragoons. Having heard that old Field- Marshal Leslie, now better known as Earl of Leven, and some other members of the Scottish Parliament, were meet- ing at Alyth, to concert mea- sures for the protection of Dundee, he suddenly dis- patched Colonel Alured, with 500 horse and two troops of dragoons, to take them prisoners : so the colonel seized the Earls of Leven, Marischal, and Craw- ford, and Lord Ogilvie ; the Lairds of Humbie, Colinton, Cockburn, Fotheringhame, and others, who were all sent prisoners of war into England. Among them* were two officers and seventy soldiers. On the 26th of August, Monk next appeared before Dundee, and it is difficult to reconcile the barbarity of his conduct there with the general bearing of the Cromwellian troops in Scotland, and PIKEM.\N OF THE CI! (I'UW with that courage and good judgment which he generally exhibited, or with that chivalrous char- acter which won so much the confidence of his soldiers. On the latter power. Lord Wharn- cliffe, in a note to his translation of Guizot's " Memoirs of General Monk," observes : — "It is certain that Monk possessed in a remark- able degree that power of se- curing the attachment of the soldiers which is the attri- bute of all great commanders. Carte, in his " Life of Ormond," calls Monk the most beloved by the soldiers of any officer in the army ; and Lord Byron, his commanding officer in the action near Nantwich, in 1644, describes his arrival as adding great alacrity to the soldiers ; and again, when he mentions the rout of his old regiment, adds " though they had their beloved Colonel Monk at the head of them." In fact, as Price, his chaplain, says of him, " the soldiers did generally love him ;- and it was to their general affection and confi- dence that he owed that con- trol which he afterwards exer- cised over his army under the most critical circumstances, and without which he must then have failed." Dundee at this time was walled, and a place of consider- able strength. So secure was it considered, that during Crom- well's invasion many of the citizens of Edinburgh and of other towns had sent there their most valuable effects for security, under a special guard of the citizens of the capital ; and many nobles and persons of the highest rank in Scotland had repaired to it as a place of strength. Among these were the Earls of Buchan, Tweed- dale and Buccleuch ; Viscount Newburgh (who had not accompanied his regiment into England); the Lords Balcarris, Elibank, and Ramsay ; the Master of Burleigh, fifteen knights, eleven gentle- men of estate, and a number of Edinburgh mer- chants, writers, and advocates. The governor was Major Sir Robert Lnmsden, of OJtWELT.IAX PERIOD hU). The Sack of Dundee.] MONK BEFORE DUNDEE. 283 2^4 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [The Sack of Dundee. Bewhannie, and his garrison, composed chiefly of the burghers and fugitives, was very strong — some accounts make it 10,000 or 11,000 in arms, an exaggeration probably ; but Dr. Gumble, then Monk's chaplain, and afterwards his biographer, admits that it was much more numerous than the investing force. Among the troops in Dundee were two battalions of the regiment of Alexander Sutherland, Lord Duffus. These, circumstances quite justified the reply which was sent by the governor, and which Monk, as an excuse for his future barbarity, chose to call arrogant, on his demanding the surrender of the town. It was couched in these words; and might have been otherwise, had Lumsden known that three days later the rout of Worcester was to ensue : — - "Sir, — We have received yoilrs. For answer thereunto, we by these acquaint you that we are commanded by the King's Majesty to desire you and all officers and ships that are at present in arms against the King's authority; to lay down your arms, and to come in and join with His Majesty's forces in the kingdom, and to conform and give obedience to His Majesty's declaration sent you herewith, which, if you will obey, we shall continue, sir, your faithful friend in the old manner, " Robert Lumsden." All the nobles and gentlemen in Dundee were now serving with the townsmen, and took their turns of duty, in buff coat, cuirass, and morion, with pike knd musket, on the walls, on which there were at first some forty pieces of ordnance. These were chiefly worked by a body of Scottish merchant-seamen, from the ships in the Tay, under Captain George Ponton, a gallant skipper of the Queen's Ferry. On the afternoon of Sunday, the 31st of August, before even Alured had come in with his cavalry and the prisoners from Alyth, Monk, having got his guns into position, began to cannonade the town,; and among the first who fell was Captain Ponton. An exchange of shot and shell continued till ten next morning, when terms of surrender were twice offered by him, and twice refused by Lumsden Jind Lord Duffus, who, being ignorant of Lord Leven's capture, hourly expected his appearance at the head of troops to raise the siege. During the whole night the English cannon had continued to fire on one point, where the 0I& spire of St. Clement indicated in the starlight a line whereby to breach the northern wall. The breach being declared practicable on the ist of September, Monk ordered a general assault, at push of pike, promising his soldiers, as a stimu- lant, the pillage of^the town without licence for twenty-four hours. Dr. Gumble informs us that Monk obtained very good intelligence of all that passed within the toWn, by means of an artful boy, who used to get over the wgrks in sight of the sentinels and townspeople, as he pretended, "in order to enjoy, with the chil- dren of the town, the amusements of their age," his size and years rendering him beyond suspicion. Among other things, he informed Monk that at nine in the morning all the strangers and soldiers were in' habit of taking large morning draughts, and that before twelve they were well drenched in their cups. This information was probably correct, for it seems to have been the constant practice of the male inhabitants of the place of all ranks, until late in the last century, to breakfast in ale- houses ("History of Dundee," 1847). Of this circumstance, Gumble reports, Monk did not fail to take advantage, and gave orders for the assault at the usual wassail hour ; and this statement, that many of the inhabitants were intoxicated, and " did no dewtey in their ain defence," is corroborated by Sir James Balfour. The English infantry advanced with great ardour. The stormers were composed of the fierce and fanatical regiments of Monk and Ashfield — the pikes in front, the musketeers in the rear, to fire between the files ; the dragoons closing up for ser- vice in the streets, the moment an entrance was effected. While the breach in the north wall was attacked by them, another force assailed the Well- gate Port, and after the gate had been broken down by 150 English seamen, armed with sledge- hammers and axes, the town was entered at two points. The forlorn hope was led by Captain Hart, of Monk's regiment. Six English officers and twenty privates were killed in the northern breach. Colonel O'Key thus describes the assault ; — " It was rerolved to storm the place. Our two regiments of foot were very weak, by reason of sickness, and we ordered that 650 horse should fall on with sword and pistol, 250 on foot and 250 on horseback to second tliem, all the seven troops of dragoons, and 15.0 seamen. Our guns began to batter at .five o'clock in the morning, and at ten we fell on with such courage and spirit in our men that I never saw more in no place in all my life. The whole body of liorse, that was to stand as a reserve at some distance, as soon as our forces fell on gave a shout and came up to the works, and kept under the caftnons' mouth." Many of the troopers, he adds, got into the town as soon as the infantry. For a quarter of an The Sack of Dundee.] THREE DAYS OF RAPINE. 28s hour the breach was defended, and O'Key admits that most of the defenders died at their posts. Captain Hart was wounded, and Ensign Francis Norris (also of Monk's regiment) was wounded mortally (" Commons Journal," 1651). Sir Robert Lumsden fought bravely ; and among those who fell by his side were Sir John Leshe, of Newton, Captain Fergusson, Bailies Brown and Davidson, two ministers of Dundee, and twenty- two gentlemen of Edinburgh, who served as volun- teers. The explosion of a magazine by a live shell, causing a panic in rear of those defending the breach, assisted the entrance of the stormers, and when the cavalry broke in there ensued in the quaint and narrow streets of Dundee a dreadful scene of shameful and pitiless butchery. Declaring that he would die rather than surrender to rebels, Sir Robert Lumsden, with a small band of brave Cavaliers, retired to the great church of St. Mary, which was built by David, Earl of Huntingdon, the Royal Crusader, while, according to O'Key, most .of the people fled for shelter to their houses. When Monk's musketeers stormed the church, Lumsden and his friends retired into the grand old spire, which they defended, one account says, for three days, with sword and pistol, from story to story, till they were driven to its summit. Then the veteran governor surrendered his sword to Colonel Ashfield, on the promise "of quarter for himself and ten surviving friends, who were all wounded." The promise was given ; but the moment they were disarmed they were all cruelly murdered and decapitated, and the grey head of Lumsden was spiked on the northern buttress of the steeple. Ludlow admits that, besides the governor, 600 were "killed in cold blood;" but the slaughter far exceeded his modest 'admission. On finding themselves surrounded, as the stormers poured in by the breach and Wellgate Port, the two battalions of Lord Duffus's regi- ment laid down their arms in front of the town- house at the old Yarn Market, capitulating as prisoners of war ; but a merciless fire of musketry ' was poured upon them from every point, and every officer and man was shot down. Not one was permitted to escape. A similar slaughter of another force took place in the Fish Market. Every house was broken open and pillaged. Lust, rapacity, and cruelty reigned supreme.; and the barbarity of the Croats at Magdeburg, and of the English at Drogheda, was now repeated in Dundee. Upwards of 200 women, most of whom were first outraged, were murdered; 1,300 men, and an unknown number of children perished. Blood was dripping from the stairs of the houses, and it ran ankle-deep in the gutters of the market-place. , For three days this scene of carnage and crime lasted. Nor did it close till the 6th of September, when Monk is said to have seen a starving infant sucking at the gashed breast of its mother, as she lay dead in the street called the Thorter Row. Close by that place, when the pavement was relaid in i8ro, there were found the skeletons of a woman and child, supposed to be the remains of those who at last excited the lingering or dormant pity of Monk. In corroboration of the massacre of those days, when the Nether Gate was widened, about 18 10, vast quantities of human bones were found in a more or less perfect state of preservation ; and all these bore signs of hasty and coffinless interment in shallow boles. In one pit 200 skulls were found, in July, 1851. The head of Sir Robert Lumsden remained long on the steeple, until the fall of the stone on which it was fixed by Monk's order. His widow, "the Lady Bewhannie," died seven months after the horrors of Dundee, at her own house in Fifeshire. The plunder obtained by the English in Dundee was very great, especially for that age. A contem- porary diarist asserts that they got ;^2oo,ooo sterling in bulHon, silver plate, jewels, rings, watches, and " other precious things belonging to the town of Edinburgh." Balfour says two millions and a half, by which he probably means Scots' money. " It was the richest town I ever saw in Scotland or England for the size of it," wrote Colonel O'Key ; "and some of our soldiers got _;^5oo apiece." " Some of my men," says "White- lock, another Parliamentarian, "have gotten ;^Soo, some ;^300, others ;£^2oo and ;^ioo apiece, and none of them but are well paid for their service." Some 800 prisoners were taken, and stripped to their shirts. There were taken 40 great guns, a vast store of arms and amunition, with 100 ships in the harbour. Sixty of the greatest tonnage were laden with all that Monk's troops deemed valuable, "the best plunder of any gotten in the wars throughout the three nations," and sent away for England. " But see," says Gumble, who strongly censures the infamous conduct of his countrymen, "the just judgement of God !" A storm arose, the sixty ships were dashed against each other, and all perished on the bar, where the deep shifting sands of the Tay swallowed them up, and there they lie with the spoil to the present hour. 286 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Exploits of Admiral Blake. Two ■ relics of the sack and storming of Dundee yet remain in the old burying-ground ; these are the monument of George Brown, of Horn, baiUe of the town, "who was mortally wounded by the enemy in the heat of the fight ; " and that of the leader of the cannoniers, which simply tells that " Heir lyes ane honest man^ namit George Ponton, skipper and bvrges in the Queen's Ferie, who departed this lyfe the first of September, 1651." The fate of Dundee struck terror into other towns and districts. The conduct of Monk's troops there was totally unlike that of the English army anywhere else in Scotland. Bishop Burnet tells us that he remembered three of Cromwell's regiments coming to Aberdeen — probably some of the force that sacked Dundee. He sa>ys there were an order, discipline, and piety among them that amazed all people. Most of them were Independents and Anabaptists, and all were gifted men ; but they never disturbed the people in the churches save once. They reproached the Scottish cleigy with laying things to their charge which were false ; the preachers retorted. " The debate grew fierce ; at last they drew their swords, but there was no one hurt. Yet Cromwell displaced the governor for not punishing this." In Lowland Scotland, the power of the Com- monwealth soon seemed as firmly established as in Ireland, and all authority save such as was derived from the EngUsh Parliament was abolished by pro- clamation. A mixed committee of Scotsmen and Englishmen was appointed to supersede the Court of Session. The Parliament next proposed an incor- porating union, and this filled up the measure of the disgust and hate of the Scots for a time, for there is a pride in the independence of his country of which even the most humble peasant is conscious ; but before this could be accomplished the Parlia- ment itself was overturned by the towering ambition of Cromwell, to whom all the country seemed to submit, save a few Royalists who remained among the Highland mountains, under Sir Evan Cameron, of Lochiel, the Earl of Glencaim, Lord Balcarris, and General Middleton. In the Lowlands strict peace was maintained ; and the people, freed from the tyranny of their ecclesiastical despots, were otherwise not much, dissatisfied with the new state of things, which lasted till the Restoration. CHAPTER XLIX. EXPLOITS OF ADMIRAL BLAKE, 1 65 2. In 1652 a war broke out with the Dutch, and some of the leading men of the Republican party had it in agitation to augment the navy and reduce the army, under the pretext that the latter in such a crisis was unnecessary and expensive. In this Cromwell foresaw a scheme for lessening his power, and without loss of time made it answer his own grasping purpose. Repairing to the army, he incited the principal officers to petition for their arrears of pay. This produced a warm debate ; the officers were reprimanded, and a spirit of mutiny spread through all ranks. The chief subjects in dispute by the Dutch were the compliments paid to the English flag, and the sovereignty of the sea ; and these two matters were brought to a speedy issue. The command of the navy at that time was entrusted to Admirals Blake, Dean, and Popham, who were allowed three shillings per diem each, as Commissioners of the Admiralty. Blows had been exchanged before a formal declaration of war, for Whitelock tells us that, in October, 165 1, on an English man-of-war meeting some Dutch fisher-boats, her captain demanded of them the tenth herring as an acknowledgment of England's superiority over the ocean, or else to lower their sails. The Dutch refused, and fired upon the English man-of-war, whose guns sunk one of their vessels with all on board. It was evident that war must ensue between the Republics ; but the States wished England to be more completely the aggressor, and with great care and expense they put to sea a fleet of 150 sail, to be ready for any emergency. On the 1 8th of May in the following year, a Dutch fleet consisting of forty-five ships, led by Martin Van Tromp, one of the bravest and most experienced seaman in Europe, appeared suddenly in the Channel, on pretence of acting as convoy to some merchantmen, and came to anchor in the Downs, with the deliberate intention of provoking hostilities. Major Bourne, who commanded a small squadron of eight ships in the Downs, was informed by Van Tromp, as an excuse for not Exploits of Admiral Blake.] THE HONOUR OF THE FLAG. 287 .proiferihg the usual salute, by dipping his ensign or lowering his topsails, that he had been " forced in by stress of weather from the Flemish coast, and had no desire to prejudice the Commonwealth of England." Bourne did not deem this a sufRcient excuse for the watched-for omission, and replied "that the brevity of his stay would best prove the truth of his assertion.'' At the same time he dispatched a message to Admiral Blake, who commanded only fifteen sail in Dover Roads, and he at once got up his anchors and stood for the Downs to " have it out" with the Dutch, though the ambassadors from that nation, sent for the adjustment of differences, were at that time actually resident at Chelsea. Robert Blake, one of England's noblest heroes, was bom at Bridgewater, in 1599, where he lived in a retired manner until 1640, when he was returned to Parliament for his native place. Failing to be re-elected for the one that followed — the famous Long Parliament — he was employed, however, in the war between the king and the nation, and dis- tinguished himself by his military talent on various occasions ; but it was not until 1649, when he was fifty years of age, that he was first invested with a command at sea. The expedition on which he was sent was directed against Prince Rupert, whoin he pursued from Kinsale, in Ireland, to the Tagus, and thence to Malaga, on the southern coast of Spain, where he scuttled or nearly de- stroyed his whole fleet. On his return to England after this victory, which he had won despite the opposition of Spain and Portugal, he was appointed to the honourable office of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. Blake's family were originally of Irish origin, and is now represented by the Blakes of Twisel Castle, in the county of Durham. Who was the aggressor in the action that ensued between him and Van Tromp, on the 1 9th of May, it is not easy to determine. Both admirals were prompt and fiery, and each of them dispatched to his own Government a narrative totally opposite in all its details to that of the other, and yet sup- ported by the testimony of every surviving captain in his fleet. Blake asserted that, having made a signal to the Dutch admiral to strike. Van Tromp, instead of complying, fired a broadside at him. Van Tromp, on the other hand, wrote that he was preparing to. strike when he was wantonly fired on by Blake. It is pretty certain, however, that the Admiralty of Holland, who are distinct from the Council of State, had given Van Tromp no orders to . strike, but had left him to his own discretion with regard to that vain and useless but much contested ceremonial. They seemed anxious to introduce the claim of an equality with the new Common- wealth, and to interpret the former respect to the English flag as deference due to it only while it remained a regal one. Ludlow has it that Van Tromp, on entering the Downs, came within cannon-shot of the English fleet without striking his flag. Blake ordered three guns to be fired in succession as a hint of what was required; "whereupon he answered with one gun which shot through the English flag, and fol- lowed it by a whole broadside," at the same time running a red flag up to his maintopmast-head, as a signal for a general engagement. This was about four in the afternoon, and Blake, with his fifteen ships, at once closed in, and en- gaged the Dutch fleet of forty-five sail, which were drawn up in line. So little had the Dutch broad- side been anticipated, that at the moment it was fired Blake was in his cabin drinking with some of his officers, [and indulged in a rough jest about Van Tromp breaking his windows. The chief fire of the Dutch was directed against his ship ; but he was bravely supported by the rest of his captains, and when Bourne came in with his little squadron the fight became more equal. Whitelock asserts that at first Blake, so soon as he saw that Van Tromp was resolved to fight, singled him out from the rest of his fleet, as if to have a duel between the two ships about the point of honour, and thus to, prevent the greater effusion of blood, and a national quaixel ; but that when he came near. Van Tromp and the whole of his fleet, contrary to the law of nations, fired upon him with many hundred shot, and he was obliged for some time to encounter all their strength alone. Be this as it may, a close and bloody engage- ment ensued, and lasted till darkness fell, and they could no longer see to train their guns, when the Dutch sheered off. Their loss in men was greater than that of the English, who had not so much as one ship disabled ; while Van Tromp lost two, one being taken, and the other sunk as the prize-crew were bringing her off, though the Dutch assert that the English only plundered her, and that she rejoined the admiral next day. Two Dutch captains and 200 seamen were taken prisoners. The greatest damage sustained by the English was in Blake's own ship, the James, of 80 guns, in which the master and many men were wounded. She had received above a thousand shot ; her mainmast was carried away, her rigging torn and cut, her hull pierced between wind and water, so that seventy holes could be counted in it. The Dutch account has it that the battle was 288 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Exploits of AdmM Eiake. over by nine in the May evening, " when the English, being forced to retreat, with the loss of six of their best ships sunk and two taken, the darkness of night (ultimately) saved the rest from an entire defeat " (" History of Holland," 1705). Next morning Blake, with whom certainly the victory lay, as he had taken and sunk two of the enemy's fleet, yet lost none of his own, saw the Dutch about- twelve miles off; they took shelter his advice ; but finding that the English would not be satisfied without payment for the damage sus- tained, and that Blake was ordered to sea to revenge the affair in the Downs, Van Tromp departed with a fleet of seventy sail to watch him, while Van Galen sailed for the Mediterranean to fight the English there. Blake's next great battle occurred on the 28th of September; but prior to that event there were several minor engagements by sea, all arising out SKIRMISH BETWEEN BLAKE AND VAN TROMP {see /lage zSj). at the back of the Goodwin Sands, and then bore away for the coast of Holland. So enraged were the London populace when news of the battle reached them, that Cromwell had to place a guard over the Dutch ambassadors at Chelsea to prevent them being insulted, while he dispatched a messenger to the fleet, with assur- ances to the officers and seamen that " nothing should be wanting for their encouragement." The Dutch plenipotentiaries, knowing the, in- tentions of their masters at home, endeavoured, in an audience obtained with the Parliament, to show that the late battle had been the mere result of chance, while the States sent a fourth ambassador, Adrian Paw, Lord of Heemskirk, to assist with of the silly dispute about the flag, rather than the originul pretexts for war. Before the end of July he had captured above forty of their richest merchantmen ; and in the pre- ceding month two English frigates, under Captains Taylor and Peacock, engaged two Dutch ships off the Flemish coast, for refusing to lower their flags — one of these was taken, the other beaten ashore and stranded. With a fleet of sixty armed vessels, Blake, leaving in the Downs Sir George Askue (or Ayscue) with seven sail, went to the North Sea in search of the Dutch herring fleet, " of which he took a hundred, with twelve of the thirteen frigates that formed its convoy, and sunk the thirteenth. Having plundered the busses, he suffered them and Exploits of Admiral Blake.} THE TWO FLEETS. 289 their crews to return home." He next took six East India ships, valued at four miUions of livres. He had now on board his fleet the regiment? of Goffe and Ingoldsby serving as marines. Van Tromp took the- opportunity of Blake's absence, and appeared off the English coast with a fleet of Seventy sail, which being dispersed by a gale, he was obliged to return without effecting anything. The States of Holland expressed much dissatisfaction at his conduct, so he resigned his wsfe blpwn to sea; and on the 37 th it hove in sight a third time. Upon the first appearance of the Dutch a Council of War had been held, and it was resolved to attack them at once; but the weather proved so rough that the English could not get up their anchors till the 28th, when the whole fleet got under weigh, with a fresh gale blowing west by north. At noon the Dutch were again in sight, and by three in the afternoon they were almost ADMIRAL BLAKE (FROM AN AUTH'ENTXC PORTRAIT). command to the Vice-Admiral De Ruyter; and many desultory encounters ensued in the Medi- terranean and elsewhere, till, on the 28th of Sep- tember, 1652, Blake being off the North Foreland, came in sight of the Dutch fleet, led by De Ruyter and De Witt. The strength of the two fleets was nearly equal, according to Hume; but the actual intention of the Dutch in hovering off' the coast was somewhat of a riddle. On the 2Cth of September their fleet was first seen near the back of the Goodwin Sands, whence they were driven about nightfall by a storm of wind from the land. On the 26th the fleet appeared again, but again within gunshot of Admiral Blake, who had with him only three of his squadron, the rest of the fleet being a league or two asterii. Vice-Admiral Penn, who was within hail, asked through his trumpet if he "was to bear up among thQ^enemy?" But Blake replied, " We shall all bear up together, as soon as some more of the fleet are near." At this time De Witt, the senior admiral of the Dutch fleet, which consisted of fifty-nine sail, all men-of-war, left his own ship of forty guns, and went on board a large Indiaman of fifty-six guns. By four o'clock the English were more than within range, and their whole fleet had come up, both being now within eighteen miles of the North Fore- land. The battle was begun by Captain Mildmay, 25 290 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Exploits of Admiral Blake. in the Nonpareil, who first opened fire, and as the orders of Blake were that no cannonading was to take place till quite close to the enemy, the English gunners did great execution. The Dutch responded by firing single shots, " in bravado " (to quote a journal in Whitelock), till the admiral bore in among them, and the vice-admiral filled to bear after him ; " but it pleased God to disappoint us, being grounded upon a sand called the Kentish Knock, under \yhich they placed themselves, that we might be necessitated to mischief in case we endeavoured (to get) the weather-gage, and on heaving the lead overboard, we found that we had not three fathom of water." From this and some other circumstances, it is supposed that the Dutch, though hovering thus menacingly in English waters, had no intention of fighting if they could avoid it. In their own accounts of the battle they assert that De Ruyter was against an action, but that De Witt urged it, adding that twenty of their captains failed in their duty, and that Blake was joined suddenly by six- teen men-of-war, which last assertion is untrue. By skilful manoeuvring Blake got the weather- gage of De Ruyter, but ran aground ; so did the Sovereign, the Resolution, the Atidrew, and the vice-admiral's ship, all while engaged with the enemy, and while within range of musket-shot. But they were all soon afloat again, and the tempo- rary accident became advantageous, because, says one who was engaged, "being forced to tack our ships to clear ourselves of the sands, it fell out better to do execution upon the enemy than we could have cast it ourselves ; for, as the Duich fleet cleared themselves of our general (Blake), he standing to the northward and they to the south- ward, we fell pat to receive them, and so stayed by them till night parted us.'' Blake had formed his fleet into three squadrons ; the first commanded by himself, the second by Vice-Admiral Penn, the third by Rear-Admiral Bourne. The engagement now became close and hot, and for the Dutch a very destructive one ; but the actual amount of damage they sustained was never ascertained by the English. Three of their ships — one commanded by the vice-admiral, were very soon disabled wholly, hav- ing all their masts shot away, and another was destroyed as they were towing her out of gimshot. The battle lasted from five to seven in the evening, according to Ludlow ; about an hour after sunset, and when darkness was closing, the Dutch made sail to escape', closely followed by the fleet of Blake. Captain Mildmay, in the Nonpareil, threw himself on board of their swiftest ship, under a fire of musketry, and took her. " This done," says Lud- low, "he pursued another, and in half-an-hour overtook her, and forced her to yield also. In one of these ships was the Dutch rear-admiral, whom Captain Mildmay took out with the rest of the men,, and then let her, with the dead in her, to sink in the sea, she being so disabled that he despaired of bringing her off." Two Dutch captains were among his prisoners, who asserted that De Witt must surely be slain, as his ensign had been struck during the battle, and a blue one hoisted in its place. In all his fleet Blake had only forty men and one officer. Captain Jervis (a name of future naval fame), killed, according to Whitelock, but he had many wounded ; according to Captain Schomberg, 300 killed and 300 wounded. "We lost not one ship or frigate," says the old journalist before quoted; "nor did any vessel shrink from her work. The merchantmen-of-war fell to it to the purpose, and a great spirit of reso- lution and gallantry possessed our whole fleet. Our tackle and masts, as usual in such disputes, were somewhat shattered. At first our enemy appeared very resolute, having placed themselves in a fighting posture before our ships came up, and behaved themselves very stoutly, but seemed to flag towards the latter end ;■ and I believe if Pro- vidence had allowed us one hour more (of light) we had made a total end of them." There can be little doubt that the Dutch were most severely handled in this battle, which resulted in an inquiry into the conduct of twenty of their captains, in De Ruyter offering to resign his com- mission, and in De Witt falling ill of grief and mortification. All night Blake kept the Dutch — whose poop- lights he could see — in sight, intending to renew the batde on the 29th ; but when day broke, and they were seen about six miles to the north-east, he failed to overtake them, as the wind proved against him. Some of his smaller frigates crept near them ultimately, and exchanged a few shots with the sternmost ships, after which we are told that "they hoisted all their sails, and ran for it," In this flight three or four more of their vessels, which had been battered below the water-line, were seen to go down with all aloft standing. Blake still pursued them ; but by the 30th they were all hull down, or only visible from the main- topmast-head. He still followed them until the spire and houses of West Capelle, in the isle of Walcheren, were visible, and he saw them run into the mouth of the Maese, under the shelter of the Exploits of Admiral Blal;e.] A BROOM AT THK MASTHEAD. 291 isle of Goeree. He then called a Council of War on board his ship, and it was concluded that they could only be attacked at great risk among " shal- lows," with which they (the Dutch) alone were familiar, and that as some of the frigates were short of victuals, a return to the Downs was necessary. All the seaports of England being now filled with prizes and riches taken from the Dutch by "Blake, Sir George Ayscue, and others, the States- General of Holland began to think seriously of retrieving the losses and disgraces they had sus- tained. For this purpose they selected again their old admiral, Martin Van Tromp, and Frederick III. of Denmark warmly recommending him at the same time, he was restored to his rank and com- mand. Eager to blot out his past misfortunes. Van Tromp soon got together a large fleet of eighty — some say eighty-five — vessels and ten fire- ships. It was now the month of November, a season when no expedition was looked for ; Blake had divided his fleet for the protection of trade, and some were in harbour refitting. Twenty of his vessels had sailed for Newcastle to convoy the fleet of colliers, twelve had gone to Plymouth, and fifteen had sailed up the Thames j so there remained with him in the Downs but thirty-seven men-of-war. Hearing of this dispersion and these arrange- ments. Van Tromp put to sea with the intention of convoying a fleet of 300 merchant ships as far as Cape St. Lazare, by the way of the English Channel; and somewhat despising Blake's fleet in con- sequence of its weakness, he sailed near the Goodwin Sands, not far from the place where the last battle had been fought with De Ruyter. Blake was still at anchor in the Downs, and though his vessels were under-manned, scarcely twenty having their full complement on board, he resolved to fight, after taking the advice of a Council of War. He got under weigh, and detached seven quick sailers to reconnoitre the enemy. On the 29th these vessels came up with nine ships sent ahead on the same service by Van Tromp, and they immediately engaged each other. About noon the firing began, and as they were speedily reinforced by both fleets, ship engaging ship as they came up in succession and shortened sail, the battle had become general about three o'clock, and a severe and bloody one it proved. Blake, in the Triumph, seconded by the Victory and Vanguard, was long engaged with no less than twenty of the enemy, and more than once was nearly borne down by their superior force ; but he scorned to give way, being resolved to show the enemy what English seamen could do under captains who had so often led them to victory. The strife, however, was most unequal now, as the Dutch ships outnumbered his fleet by nearly fifty sail. Blake received a severe wound in the thigh, and his ship would have been taken but for the timely intervention of some of his squadron. The English could scarcely hope for success, but they continued the battle with the utmost obstinacy; and for some hours it seemed actually doubtful whether they or the more numerous Dutch would prove the victors. The Garland, 40 guns, commanded by Captain Akson, and the Bonaventure, 36 guns, under Captain Batten, bore down, and with great in- trepidity boarded the great ship of Van Tromp. The Dutch Vice-Admiral Evertzen, on seeing this, came up to his support with several ships, and only in time to save him from destruction. Fighting desperately at the head of their boarders, who were armed with swords and pistols, pikes and hatchets, the brave Captains Akson and Batten were killed, with many of their men, by either being shot down on the enemy's deck, or being tumbled overboard, when wounded and bleeding, to drown miserably alongside, and their ships be- came the prizes of the Dutch, after their crews had slain many of them, among others, the purser and secretary of Van Tromp, who were killed by his side. Van Tromp, in his dispatch to the States-General, calls the Garland, curiously, the Rosencrantz ; but she and the Bonaventure were the only captures he made. Seeing the danger these ships were exposed to at first, Blake, with his tiers of guns engaged on both sides, had his ship steered amid a throng of the Dutch fleet to rescue them ; but finding their strength overwhelming, and that he was in danger of .being boarded from some of their largest vessels, he was compelled ultimately to draw off, under cloud of night, and make sail for the river, after three of his ships had been sunk. The " History of Holland " states that his fleet, divided in two squadrons, was pursued by that of Van Tromp; that one took shelter in the Thames, and the other under the castle of Dover. Steering for the Isle of Rh^, Van Tromp now had a broom ostentatiously lashed to his maintopmast- head, as a token that he had swept, or would yet sweep, all the EngHsh out of the Channel (Phillips). Blake felt keenly his defeat, followed as it was by the arrogant and insulting tone adopted by the Dutch; but, even ffsm their own accounts, they had not much reason to boast of their victory, for 292 BRITISH EATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Battle with the Dutch, one of their flagships was blown up, two were totally disabled, and they lost a vast number of men. Great preparations were immediately made in England, in order to avenge so mortifying an insult and recover the honour of the flag. Some of Blake's officers were displaced for alleged mis- conduct, and a committee, composed of Sir Harry Vane, Mr. John Carew, and Major Scallaway, was appointed to regulate all matters pertaining to the marine. Unserviceable ships were docked and repaired, the storehouses were filled with provisions, and thirty frigates ordered to be built with all speed. Monk was recalled from Scotland to take part in naval affairs, and on the 26th of November, 1652, Parliament resolved, " 'That there shall be three generals for governing the fleet, and fleets at sea, for the year ensuing, from the 3rd of Decem- ber, 1652, to the 3rd of December, 1653 ;' and it was voted that General Blake, Major-General Dean, and Lieutenant General Monk, be the three generals of the fleet for the year ensuing. Captain (afterwards Sir William) Penn was appointed vice^ admiral." Colonel Robert Lilburn succeeded to the command as one of the generals of the fleet for the ensuing year. Most of the ships in those days were navigated by the masters, who were seamen, and fought by the captains, who were soldiers. Hence, says Macaulay, when Monk " wished his ship to change her course, he moved the mirth of his crew by calling out, ' Wheel to the left !'" But, unfortunately for this anecdote, "Wheel," as a command, was unknown in these days, the orders being, " To the right hand turn," "to the left hand turn," and so forth (Colonel Munro's " Exercise for the Younger Souldier his Better Instruction"). To encourage the seamen, the English Parlia- ment at this time raised their pay from twenty to twenty-four shillings per month, and ordered the erection of hospitals at Deal and Sandwich for the reception of the sick and wounded. These and other encouragements had such a good effect, that in six weeks a fully-manned fleet of sixty sail was in readiness to receive Van Tromp. CHAPTER L. THE THREE DAYS' BATTLE WITH THE DUTCH, 1653. From Queensborough, in the Isle of Sheppy, two miles from Sheerness, the fleet sailed for the Downs, and in quest of the Dutch, on the loth of February, 1653. General Monk was on board the Vanguard. Blake's orders were to intercept the Dutch coming from the Isle of Rhe'. The States- General, having heard of the great naval prepara- tions made in England, had dispatched an express to Van Tromp, desiring him to return with all speed, and to endeavour to prevent the English from putting to sea, by blocking up the river Thames. Van Tromp, when, in obedience to these orders, he drew near the isle, or rather peninsula, of Port- land, in the Channel, to his surprise fell in with the English fleet, consisting of upward of 60 sail. His own strength amounted to 73 men-of-war, with some 300 merchantmen in convoy. Rapin says the English fleet was superior to the Dutch, and that the States, on tidings of Cromwell's pre- parations, " had equipped twenty ships to join their admiral in his passage, but they were hindered by contrary winds." If the battle that ensued be the same which the Earl Qf Clarendon states occurred in January — and it can be no other — the Dutch fleet consisted of 100 men-of-war, or armed ships, while the English was much inferior. The former was divided into four squadrons, commanded by Van Tromp, De Ruyter, Evertzen, and the Admiral of the Northern Quarter. At eight o'clock on the morning of the i8th of February, these four squadrons, following their course up the Channel, widi the advantage of the wind, as their own historians assert, began the fight when only a few of the English ships had come up; and this agrees with the English account, which is to the effect that the Triumph, on board of which were Admirals Blake and Dean, with twelve other vessels, engaged " board on board " {i.e., yard-arm and yard-arm) with the main body of the Dutch fleet for nearly six hours. The Triumph received a great number of shots in her hull, and was becoming sorely pressed by the enemy, when she was gallantly supported by a well-directed fire from the guns of the Fairfax, under Captain (afterwards, Sir John) Lawson. Surrounded by several of the largest vessels in the Dutch fleet,, these two ships had some 250 men Sattle with the Dutch.] RENEWAL OE THE CONELlCT. 293 killed and wounded. Blake was among the latter, and his captain, named Ball, and his secretary, Mr. Sparrow, were among the former. Both fell by the side of Blake, and the Triumph was so shattered in her hull and riggmg as to be mcapable of acting on the two subsequent days. The wound received by Blake was inflicted by an iron bar or splinter, which also carried away a great part of Admiral Dean's breeches. The whole English fleet having by this time come up, there ensued one of the most furious and sanguinary battles of this short and most absurd war — absurd so far as the original cause is con- cerned. So hotly were the Dutch battered by successive broadsides, and so perilously were their decks swept by the fire of musketry, that about four in the afternoon twenty-six of their principal vessels became so crippled that they drew out of range, and left the rest to continue the engagement. During this time an English ship, the Prosperous, 44 guns, was boarded and taken, sword in hand, by De Ruyter; but his own ship had nearly the same fate at the hands of the crew of the Merlin, by whom the Prosperous was retaken. Captain Mildmay, of the Vanguard, was killed. Many ships were found to be disabled, but of the fleet none were taken or lost save the Samson, which, being so battered as to be totally unser- viceable, was scuttled and sunk by the crew. As for the e^emy, they had seven men-of-war taken or sunk, one of them carrying an admiral's flag ; and, besides these, the Dutch historians mention one, commanded by a Captain Winkelem, which blew up and another which was destroyed by fire. They also say that Van Tromp, when attacking Blake, " forbore firing till he came within musket-shot of him, and let fly a broadside, then tacking about nimbly (the Dutch are not used to be so nimble at tacking," notes Lediard, drily), " he fired a second at him on the same side. Then flanking him again on the other side, he thundered off a third, which did such great execution that nothing but groans and lamentations were heard on board his ship, which upon this ever after fought retreating, and was pursued by Van Tromp.'' The very disabled state in which the Triumph remained at the close of the action in some degree corroborates the Dutch account; but there was, undoubtedly, great slaughter on board the ship of Van Tromp. De Ruyter had his main and fore- topmasts shot away, and would have been taken had he not been relieved by Admiral Evertzen. "The History of the United Provinces" asserts that many ships were burned and sunk on both sides ; that the English lost five captains ; that nightfall left the victory doubtful, and caused a renewal of the conflict with greater animosity than before. The Fairfax had above 100 men killed and as many wounded. " On board of the enemy's ships which fell into the hands of the English," says Captain Schomberg, "the spectacle was shocking, from the dreadful carnage, the rigging being covered with blood and brains." During the whole of the subsequent night, the tiitie was spent in the repair of damages, plugging shot-holes, refitting the standing and running rigging, and in other preparations for a renewal of the conflict ; and several disabled ships were sent to Portsmouth. When day broke on the morning of the 19th, the Dutch were overtaken by Blake's leading ships, near Dungeness, that tongue of land which stretches for several miles into the Channel, and though most of his fleet were astern, the battle began once more. Van Tromp, having sent all the merchant ships ahead, formed the fleet in the order of a half-moon, and after exchanging fire for some time, made a running fight of it, as he stood over to the coast of France. The English captains made several bold attempts to break through this half-moon, to reach the merchantmen, and one of these, the ship of Admiral De Ruyter, was so severely handled that she was obliged to be taken in tow by others, and kept out of range. About the same time, one of his men-of-war was boarded and taken by Captain James Lawson. The merchant captains now began to fear that the convoy would no longer be able to protect them. Hoisting everything that would draw, aloft and below, each began to shift for himself, and many threw much of their cargo overboard, to lighten the draught of their ships. According to Blake's account, eight men-of-war and sixteen merchant-ships were the fruit of tliis day's encounter, and more would have been taken had not the darkness come on. One Dutch cap- tain, on finding himself grappled on both sides by two EngUsh vessels, set her on fire, that all might die together. They sheered off, however, and when she blew up every soul on board perished with her. The battle was resumed on the morning of the 19th. While still standing towards their own coast, the Dutch were overtaken by the inexorable Blake, compelled to shorten sail and engage. During the whole day the battle raged with cannon and musket over a great extent of sea, till four in the afternoon, when the Dutch retired to the sands before Calais. 294 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Battle with the Dutch. In this running fight three Dutch men-of-war were captured by Captains Graves, Martin, and Lawson, and several merchant ships by Admiral Penn ; but ammunition began to fail, and as the Dutch had got into shoal water the pursuit was abandoned. The accounts of the losses and captures vary very much. In the three days' actions the Dutch lost, according to Burchett, eleven ships of war, thirty merchantmen, and 1,500 men killed ; Clarendon says 2,000 thrown shattered that they never went to sea again. Another says the third day's battle "proved bloodier than both the former, as the fight lasted from morning till night, without any remarkable ad- vantage on either side. The Dutch had eighteen men-of-war sunk and burned, and the English twenty-one men-of-war sunk or burned, and three forced ashore. The loss of seamen on both sides was computed at 4,000 men."_ This writer adds that on the fourth day "both fleets faced each SEA-FIGHT WITH THE DUTCH, FEB. l8, 1653 (iee page 285). overboard. The English lost but one ship, the Samson, Captain (afterwards Sir William) Batten, sunk by themselves, and their killed and wounded equalled that of the enemy. In writing of this triple battle, Whitelock says the officers, mariners, and soldiers behaved with great courage and gallantry in both fleets ; " but that after a sharp and bloody fight the Dutch were wholly routed and overcome, and had a sore and terrible loss both of their ships and men." In these actions the English infantry were still serving on board as marines. There are two Dutch accounts of these conflicts. One asserts that they sunk five English ships (the names are given), two were burned, and six so other once more, with an intention of renewing the engagement, but found their ships in no condition for further service. In Holland they made public rejoicings upon this occasion, as the English did in London, each party attributing to themselves the glory of the victory " (" History of the United Provinces," 1705). One fact the Dutch cannot deny — they were driven from the Channel by a series of running fights, and forced to seek shelter, first on the coast of France, and lastly that of Holland. About this time Charles II. offered to serve as a volunteer on board the Dutch fleet, in the hopes that some of the English captains and crews under Blake who might be Royalists would come to him ; but the Battle with the Dutch.] DEFEAT OF THE DUTCH. 295 296 BRITISH BATTLES ON LANt) AND SEA. [Point of Gober. States-General would not accept his services, as they believed the proposal might only serve to widen their breach with the English Republic, and peace was what they earnestly desired. The commissioners for the management of affairs by sda not having finished the time limited by Parliament for their acting, nor clearly seeing to what extremities affairs might be driven, had exerted themselves with such vigour and diligence that since the reoent engagements they had equipped and manned a considerable fleet, well furnished with provisions and ammunition. This force, under Dean and Monk as admirals, Penn as vice-admiral, and Lawson as rear-admiral, sailed on the 5th of May for the Texel. At this time the Dutch were becoming more than ever anxious for peace ; but Parliament, dreading the ambitious schemes of Cromwell, whose secret thoughts aspired to the throne, refused to terminate the war, for it was only by keeping up a victorious navy that they could hope to hold the influence of his army in check. But Oliver had resolved on a decided step. At the head of 300 musketeers, he dissolved the Long Parliament, by clearing the hall, locking the door, and marching off with the key in his pocket. This occurred fourteen days before the sailing of the fleet for the Te-xel. The Barebones Parlia- ment, of 140 members, was soon after also dis- solved, amid the jeers of the nation, and from that time all power and authority by land and sea became centered in Oliver Cromwell, as Lord Protector. Presented with a ' sword and Bible in West- minster Hall, he sat upon a throne, robed in imperial purple, surrounded by "the lucky dray- men and shoemakers " who. had left their crafts to follow his banners, and had fought their way through the ranks to be colonels and generals of cavalry and infantry, and whose peculiarities made England the arena of many ridiculous and dis- tracting scenes. CHAPTER LI. POINT OF GOBER, AND CAMPERDOWN, 1653. In their naval battles with the Dutch, the success of the English was chiefly owing to the superior size and construction of their vessels, an advantage for which all the skill and bravery of Van Tromp, De Ruyter, and others, could not compensate. By means of 'ship-money, a tax which had been so bitterly complained of, when the heavier requisi- tions of a military republic had been unforeseen and unknown, the late king had placed the navy of England in a situation it had never attained in any previous reign; thus it was to the navy of Charles that Cromwell owed his power at sea — the ships of the king were of a size then unusual, and in the year of his dethronement the fleet con- sisted of eighty-two sail for the purpose of war. But the misfortunes which the Dutch met with in battle were small in comparison to those which their trade sustained from tlie English. The whole commerce by the Channel was cut off; by the beginning of 1653 more than j,6oo of their ships had been captured ; and this distress they endured, not for any national interest or necessity, but from vain points of honour and personal resentments, of which it was difficult to give a satisfactory account to themselves. The honour of the flag, and the desire of remaining sole lords of the sea, were the aspira- tions which prompted those battles, each of which was becoming more fierce, rancorous, and bloody than its predecessor. Dean and Monk were together, on board the Resoltction. Their fleet, according to Lediard, consisted " of near a hundred sail of stout ships." The Dutch, he relates, finding all hope of peace frustrated for the present, had left nothing undone for the vigorous prosecution of the war. The orders of Monk and Dean were ,to look out for the Dutch upon the coast of Holland. The latter were not yet ready with their fleet, which was scattered about in several harbours ; thus the English ravaged the towns along the shore, and, taking many prizes, returned home. In the meantime Van Tromp got out of the Texel, and convoyed a number of merchantmen north-about, to get round Scotland by the Pentland Firth, and was pursued by the Ent^lish as far as Peterhead, on the coast of Aberdeen- shire ; but he eluded them, and on his return was joined by three squadrons under De Ruyter, De Witt, and Evertzen, so that now his united Camperdown.] ALL HOLLAND BLOCKADED. 297 strength was reckoned at 104 (Whitelock says 120) sail. On the ist of June advice was brought to Yarmouth Roads, where the English fleet lay at anchor, that the Dutch had been seen off the coast, so orders .were instantly issued to weigh, and sail in search of them. " On the 3rd they met, and bot'h sides being eager for an engagement, the fight began about eleven o'clock, off the Point of the Gober." In the Dutch fleet were six fire-ships, and in the English five. The Blue squadron of the English, consisting of forty sail, Rear-Admiral Lawson, bore right through the enemy's line ; and he laid his ship alongside of De Ruyter's, which would have been captured but for the timely intervention of other vessels with the concentrated fire of their guns. Lawson's battery, however, soon after sunk one of their ships, of forty-two guns, commanded by a captain named Bulter. Early in the action one of the first broadsides killed Admiral Dean. A chain- shot cut his body nearly in two ; and Monk, with great presence of mind, spread a cloak over the mangled remains, lest their appearance should depress the ardour of the crew of the Resolution. After this the fleet was commanded by General Monk alone. The action continued with unabated fury till . three in the afternoon, when the Dutch fleet, which had been severely mauled and was now in great confusion, began to sheer off simultaneously, and maintain a kind of running fight until nine in the evening, when one of their largest ships blew up with a dreadful crash. This catastrophe increased the confusion; and though Van Tromp used every means to compel his captains to preserve something of a line, his efforts were to no purpose, and they bore on their course, with all sails set, towards the coast of Flanders. Between eight and nine next morning, the inexorable English were close aboard of them again, and the battle was renewed off Nieuport with great bitterness, the poops and tops being manned by small-arm men, with matchlocks and musketoons. For four hours the conflict was maintained with great obstinacy. Vice-Admiral Penn twice led his boarders across the deck of Van Tromp, and twice, by dint of pike and sword, they were hurled back to their own ship or into the sea; and on the last occasion the Dutch admiral would inevitably have been taken, but. for the assistance he received from De Ruyt^r and De Witt, One account says that Van Tromp having boarded the ship of Penn, was beaten off, and when boarded in return " was forced to blow up his deck, of which the English had possessed themselves." Admiral Blake, though not yet quite recovered from his recent wound, having joined the fleet in the night with eighteen sail, the Enghsh were thus more than ever a match for the Dutch, who were cannonaded and pressed with such fury on every side that they were utterly defeated, and com- pelled to run, with all standing, among the flats of Zealand for shelter. Six of their best ships were sunk, two were blown up, eleven sail and two hoys were taken, with 1,515 prisoners, of whom five were captains of distinction and reputation. On the English side not a ship was lost, and but very few men were killed or wounded — not more than 160. The prisoners were sent ashore. The result of the last encounter made Van Tromp declare before the States-General, at Flushing, " that without a considerable reinforce- ment of large men-of-war, they could not do further service;" and De Witt, a hot and impulsive officer, went yet further. "Why should I hold my tongue?" he exclaimed. "I am in the presence of my lords and masters — true ; but I must say it — the English are our masters, and of course are masters of the sea !" The English now blockaded the whole coast of Holland, and, so the trade of that country was totally at an end and its fisheries suspended. Convinced at last of the necessity of submission, the Dutch resolved to gratify the pride of the sister Republic by soliciting peace ; but Cromwell, who had his own secret reasons for continuing the war, and had begun to indulge in the creation of knights and peers, treated their advances with disdain. In a few weeks they repaired and manned their fleet anew, equipping ships of a larger size than any they had hitherto sent to sea. Like the English, they did all that was requisite to encourage their seamen, and published an ordi- nance granting recompenses to all who were mutilated in the service of the States, varying from 1,069 guilders, 13 stivers, 3 doits far the loss of both eyes, to 160 guilders for the loss of one foot. The guilder was then worth about twenty-two pence English. Incurables were to receive a crown per week. Determined to conquer er die, Van Tromp once more put to sea, and, as the event proved, he sailed upon its waters for the last time. In addition to rewards for wounds, the States 2g8 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Canrperdown. offered 10,000 guilders for the capture of an Eng- lish admiral ; for other war-ships, 6,000 ; for mer- chantmen, 4,000; for a mainmast flag, 1,000; for a poop or foremast flag, 150; so, fired alike by the mingled desire for gain, glory, and revenge, Van Tromp set sail with ninety-five ships from Zealand, and was soon after joined by twenty-five more, under De Witt, from the Texel. The hatred and rancour of the Dutch were now fierce and deep. An instance of this may be given in the fight that took place between a small English vessel manned by twelve men, and a Dutchman of fifty men. The captain of the former had attempted to board the latter, but was taken prisoner and kept as such for some hours, after which the Dutch captain suddenly changed his mind, " basely shot him in cold blood, ran his sword through him three or four times, then cut him in pieces and pulled out his heart.'' Another note to Lediard's " Naval History " says that General Monk having observed that the war was becoming very tedious and burdensome to the nation, and that the capture of ships in battle weakened the fleet by dispatching from it prize- crews, " to make short work of it, gave orders that his captains should neither give nor take quarter ; so that in a few hours the air was filled with the fragments of ships blown up and human bodies, and the sea was dyed with the blood of the killed and wounded." At nine in the morning of the 29th of July, 1653, Monk's scouting ships discovered the Dutch fleet coming from Vheland, the island at the mouth of the Zuyder Zee, five miles north-east of the Texel. It had then two villages, called East and West Vlie- land, the sites of which are now covered by the encroaching sea. The fleet of Van Tromp consisted of ninety- seven sail, or thereabout — ninety being ships of war. He stood off from the English on an oppo- site tack; thus it was five in the evening before Monk's lighter frigates could come up with the enemy and engage them. At seven the Dutch shortened sail, and Monk, in the Resolution, with thirty ships, all that could as yet come up, began a close battle with them off Camperdown, a village on the coast of Holland, near which lie some dunes of pure white sand — a scene memorable for more than one engagement, especially the victory gained in another age by Lord Duncan. Blake having been landed on account of ill- health, and having gone to Ipswich, Monk was again in command, and at Camperdown led the van of battle on the 29th, 30th, and 31st of July. Though the evening was so far advanced when the battle began, there were still fully two hours of light, and the fire of cannon and musketry between the hostile fleets lasted till nine o'clock. The mizzen rigging of the Resolution was set on fire, but it was extinguished by the courage and activity of her captain, Joseph Taylor. The Dutch had several fire-ships, the EngUsh not one, so their presence added greatly to the perils encountered, as many of Monk's vessels were in danger of being de- stroyed by them. Early in the adtion one of the flaming ships set fire to the Triumph, most of whose crew threw themselves overboard into the sea, and she was only saved from total destruction by the brave fellows who adhered to her, while amid the smoke and flames the Dutch poured cross-bar, chain, and round shot upon them. After the darkness fell, all hands on board the fleet were set to work in bending new sails, re- pairing the rigging, or replacing wounded spars, for the ships had suffered much, though the English had only sixteen killed and twenty-five wounded — fourteen of the latter dangerously. On the 30th scarcely a shot was fired, both fleets had work enough on hand in keeping off a lee shore, "the wind blowing hard, with thick and dirty weather.'' But the morning of the 31st proving fair and sunny, with light breezes, the fleets prepared again for a trial of strength. The Dutch, having the wind with them, bore down upon the EngHsh with great resolution, and opened their fire at seven in the morning. In many instances almost yard- arm and yard-arm, the battle was continued with sanguinary fury till one in the afternoon, the Dutch all the time having the advantage of the TOnd whenever they required it. Rear-Admiral Lawson (the son of a poor man at Hull), who distinguished himself during the Pro- tectorate, and who, though a Republican, readily became a Royalist in 1660, and was knighted, attacked the ship of Michael Adrian de Ruyter with such unusual fury, that in an incredibly short space of time he killed or wounded half the crew, and so totally disabled her that she was towed out of the line with the blood trickling from her ports and scuppers; but De Ruyter bravely went on board another vessel, to continue his part in the action. After it had lasted labout six hours, the gallant "Van Tromp was killed by a musket-ball, as he walked upon the deck with his sword drawn" (Ludlow), and when in the act of delivering an order. The ball went fairly through his heart. Two of the English ships were set on fire— the Oak, most of the crew of which were saved ; and Camperdown.] DEATH OF VAN TROMP. 299 another, all the crew of which perished with her. The Worcester retook the Garland, a ship which had been captured by the Dutch in a previous battle ; but the captors were compelled to abandon and bum their prize. Van Tromp's flag had been shot down early in the morning, and was not re- hoisted during the whole day. After the fall of the great admiral, the command of the Dutch fleet devolved on the vice-admiral, Evertzen. The Victory, commanded by Captain Lane, "was hard beset by one of the Dutch vice- admirals, and two other men-of-war, but made her party good. Another Dutch vice-admiral, mis- taking the condition of the English ship, as well as the resolution of the captain, officiously bore up, and offered him 'quarter, if he would yield j' but he, not taking the compliment as the Dutchman meant it, returned it with a broadside which im- mediately sunk him." The enemy had nine flags fl)dng when the battle began, but only one remained at its close, by which time thirty-three (Clarendon says between twenty and thirty) of the Dutch ships were sunk, and 1,000 prisoners taken. Among these was Cornelius Evertzen, the vice-admiral, a brave and skilful officer. Notwithstanding the barbarous orders issued by Monk, many of these prisoners were mercifully taken up by the English boats, as they were swimming about among the blazing and sinking hulls. The total losses of the English were four ships destroyed ; eight captains — Graves, Peacock, Taylor, Crisp, Newman, Cox, Owen, and Chapman — and 400 seamen killed ; five captains and 700 seamen wounded. The Dutch slain of all ranks were 6,000 men. The fall of Van Tromp so disheartened the fleet that soon after it began to bear away, each ship making all the sail its crew could put upon it, pursued by the swiftest of the Enghsh frigates, till shelter was found in the Texel. The death of their favourite admiral excited fresh consternation among the Dutch, who now began to lose some of their wonted spirit, and to declare that the hand of God seemed to be up- raised against them. The States-General paid the highest honours to his memory, and interred him with great solemnity in the Oude Kerk of Delft, where his tomb is still to be seen. The hero of thirty-two naval engage- ments, he was a native of the small town of Brielle, and was sent to the Dutch East Indies in his eighth year. Being taken prisoner by the English, he served for two years in one of their privateers. Later in life he was a captive among the Moors in . Barbary, but made his escape. He signaUsed himself on many occasions under the Admirals Heemskirk and Pieter Hein, and succeeded Van Dorp, as Admiral of Holland. He loved to be styled "the Burgher of Brielle, and Father of the Seamen." The exact part of the coast off" which he received his death-wound lies between Schevening and the mouth of the Maese ; and he left a son. Count Van Tromp, who, after having distinguished himself in the war between Denmark and Sweden, succeeded Admiral De Ruyter in the command of the Dutch fleets. After the battle of the 31st of July, Admiral Lawson, who hovered off the Dutch coast with fifty sail, took thirty-eight more of their ships and many herring busses, which he sent into Yarmouth ; and a few days later thirty-five other prizes, laden with French wines, fish, &c., were sent by him to the same place ; and then the poor Hollanders became reduced to the verge of despair. Upon the return of the fleet, gold chains and medals were presented to General Monk, and Admirals Blake, Penn, and Lawson. Smaller medals were given to all the officers. The gold medal had on one side a view of the battle; on the other the cross of St. George, the saltire of St. Andrew, and the Irish harp, hung upon an anchor, though neither Scotland nor Ireland had any particular concern in these battles of the two republics. On some of the smaller oval medals was the legend: "For eminent se>rvice in saving y^ Triumph, fired in fight wt y° Dvtch, in Ivly, 1653." The 25 th of August was appointed a day for solenm thanksgiving. At a public feast in London Cromwell put the gold chain round Monk's neck, and required him to wear it during the entertainment. In the following month, Monk, in his ship, the Resolution, nearly perished in a terrible gale of wind, off' Cromer. " The English fleet being now absolute masters of the sea," says General Ludlow, in his Memoirs, " no ship could stir out of the Texel without their permission. The Dutch were unwilling to impute their own ill-success to the cowardice of their officers ; but so it was, by the blessing of God upon the endeavours of the Parliament and its fleet, that since the beginning of the war we had taken, sunk, or destroyed between 1,400 and 1,500 of their ships, of which many were considerable men- of-war. Their seamen generally declined the service ; neither had they a sufficient number of ships to put to sea. In short, matters were brought to that pass," continues the general, " that 300 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Camperdo'wn. when Mynheer Nieuport, one of their former ambassadors, sought te bring about a peace, Cromwell could now dictate his own terms." Peace was signed in April, 1654; and one of the conditions of the treaty was the expulsion of the exiled King Charles II. from the dominions of It is thus given in the " General Collection of Treaties," Vol. III., and appears, according to Schomberg, " to be the first instance of England's establishing the right of the flag by a formal treaty " (" Naval Chronology "). Prior to the peace with Holland, Cromwell had HELMET AND SUPPORT (SEVENTEENTH CENTURY). the Dutch; another was that the latter should recognise the English sovereignty of the sea. So, after all the lives that had been lost and treasure expended, the matter of the flag remained just the same as it did before. The clause was to this effect : — " That the ships of the Dutch, as well ships of war as others, meeting any ships of war of the English Commonwealth in the British seas, shall strike their flags and lower their topsails, in such manner as hath ever been at any time heretofore practised under any form of government." the unwelcome prospect of a rising in Scotland, where, in the Highlands, a party had always re- mained more or less in a state of resistance to his government, and in arms for the young Charles II., to whom they still continued loyal. We shall have to pass now, from the series of naval encounters which we have just been describing, to the account of an expedition against the Scotch which re- sulted in a series of engagements on a com- paratively small scale, but at the same time not without special importance to the two contending parties. Glencaim.] PROJECTED GATHERING OF THE CLANS. 331 CHAPTER LH. THE EXPEDITION OF GLENCAIRN, 1653. The castle of Dunottar had surrendered to the forces of Cromwell in June, 1652, but the Regalia were concealed beyond his reach. Argyle, at last, when too late, after all his secret collusions with Cromwell, had made a futile attempt to raise the as a general rising was projected immediately after by the Earl of Glencaim, in conjunction with General Middleton ; and this they proposed to have in spite of the depressed state of the kingdom, both from internal dissensions and the TAYMOUTH (balloch). (See page 305). depressed spirits of his brother nobles, and invited a Convention of the Estates to meet him at Inverary, but none appeared. He proceeded, however, to muster the Camp- bells, and to fortify some of his Highland strong- holds; and though two of Cromwell's commis- sioners held a conference with him, and endeavoured to persuade him to submit to the Commonwealth, he refused to accept the terms offered him. The sudden arrival of Major-General Dean by sea at Inverary, enabled him to surprise the marquis when confined to bed by illness ; so to Argyle, says a writer, " belongs the honour of being the last man of rank who submitted to the victorious arms of the English Commonwealth." But it was not so. calamitous issue of two disastrous campaigns, in which 30,000 of the flower of the Lowland Scots had perished ; and the war between the Common- wealth and the Dutch, the absence of Monk with the fleet, and the occupation of Cromwell amid dreams and schemes of royal power in London; seemed to favour the opportunity of gathering the clans, who, confiding in the strength of their mountain passes, and the inaccessible nature of their remote glens, had now shown symptoms. of active hostility. " These inhabitants of the hills," says Colonel Mackinnon, "knew no law but the will of their chiefs, nor any country but their native glens, and neither understanding nor caring for the political and religious differences which 26 302 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Glencalni, brought the English army into Scotland, but deeming themselves the rightful owners of the plains, whence their ancestors had been driven by foreign invaders, they gladly availed themselves of any pretext for committing depredations on the Lowlands and spoihng the usurpers of their in- heritance." ("History of the Coldstream Guards.") The English troops in Scotland consisted of General Monk's regiment, Colonel Reid's, Colonel O'Ke/s, Colonel Fenwick's, Colonel Fairfax's, Colonel Twisleton's, that -i^hich was Harrison's, Colonel Alured's, Colonel Morgan's, Colonel Ash- field's, Colonel Fitch's, Colonel Daniel's, Colonel Cobbet's, Colonel Salmon's, Colonel Thomlinson's, part of Colonel Sanderson's, and the company in the castle of Dumbarton. In February, 1654, these were reinforced by the regiments of Lieutenant-General Lambert, Com- missary-General Whalie's, and part of that of Sir William Constable; but in the preceding month of August, Lieutenant-General John Middleton, of Cadham and that ilk, had landed in Scotland, and pushing onward from the north, unfurled the Royal standard between Stirling and Dumbarton. This officer had at first taken service under the English Parliament, prior to which he had been a pikeman in the regiment now called the Royal Scots. A captain of horse under Sir William Waller, he changed sides when Charles was at the Isle of Wight, and joined the Scottish army des- tined to effect his rescue.' He was afterwards taken at Worcester, and escaped from the Tower of London, and at a future period we shall hear of him as an earl, and commanding the British troops in Morocco. He now returned to Scotland, commissioned by Charles II., as Montrose had been diree years before, to raise all the forces he could muster in the Royal cause. Of the state of Scotland nearly about this time, we have the following pleasant picture in " Nicoll's Diary :"— "Much falset and cheitting at this tyme was daylie detectit by the Lords of Session, for which was dayhe hanging, skurging, nailing of luggis and their binding of pepill to the Trone, and boaring of tongues ; so it was ane fatal yier for false notaries and witnesses, as daylie experience did prove ; and as for adultrie, &c. &c., it did never abound moir nor at this time." In England matters were equally strange. There Quakers rode about the highways naked, or clad only in a white shirt ; cobblers became colonels ; brewers sang psalms, tailors taught, and watermen expounded, while soldiers preached at the street corners. A musketeer went into a church at Walton-on-Thames, bearing five lighted candles, and, declaring to the people that he had a message from God to proclaim the abolition of the Sunday, the clergy, and the Bible, he consumed the latter with the fifth candle. The blasphemies and absur- dities of the English Puritans seem incredible now. Though it is undeniable that, save in the sack of Dundee, the conduct of Cromwell's troops in Scotland was excellent, her criminal records are full of instances of the slaughter of English soldiers at that time ; foragers and stragglers were cut off by the armed peasantry, whenever an opportunity occurred, for the English were as much detested — especially by the Lowlanders — as the Austrians are in Italy and as the French were in Spain. Scotland was never more prosperous, more peaceful, or in a more happy condition, than when for nearly ten years under Oliver Cromwell. " Its manners and manufactures were improved by the English soldiers," says Robert Chambers ; " its wealth was increased by the then large sums (about _;^i4o,ooo annually) which were sent from England to pay the army ; and the people found a degree of humane justice in the English judges, and even in the military commanders, which they had never experienced under their former feudal masters, or under their tyrannical priesthood." Prior to the landing of Middleton, a commission similar to his had been given by Charles II. to William, Earl of Glencairn, who, leaving his seat of Finlayston, in Clydesdale, early in August, 1653, proceeded to Lochearn, where he wa^ met by several Highland nobles and chiefs of clans, whose loyalty was inspired by very different principles. Some were resolute Presbyterians, and in arms for the king only to drive out the English Sectaries ; some were pure Cavaliers, of Episcopal or Catholic tendencies, resolved only to take the field for the royal family, while hating Puritan and Presbyter ahke. Those who met Glencairn were the Earl of Athole, the Marquis of Argyle, Macdonell of Glengarry, Sir Evan Cameron, of Locheil (who slew the last wolf seen in Scotland), the tutor of Macgregor, the Lairds of Struan, Inverurie, and Macnaughton and Colonel John Blackadder, of Tulliallan, on Forth. " It could hardly be expected that such dis- cordant elements — men who hated each other on account of their religious principles, and only agreeing in the sentiment of loyalty — would act harmoniously together, yet their first meeting passed off with some degree of harmony. After consulting with Glencairn they separated, and proceeded, according to agreement, to raise their clans and dependants without delay.'' Glencaim. ] THE TROOPS OF GLENCAIRN. 303 The first who joined Glencaim, confident that their expedition would pnd in the uprootal of Cromwell and destruction of the Commonwealth, was John Graham, of Duchray, with forty men. Then came Macgregor, with eighty Highlanders ; Kenmure, with forty troopers; Colonel Blackadder brought fifty ; ■ and a Captain Hamilton came in with sixty well-armed Lowlanders, who, in conse- quence of some peculiarity in their costume, were known by the sobriquet of Cravates, the old French name for Croats. "The celebrated Wogan," says Sir W. Scott, "who, when a youth, had been engaged on the side of the Parliament, and commanded a troop of horse under Ireton, with whom he was a great favourite, was with these bold Royalists. Being shocked by the king's murder, he joined the Cavaliers, and commanded Ormond's Guards in tlie wars of Ire- land. When all was lost save the insurgent army in the Highlands, he fetched a body of Cavaliers from Paris, and, avoiding the common roads, joined Glencaim at Locheam." In a skirmish he received a woimd in the shoulder, which gangrened for want of surgical assistance, and dying at Weems, was buried at the church of Kenmore. Such was the nucleus of the Royal forces; and of Glencaim's intentions the crafty Argyle is stated in the " Mercurius Politicus " to have duly in- formed Colonel Lilbum, whom Monk had left in command of the English in Scotland. When Colonel Kidd, Cromwell's governor in Stirling Castle, was informed that these Royalists were at no great distance from him, he marched against them with the greater part of a regiment of infantry and a troop of horse. Amid the beautiful scenery of that mountain pass, Glencaim prepared to meet the colonel by drawing up his little band of foot in a judicious manner, with his few horse upon the flanks, under Viscount Kenmure, and the petty conflict that ensued proved disastrous to the Republicans. The Lowlanders of Hamilton and Duchray received and returned their- first fire with such steadiness that they began to retire ; and when Kenmure's troopers advanced with shouts, the retreat became a run, and sixty EngHsh were killed on the spot and eighty cut down in the pursuit. No prisoners were taken on either side. This success, with another in the celebrated pass of the Trossachs, soon caused Glencairn's forces to increase in number. The Chief of Glengarry (afterwards Lord Macdonell, of Aros) came in with 300 of his name ; Lochiel brought 400 ; Macgregor, 200 ; the Earl of Athole came with 100 horse, and a regiment of foot, 1,300 strong, under Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew Drummond ; Sir Arthur Forbes (afterwards Earl of Granard) brought eighty troopers. All these leaders gave commissions to their private friends to proceed to the Lowlands and buy forces, and to seize all the arms and horses they could find. " The Scottish Cavaliers," says the "Mercurius Politicus," "walk up and down with comfortable phantasies, Saying the fort of Aire is taken by the Highlanders, which cheers up the whole drooping fraternity in Holland and Zealand." Glencairn's forces now amounted to 2,400 men ; among them were several disbanded soldiers "and desperate people, sequestrate, sequestrable, or much in debt " (" Mihtary Mems. Great Civil War "). As he was in hourly expectation of meet- ing with General Middleton, the earl marched towards the Gordons' country, where several of Huntly's men joined him. Meanwhile Colonel Morgan, who commanded the English at Aberdeen, determined to oppose these movements, and marched at the head of 1,000 horse and 2,000 infantry. With these he proceeded day and night, till he fell unexpectedly on Glencairn's outposts, before they had the least intelligence of his arrival. They were driven in and pressed so quickly that it was with the utmost difficulty they could keep their ground, till Graham of Duchray, who commanded them, rallied forty, whose steady fire checked the advance of the English, slew an officer, and prevented them from entering a pass in the mountains. As it was impossible to avoid an encounter, Viscount Kenmure, a hot and fiery Cavalier, hastened to reinforce the outposts. The glen was deep and narrow; another English officer was killed by Sir Mungo Murray, and though the troops were anxious to fight their way into the pass. Colonel Morgan deemed it prudent not to proceed. He encamped for the night, and next day marched back to Aberdeen, still leaving the prestige with Glencaim. According to the " Mer- curius Politicus,'' this encounter occurred "near the lough at the head of Cromar." Sir Thomas Morgan, though a zealous Repub- lican, was a great favourite with Cromwell, by whom he was aftenvards entmsted with the com- mand of the forces sent to the siege of Dunkirk. He offered no further effective molestation to Glencaim, who now marched to Elgin, in Moray- shire, where he first obtained official information of the landing of General Middleton to assume the command of the king's troops, with Colonel Robert Munro and sixty other officers, 500 stand of arms, and 150 barrels of powder, a circumstance 304 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Glenc^nit which, when known to Cromwell, brought Monk again to Scotland as commander-in-chief of all the English forces. So sanguine was Glencairn of success now that, according to Burnet, he in- vited King Charles to return to Scotland, but the latter did not think proper to do so. The earl now pushed forward into the county of Sutherland, followed by Morgan, with whom he had several petty skirmishes, till he passed the Ness above Inverness ; and as the English had no garrisons north of that river, he gave up the pursuit. General Middleton, who was then at Dornoch, on Glencairn applying to him for orders, directed a general rendezvous there of their little army, which was found to consist of only i,6oo horse and 3,500 foot; of the former some 300 were neither properly mounted nor armed. When all were drawn up, Glencairn went along the ranks, informing them that he had no other command save as colonel now, and hoped that all would serve His Majesty under an officer of such experience as General Middleton. As the earl, though deficient in military skill, possessed great personal courage, and was a favourite with his followers, the change is said to have caused dissatisfaction. After the inspection Middleton entertained the officers to dinner at his head-quarters in Dornoch, where, at a return enter- tainment given by the earl, there occurred the following extraordinary scene. Calling for a bumper of wine, the earl said to Middleton, "You see what a gallant army I and these noble gentlemen have raised out of nothing. They have hazarded life and fortune to serve His Majesty, and your Excellency must therefore give them all the encouragement you can." On this, a Sir George Munro, who was pro- bably intoxicated, exclaimed, " By God ! the men you speak of are no other than a pack of thieves and robbers! In a short time I shall show you another sort of men !" Glengarry, thinking that this insult was levelled at his Highlanders, now started up with his hand on his sword, when Glencairn said calmly, "For- bear, Glengarry ; I alone am the insulted." Then, turning to Munro, he added, "You are a base liar! They are neither thieves nor rogues, but much better men than you could raise." This uncourteous retort led to a duel with sword and pistol on horseback, two hours after they had separated and drunk wine with each other to allay suspicion. They fired their pistols without effect. A trumpeter was their sole attendant. Closing in with their broadswords. Sir George had his face laid open; blood blinded him, and Gl^nc^irn would have run him through the body had not the trumpeter arrested his sword. On hearing of this circumstance Middleton put Glencairn under arrest; and when another and more fatal encounter took place between a Captain Livingstone and a gentleman named Lindsay, in which the former was killed, the latter was tried by court martial and shot at Dornoch, in spite of all Glencairn's efforts to save him. All these transactions are minutely described in the "Diurnal of Occurrences," printed in the "Spotswood Miscellany," taken from the "Mer- curius Politicus ;" and in the "Account of the Earl of Glencairn's Expedition to the Highlands in the Years 1653 and 1654, edited by Sir Walter Scott ; from the Original MS. in possession of Sir Alexander Don, Bart., entitled 'Military Memoirs of the Great Civil War.' Edinburgh. Quarto. 1822." In consequence of Lindsay's punishment, Glen- cairn quitted Middleton in disgust, and drew off with 100 horse — ^his own immediate friends. The general sent a strong party after them, with orders to bring them back or fight them all ; but Macleod of Assynt, the betrayer of Montrose, secured the passes in such a manner that to reach the fugitives was impracticable. Several levies that joined him on his homeward way Glencairn sent north to Middleton; and as his health had suffered lately, he retired to Lochleven, in Dumbartonshire. His defection was a serious matter to General Middleton, as his example was followed by several of the Lowland lords; nevertheless, the latter was prepared to prolong the struggle, though the ter- mination of the war with Holland enabled the Protector to dispatch additional troops into Scot- land, under command of General Monk, who was coming on by forced marches. In the middle of April he was at Newcastle. He was received by the mayor and corporation, who gave him a banquet of wine and sweetmeats. When he marched for Scotland, all the shipping hung out their colours and fired their guns in salute. Monk arrived at Dalkeith, and soon after com- menced his march for Stirling, which he entered at the head of his own regiment, part of Colonel O'Key's, and that of Sir William Constable. There is a great scarcity of information relative to Scotland and to Scottish aflfairs for the ten years preceding the Restoration ; but we find that on the 22nd May, 1654, he (Monk) marched towards the mountains, and encamped at Kilsythe, there being an alleged scarcity of grass for the horses of his cavalry in the Highlands. Colonel Pride's regiment— the chaplain of vvhigh was the father of the famous Titus Oates— Glencaim.] COMBAT AT LOCH GARRY. J6§ reinforced the troops, who were much harassed in marching through districts almost destitute of roads, in pursuit of the forces of Middleton, who was per- haps beginning to see the hopelessness of insurgents taking the field against a standing army, that had been some ten years in existence, and had seen so much of incessant warfare. During these operations Monk captured the island of Loch Tay, in Breadalbane. It contains the ruins of a priory built by King Alexander II., and this some of the Royalists had garrisoned. He next captured the old castle of Balloch (now called Taymouth), the seat of Sir John Campbell, of Glen- orchy, who had aided Middleton and Glencaim; he then reduced Weems Castle, a stronghold of the clan Menzies, and that of Garth, in Fortingal, in a district deemed impassable till 1754, in which year the future historian of our Highland regiments was bom there. Among the Lansdowne MSS. these captures are thus mentioned in a letter by William Clarke :— " Sir, — This day the Isle of Loughtay was surren- dered to the generall uppon granting their bagge, baggage, provisions and armes, to march with (some) English prisoners they had; and likewise this day the enemy quitted Garth Castle upon the approach of a party of horse, which were to summon it. Glenochies (Glenorchy ?), Howse, Weems, and the isle in Lough Tay are garrisoned by Captain Dennis's and Captain Blake's two companies. To-morrow we march for Loughnes. Sir, I only desire your care of the enclosed, and remain your servant, "William Clarke. " From the camp near Balloch, in Broad Albin, 14th June, 1654." Monk next advanced into the country of the Camerons, where the houses were all given to the flames, including the new one built by Glengarry, and when, on the march through Glensinnick, in Seaforth's country, a violent storm drove 500 sheep and cattle into the camp, and these proved a seasonable relief. The houses of a tribe called Macmartin were destroyed. At a place called Browling (?) 100 baggage-horses were abandoned in a morass. "Never was an army till this summer known to pass that way" ("Services of the Coldstream Guards"). Among these troops was a regiment of Cromwell's invincibles, known as "The Brazen Wall." Middleton, being anxious to harass and to avoid Monk, was then on his march from Strathfillan towards Glenlyon, when he was unexpectedly attacked by the column of Colonel Morgan, who had come by a different route, and had with him 1,500 additional men drawn from Ireland. This encounter occurred near the secluded mountain sheet of water named Loch Garry, on the 26th of July, towards the evening. The conflict was brief and soon decided, and little more than the lists of the casualties on the side of Middleton are preserved. Among his killed were Major-General Dylar, Colonels Hume, Innes, and Grimes ; Lieutenant-Colonel Ogilvie, Major Brown, nine captains, and fifty men. There were taken prisoners, Colonels Crawford, Hay, and Meldrum, Major Forbes, Captain Graham, and twenty-three other officers ; 400 horses were taken, and 2,500 men totally routed. Middleton, though severely wounded, cut his way out of. the press, and ultimately escaped to the Continent, where he remained till the Restora- tion, when he was rewarded by an earldom ; but in the affair by Loch Garry, the Royal standard, nineteen other colours, Middleton's charger and sumpter horse, with his commission, private papers, and all his correspondence with the king, remained the trophies of the victors. And so ended this ill-conducted and rash attempt to break the power of the unpalatable Republic. Some of the fugitives reached Glencairn at Ross-dhu, and proposed that the field should be taken once more; but the- earl told them that the king's interest was ruined for the time by the sur- prise at Loch Garry, and that he now intended to make terms for himself, which he accordingly did with General Monk, who permitted him to reside in peace at his family seat of Finlaystone. Several of the king's officers were put to death for being .concerned in this rising, among others a Captain Gordon, who was famous for the beauty of his person, and whom Monk barbarously huflg at the Cross of Edinburgh on the 26th of February, 1655- Reductions in the pay of the army now began to excite discontent among the officers, and the allowance given to generals was quite inadequate to maintain the tables and state these Republicans affected ; thus, says Ludlow, " I can clearly make it appear that during the four years I served in Ireland I expended ;^4,5oo of my own estate more than all the pay I received." On the i8th of December, 1654, the Parliament resolved that the standing army should consist of 10,000 horse and dragoons, and 20,000 infantry, the assessment for their maintenance being ;^6o,ooo per month, and the necessity for this force was among the first fruits of the new state of things. 3o6 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Blake's Last Exploit CHAPTER LHL THE LAST EXPLOIT OF BLAKE, 1657. In the year 1654 the total expenses of the English navy were ;^8so,6io; and, as an instance of Cromwell's growing vanity, Evelyn tells us in his " Memoirs '' that oil the 9th of March he " went to see the greate ship newly built by the usurper in 1682, the devil is mentioned as appearing " in seaman's clothing with a blew cap." Naval commanders wore scarlet in the time of Elizabeth, and that order was confirmed by her successor, James I. ; but till the era of George II. NAVAL AND MILITARY UNIFORMS, PERIOD OF THE COMMONWEALTH. Oliver, carrying 96 brasse guns, and of 1,000 tons | burden. In the prow was Oliver on horseback, trampling six nations under foote, a Scott, Irishman, Frenchman, Spaniard, and English, as was easily made out by their several habits. Fame held a laurel over his insulting head ; the words, ' God with us.' '' It would be interesting to know what the several "habits" were, that indicated so clearly those six nationalities. From Wycherly's comedy of " The Plain Dealer," we find that about ten years subsequent to this, red breeches were the indication of an English sailor, but otherwise his costume was pretty much like that of the landsman. In Law's "Memorials," our tars were armed like the soldiers, and habited according to their own or their captain's fancy. (" Knight's British Costume.") The expulsion of the young king, Charles II., from the Dutch territories, was doubtless petty spite, but it seemed a part of the foreign policy that made the name of Cromwell famous. The naval glory of England, which had paled during the days of James and Charles, now shone forth with renewed lustre. Spain, humbled by sea and land, was at last fain to yield up the rich island of Jamaica. Inspired by bigotry and ambition, and by the prophecies of a canting preacher, Cromwell sent thirty ships under Blake to the Mediterranean, where no English fleet had been since the days Bldke'siast Exploit.] ADMlkAL BLAKE. 307 3o8 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Blake's Last Exploit, of the Crasades, and this armament humbled the Grand Duke of Tuscany on the European side, and the Algerines on that of Africa. The Day desired him to look at his castles of Porto Farino and Goletta, and do his worst, when asked to restrain the piracies of his subjects. Blake did not require this bravado. He drew up his ships close to the castles, and blew them to pieces with his guns. He sent bodies of seamen into the harbour in pinnaces and long-boats, under the fire of 140 pieces of cannon. These burned every ship that lay there ; and the boldness of this action, which its very temerity rendered safe, and which was executed with very little loss, filled all that part of the world with the fame of the EngMsh arms. At Tunis he released many Christian slaves, some of whom were Dutch and English seamen. In the following year he was cruising off Cadiz, in conjunction with General Montague, in hopes to lure out the Spanish fleet which lay there, or to intercept another homeward bound ; and while he anchored for a time in a Portuguese bay to take in water and some provisions, Captain (after- wards Admiral Sir Richard) Stayner, whom he had left to continue the blockade with the Bridge- water and Plymouth and four other vessels, fell in with eight galleons returning from South America. The commodore gave chase ; but the weather proving stormy, prevented four of his ships from getting up to the attack. However, with the three we have named, he engaged them with such spirit, that in a very short time two of the galleons Avere sunk, two run on shore, two escaped, and two were taken. One of those which were sunk had been set on fire in the action by Captain Young. On board of her was a Spaniard of rank, the Viceroy of Peru, who with his wife and daughter perished. His sons and his brother, who, was Governor of the Havannah, were saved and brought to England prisoners, with one hundred more. The galleons and the treasure they had on board amounted to two milKons of pieces of eight. The money, merchandise, and bullion were put in wagons, and conveyed in a species of triumph through the streets of London to the Tower, where the silver was ordered to be coined." Captain Stayner, in his letters to Cromwell and Montague, veported that there was as much more treasure on board the galleon of the vice-admiral, which was sunk. (Whitelock.) The Viceroy of Peru was also marquis of Badajoz, and his daughter was betrothed to the young Duke of Medina Celi. The marquis might have escaped, but seeing that the ladies had fainted, ")ie chose rather to die with them than drag out a life embittered by the remembrance of such a dismal scene." In a poem of Waller's, " On a War with Spain," this disastrous sea-fight is particularly noticed, and in "Evelyn's Memoirs" thus : — " February the loth, I went to visite the Governor of Havanna, a brave, sober, valiant Spanish gentle- man, taken by Captain Young, of Deptford, when after twenty yeares being in the Indies, and amassing greate wealth, his lady and whole family, except two sonns, were burnt, destroyed, and taken, within sight of Spaine, his eldest sonn, daughter, and wife perishing, with immense treasure. One sonn, of about seventeen yeares old, with his brother of one year old, were the only ones saved. The young gentleman, about seventeen, was a well-com- plexioned youth, not olive-coloured ; he spake Latine handsomely, was extremely well-bred, and born in the Caraccas, 1,000 miles south of the Equinoxial, neere the mountains of Potosi ; he had ■never been in Europe before. The governor was an ancient gentleman of great courage, of the order of St. lago, sore wounded in his arme, and his ribs broken; he lost for his own share ;^i 00,000 sterling, which he seemed to beare with exceeding indifference, and nothing dejected. After some discourse, I went with them to Arundel House, where they dined. They were now going back into Spaine, having obtained their liberty from Cromwell. An example of human vicissitude." Cromwell's hostilities with Spain were entirely un- provoked, and resulted in the seizure by Phihp IV. of all the EngUsh ships throughout the harbours of his extensive dominions. The Spanish commerce, so profitable to England, was thus lost to her; and an incredible number of her ships fell into the hands of the enemy. Admiral Blake, having heard that a Spanish West Indian fleet of sixteen sail, much richer than that scattered by Commodore Stayner, had taken shelter at the Canaries, under the command of Don Diego Dioqiies, he sailed at once in quest of it from Cadiz, and was off the isle of Teneriffe about the middle of April, 1657. Of this great EngUsh seaman, Lord Clarendon says that he was a well-educated man, and had taken the degree of Master of Arts at Oxford ; that he was some- what melancholy and reserved by. nature, and that " he was the first man who declined the old track, and made it manifest that the science (of the sea) might be attained in less time than was imagined, and despised those rules which had long been in practice, to keep his ship and men out of danger, which Jiad been held in former times a point of great ability and circumspection. He was Blake's Last Exploit.! CAPTURE OF THE GALLEONS. 309 the first man to contemn castles on shore, which had been thought very formidable, and were dis- covered by him to make a noise only. He was the first that infiised that proportion of courage into seamen, by making them see by experience what mighty things they could do if they were resolved, and taught them to fight in fire as well as upon water; and though he has been very well imitated and followed, he was the first who gave the example of that kind of naval courage and bold and resolute achievements." Like others he had begun to fear the grasping ambition and doubt the political purity of Crom- well J but he was still wont to say to his officers and seamen — " It is our duty to fight for our country, into what hands soever the government may fall." Disinterested, generous, and liberal, ambitious only of true glory, and formidable only to his own avowed enemies. Admiral Blake, says Hume, " forms one of the most perfect characters of the age, and the least stained with those errors and violences which were then so predominant." He found the Spanish fleet, consisting of six great galleons, richly laden, and ten other vessels, lying in the bay of Santa Cruz, on the eastern side of the isle of Teneriffe, overlooked by the town, which is built on a level and arid space at the base of a ridge of hills. Across the mouth of the port Don Diego Dioques had thrown a great boom, and within it were the sixteen vessels, moored by stem and stern, with their broadsides turned to the offing. The bay was further defended by seven forts, all mounted with cannon, and two castles at its entrance, one of them in the form of a great tower. All these works were connected by breastworks of earth manned by musketeers. Don Diego deemed himself so secure that to a Dutch captain who expressed a wish to sail, he said — " Get you gone if you will, and let Blake come if he dares ! " And by the Dutchman this defiance was delivered to Blake, who, on reconnoitring the harbour, saw that the smaller vessels were moored almost immediately under the guns of the forts, and that the galleons, as they drew more water, lay nearer the sea. He called a council of war, and as the meeting found it impracticable to bring off the galleons, it was resolved to destroy them. The wind being fair and fresh from the westward. Captain Stayner with a squadron led the van, and with all sails set, burst through the boom, thus forcing a passage into the bay, while some of the lesser frigates plied the two castles and some of the forts with incessant broadsides. Blake followed next with the rest of the Heet, and placing some of his ships in such p, manner that they fully occupied the attention of all the forts by the weight and direction of their fire, with the rest he engaged the galleons. He received their broadsides and returned them, and then boarded them all in succession amid the smoke. After a four — some say six — hours' con- flict, he drove out the Spaniards and captured every one of the ships. Much of the plate and bullion on board had been carried ashore, and much had been thrown into the bay, where an account published in 17 14 says it was then still lying. Finding it impossible to bring the prizes off he set them on fire, turned them to the water's edge, and then the hulls sank in the bay, where in Captain Dampier's time they were still to be seen lying in fifteen fathoms of water ; and he observed that the marks of Blake's shot were also visible in the walls of the forts. "Blake's loss was only 40 killed and 120 wounded in this most hazardous and successful enterprise, after the completion of which, as the wind chopped suddenly about and proved fair for quitting the bay, he stood at once out to sea, leaving the Spaniards astonished at his skill and tenferity. The slaughter on board the Spanish ships, says Clarendon, was incredible, and not one English vessel was left behind, after all the fire sustained from the fleet and forts. " The whole action," he continues, " was so miraculous that all men who knew the place wondered that any sober man, with what courage soever endued, would have undertaken it, and they could hardly persuade themselves to believe what they had done ; whilst the Spaniards comforted themselves with the behef that they were devils and not men who had de- stroyed them in such a manner." When the news of this glorious success reached England, the Parliament ordered a diamond ring worth five hundred guineas, with a letter of thanks, to be presented to the admiral ; while Cromwell— now daily aping the functions of royalty — bestowed the honour of knighthood upon Captain Stayner, who brought home the despatches. After leaving Teneriffe, Blake cruised for a time off the Spanish coast; but now, as the fleet had been long at sea, and many of the ships were out of repair ; and as Blake, who had been long con- fined to his cabin and to his bed by disease — scurvy and dropsy combined — and who felt his 310 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Dunkirk. end approaching, was anxious to yield up his last breath in the native land which his valour had adorned, he hauled up for home. On board his old ship, the 5/. George, he sailed on his last voyage from Lisbon, when the fervent prayer of the English resident as he departed was, " I pray God to strengthen him ! " As the ships rolled through the stormy waters of the Bay of Biscay, and were pooped by many a sea, Blake, now past his sixtieth year, grew worse and worse, but some of his old spirit beamed out as he drew near the latitude of old England. " He inquired often and anxiously if the white cliffs were yet in sight, for he longed to behold the swelling downs, the free cities, and the goodly churches of his native land ; but he was now dying beyond all doubt. . . . Many of his favourite officers silently and mournfully crowded round his bed, anxious to catch the last tones of a voice which had so often called them to glory and victory. Others stood on the poop and forecastle, eagerly examining every speck and line on the horizon, in hope of being the first to catch the welcome glimpse of land. Though they were coming home covered with laurels, gloom and pain were in every face. ... At last 'The Lizard' was announced; shortly the bold cliffs and bare hills of Cornwall loomed out gradually, but it was now too late for the dying hero.'' He had bade farewell to most of his offieers ; and as they stood, many of them sobbing like children, in his cabin, from its windows could be seen the green hills and apple bowers of Devon- shire glowing under thfe autumnal sunshine; but just as the Si. George rounded Rame Head, and came in view of Plymouth, with all its spires and shipping, Blake, the hero of so many gallant battles, yielded up his last breath. This was on the evening of the 17th of August, 1657. A true model in all things of a British sailor, Blake during his stirring career had been as prodigal of his money as of his blood, and not- withstanding the many opportunities he had of en- riching himself, at a time when all men were doing so by the plunder of the enemy and the exiled, he had not increased his patrimony by so much as ^500. His remains were interred with much solemnity in Henry VII. 's chapel at Westminster. Crom- well, fully sensible of his merit, says Samuel Johnson, in his " Life of Admiral Blake," ordered him a pompous funeral ; and people of all parties, by their tears, bore testimony to his valour, gene- rosity, and public spirit. It was among some of the mean outrages which blotted the triumph of the Restoration that Blake's mouldering remains were, thirteen years after inter- ment, removed from their resting-place to another in the neighbouring churchyard of St. Margaret. But the tale of his achievements has become a portion of the history of his country ; and it must never be forgotten that he was the first English admiral who taught our seamen that contempt of danger for which they have ever since been famous ; and thus he deserves to be regarded more than any other as the real founder of Britain's naval glory. CHAPTER LIV. THE DUNES, BEFORE DUNKIRK, 1658. The year 1657 saw a league offensive and defensive formed between France and the Commonwealth. The Prince of Conde, unable to cope with Turenne supported by the Court, had retired to the frontiers of Champagne, but the sparks of his revolt were still alive, and though the Spaniards had been de- feated with bloody slaughter, the prince still main- tained the honour of his name amidst the disasters of a hopeless cause. The negotiation set on foot by the ambassador of France in London during 1656, was concluded at Paris on the 13th of March, 1657, by a treaty or league, importing that England's successful usurper should lend 6, 000 men to the French army, in furtherance of the schemes of Cardinal Mazarin; that Mardyke and Dunkirk should be besieged and taken, and when taken, delivered to the English. For this unwarrantable interference in the affairs of France and Spain, Cromwell was to be rewarded by the king of the former country meanly and ignominiously depriving of protection Charles II. and the Duke of York, who had sought asylum in France, and whom Cromwell strove to pursue with rancour and fear from country to country. For this Continental expedition Cromwell pre- pared 6,000 troops, under the command of the Commissary-General, Sir John Reynolds, who in former years had besieged Galway, dispersed the Mardykc.^ THE ENGLISH BEFORE MARDYKE. 311 Irish at Leitrim, and been latterly chosen one of the Council of State. Associated with him in authority was Sir Thomas Morgan, who had routed Middleton on the banks of Loch Garry; On Charles II. being informed of this negotia- tion, he sent a trusty messenger to the Archduke Leopold, Governor of the Low Countries, to pro- pose a league with Spain. In this Charles was actuated by two objects: to gain some reputation by a treaty with that power, and to be nearer England, where he was already beginning to per- ceive his presence might soon be necessary. Leopold accepted these overtures, believing that if the exiled King of Great Britain became attached to Spain, he would have influence enough to draw into the Spanish ranks those Irish forces which then served in France. This was all that Spain could expect from a monarch who had nothing to offer but the use of his sword. Charles was to reside at Bruges, and Spain was to furnish him with 6,000 men, as soon as he was in possession of some good port in England. King Philip settled upon him a monthly pension of 6,000 guilders, and another of 3,000 on his brother the Duke of Gloucester. Soon after this Charles prevailed upon Justin Macarthy, Lord Muskerry, who commanded the Irish regi- ment of the Duke of York and Albany, to desert, and, with his whole corps, to join the army of Spain. He also found means to cause four regi- ments of Irish, Scots, and English to come over by single companies and offer him service. At that time all Europe teemed with our exiles. Of- the Irish alone Cromwell had transported to the Conti- nent more than 40,000 men, and these were to be found chiefly in the ranks of France and Spain. By these means the Spanish army was reinforced by four splendid Irish regiments, accustomed to all the hardships of war in their o^vn country, and dis- ciplined in France under the eye of the great Turenne ; and these troops, second to none then in the world, were engaged in all the marches, sieges, and battles of the years 1656 and 1657. The defection of these Irish regiments alarmed their new friends the Spaniards, who exacted from them an oath of fidelity. The Duke of York and Lord Muskerry were indignant, but, says the author of the "Military Memoirs of the Irish Nation," the Spaniards " considered that religion would operate as a safeguard where honour — the paramount law of military men — had lost its control. The com- mands of Charles may plead some extenuation, but can never justify the abandonment of the French colours by these Irish regiments." From a letter in " Ormond's Memoirs," it appears that the Irish pled Mazarin's alliance with Crom- well, the persecutor of Catholics, and the destroyer of the Irish nation, whose gentry he had massacred at home, led into slavery, or driven to beggary abroad, as the reason for turning their arms against France. Reynolds, with the English forces, appeared,, in September, before Mardyke in Flanders, in con- junction with a body of French ; and it was cap- tured and taken possession of by the former, in the name of England, and in pursuance of the treaty with Cromwell, who ordered new fortifications to be built, and the old to be repaired, to ensure its retention. Before these works were finished, Don John of Austria, who had determined to destroy them, marched out of Dunkirk in the dead of the night. The Duke of Gloucester's Irish regiment formed part of his infantry. They extinguished their lights and matches when they came within range of cannon-shot, and advanced, unnoticed, close to Mardyke, while King Charles, Don John, and the Marquis of Ormond covered their approach with their horse and dragoons. The garrison and some English frigates in the harbour having, however, caught the alarm, a brisk and random fire was opened ; but in the confusion and darkness of a nocturnal attack, chance, not aim, directed the shot, which passed over the heads of the infantry. Several of the cavalry were killed and wounded, and the Marquis of Ormond had his horse shot under him. The Irish regiment of Gloucester did all that discipline and their native valour could effect. Finding the ditch too deep in one place, they at- tempted to fill it up in another, and kept up a heavy fire upon the English, until the approach of day compelled them to fall back on Dunkirk, with the loss of several killed and wounded ; among the former was a captain. This regiment was quartered in Mont Cassel during the winter, and that of the Duke of York at St. Omer, as being contiguous to Dunkirk, with the view of throwing them into that place if it was attacked. Mont Cassel was open and defenceless. It was suddenly taken by the French, and 400 Irish were compelled to capitulate. ("Life of James IL") On the 1 6th of December, Re)Tiolds, the com- mander of the English in Mardyke, who had been recalled in consequence of some respect shown to the Duke of York, when returning home, was cast away on the Goodwin Sands, and perished with all his company. On this Cromwell sent Sir William Lockhart, of Lee, to lead the EngUsh troops ; and as he was a soldier of great experience, and one of 312 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Mardyke. the most remarkable men of the time, great events were anticipated. Lineally descended from the Sir Simon Lockhart who brought back the heart of Bruce from Castile, he had been educated in Holland, had served in the French army, and afterwards as Lieutenant-Colonel of Lord William Hamilton's regiment in Scotland. He was knighted by Charles I., after that monarch's surrender to the Scots before Newark, and subse- quently served in the campaign of " The Unlawful and the latter under Sir William Lockhart in person. Its governor, the Marquis de Lodi, whose innate courage impelled him to be a soldier, but whose unaffected piety and ardent devotion were better suited to the sohtude of a cloister, defended the town resolutely at the head of only 2,000 infantry and 800 horse, and by his valour, vigilance, and skill made up for the smallness of his forces, whose number, even if doubled, would have been insuffi- DUNKIRK, FROM THE SEA. Engagement," when he was taken prisoner at Preston. He was again in the Scottish army when Charles II. arrived in Scotland; but having been treated with disrespect by that prince, he told him haughtily that " no monarch on earth should dare to use him so." By Charles's side he fought bravely at Worcester, and when all was lost took service under the Commonwealth, and became one of Cromwell's judges in Scotland. Oliver, who valued him highly, gave him his niece, Robina Shouster, in marriage, and in 1655 ^^. was the ambassador of England in France. Immediately after his arrival at Mardyke, Dun- kirk was invested by a combined French and English army ; the former under Marshal Turenne, cient to man the works. The English ships, twenty in number, blockaded the place by sea ; while their troops, most of whom were infantry, held Mardyke, and Turenne formed lines all round to cut off supplies and intercept rehef, in the month of June, 1658. The Spaniards, under Don John of Austria, the Prince of Condd, the Marquis de Caracena, and the Duke of York, who, prior to the English alUance, had served with much distinction in the armies of France, advanced to its support, and approached these lines of circumvallation ; and Turenne, confident in his own great talents, and sensible from experience that such lines were liable to vicissitudes, marched forward to give battle. Mardyke.] ON THE DUNES. 3^3 Don John thus, instead of being the assailant as he expected, found himself the assailed. His cannon and ammunition had not come up ; half his cavalry were scattered foraging ; his in- fantry, composed of 2,500 Spaniards, 2,000 Irish, and 2,000 Walloons, were inferior in number to the enemy, and defeat seemed inevitable. Condd advised a retreat, but Don John and the Marquis insisted on giving the French and English battle. Their position on the sandhills, or dunes, as the heavy work this ascent must have proved to them in their enormous calf-skin boots. The resistance of the Spaniards was not less brave than the English attack. Eleven captains of the regiment of Boniface, and Slaughter and O'Farrel, two Irish officers, were killed before they were driven from the sandy dunes, beyond which they were fiercely pursued by Lockhart so far that he was in danger of being cut off. Some squadrons of horse, under the Duke of MONK ENTERING LONDON. former named them, was strong ; their right reached the sea, their left was flanked by the canal of Fumes, and their centre occupied a line of sandy elevations. The native Spaniards, supported by 100 Irish pikemen and musketeers, were first attacked by Lockhart's own regiment of Cromwellian infantry. " With the steadiness of veterans and the valour of Britons, they halted at the foot of the sandhills, like Cffisar's men at Pharsalia, to take breath, keeping up a deadly fiire^ They then began the ascent with a great shout, and notwithstanding the steepness of the hill and the yielding of the sand, they reached the summit, after losing their lieu- tenant-colonel and several officers and men ; " and York, now fell upon the English, whom their allies, the French cavalry, failed to support ; and Ludlow relates that they were in danger of being entirely cut off. This being perceived by Major-General Drummond, a Scottish officer serving in the English army, he galloped to the French cavalry, and after bitterly reproaching them with treachery and negligence, ultimately procured a party to protect the advanced column of infantry. Succoured thus by Drummond, the English took heart anew ; their advance was resumed, and a vast number of the enemy were slain. Charged again and again by the Duke of York, their firm ranks remained impenetrable ; and thus the Spanish right wing sustained an irreparable defeat. For his 87 314 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA, [Mardyke, courage on this occasion, arms of augmentation were granted in 1672 to Lieutenant-Colonel Fen- wick, of Monk's corps, then styled " His Majesty's Coldstreamer Regiment." (" Life of James IL," 1816.) " Many of those that were killed on the enemy's side," says Ludlow, " were EngHsh and Irish that fought under the Duke of York; and as it was confessed by all present that the English who took part with the French behaved themselves with more bravery in the field that day, so it was observed that those of the cavaUer party who had joined with the Spaniards behaved themselves worst." But it must be borne in mind that our military memorialist was a partisan writer. Though hopelessly defeated, the Spanish right wing still continued to resist, and the duke states, in his " Memoirs," that having rallied a few of his own English, he called to a Spanish major to follow his example, and that it being the custom of the Spaniards not to run when others stand, they faced about with the most determined resolution, and penetrated the English ranks ; but not one soldier then asked for quarter or threw down his arms, the matter being debated hand to hand with the butt-end of the musket. The " History of the Earls of Flanders " (COrn- hill, 1701) states that the assailing force under Don John amounted to 30,000 men, which is a mistake ; that they assaulted the lines of Turenne in two places ; that during the battle the Marquis de Lodi made a sortie, which was repulsed by Francis, the Marquis de Crequi ; and that the Marquis d'Hoquincourt, Marshal of France, who had joined the Spaniards, was mortally wounded. Ultimately the right wing gave way, and the Spanish left fared no better. Colonel Grace, in the centre, seeing the disorder on his flanks, marched off his Irish regiment in three divisions, and reached the canal of Fumes, by which he secured his retreat without the loss of a man. The regiment of Charles II., composed of English, and that of the Earl of Bristol, composed of Irish, were in the line next to the native Spaniards. James, in his "Memoirs," states that the English stood firm, although they saw all around them broken and routed ; but some of the Irish, notwithstanding the example of their officers, dis- graced their colours and took to flight. The king's battalion stood firm. Of Lord Muskerry's, the leader is said to have been the only man who escaped untouched. A French colonel, inspired by generous gallantry, rode up to this Irish regiment and offered it quarter, which at first the soldiers declined ; but on seeing the whole army routed they surrendered, upon con- dition of being "not stripped or delivered to the English Cromwellians." The whole of the duke's and Lord Bristol's Irish regiments were made prisoners ; but by bribery or artifice all contrived in a few days to be under their colours again. (Clarke's " Memoirs of James IL") Lord Muskerry with twenty men only escaped from the field. The Marquis de Lodi being killed in a sally, and Don John being thus defeated by Lockhart and Turenne, Dunkirk was surrendered on the 24th of June; and Cromwell, like the lion in the fable, claimed it as well as Mardyke. Sir Wilham Lockhart was made governor, and in this capacity, at the head of the English troops, he had the hardihood to refuse to open the gates to Charles IL, at the death of Cromwell, and even at that critical peripd when the cautious and somewhat truculent Monk was scheming to restore the king. Though the request to receive Charles in Dunkirk was accompanied by the most brilliant promises of reward and promotion, his answer was decided : " I have been trusted by the Commonwealth, and cannot betray it." Clarendon tells us that at that very time this sterling old soldier " refused to accept the great offers made to him by the cardinal (Mazarin), who had a high esteem of him, and offered to make him Marshal of France, with great appoint- ments of pensions and emoluments, if he would deliver Dunkirk and Mardyke into the hands of France ; all of which overtures he rejected, so that His Majesty (Charles II.) had no place to resort preferable to Breda.'' On the Restoration, Lockhart was deprived of the government of Dunkirk, which was bestowed on Sir William Harley, and he died in 1675. Sir Thomas Morgan, who served under him at the battle of the Dunes and capture of Dunkirk, drew up a detailed account of these affairs, which, according to Granger, was printed at London in 1699, in quarto, and was subsequently reprinted in the "Harleian Miscellany" and the "Phoenix Britannicus." It was remarked by the saints of that time that the battle of the Dunes was fought on a day which was held for a fast in London, so that, as Fleet- wood said, " While we were praying they were fighting, and the Lord hath given a signal answer. The Lord has not only owned us in our work there, but in our waiting upon Him in the way of prayer, which is indeed our old experienced anci approved way in all straifs an4 difficulties." Lowestoft.] THE SEPARATE ESTABLISHMENTS. 3^5 The son of Cromwell, whom Cardinal Mazarin was wont to designate "the fortunate madman," appeared in the camp at Dunkirk, and was received with those honours accorded to princes alone. Many other places were reduced by the troops under Turenne and Lockhart, till Spain became alarmed at their progress, and sued for a peace, to which France was not averse ; but Cromwell'^ glory ended at Dunkirk, and his artful plans and soaring ambition were soon after buried in his grave. CHAPTER LV. NAVAL ENGAGEMENT OFF LOWESTOFT, 1 665. When General Monk, at the head of 7,000 veterans designated " the army of Scotland," marcHed to London and restored the king, never had there been such joy seen in England. Flowers strewed the roadway before Charles ; old Cavaliers, who had won their scars at Edgehill and Naseby, and had seen their houses stormed and the tombs of their ancestors defaced by Cromwell's troopers, shed tears of joy ; while on Blackheath stood the army of Monk, grim, sad, and sullen, being con- scious that they were no longer wanted — that the day of their power had departed. Disbanded, all save the regiment of Monk, retained to form the Coldstream Guards, these veterans of the Civil War quietly settled down to their old occupations ; but many of the cobblers and draymen who had led them in battle were hanged at Tyburn. Speaking of some of these, " I saw not their execution," says Evelyn ; " but met their quarters, manglecf and cut, and reeking, as they were brought from the gallows in baskets on the hurdle. Oh, the miraculous providence of God !" The Marquis of Argyle, for complicity with Cromwell, was executed in Scotland. Now were raised those forces which formed the nucleus of the future British army ; but it must be borne in mind that England and Scotland had, until the union, their own separate establishments, the troops of neither being permitted to cross the borders. In England we find from the " Mercurius Publicus" that in 1660-61 there were His Majesty's Own Life Guard, under Lord Gerard, of Brandon; the Duke of York's Life Guard, under Sir Charles Barklay ; and another corps of Life Guards, under Monk, now Duke of Albemarle. These three were troops of horse. There were two regiments of Foot Guards; one being Monk's Coldstreamers, and the Royal Regiment of Guards, then at Dunkirk, under Lord '' Wentworth, in which " the old Earle of Cleveland now trailed a pike,'' under the orders of his own son (Evelyn). After various vicissitudes there, this corps returned to England, and eventually became that which is now called the First or Grenadier Guards. In 1664 it consisted of twenty- four companies, or 2,400 men, exclusive of officers, and the half of these companies usually did gairison duty at Rochester and Dover. The Blues, called also " The Oxford Blues," from the title of their first commander, Aubrey de Vere, Earl of Oxford, K.G., were embodied in 1661. In Scotland, at the Restoration, there were raised similar corps — viz., the Scottish Life Guards, of horse, embodied under Viscount Newburgh ; in the ranks oFthis corps many gentlemen, and some who had been officers, served as privates. In 1678, Murray of Newton, a private of this regi- ment, fought a duel with Lieutenant Gray, of the Midlothian Militia, who maintained that they were equal in rank. (" Lord Fountainhall," Vol. I.) The Scottish Foot Guards were restored, under the Earl of Linlithgow, then known as Lord Livingstone. Each company of this corps had then a piper; and in June, 1661, adjutants were first appointed to all these corps of guards, prior to which their duties had been done by a com- missioned sergeant-major. Among the corporals appears the name of Sir David Livingstone, Bart. (" Origin, &c., of Scots Fusilier Guards "). Lin- lithgow's regiment, long called the Third, is now known as the Scots Fusilier Guards, which first entered England in 17 13. In 1662 the Scottish Parliament made Charles an offer of 2,000 horse and 20,000 infantry, armed and furnished with forty days' provision, to march wherever he required them, against foreign invasion or domestic insurrection. In the spring of the precedmg year, Charles brought over from France the Scottish regiment of Douglas, now known as the ist or Royal Scots, 3i6 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Lowestoft. originally raised in the time of James VI. of Scotland, and its services were soon required in the suppression of those fanatics known as the " Millenarians " or "Fifth-Monarchy Men." The Queen's Regiment, now known as the 2nd Foot, was raised in 1661 ; and the 3rd, or Old Buffs, placed on the establishment four years subsequently, were so named from their accoutrements being of buff leather. Other corps were raised from time to time as their services were required. With the date of the Restoration, the history of the British army becomes in point of fact the history of all the contests in which the British nation has since that period been engaged. Each successive reign, moreover, added something to its numbers and efficiency; as each successive war brought with it some striking improvement in the mode of arming, drilling, and moving the men. Under Charles II. the cost of clothing the private soldiers was as follows : — Infantry, per man, ^£2 13s. ; dragoons, £6 los. ; horse, ;£g. The Scottish Fusiliers, now 21st Foot, raised in 1678, and so called from being armed with the fusil, invented in France, was the first corps which bore that weapon in Britain. During the reign of Charles the hand grenade came into permanent use, and the bayonet was invented at Bayonn6, whence its name. It was sometimes three-edged, but was usually flat like a dagger, and was stuck into the muzzle of the musket for close quarters. Bandoleers still lin- gered in use; but cartridge-boxes of tin, on the principle of the old " patron " of Elizabeth's time, were strongly recommended by Lord Orrery. At the Restoration, the tonnage of the royal navy was only 62,594 tons. In the month of August, 1678, it consisted of eighty-three sail, manned by 18,323* seamen. These were actually on service in that year, besides a number of hired armed vessels. Eleven large vessels had been launched, and nineteen were on the stocks, the whole making the navy amount to 113 sail, classed in six rates. The names borne by many of the ships under Cromwell were now altered. The Naseby became the Charles; the Speaker became the Mary ; the Dinibar was called the Henry; the Lambert the Henrietta; and so forth (see " Pepys' Diary"). In 1662 a judge-advocate was first appointed to the fleet ; in the following year servants were first allowed to the officers; and in 1664 a surgeon- general was first appointed. Five years after his restoration, Charles plunged into a naval war with Holland, for no cause that can be assigned, save that he wished to command the supplies voted for the purpose. This Dutch war, as we shall show, opened well, but closed ignobly. On the 4th of March, 1665, it was proclaimed by sound of trumpet, at the Exchange in London ; and the Duke of York (afterwards James II.), as Lord High Admiral of England, assumed com- mand of the fleet about the latter end of the month. " Great preparations for his speedy return to sea," says Pepys, under date the 6th. " I saw him try on his buff-coat and hat-piece, covered with black velvet. It troubles me more to think of his venture than of anything else in the whole warr." The preparations of England were clouded by a bad omen. On the very day the duke was trying on his buff coat, H.M.S. London, mounted with eighty guns, all brass, blew up near the buoy at the Nore; 300 of her crew were drowned, and Mr. Pepys went to 'Change with this news, where it " was taken very much to heart." The royal duke, wisely despising the narrow prejudices of rank and party, now called arounc? him the seamen and officers who had fought and conquered in all the naval battles of the Republic ; and with them under his orders his armament in- sulted the coast of Holland, and rode triumphant in the German Ocean. His fleet consisted of 109 ships of war, or other armed vessels, with twenty-eight fire-ships and ketches. These had on board 21,000 seamen and soldiers, acting as marines. The latter consisted chiefly of the Foot Guards — the Coldstreamers — 500 of whom were suppHed with matchlocks and collars of bandoleers from the Tower, on the 24th of February, 1665. A new corps, called the admiral's, was on this occasion raised, and probably laid the foundation of the marine regiments of later times. The fleet did not sail till the month of May. Many young gentlemen and nobles of the highest rank served on board as simple volunteers. Among others was young Lord Buckhurst, the future Earl of Dorset, like his companions Sedley and Rochester, one of the wildest gallants of the age, and who, on the fleet putting to sea, composed the celebrated song, "To All you Ladies now on Land." The duke was on board the Hoyal CJiarks, which, as a flagship, was allowed to have three lieu- tenants, four master's mates (each to have the pay of the master of a third-rate), and thirty midship- men. (Schomberg.) The English fleet was at sea before the Dutch and thus excited great consternation in Holland where the most active preparations were being Lowestoft.] CdURAGE OF THE DUKE OF YORK. 317 made, and where the States-General offered a reward of 50,000 florins for the capture or destruc- tion of an English admiral ; 30,000 for that of a vice-admiral; 203000 for that of any other flag- ship; and 10,000 feir any vessel above forty guns. (''Bruce on Military Law," 17 if) Near the Texel the duke continued cruising for fifteen days, to prevent the Dutch fleet coming out and effecting a junction with that of Zealand ; and while thus occupied, he captured many home- ward bound vessels, whose crews were totally igno- rant that war had been declared. Failing to draw out the grand fleet of the Dutch, and encountering a violent storm, he sailed from the mouth of the Texel, in hope of falling upon De Ruyter, who was returning to Holland; but provisions becoming short, he was obliged to bear up for the coast of England. Avaihng himself of this movement, the Dutch admiral, Baron Opdam de Wassenaer, came forth with die united fleet, in seven squadrons, thus : — 1. Baron Opdam's, fourteen ships, two fire-ships; 2. Vice-Admiral Evertzen's, fourteen ships, one fire-ship ; 3. Vice-Admiral Cortenaer's, fourteen ships, one fire-ship; 4. Stillingaurt's, fourteen ships, one fire-ship ; 5. Captain Van Tromp's, sixteen ships, two fire-ships ; 6. Captain Evertzen's, four- teen ships, one fire-ship; 7. Scheam's, sixteen ships, two fire-ships; making a total of 102 ships, ten fire-ships, with seven yachts. In this fleet were 4,869 guns and 22,000 men. Baron Opdam was soon over the Dogger Bank, that extensive ridge of sand which extends from within sixty miles of Jutland, nearly to Scarborough, in Yorkshire. Thence he detached a squadron to capture the English Hamburg fleet of nine mer- chant ships, which, together with their convoy, a 34-gun ship, fell into the enemy's hands. Incensed by these tidings, the duke put to sea from Southwold Bay on the ist of June, resolved to bring the Dutch to action. His fleet was divided into three squadrons. fhat under the Red Flag he led in person, assisted by Sir William Pen (or Penne), a native of Bristol, and Sir John Lawson. The former had been a cap'tain at the age of twenty-one, and rear- admiral in Ireland at twenty-three, and general in the first Dutch war at thirty-two. He belonged to the ancient family of the Pens of Pen Lodge, Wilt- shire. The second, or White Squadron, was led by Prince Rupert, assisted by his fav6urite officers. Captain Minnes and Captain Robert Sampson. "The third, or Blue Squadron, was under Edward, Earl of Sandwich, K.G., who, as Admiral Montague, had the honour of bringing the fleet to submit to Charles II., and to convoy him home, after Monk's march out of Scotland. He was assisted by Sir George Ayscue, Knight, and Captain, after- wards Sir Roger, Cuttance. The duke sighted the Dutch fleet not far from Harwich ; but the wind being southerly, and next morning blowing fresh from the south-west, they bore away towards the mouth of the Maese, whence Baron Opdam sent an express to the States- General, informing them that he did not conceive it wise to attack the English while they had the wind with them. But their High Mightinesses were by no means satisfied with this excuse, and ordered him to fight "let the wind be as it would, on peril of losing his head." Opdam, at a Council of War which he had assembled, finding that all the officers present were of his opinion, said, " I entirely agree with you, but here are my orders, and to-morrow shall see my head bound with laurel or with cypress." He then gave orders to weigh and put to sea, and after sailing all night, came up with the Duke off" Lowestoft on the morning of the 3rd of June. Brandt, in his "Life ofDe Ruyter," says the meet- ing took place " about ten leagues north-east by north of L'Aystoff." Basnage has it about eight leagues. Any way, the battle must have been witnessed by the people on the coast of Suffolk. The guns of the leading ships opened upon each other at three in the morning, while the sun was below the horizon, and there was but a faint light upon the sea. The Duke of York had the weather-gage; but as both fleets charged through each other several times with fury and intrepidity, pouring in their broadsides, this advantage was sometimes lost, which Basnage deems was a mistake on the part of the English, who should have quietly awaited the attack of the enemy. Hence, until one o'clock in the day. the're was no apparent advantage won on either side. At that hour the Earl of Sandwich, with the Blue Squadron, broke into the centre of the Dutch fleet, and thus completely separated it into two parts, which, by putting the whole into confusion, was the first step towards victory. The Duke of York, in the meantime, laid his ship, the Royal Charles, 80 guns, alongside that of Baron Opdam, the Endracht, 84 guns. The engagement with cannon and musketry, round and cross-bar shot, was close and deadly, and many times the duke, who — whatever the detractors of future years asserted — was undoubtedly a brave man, was many times in great peril. The Earl of Falmouth, 3i8 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Lowestoft. Lord Muskerry, and Richard Boyle, son of the Earl of Burlington, were all three killed by his side, by one chain-shot. " They were so near his Grace, that he was sprinkled with their blood and brains; and the Dutch writers say the prince himself was wounded in the hand by a spHnter of Mr. Boyle's head " (Lediard). Pepys says that Boyle's head struck down the duke. They also assert that the crew of Opdam had succeeded in cutting a passage on board of the Royal Charles, The explosion of his ship caused the greatest confusion and consternation in the fleet. Three others of his largest ships, the Coeverden, 60 guns, the Prince Maurice of Nassau, 50 guns, and two others of 40 guns, fell foul of each other in suc- cession, and suffered the same fate. The Orange of Zealand, a 7S-gun ship, with 400 men, having been disabled by the Mary, com- manded by Captain Smith, took fire, and every man on board perished in the flames or in the sea. FIREWORKS, FROM GUNS AND BOWS. (MIDDLE OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.) out of which they were driven by the Duke and his seamen. Amid the heat of this affair, the ship of the Dutch admiral suddenly blew up. With her there perished more than 500 men, a great number of whom were volunteers, and members of the best families in Holland. Only five men were saved. The Dutch say that Captain (afterwards Sir Jeremiah) Smith, perceiving that the Duke of York was imperilled by the boarders of Baron Opdam, crept alongside, and contrived to fire his magazine ; but it was more probably supposed to be the result of revenge by a black seaman whom the baron had punished. The " History of Holland " says it was the act of an English gunner who served on board. Captain Smith then ran his ship between the Royal Charles and the Urania, commanded by Captain Seaton, a Scotchman in the Dutch service, who had sworn to board the English admiral. She was a 76-gun ship, with 400 men. Smith killed Seaton and more than 200 of his men, and took the ship,- in the struggle losing ninety-nine men and all his officers, save himself and one lieutenant. His master lost a leg. (Pepys.) By four in the afternoon. Admiral Stillingaurt and Egbert Cortenaer, vice-admiral of the Maese, were lying dead on their decks, the former cut in two by a cannon-ball, and the latter by a dreadful wound in the thigh, and their ships bore out of the action without striking their flags, which drew many Lowestoft.] THE LOSSES OF THE DUTCH. 319 MAKING PROCLAMATION OF WAR BEFORE THE ROYAL EXCHANGE [see page 3l6). 320 BRiTISii BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [toweStoft. afler them, and thus added, if possible, to the con- fusion of the Dutch fleet. The author of Van Tromp's Life says that, before the Orange was destroyed by the Mary, her captain had boarded the Montague, and with his own hands had pulled dowrt the English flag, replacing it by that of the Prince of Zealand, which was kept flying for an hour, till the Montague was retaken by the Royal James, in which the Earls of Marlborough and Portland were killed. The captain of the Orange was saved only to die of his wounds. James Lee, Earl of Marlborough, was the officer sent in 1661 to take possession of Bombay. The whole Dutch fleet seemed now to be one blaze of fire, " and the cries of so many miserable wretches, perishing either by fire or water, seemed more dreadful than the noise of the cannon. The English gave their vanquished enemy all the assist- ance they could, while with continued fury they assailed the rest." Van Tromp still held out bravely, surrounded by a flaming and sinking fleet, and, with not more than thirty ships, continued the battle till eight in the evening, with all the dogged courage of a true Hollander, when he was forced to give way, and, with night descending on a wreck-strewn sea, to leave the English masters of it. As usual, the details of the losses on each side are very conflicting. On the side of the English, only one ship was lost, the Charity, 40 guns, which was captured early in the engagement by a Dutchman of 60 guns, after being hotly attacked by Van Tromp, and Captains Hiddes and Swart, and having half her men killed. In the English fleet, the killed amounted to only 250. Among those most re- gretted were Vice-Admirals Sampson and Sir John Lawson 5 and Captains the Earls of Portland and Marlborough; the wounded were 350. Of the Dutch fleet there were taken eighteen sail, and fourteen were set on fire and sunk ; 2,063 prisoners were taken, of these sixteen were captains,' who were all brought to Colchester ; and more than 4,000 of all ranks perished in the engagement. (Echard.) It was the 'general opinion that, had the English pursued Van Tromp, whose ships fled towards Vlie, the Maese, and Texel, with sufficient vigour, the last remains of the Dutch navy would have been taken and destroyed. The duke did not see this at the time, and stood in for the coast of England. He landed, and rode post to Whitehall, where he was congratulated in honour of the victory ; but, glorious though it was, the king and council did not think it proper to expose him to the dangers of a second engagement. Strangely enough, the Dutch asserted that the victory lay Vith them; and all the dunes about Dunkirk were blazing tvith bonfires in honour of it ; but the States-General; to convince the people; who Were greatly agitated and incensed in some parts of Holland; that the fcause of defeat lay with their own oflicersj four of them wer6 publicly and barbarously shot at the Helder j four were ordered to have their swords broken over their heads by the common hangman ; the master of Vice-Admiral Cortenaer's ship was ordered to stand upon a scaf- fold with a halter about his neck while the others were executed, after which he was banished. Two others were degraded, and rendered incapable of serving the States-General more, while Admiral Evertzen was nearly assassinated by the inhabitants of the Bridle. His brother admiral of the same name had been taken prisoner ; and Pepys relates that when he was brought before the Duke of York, and it was remarked that a shot had passed through his hat, he exclaimed, in bitterness of heart, that he wished it had passed through his head ! That this great battle was fought near Lowestoft, is evident fiom the following remark by the same diarist : — " Captain Grove, the duke told us this day, hath done the basest thing at Lowestoft, in hearing of the guns, and could not (as others) be got out, but staid there, for which he will be tried ; and is reckoned a prating coxcomb, and of no courage." With regard to the non-pursuit of the Dutch after the victory, the duke, afterwards King James, in his own memoirs, gives an account of the affair different from that which we meet with in any other historian. He relates that while he was asleep, Brounker, a gentleman of his bedchamber, went to Sir John Harman, captain of his ship, with orders to slacken sail. Sir John remonstrated, but obeyed. After some time, perceiving that his doing so was producing confusion in the fleet, he hoisted out the canvas and made Sail as before ; so that the duke, when soon after he appeared on the quarter-deck, and found all apparently as when he had left it, knew nothing of what had passed during his repose. It was long after that he heard of the circutnstance iricidentally, and he then in- tended to have brought Brounker before a court- martial ; but just about that time the House of Commons took up the question, and impeached him, which made it impossible for the duke to do more than dismiss him from his household. Brounker, when before the house, dared not to pretend that he had received any such order from the duke as that which he had delivered to Sir John Harman, Battles off Dunkirk.] THE GALLEYS OF FRANCE. 321 The latter officer, afterwards an admiral, commanded in the West Indies, where he defeated and destroyed in 1667 an allied French and Dutch fleet superior to his own, and burnt tlie admiral's ship of the former. Though the duke had brought the fleet to the Nore, he did not leave the sea open to the Dutch, to observe whose motions he dispatched the Diamond, Captain John Golding, and the Yarmouth, Captain AyHfife. These frigates happened to fall in with two direction ships, as the Dutch named them, each of 48 guns. One was commanded by a master, the other by Cornehus Evertzen the younger, and the four ships at once engaged. At the first broadside Golding was slain ; but his lieutenant, Davis, managed the conflict so well, in concert with the captain of the Yarmouth, that both the enemies' ships were taken and brought into port. (" King James's Memoirs.") " 26th April," Evelyn writes, " I presented young Captain Evertzen (eldest son of Cornelius, Vice-admiral of Zealand, and nephew of John, now admiral, a most valiant person) to His Majesty ir. his bedchamber. The king gave him his hand to kisse, and restored him his liberty." Charles did more, for he gave him his passport and fifty broad pieces of gold. In honour of the battle off Lowestoft, a medal was struck, having on its obverse side a fine profile of the duke, with the legend, "Jacobvs, Dux Ebor et Alban, Dora Magn. Admiralis AngUae," &c. On the reverse was a view of the battle, in which the Royal Charles was finely depicted, with the royal standard flying at her mainmast head, a flag with an anchor at the fore, the union on her jack-staff and also at her mizen-top, and St. George's cross at the stern. Around the medal was the proud inscription, " Nee minor in terris, 3 Jvnii, 1665." CHAPTER LVL THE FOUR days' BATTLE OFF DUNKIRK, 1 666. In this year the command of the fleet was entrusted to Prince Rupert and the Duke of Albemarle. At the pressing instance of the States-General, and to keep up the quarrel between two great maritime powers, to the end that both might be weakened, the King of France declared war against Britain on the 19th of January, and fitted out a fleet of thirty-six sail, besides galleys and fire-ships, under the Due de Beaufort, his admiral, to leave Toulon and enter the Channel. Of these galleys we have a description in the diary of Evelyn. They were rowed by slaves, whose action the captain could command by a nod and a whistle. "The spectacle was new to me," Evelyn adds, "and most strange, to see so many hundreds of miserably naked persons, having their heads shaven close, and having only high red bonnets, a payre of coarse canvas drawers, their whole back ' and leggs naked, doubly chained about their middle and leggs in couples, and made fast to their seates, and all commanded in a trice, by an imperious and cruell seaman. One Turke he much favoured, who waited on him in his cabin, but with no other dress than the rest, and a chajTie locked about his leg, but not coupled." These galleys were frequently beautifully carved and gilded ; and the diarist tells us that when they began to move, the bending of the slaves al their sweeps, " and the noyse of their chaines, with the roaring of the beaten waters, had something strange and fearfuU to one unaccustomed to it." Holland had now a formidable ally. In the lapse of a few years Louis XIV. had replenished his treasury, created a naval force, augmented his army, and appointed magazines for miUtary stores. Colbert and Luvois, the former equal to Sully as a financier, were his ministers ; Condd and Turenne, both in the prime of life, were his generals; so France at that time had just reason to be proud of herself. When Beaufort sailed for the Channel, the Dutch fleet under De Ruyter, Evertzen, and Van Tromp, to the number of seventy-six sail, was at sea when the duke was supposed to be entering the Channel — we say supposed, because, for many unaccountable reasons, he did not come to Belle- isle-en-Mer, where he was to join the Dutch, till the end of September. 322 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Battles off Dunkirk. The English fleet under Rupert and Albemarle did not exceed seventy-four sail when it came to anchor in the Downs on the 29th of May. Among the troops embarked on board the. fleet were 300 men of the Guards, who marched from London on the 28th of March. Albemarle, who, from his successes under the Protector, somewhat underrated the Dutch, proposed to detach Prince Rupert with twenty sail — the whole of the white squadron — to the Isle of Wight, to oppose the Due de Beaufort. Sir George Ayscue, who was well acquainted with the skill and valour of De Ruyter and Van Tromp, protested against the temerity of the resolution to weaken the strength of the fleet ; but the superior authority of Albemarle prevailed, and the remainder of the fleet set sail to give battle to the Dutch, of whom they came in sight off Dunkirk on the ist of June. The enemy cut their hempen cables at once, in their eagerness to engage, and the battle that ensued is one of the most memorable that has yet been recorded in history, whether we consider the length of its duration, four successive days, or the desperate courage with which both sides main- tained it. By the most heroic valour, the Duke of Albe- marle made every atonement for the rashness of the attempt ; and no youth, not even the fiery and headlong Rubert, could have exerted himself more than did this old soldier of the Common- wealth, who had now attained the highest honours that can accrue to a subject, and was then in the decline of life. By eleven o'clock on the morning of the 2nd of June, it was known by a dispatch from Albemarle that a battle had begun, and orders were given to dispatch at once 200 more soldiers to the fleet. " Down to Blackwall," says Pepys, " and there saw the soldiers — who were by this time getting most of them drunk — shipped off. But, Lord ! to see how the poor fellows kissed their wives and sweet- hearts in that simple manner at their going off, and shouted, and let off their guns, was strange sport." And all the 3rd and 4th the din of cannon was heard in the air at London, as both Pepys and Evelyn tell ; but a letter, from the Governor of Dover Castle asserted that what was taken for cannon was only thunder. Favoured by the same wind which bore Prince Rupert to the Isle of Wight, to look for a foe who never appeared, the whole Dutch fleet, as we have said, now stood confidently towards the uselessly diminished armament of the Duke of Albemarle, then amounting to between fifty and sixty sail ; and the wind was blowing so keenly from the 'south- west that his fleet careened so much as to render the lower tier of guns useless. De Ruyter had under his orders an armament carrying 4,716 guns and 22,000 men. He led in person the squadron of the Maese. That of North Holland and Friesland was led by Evertzen, and that of Zealand by the younger Van Tromp. Notwithstanding his great supe- riority in strength, De Ruyter, in a letter to the States-General, confesses that, in the battle which ensued, and which lasted so many days, the English were always the assailants, and that it was they who began the action "by attacking the Dutch as they lay at anchor, between Dunkirk and the North Foreland, and with such im- petuosity that they were obliged to cut their cables to put themselves in a posture to receive them." i The battle was begun by Vice-Admiral Sir I William Berkeley,, who, when leading the van, ! carried his ship, the Siviftsttre, into the thickest I of the enemy, who attacked her on all sides. Being a second-rate, she was ere long compelled to strike, and, with two others, was taken by the Dutch boarders, who found Sir William lying dead in his cabin and covered with blood. He lay on the table, with a musket-ball in his throat. As ship after ship engaged, the Dutch directed their fire chiefly at the sails and rigging of the English, seeking to disable them, and as they made plenti- ful use of cross-bar and chain shot, they were found very destructive. The English had the advantage of the wind, but we are told that it increased so much during the action, that they could make no steady use of their matchlocks ; but this con- tingency must also have affected the Dutch. De Ruyter obtained an opportunity for tacking with advantage, while the English cannon made the most dreadful havoc among the squadron of Van Tromp, whose own ship was so shattered, as well as that of Vice-Admiral Van Neez, that he was compelled to shift his flag on board another, commanded by Jacob Swartz. De Ruyter, upon coming to his assistance, soon shared the same fate, his ship being almost beaten to pieces ; while that of Count Tralow was blown up with nearly all on board, the shattered remains of men and blazing splinters falling in a shower upon the con' tending ships. The Prince of Monaco, the Count de Guiche, and a few others contrived to get overboard in time to reach in safety the ship of Captain Van Gueldre. Struggling against the wind and the enemy. Van Tromp behaved with the most un- Battles off Dunkirk.] SIR JOHN HARMAN. 333 paralleled bravery; and the " History of the United Provinces " asserts that he sank one English ship of fifty guns, another of seventy, and burned three others of seventy guns each, which is probably an exaggeration, though this account is followed by Rapin, who was always favourable to the Hol- landers. The greatest loss the Dutch sustained he asserts to have been the death of Vice-Admiral Evertzen, who was slain by a cannon-ball. Prior to this event his squadron had surrounded the Essex and the Henry, commanded by Sir John Harman, whose intrepid conduct is worthy of record. The Essex, a third-rate, was taken; the Henry, being assailed on both sides and raked fore and aft. Admiral Evertzen hailed her through his trumpet, and offered quarter. " No, sir," replied Sir John Harman ; " it is not come to that yet." Evertzen fell by the next broadside, and in the confusion consequent to this occurrence the Henry fought her way oflf. Three fire-ghips were then sent to* bum her. One of these grappled her on the starboard quarter ; but the smoke was so thick that her crew could not draw the grappling irons, when they were hooked, until the flames burst forth, when her boatswain yesplutely leaped on board, disentangled the iron, cast off the fire-ship, and regained his own. Scarcely was this courageous act effected when she was grappled on the port side by another fire- ship ; her sails and rigging took flame ; destruction seemed inevitable, and as some 6f her crew pre- pared to jump into the sea, Sir John Har;nan drew his sword, and threatened to kill the first man who attempted to quit the ship. This stem energy restored prder; the fire-ship was cast off; the flames were extinguished, and Sir John Harman, though his leg was broken by a shot, says one account— by a burning yard, that fell from aloft, says another — continued on deck giving his orders, by which the third fire-ship was sunk and sail made on the ship. Crippled though she was, he got her into Harwich, where she was repaired in sufficient time to share in the subse- quent actions. De Witt, the original inventor of chain-shot, was on board the Dutch fleet, which now lost another great ofiicer in Vice-Admiral Stackhoven. John Campbell, in his "Lives of the Admirals," 1742-44, asserts that the battle of the ist of June, 1666, " was the most terrible fought in this war. It was by no means easy to say who were the victors upon the whole, or what was the loss of the vanquished." The loss of the English was computed at sixteen men-of-war, of which ten were sunk and six taken ; the loss of the Dutch was fifteen ships. The London Gazette of the 7th of June, 1666, states that the Duke of Albemarle " had all his tackle taken off" by chain-shot, and his breeches to his skin were shot off." Campbell states that he " was much blamed for his rashness and great contempt of the Dutch ; but he thought that fighting was, almost on any terms, preferable to mnning away in a nation who pretend to the dominion of the sea." Darkness alone parted the combatants, and the whole night was spent in repairing and refitting. By daybreak on the moming of the 2nd of June the cannonading was resumed ; but previous to this a council of war had been held, by candlelight, on board the head-quarter ship, wherein the Duke of Albemarle delivered this opinion : — " That if we had dreaded the number of the enemy yesterday. we should have-fled; but though we are inferior to them in ships, we are in all things else superior. Force gives them courage. Let us, if we need it, borrow resolution from what we have formerly performed. Let the enem:y feel that though our fleet be divided (referring to the absence of the White Squadron), our spirit is entire. At the worst, it will be more honourable to die bravely here on our own element than be made spectacles to the Dutch. To -be overcome is the fortune of war; but to fly is the fashion of cowards. So let us teach the world that English- men would rather be acquainted with death than fear!" These noble words elicited a burst of applause ; every captain repaired to his ship, and the action was at once renewed with, if possible, increased fury, a few hours' pause only occurring by the inter- vention of a calm, till about noon, when a breeze sprang up. Van Trovnp, before the wind, rashly bore into the midst of thp English fleet, and being raked on all sides, had a narrow escape, and had once more, as on the preceding day, to shift his flag. Admiral Vander Hulst, who bore up to his assistance, was killed by a musket-shot ; and had not De Ruyter, with sixteen newly-arrived ships, borne in to his assistance, the great Van Tromp had been then taken or sunk. He and De Ruyter, though rivals in glory, and enemies from faction, exerted them- selves in emulation of each other; but by this reinforcement of the Dutch, Albemarle found him- self overmatched, and their historians state that three of his ships were burned by their own crews and abandoned. Hard pressed now, he bore in fqr the coast of England. With sixteen of his 32 + BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Battles off Dunkirk. least shattered ships he covered this retreat, kept the enemy in check, and made a running fight of it. The Dutch continued to follow, but at such a distance that the firing gradually ceased, till the loo guns, under Sir George Ayscue, Admiral of the White, was stranded on the shoals near the Galloper sandbank, where she was surrounded by the Dutch and set on fire, Sir George and all her crew being taken prisoners. GENERAL MONK, DUKE OF ALBEMARLE. afternoon, when just as they were coming within range again, a fleet of twenty-five sail was dis- covered to the southward, crowding all sail towards them ; and with hearty cheers that rang over the sea the retreating English hailed the succouring White Squadron under Prince Rupert. Albemarle now instantly hauled to the wind, the more readily and speedily to effect a junction. In performing this manoeuvre the Royal Prince, This capture of an English admiral caused great exultation among the Dutch, notes Captain Schom- berg in his "Naval Chronology;" and this event has been assigned by some sea officers as a reason why the EngHsh do not hoist the red flag at the main. Ayscue was Admiral of the White ; the distinguishing flag of a Red squadron has ever been the Union, or flag of the Lord High Admiral ; and Sir George, on his return to England, was set Battles off Dunkirk.] SIR WILLIAM MINNES SLAIN. 325 aside, for in those days error or misfortune were crimes. Pepys says he was " carried up and down the Hague for the people to see; and that Sir William Berkeley's body was shown in a sugar chest, with his flag set up beside him." Nightfall of the 3rd saw the Dutch fleet in triumph surrounding the flaming Frmce Royals but on the morning of the 4th, Albemarle and Rupert, now united, stood towards them, with all their sails set, the trumpets sounding and drums wrecked aloft and shattered below that they had to be towed out of the engagement. The Dom Van Utrecht struck her flag to the Duke of Albemarle^ but was afterwards relieved. Several of the English vessels were terribly cut up, and fell into the hands of the enemy. Rear- Admiral Sir William Minnes having received, like Sir William Berkeley, a musket-shot in his throat, could not be persuaded to have it dressed or to leave the deck, but held his fingers to the wound CHATHAM IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (FROM AN OLD VIEW). beating in every ship, the seamen waving in de- fiance their hats and the ofiicers their plumed beavers. With equal valour, anvas ca,rried on, {"entland Hilts.] THE BROKEN COVENANT. 329 CHAPTER LVni. PENT LAND HILLS, 1 666. In Pepy's Diary he notes the following on the 30th of November : — "To White Hall; and pretty to see — it being St. Andrew's Day — how some few did wear St. Andrew's Cross ; but most did make a mockery at it, and the House of Parliament, contrary to practice, did sit also ; people having no 'mind to observe the Scotch saint's day till they hear better news from Scotland." Elsewhere he tells us that the news referred to was a rumour that had reached London of 4,000 men in Scotland having taken arms for the Covenant. England had now become, so far as the habits of its people were concerned, a land of peace, and more apt to be startled by the idea of a war on land. But, as Creasy has it, " the Scotch were less pacific among themselves, and discarded their belligerent propensities later than was the case among their Southern neighbours." In no part of the empire had the Restoration been hailed with greater delight than in Scotland, where it was regarded as the restitution of regal independence. The Parliament once more met, as of old, and Scottish law was administered once again, as it is still ; but with England at his back, the king, undeterred by the terrible past, felt him- self in the position his father had once occupied, and like him attempted to force his own forms of religion upon the Scottish people. " The Govern- ment," to quote Macaulay, "resolved to set up a prelatical church in Scotland. The design was disapproved by every Scotsman whose judgment was entitled to respect. Some Scottish statesmen who were zealous for the king's prerogative had been bred Presbyterians. Though little troubled with scruples, they retained a preference for the religion of their childhood ; and they well knew how strong a hold that religion had on the hearts of their countrymen. They remonstrated strongly; but when they found that they remonstrated in vain, they had not virtue enough to persist in an opposition that would have given offence to their master; and several of them stooped to the wicked- ness and baseness of persecuting what in their consciences they believed to be the purest form of Christianity. The Scottish Parliament was so con- stituted that it scarcely ever offered serious opposi- tion to kings much weaker than Charles was. Episcopacy was therefore established by law, and as to the form of worship a large discretion was left to the clergy. The people, in defiance of the law, persisted in meeting to worship God after their own fashion.' . . . Driven from the towns, they assembled on heaths and mountains. At- tacked by the civil power, they without scruple repelled force by force. At every conventicle they mustered in arms. They repeatedly broke out into rebellion. They were easily defeated, and mercilessly punished ; but neither defeat nor punish- ment could subdue their spirit. Hunted down Hke wild beasts, tortured till their bones were beaten flat, hanged by scores, exposed at one time to the licence of soldiers, abandoned at another to the mercy of troops, of marauders from the Highlands, they still stood at bay in a mood so savage that the boldest and mightest oppressor could not but dread the audacity of their despair." Bishops for the new dioceses were consecrated in England, and by an Act of the Scotch Privy Council, ordering the ejectment of all recusant ministers, 350 were expelled from their manses in one day. And this tyranny was attempted among a free people, in a land that never nurtured fools or cowards, after all the wars, battles,, and bloodshed in defence of the Covenant; after all the armies levied and lives and treasure lost since 1638. All meetings for prayer and sermon now took place in arms; and alarmed by the spirit of re- sistance he had evoked, remembering, too, perhaps, the downward career of his father, Charles IT. changed the Scottish ministry. But the change came too late, for again the banner which had been displayed so often before " for an oppressed Kirk and broken Covenant " was unfurled on the moun- tains, and a body of the Presbyterians rose in arms. The Lairds of Barscob and Corsack routed a party of the national forces, under Colonel Sir James Turner, at Dairy, and then began their march at once for Edinburgh, the seat of govern- ment. This was in the autumn of 1666. They at first proposed to shoot Turner, but spared his life on discovering that his conduct to the people had been much less severe than the written orders found on his person inculcated. The commander-in-chief of the Scottish army at this time was Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Dalzell, of Binns, who, after serving in Russia, 33° BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Pentland Hills. whither he had fled after Worcester, had returned with a heart full of zeal for the king and rancour against the Presbyterians in every form. He merely viewed them as a sect which had brought so many of the Scottish Cavahers to the scaffold, and which had basely sold their monarch to his enemies ; and to this spirit must be attributed many of the fierce and relentless acts committed by this then veteran officer, though the history of them must always be accepted with caution. which they groaned ; they desired that episcopacy might be put down, that the Covenant might be set up, their ministers restored to them, and then they promised that they would be, in all other things, the king's most obedient subjects. Most simple and just were the demands of these poor people ; but the king was an alien now, and their nobles were pitiful in their servility. General Dalzell followed them closely from place to place with his cavalry, the flower of which were the iM^S/::tX- THE PENTLAND HILLS. Concentrating at Edinburgh all the detachments which were dispersed about the adjacent country for the suppression of armed conventicles, Dalzell marched westward, by the Glasgow road, to meet these insurgents, whose strength was ever varying, and whose numbers were greatly exaggerated, according to the wishes of their friends or the fears of their enemies. Bishop Burnet records that " a great many came to the rebels, who were called 'whiggs.'" At Lanark, in Clydesdale, they held a solemn fast- day, in which, after much praying, they renewed the Covenant, and set forth their manifesto, in which they denied that they rose against the king, but complained of the oppressions under Scottish Life Guards. He published a proclama- tion, offering pardon to all who within twenty-four hours returned to their own houses ; he threatened with death all who were taken with arms in their hands after that short period. He found the whole of the peasantry so completely in the interest of the insurgents, that he could obtain no informa- tion concerning their strength, intentions, or move- ments, save the vague and contradictory rumours brought in by his patrols of horse ; and thus, while he was searching for them in the west country, they suddenly appeared within four miles of Edin- burgh. During this march their numbers had been con- siderably augmented ; but few men of any influence f entland Mills.] PURSUIT OF THE COVENANTERS. 331 ^32 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Pentland Hills. joined them, as most of the Covenanting gentry had been committed to various prisons and castles, on pretence that the war with the Dutch rendered their safe detention necessary. Ill-armed, and almost totally undisciplined, the insurgents, on halting in the vicinity of the Pent- land Hills, mustered only 3,000 horse and foot. The command of the whole was now taken by an Ayrshire gentleman, Colonel James Wallace, of Auchans, a descendant of the Wallaces of Dun- donald, an officer who had served with great distinction in former wars, who had been lieu- tenant-colonel of Argyle's Highland regiment in Ireland, and had seen service at the battles of Benburb, Kilsythe, and Dunbar, when he was lieutenant-colonel of the Scots Foot Guards. Wallace knew well how desperate was the situa- tion of his slender force, thus he left nothing undone to ensure a victory that might lead to greater triumphs, or ensure a resistance that would avenge defeat and fall. A memoir of General Dalzell states that " on reaching the secluded village of Colintori, which lies in a deep and wooded hollow, they learned that in Edinburgh, where they had expected a great accession to their strength, the citizens, under their provost. Sir Andrew R^-msay, were in arms against them, and had made vigorous pre- parations for a defence. The barrier gates were shut and fortified by cannon ; the gentlemen of the neighbouring shires had been summoned to defend the walls; the College of Justice had formed a corps of cavalry ; and all gentlemen in the city who possessed horses were ordered to mount and appear in arms in the Meal Market, under the young Marquis of Montrose, to await the orders of General £)al2ell. The latter sent Alexander Seton, Viscount Kingston, with a body of the Guards, to the old quarries in Bruntsfield Links, with orders to lie there concealed, as across these Links lay the direct road to the quarters of the insurgents, who had many friends in the capital ; but they, overawed by the Cavalier Government, according to Kirkton, cpuld only fast and pray for them." Colonel Wallace, on hearing of these prepara- tions, marched along the northern slopes of the Pentlands, in the hope of effecting a retreat to Biggar; for now, dogged by Dalzell, and battered by fjie November storms of wind and rain, the unhappy Covenanters began to lose heart, and as their spirits sank so did their numbers, which from 3,000 dwindled down to little more than 900 hungry, wet, and famished creatures. The colonel began to see the utter hoplessness of success now, and that there was nothing left for them but to die like men, with their arms in their hands. By his side were Captain Paton, of Meadowhead> and Sergeant John Nisbet, of Hardhill, brave and resolute men, who had served in foreign wars, and were fine specimens of their cause and class, whose ancestors were among the old Lollards of Kyle. "We are not unwilling to die for religion and liberty," said they; "yea, we would esteem a testi- mony for the Lord and our country a sufficient reward for all our loss and labour." To General Dalzell they wrote a long and most pathetic letter, setting forth their religious griev- ances ; but the only answer returned to it was the sound of the trumpets and kettledrums, when, on the morning of the 28th of November, this officer, who was remarkable for the vast length of his beard, which he had never shorn since the death of Charles I., and for the antiquity of his military equipment, at the head of more than 3,000 horse and foot, traversed the western side of the Pent- lands. With colours flying, his troops descended towards a place called Rullion Green, where the 900 devoted men of Wallace awaited them quietly and resolutely, with their swords and Bibles in their hands, and singing the 74th and 78th Psalms. They stood in line, their flanks covered by a few toil-worn horsemen, and all blew their matches as Dalzell approached. His infantry first assailed them ; but such was the desperation and so high was the religious enthusiasm of these men, that twice they repulsed the troops of the line. The latter were then drawn off, and the attack was renewed by Dalzell's horse. These were the Life Guards, the finest cavalry in Scotland, being chiefly Cavaliers, all well mounted and briUiantly accoutred. By a single charge, in which they were led by Dalzell, they bore down horse and foot alike, by dint of sword and hoof, when the shadows of evening were darkening in the grassy glen. Fifty men were cut down on the spot, and many more were wounded. Among the former were two Irish clergymen, named Andrew M'Cormick and John Crookshank, who perished in the front rank. Dalzell and Captain John Paton met hand to hand in this brief conflict, and had exchanged several blows, before a press of troopers separated them. Paton then discharged- his pistols at the general, off whose buff coat the balls were alleged to recoil harmlessly (as the peasantry believed him to be in league with the devil, and that water would boil in his boots). On perceiving this, and re- membering that he was shot-proof, the captain, according to a superstitious historian, loaded one The Dutch in the Medway.3 ESCAPE OF CAPTAIN PATON. 333 of his pistols with a silver coin ; but this manoeuvre was observed by Dalzell, so he stepped behind a soldier, who fell, pierced by the coin, which was supposed to be proof against any spell; but the same foolish legend is told of Lord Dundee, at ICillycrankie. As Paton rode from the field, Dalzell ordered him to be pursued, and three troopers overtook him just as he was about to leap his horse across a ditch. By a single backhanded stroke, he clove the head and helmet of one like a nutshell, and the other two fell headlong into the ditch, where they lay under their struggling chargers. " Give my compliments to Dalzell, and tell him that I am not going home witli him to-night," said Paton, as he galloped away. John Nisbet, of Hardhill, a tall and powerful man, fell on the field covered with wounds, but was found aUve next day, as he was being stripped for burial among the dead, and survived to be a captain of musketeers at the battle of Bothwell Bridge. On seeing that all was lost in an instant, Colonel Wallace left the field, and, favoured by the dark- ness, took a north-westerly direction along the hills, and escaped. After much privation he reached the Continent, where he died in penury, at Rotter- dam, in 1678. The " gentlemen " of the Life Guards, inspired by pity, spared the fugitives, who escaped amid the gloom of the November night ; but eighty prisoners (130 according to Bishop Burnet), among whom was the unfortunate Laird of Corsack, were taken, and brought into Edinburgh, where a royal salute was fired' as they were marched through the streets, their escort with trumpets sounding and kettledrums beating. It is recorded in Crookshank's History that " Andrew Murray, an aged Presbyterian min- ister, when he saw the ferocious Dalzell, in his rusted head-piece, buff coat, and long waving beard, riding at the head of his Cavalier squadrons, who, flushed with victory, surrounded the manacled pri- soners with drawn swords and cocked carbines; and when he heard the shouts of acclamation from the people, was so overpowered with grief for what he deemed the downfall for ever of God's covenanted Kirk, that he became ill and expired." Within a rude enclosure, which may yet be seen, the dead who fell on both sides were interred. A few trees overshadow the spot, and a monument to their memory bears the following inscription : " Here and near this place, lyes {sic) the Rev. John Cruickshank and Mr. Andrew M'Cormick, minis- ters of the Gospel, and about fifty other true cove- nanted Presbyterians, who were killed in this place, in their own innocent self-defence, and defence of the covenanted work of Reformation, by Thomas Dalziel, of Bins. Rev. xii. 11. Erected, September, 1788." Apart from the rest, one solitary grave is still shown by the side of the mountain bum, now called the Deadman's Grain, from the circumstance of a wounded Covenanter falling there when pur- sued by a Cavalier trooper. Drawing a pistol from his holster, he fired it at his pursuer beneath his bridle-arm, but missing, shot his own horse in the flank. It fell, and he was instantly slain. At Easton, in Dunsyre, there was long visible one lonely grave, in which, according to tradition, lay a fugitive Covenanter, who had expired by the wayside of wounds received at the Pentlands. It was opened in 1817, and found to contain the skeleton of a tall man, with two silver coins of the year 1620. On being touched the bones crumbled into dust. An announcement of the encounter at Pentland is contained in the London Gazette of the 6th of December, 1666, which also records the bestowal of the Garter on Prince Rupert, Count Palatine of the Rhine. CHAPTER LIX. THE DUTCH IN THE MEDWAY, 1667. In a work called " The Invasions of England," we are told that the Dutch have the honour of being the last nation whose fleet has entered the Thames in defiance of England, and the last that has destroyed English shipping and English arsenals, almost in the heart of England's power. Between that time and the days of the Armada, a vast ad- vance had been made in naval science, skill, and the construction of ships. Among many other useful inventions by Sir Samuel Morland, of Berks, was the drum-capstan for weighing heavy anchors ("Aubrey's Surrey"). Three-deckers had been introduced by Phineas Pett, the great "work- master" of the navy during the reigns of James I. 334 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [The Dutch in the Medway. and Charles I.; and during the era of Cromwell the greatest regard was shown for the full development of our naval resources. The Dutch had shown similar zeal ; and under De Ruyter, Van Tromp, and others, their fleets and seamen were only second to those of Monk and Blake, their conquerors. The States-General spent on the war about forty millions of livres annually, a much greater sum than was granted by the Parliament of England ; hence it was no doubt the want of money which compelled Charles to pay his seamen with tickets, a contrivance which ended so much to their loss. The expense of the vast armaments was exhausting the supphes of England, and the king had resolved to save, as far as possible, the last subsidy of ;^i, 800,000, and to employ a portion of it for the payment of his debts, and those which were consequent to the war. With all the alleged faults of his brother James II., Britons should ever remember that he loved the navy well, and that while Duke of York he did their forefathers good and gallant service on the quarter-deck; and he was one of the very few honest men at the Admiralty amid the corruption that had grown out of the Commonwealth ; but all his exertions could not save that shameful profu- sion of the funds which should have armed the ships and paid the seamen, and which exposed England to be attacked in her own rivers, and even raised in the minds of the Dutch admirals projects for seiz- ing and fortifying positions on her shore. After the great sea-battles off" Lowestoft, Dun- kirk, and elsewhere, the fleet began to be neglected, and the streets of the seaport towns were filled with idle seamen, unpaid and starving; very few ships, and these of inferior size, were kept afloat for service. De Ruyter, Holland's greatest adminal, and De Witt, her greatest statesman, deemed that now the time had come to deal England a deadly home-thrust, and in the month of June, 1667, they sent to sea a fleet of at least seventy sail. In the month prior to this a Dutch squadron had entered the Firth of Forth, under Admiral Van Ghent, while the troops were in the west country, under Dalzell and Claverhouse. Bishop Burnet states that during the war the Scots had fitted out numerous armed ships, and taken many valuable prizes. Pepys says that the Scottish privateers had galled the Dutch more than all the English fleet ; and the States-General, pro- voked at this, had sent Van Ghent to Scotland Avith special orders to waste the coast, and seize all the ships he could find. He entered the Forth on the I St of May, and if he ha4 hpisted EngHsh colours he might with ease have destroyed Leith, the harbour of which was full of shipping ; instead of which he contented himself by exchanging shots with a small fort on Burntisland, where there was a Scottish garrison, among whom Van Ghent threw 500 cannon-balls ; but he was gone by the 30th of the same month, when an English squadron of seventeen sail, under Sir Jeremiah Smith, came to anchor in the roads of Leith, and on this occasion, as on others, his ships fired a salute, to which the cannon in the castle of Edinburgh, the citadel of Leith, and Burntisland replied ; for though under one king, the countries were yet as much, or more, apart as Norway and Sweden are to-day. The expedition of Van Ghent to the North was merely a feint to draw the attention of the English Government from their own shores, off which, immediately on his forming a junction with De Ruyter, the united Dutch fleet appeared, and then scenes ensued which the writers of English history seem disposed to notice as briefly and hurriedly as possible. On the 7 th of June, De Ruyter was at the mouth of the Thames, which he completely blocked up. He then sent seventeen of his lightest vessels, with four barques and as many fire-ships, up the river, under the orders of Vati Ghent and Cornelius de Witt, brother of the Pensionary, and one of the deputies of the States-General on board the fleet. The warnings of the duke had caused ere this a fort to be erected at Sheerness, a chain or boom to be thrown across the Medway at the Stakes, guns to be mounted on proper batteries, and the pre- paration of a competent number of fire-ships. On the first alarm, old Monk, the Duke of Albemarle, with some of the Foot Guards, hastened to the mouth of the Medway, where he erected batteries, and moored ships to guard the boom, in front of which 'and, in the narrowest part of the river, he sunk five vessels to bar the way ; thus causing an insuperable obstruction to the Dutch, who were compelled to fall back with the ebb tide, but only for a time. A distant firing was kept up for some hours between an eight-gun battery, the ships guarding the boom, and the Dutch, who could not proceed, as the sunken vessels admitted the passage of but one ship at a time. On this. Captain Jan Brakel, captain of a small frigate in the squadron of the Maese, whom Cornelius de Witt had that morning placed under arrest for some breach of discipline, solicited permission to go on board his vessel. It was accorded, on which he instantly passed the The Dutch in the Medway.] CONSTERNATION IN LONDON. 335 chain, and grappling with an English frigate, took her by boarding. The chain was now broken or cast loose by a body of seamen who landed under a fire from some troops on shore, and broke the bar to which it was secured. Four ships were now set in flames, the Mathias, the Unity, and two others, all recently taken from the Dutch; the Royal Charles, loo guns, was abandoned by her crew and taken (" Davis's Hol- land," &c.). The fortifications at Sheerness were stormed and destroyed, with naval stores to the value of 400,000 livres, according to the Dutch historians. Still advancing, with seven vessels and some fire-ships, up the river to Upnor Castle, De Witt and De Ruyter, who took a personal share in this perilous enterprise, fired the Royal Oak, the Royal London, and the Great James, three first-rate men- of-war. Though Lediard and others state that they were roughly handled by Major Scott, who com- manded some troops in the castle, and by Sir Edward Spragge, from the opposite bank, they landed some seamen and seized all the artillery and ammunition they could find. A fair wind springing up, De Ruyter resolved to drop down the river _with it, taking with him the hull of the Royal Charles, which had been twice set on fire by her own crew. The English officers and men, as the subsequent trials proved, seem to have become bewildered, or to have lost their presence of mind. Captain Douglas, of the Royal Oak, was one noble exception. When his ship was set on fire, and he was desired to quit her, he replied, " It shall never be said that a Douglas quitted his post without orders !" and so he perished with his ship (Temple, Vol. II.). The Dutch got out to sea again, with the loss of 150 men, and two of their vessels which ran aground and were burned by their crews. Their fleet stiU lay off the mouth of the Thames, and London speedily felt the miseries of a blockade. " Fuel," says Macaulay, " was scarcely to be procured. Tilbury Fort, the place where Elizabeth had hurled foul scorn at Parma and Spain, was insulted by the invaders. The roar of foreign guns was heard for the first and last time by the citizens of London. In the Council it was seriously proposed that if the erlemy advanced the town should be abandoned. Great multitudes of people assembled in the streets, crying out that England was bought and sold. The houses and carriages of the Ministers were attacked by the populace ; and it seemed likely that the Government would have to deal at once with an invasion and with an insurrection." Pepys relates that many EhgHshmen were re- ported to be on board the Dutch fleet, and that they were heard crying to each other, in English, "We did heretofore fight for tickets; now we fight for dollars !" The following passages in his " Diary" illustrate the wretched mismanagement of the time : — "Several seamen came tome this moaning to tell me that if I would get their tickets paid they would go and do all they could against the Dutch, but other- wise they would not venture being killed, and lose all they had already fought for ; so that I was forced to try what I could do to get them paid. . . . Indeed, the hearts as well as the affections of the seamen are turned away; and in the open streets of Wapping the wives have cried publicly, ' This comes of your not paying our husbands ; and now your work is undone, or done by hands that understand it not' " In another plg,ce the Commissioner notes : " Did business, though not much, at the Navy, Office, because of the horrible crowd and lamentable moans of the poor seamen that were starving in the streets for lack of money, which do trouble and perplex me to the heart ; and more at noon, when we were to go through them, for then above a hundred of them followed us, some cursing, some swearing, and some praying to us." Leaving Admiral Van Nes with a squadron to block up the Thames, De Ruyter sailed for Ports*- mouth, with designs against the shipping there ; but measures being concerted for its defence by the Earl of Macclesfield and Captain Elliot, led him to menace Torbay and Harwich, after which he again returned to the Thames ; and the terror of his presence was so great, that in fear of his forcing a passage to London Bridge, thirteen ships were sunk in the river at Woolwich and four at Black- wall, and platforms furnished with artillery were raised in various commanding positions at the bends or reaches of the stream. The whole coast of England was now in a state of ferment and con- sternation; and on the night of the 17th of June it reached a culminating point, when a casual fire, caused by " some chipps and combustible matter," in Deptford, caused an uproar in London, "it being given out that the Dutch fleete was come up, had landed their men, and fired the Tower" (EvelynV Prince Rupert commanded at Woolwich, and bodies of cavalry and infantry, under General the Earl of Middleton, watched the river. On the 28th of June the Royal Oak and James were yet smok- ing in the Medway. People began to secrete their valuables, and many thought of flight. For this 336 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [The Dutch in the Medway. purpose, Mr. Pepys tells us he had a girdle made for holding .;£^3oo in gold about his person. The enemy came up the Thames as far as the Hope, where Sir Edward Spragge lay at anchor with an English squadron, and a sharp engagement ensued. A fire-ship grappled with a Dutchman ; they were soon both sheeted with flames, and burned down togemer, so close to another Dutch ship that she also took fire and blew up. A third ham," to perpetuate to their families the memory of so great, or rather stupendous, an enterprise. A treaty of peace was concluded between Eng- land and Holland in the month before these cups were given; but severe punishments were inflicted - on many English naval officers, for alleged mis- conduct during the invasion and blockade of the Thames. Commissioner Pett was impeached, and com- mitted to the Tower. Captain Joseph Payne, of DE RUYTER'S attack ON UPNOR CASTLE (see page 335). was run aground and set in flames, and two other fire-ships were destroyed. After a sharp engagement, the EngUsh squadron withdrew to Gravesend, under the cannon of Til- bury, leaving the Dutch anchored at the Hope. On the following day. Sir Edward Spragge, after being reinforced by some additional fire-ships, attacked the Dutch again, and, after a short en- gagement, De Ruyter sailed down the river to the west coast of England, and then returned home, content that he had " thus insulted the great mis- tress of the sea." To him, to De Witt, and Van Ghent, on the 24th of August, the States-General presented golden cups, on which was engraven, " The Action of Chat- the Blacknose, for misconduct in the squadron of Sir Edward Spragge, was sentenced by a court- martial held on board the Victory, at Deptford, to have a halter tied round his neck, a wooden sword broken over his head; to be towed through the water at a boat's stern, from the ship to Deptford Dock, and rendered incapable of further command. Captain Anderson, of the John and Elizabeth, fire- ship, was degraded ia the same manner, and was further tied up by the two arms. Captain Mayhew, of the Blessing, received the same punishment ; and Captain William Home, Of the Virgin, fire-ship, was shot to death. So better would it have been if they had died at their posts, as Douglas did on the deck of the Royal Oak. Southwold Bay.] THE CABAL. 337 CHAPTER LX. SOUTHWOLD BAY, 1672, To preserve the balance of power, England, Sweden, and Holland, now, in 1668, formed the Triple Alliance, to prevent any potentate from acquiring by conquest an ascendancy that might be dan- self to declare his religion Catholic, and to fight for Louis against the Dutch Republic. Five men, called the " Cabal " because the initials of their names formed that word, became — ^like Laud and mrn,;^^ SOLEBAY. gerous to Europe, already convulsed by the ambi- tion of Louis XIV., who began to cast eyes on the Netherlands, to which he professed the shadow of a claim through his queen; and to preserve this balance, we shall find was the cause of many battles of which we have yet to write. This Triple AUiance greatly pleased the people of England, who litde dreamed that, through the witcheries and negotiations of Louise Rende de Perrencourt, popularly known as "Madame Carwell," and whom he created Duchess of Portsmouth, Charles was in the receipt of ;^2oo,ooo a year, paid by Louis, wHose ambition he was binding himself to curb. The secret treaty of Dover was signed in May, 167.0. By it Charles bound him- Strafford in his father's days — the chief advisers of the king. They were Clifford, Arlington, Bucking- ham, Ashley, and Lauderdale. Most pernicious was their advice; and so strong was the hatred en- tertained of them by the people, that the word "cabal" has ever since been used to denote a clique of political schemers. In 1672, Charles and Louis, as allies, made war on Holland, and a body of English and Scottish troops, under the Duke of Monmouth, joined the French army. With seventy-five sail and many fire-ships, De Ruyter put to sea, and stationed himself between Dover and Calais, to prevent the intended junction of the French and English fleets. The Duke of York could only muster forty 29 338 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Southwold Bay. sail at the Nore, yet with these he contrived to join the French fleet under Jean the Count d'Estr^es, Vice-Admiral of France, and Mard- chal in 1681. When the Duke of York resolved to take upon himself the command of the fleet, he chiefly de- pended on Sir Edward Spragge for assembling and preparing it ; and it was on board Sir Edward's ship that he, the Earl of Sandwich, and other officers of rank dined before putting to sea. Several detachments of English troops were on board the fleet to serve as marines ; and, from the list of arms broken or lost at sea by the Coldstream Guards, we find that nine companies of that corps went with the duke. Each company at this time was armed with 30 pikes, 60 muskets, 13 firelocks, 103 swords, 2 hal- berds, and I partisan, and had 60 collars of bando- leers and 2 drums. We see, from Johnson's " Lives of the Poets," that among the many noble volunteers who accom- panied the Duke of York was John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, K.G. ; he served on board the ship of the celebrated Earl of Ossory. As the result of his experience, " I have observed two things," he writes, " which I dare affirm, though not generally believed. One is, that the wind of a cannon- bullet, though flying never so near, is incapable of doing the least harm ; and, indeed, were it otherwise, no man above deck would escape. The other is, that a great shot may be avoided, even as it flies, by changing one's ground a little ; for when the wind sometimes blew away the smoke, it was so clear a sunshiny day " (he means at Southwold Bay) " that we could easily perceive the bullets that were half spent fall into the water, and from thence bound up again among us, which gives sufficient time for making a step or two on any side, though it has so swift a motion 'tis hard to judge well in what line the bullet comes, which, if mistaken, may cost a man his life, instead of saving it."* The Earl of Mulgrave afterwards became a soldier, arid on the 12th of December, 1673, was ap- pointed colonel of the "Old Holland Regiment," now known as the 3rd Buffs. Cornelius de Witt, whose maxim it had ever been, to give the navy a preference above the army, hoped to strike the first successful blow. Animated by the same idea, his compatriot and firm adherent, De Ruyter, had put to sea with seventy-five large ships, and forty frigates and fire- ships (another account says ninety-one men-of- war, forty-four fire-ships, and twenty-three yachts), and, as we stated, steered for the Channel. The van was led by Adrian Bankhart, Vice-Admiral of Zealand ; De Ruyter led the centre, and Van Ghent the rear. Ignorant that a junction had been effected between the Duke of York and the Comte d'Estrees, they were full of high hope to take a signal vengeance on the English for an attempt they had recently made on the Dutch Smyrna fleet. The precise strength of the allied fleets is doubt- ful, some actually stating it at 140 sail of all sorts. In a foot note Captain Schomberg gives the united strength at loi sail, carrying 6,018 guns and 32,000 men. The duke led the Red squadron; D'Estrees led the French, and acted as Admiral of the White squadron ; Lord Sandwich was on the left, or lar- board, as Admiral of the Blue. On the 19th of May they first discovered the Dutch armament under canvas, about twenty-four miles E.S.E. of the Gunfleet, and cleared away for action ; but a sudden thickness of the weather caused them to lose sight of each other. On tliis occurring the English and French fleets, to get fresh water, put into Solebay, or Southwold Bay, in the county of Suffolk, overlooked by a market town of the same name, situated on an eminence near where the river Blyth discharges itself into the German Sea. There the two fleets lay quietly at anchor for nine days, till De Ruyter, on hearing from the captain of a colher the situation and em- ployment of the allies, resolved to become the aggressor. It is said that on the evening of the 27th, while the wind was blowing a stiff gale from the north- west, the Earl of Sandwich and other flag officers were invited to an entertainment on board the Duke of York's ship, and that in the midst of their hiliarity the earl, a most experienced officer, sud- denly remarked that the fleets were in danger of being surprised as the wind then stood, and that, in his opinion, they ought to weigh anchor and gain the offing. In reply to this, the duke said something which seemed to hint that there was more of caution than of courage in his apprehensions. The earl, a man of resolute and undoubted courage, as he had proved at Naseby, where he had a regiment of 1,000 strong, the brother officer of Blake, and one who had covered himself with distinction in the battle where Baron Opdam perished, resented this keenly, and it had an effect on all his actions on the subsequent day. In the midst of their protracted jollity, as if to verify his warning, about daybreak came a sudden alarm that the Dutch were in sight. Bishop Burnet states that the fleet was preparing to celebrate the 29th of May ; that Buckingham was on board, and Southwold Bay.] VALOUR OF SANDWICH. 339 got ashore with all speed when tidings came of the Dutch. The drums beat to quarters ; boats were shoved off in every direction from the duke's ship, and every man hastened to his post; for if surprised in the bay the fire-ships might soon have caused the destruction of every vessel there. In the hurry, confusion, and haste to get out, many slipped their cables, others got their anchors over the bow, but all put to sea, and ranged themselves in order of battle. Leading the van, with the Ribbon of the Garter above his buff coat, and determined to conquer or die, yet tempering his courage with such fine prudence that the whole fleet owed its safety to him, the gallant Earl of Sandwich was first out of the bay which had so nearly proved a fatal trap to them, and where the ships had been so crowded together : and by achieving this he gave time to the duke, commanding the centre squadron, and D'Estrees, with the Red, to form line, while, with all sails set, he rushed into battle with the Dutch. This was about seven in the morning of the 28th of May, and seldom has any action in our annals been more obstinately contested. He engaged the squadron of Van Ghent, and ere long the duke assailed that of De Ruyter, while Van Bankhart grappled with the French or White squad- ron, under D'Estrdes, whose crews did not fight with the courage required of them. Though Pfere Daniel and other French writers deny the circum- stance, the French were very plainly accused of " sheering off." But it is probable that they were ill supplied with ammunition, as the following letter by the Duke of York, subsequent to the battle, would seem to imply : — " Whereas, I am informed by the officers of His Majesty's Ordnance that there may be spared out of His Majesty's stores in the river unto the Count d'Estrees bullets of 24-pounders, 4,000 of i8-pounders, 10,000 of r2-pounders, and of 8-pounders 5,000. These are to will and require you forthwith to deliver unto such persons as the Count d'Estrees shall appoint to receive them the several quantities of bullets hereafter mentioned, which he desires to be furnished with, viz., 3,029 24-pounders, 9,243 i8-pounders, 5,008 12-pounders, and 1,693 8-pounders, he paying the usual rates for them ; and for so doing this shall be your warrant. " Given under my hand, on board the Prince, the 24th day of June, 1672. "James. "To Sir Thomas Chickeley, Knight, Master of His Majesty's Ordnance." Sandwich, in the Royal James, 100 guns, was first assailed by the Great Holland, commanded by Captain Jan Brackel, the same intrepid officer who forced the passage of the Med way ; next came a fire-ship, and then the whole squadron of Van Ghent. Brackel got to windward of the earl, and then bearing down, grappled with his ship, amid a cloud of smoke and the roar of guns and matchlocks. Van Ghent was soon slain by a cannon-ball. Another man-of-war and three fire-ships all tried to grapple with the Royal James, but so tremen- dous was her fire that she sunk every one of them, and the sea around her was full of Dutchmen drowning, or swimming for their lives. At length he cut the grapplings of Brackel's ship, which, according to the Dutch (improbable) account, had only 300 men and 62 guns, and forged ahead of her, but still he could not work to windward. He had reduced the Great Holland to a mere wreck, and, after an hour and a halfs conflict, had killed or wounded almost all her officers and two- thirds of her men. A shot severely injured Brackel, and it is stated that three seamen from the Royal James, who had the temerity to nm up to his mainmast-head to unship his pennant, remained prisoners in his hands when the grapplings were cast off. Sandwich presented himself wherever danger was thickest; and after a five hours' combat, he might have drawn out of it with honour, as his ship was torn to pieces with shot. Of the 1,000 men on board, 600 lay dead on the decks, by their very corpses encumbering the action of the guns ; and the blood was trickling from the shot-holes and lee scuppers. At length another fire-ship, shrouded in smoke, and thus enabled to approach unseen, grappled with the Royal James, and she was instantly set on fire. On seeing this, the earl retired to his cabin, where he was followed by his captain, Sir Richard Haddock, who found him with a hand- kerchief before his eyes, and warned him of their danger. " I see how things go,'' said he, referring to the late remark of the Duke of York, "and am resolved to perish with my ship." She soon after blew up, and he, with many other gallant officers and men, was destroyed. Some who sought to escape in the barge, by over- crowding upset her, and all were drowned. The author of De Ruyter's life says that Lord Sandwich was " valiant, wise, circumspect, cautious, and can- did, in deeds as well as in words." With him there perished his son. Captain Charles Montague. Sir Richard Haddock was taken out of the sea with his thigh broken. In this action was another 34° BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Southwold Bay. captain of the same name, who commanded a fire- ship and gained a gold medal. .Meanwhile, the Duke of York with the Red squadron had been for hours engaged with the Dutch centre under De Ruyter, and had been so heavily cannonaded that he had to leave his ship, the Prince, loo guns, by one of the stern win- dows, and row amid the enemy's fire to the St. Michael, 90 guns (the maintopmast of which, with his standard, had been shot away) ; and as it was soon reported that she was in a sinking state, he had to go on board the Loyal Londofi. The fall of Van Ghent, and the furious attack of that part of Lord Sandwich's squadron which came too late to his rescue, gave it an opportunity for assisting the Red squadron under the duke, who, on being abandoned by the French, after the Sieur Rabinifere had a thigh shot off, was in imminent danger of being overborne by the united squadrons of the admiral and Adrian Bankhart. "Both fleets were intermixed pell-mell with one another," states a Dutch historian ; " never was such slaughter seen in any sea-engagement before as at this time, ac- cording to De Ruyter's own confession." In this part of the action Cornelius Evertzen — one of a brave family of seamen — Admiral of Zea- land, was killed ; and the vessels of De Ruyter, with Allemande, another flag officer, had a narrow- escape from the English fire-ships. The former was wounded, 150 of his men were killed, and his ship, by boats ahead, was towed out of the action in a half-sinking state, and ultimately was got with great difficulty to Zealand. When the squadron of the dead Van Ghent, which after his fall had drawn a little way out of fire, came again into the action — the French still held aloof— the duke had to encounter alone the whole force of the Dutch fleet, a mighty odds on which he had never reckoned; but, notwithstanding this great disparity, the fight lasted with unabating fury till nine o'clock at night, both sides having dis- played all the skill and courage that could be ex- pected in men of inherent bravery and commanders of experience. Towards the end great havoc was made among the Dutch fire-ships, of which no less than six were all set ablaze by one English man-of-war ; and, as the sun had set, the flames that rose from them shed a light upon the sea, and enabled a few fare- well cannon-shot to be exchanged, as the Dutch fleet, now in the greatest disorder, began to drift to leeward. Sir John Jordan, who now led the Blue squadron, having worked it to windward, De Ruyter's ship was in great peril, as she had beerj }aid aboard by a fire-ship j but he broke the grapplings loose, and began to make sail with the rest of his scattered fleet, one of which, the. Westergo, blew up by accident about midnight. As the Duke of York pursued them for some miles, England may fairly claim the victor)', though it was disputed by the Dutch. The loss of men was pretty nearly equal, though that of the enemy was never exactly known, as its publication was forbidden by the States-General. Notwithstanding the pitiful share taken by the French in this action, they lost two ships of war j and' Admiral de la Rabinifere was killed, with many men. Their conduct was ascribed to secret orders issued to the Count D'Estrees, " not to expose His Majesty's ships too much, but to leave the English and Dutch fleets to effect their own destruction ;" and all their other actions during the war tended to confirm this suspicion. The English wounded were placed in St. Thomas's Hospital, at Southwark, when the Earl of Ossory gave them, from his private purse, a gift each of from ten to forty shillings ("Ormond's Life"). The English had two ships burnt, three sunk, and one taken. Their loss was about 2,000 killed and wounded. Among the former were Admirals the Earl of Sandwich and Sir Fretchville Hollis, of Grimsby, who fell on board the Cambridge, and had been a colonel in the Civil Wars ; Captain Digby, of the Henry; Captain Piercy, of the St. George; Captain Waterworth, of the Anne; Sir John Fox, of the Prince, who had been knighted for valour in 1665; Captain Harman, of the Triumph; Viscount Maidstone (son of the Earl of Winchelsea), Sir Philip Carteret, and John, son of Lord Napier, of Merchiston. Admiral de la Rabinifere was interred, in presence of Mr. Evelyn, in the choir of Rochester Cathedral. The Dutch admit to having one ship sunk, another burned, and a third taken. The first- named was one of sixty guns, which went down under the artillery of Sir Edward Spragge, who was left with a squadron to watch the North Sea, where he soon ruined the Dutch fisheries, while their fleet was forced to remain idle for sheer lack of gunpowder (" Lives of the Admirals "). Sorely mangled and scorched, and recognisable only by his Order of the Garter, the body of the Earl of Sandwich was found floating in the sea by' the crew of a bomb-ketch, by whom it was brought to Harwich, and thence transmitted to London, and on the 24th of June it was solemnly intei-red, at the king's charge, in Westminster Abbey (Kennet), to which the body was brought by water, bil ftusk'ing.l PktrJcfi -kUtEkf. Ui The earl was in his forty-seventh year, having been born in 1625. Bishop Parker, in his history of his own times, writes thus : "The Earl of Sand- wich, having shattered seven of the enemy's ships and beaten off three "fire-ships, at length over- powered, fell a sacrifice to his country — a gentle- man adorned with all the virtues of Alcibiades, and imstained by any of his vices ; capable of any business, full of wisdom, a great commander by sea and land, learned, eloquent, affable, liberal, and magnificent." His bargemen attended his funeral, and the following epitaph is given in the Appendix to " Pepy's iDiary : "— " Depositum pr/enob Edvardi, CoMiTio DE Sandwich, etc., Freti Britannici ThALLASSIARCHjE, Qui in Navali illo Adversus Batavos occubuit, 28TH die Mensis Maii, A° D" 1672." CHAPTER LXI. prince RUPERT AND THE DUTCH, 1673. In this year the House of Commons, having resolved that every individual refusing to take the oath of allegiance and receive the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England should be incapable of public employment, military or civil, the obnoxious statute known as the " Test Act " was passed, which required not only these oaths to be taken and the sacrament received, but also a declaration against Transubstantiation. The Duke of York refused to take this test, and voluntarily resigned all the offices he held under the Crown, including that of Lord High Admiral of England. By this retirement the command of the combined fleets, amounting to about ninety sail, devolved upon Prince Rupert; and with a force so formidable it was confidently supposed he would sweep the Dutch from the face of the ocean. Six companies of the Coldstream Guards were distributed on board the fleet, besides strong detachments from other regiments. Sir Edward Spragge and the Earl of Ossory commanded under Rupert, whose actions during the Civil War and his ocean wanderings during the Protectorate had won him the sobriquets of " The Invincible Mad Cavalier " and " The Royal Corsair." The earl was on board the St. Michael, from which the duke had to shift his flag in the late action, with the rank of Rear-Admiral of the Blue. The French squadron joined them again, under the Count d'Estr^es and Admiral Martel ; and an order was issued to all commanders of His Majesty's ships, that in future they were not " to require from the ships of war of His Most Christian Majesty the striking of a flag or topsail, neither were they to give any salute to those of the Christian King." On the 19th of May it was determined in a Council of War, at which the king and Duke of York were present, that if the Dutch fleet could not be provoked to quit their own shores, it should be attacked upon them j and in consequence of this resolution the combined fleets put to sea. Prince Rupert's squadron carried the Red flag, D'Estrdes was Admiral of the White, and Spragge Admiral of the Blue. De Ruyter, who had been first at sea, had been informed that the English fleet would not be ready so soon, and on the 2nd of May had been off the mouth of the Thames ; but finding a strong force there, had retired to await the rest of his fleet at Schonwelt, in Zealand, between the Rand and the Stony Bank. There his ships were descried by Prince Rupert, riding in apparent security and in good order, behind the sandbanks, on the 22nd of May. The shoals and shelves so protected the anchorage that ■Rupert feared to attack him ; but having taken advantage of a mist to send in boats to take the soundings about the shore, it was resolved at a Council of War to risk all and fight the enemy. But the wind died away ; then came a storm, and nothing could be done till the 28th of the month. The Dutch fleet consisted of nearly a hundred sail of all kinds, commanded by De Ruyter, Cornelius Van Tromp, and Adrian Bankhart. D'Estrdes, we have said, was Admiral of the White, but to prevent his ships from acting as they had done at Southwold Bay, they were, whatever their secret orders might be, checkered in line with the English. Having the advantage of the wind, the count began the engagement with Van 342 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. toff flushing. Tromp; it soon became general, and was con- tinued with great obstinacy. Schram, vice-admiral of Van Tromp's squadron-, was killed; then fell Rear- Admiral Vlag, of Bankhart's squadron, with several of his captains. Sir Edward Spragge assailed Van Tromp with such weight and ardour, that during a conflict of seven hours he compelled him to shift his flag in succession from the Golden Lion — in which more than loo men were killed and wound- ed, and which was nearly fired by Sir Wil- liam Reeves in a fire- ship — to the Prince on Horseback, and thence to the Amsterdam and Comet, as each ship became riddled, wreck- ed, and sinking; and in the end he would certainly have been killed or taken but for the timely intervention of De Ruyter. Sir Ed- ward had also twice to change his ship. In Prince Rupert's letter to the Earl of Arlington, he says, "Sir Edward Spragge did on his side maintain the fight with so much courage and resolution, that their whole body gave way to such a degree, that had it not been for fear of the shoals, we had driven them into their har- bours, and the king would have had a better account of them." The Deventer, one of their best ships, was so disabled that she was towed out of the line and scuttled near the Wielings, a number of Httle islets covered with seaweed, and which form, as Sir William Temple thinks, the fragments of a sub- merged coast. Captain Legg, of Prince Rupert's squadron, boarded and took a Dutch ship named the Jnpiter, but she was recaptured, sword in hand, by the Dutch, who gained possession of her deck while the boarders were below pillaging and searching her. By that time the energy of Spragge had driven the enemy among the shoals, as the prince states, and that circumstance, with the darkness coming on, ended the first engagement, in which he lost four captains — Tempest, of the Sweepstakes, and three others — and had two ships of war entirely disabled, while the Count d'Estrees lost seven ships in all. The Dutch had eight flag officers killed, and lost one ship. Colonel James Ha- milton, a British officer, had both his legs shot off, and died. He was the eldest son of Sir George Hamilton, fourth son of the Earl of Abercom. On the 4th of June the fleets engaged again, when De Ruy- ter, having refitted and increased the fleet, stood boldly out to sea, and attacked Prince Rupert off Flushing. The cannonade lasted four hours ; but the irregularity and im- petuosity with which the Dutch made their attack soon threw them into confusion, and they bore away to the south - east. In this battle, brief though it was. Sir Edward Spragge specially sin- gling out Van Tromp, forced him twice again to change his ship, till he was once more re- lieved by De Ruyter ; and the risk he ran of being taken so provoked him against his vice- admiral, Sweers, that he reported that officer to the States-General. But he knew not that the sturdy Sir Edward Spragge, when he took leave of Charles II., prior to joining the fleet, had promised "that he would bring him Van Tromp, alive or dead, or lose his own life in the attempt." These admirals seem indeed to have had a par- ticular desire to emulate and overcome each other, for they constantly fought in every battle from the time that Sir Edward Spragge succeeded the Earl I. FOUCHARD. 2. PARTISAN. (ARTILLERY MUSEUM, PARIS.) Off flushing.] VALOUR OF SIR EDWARD SPRAGGE; 343 344 MlTlStt BATTLES ON LAND AND ^lA. tOfifthel^cxel of Sandwich, and Van Tromp gained a command in the Dutch fleet in place of Van Ghent. The third and last encounter between Rupert and De Ruyter took place on the nth of August, off the mouth of the Texel. Rupert had previous to this stood over to the coast of England, where he landed all his wounded, and had the ships entirely refitted for a last grand trial of strength; and 4,000 troops were placed on board, under the eye of King Charles, who came down the river to see the prince's armament. The English now mustered sixty men of war, and the French thirty ; but the Dutch were not more than seventy. By what was then deemed a masterpiece of seamanship, De Ruyter, having taken his whole fleet close in shore during the night, was discovered to windward of the alUes when day dawned. The French, in consequence of their good be- haviour in the late engagement, were again, as at Southwold Bay, formed in one squadron ; but they ill requited this confidence on the part of the noble Rupert, for on being attacked by Admiral Bankhart, after a little distant work with their guns, they bore away to the eastward, out of range, and remained idle spectators of the desperate and sanguinary battle, that was now inspired by long years of hate, rancour, and rivalry. One French oflScer alone bore a share in this action, Rear-Admiral Martel, for which a severe reckoning awaited him in France, when on his return he was thrown into the Bastille for having exceeded his orders. While D'Estrees, with his squadron, was sheering off", the fight between Prince Rupert and De Ruyter was very hot, and Bankhart, perceiving that the French no longer resisted, bore down with his squadron to reinforce his leader ; upon which the prince, finding himself overpowered by numbers, made a retreating fight of it, by steering westward. Van Tromp and Sir Edward Spragge had in the meantime been, as usual, hotly engaged from nine in the morning. The latter had promised to abide by Prince Rupert, but as he could not resist attack- ing Van Tromp, he laid his fore-topsail aback to stay for him, and having attacked his squadron, con- tinued fighting for several hours, apart from all the fleet. Sir Edward was at first on board the Jioyai Prince, and Van Tromp in the Golden Lion, but after three hours of an artillery fight, in which the Dutch admiral avoided coming to close quarters. Sir Edward was forced by sheer dint of cannon- shot to leave his disabled ship for the St. George, as Van Tromp at the same time had to do for the Comet. Then, with a fury all the greater for the brief pause, the fight began again, and was continued till the St. George was so battered that Sir Edward was compelled to leave her and endeavour to carry his flag on board the Royal Charles; but before his barge had been rowed ten times its own length from the ship, a well-directed cannon-shot passed through it, after passing through the St. George. Shattered and swamped as the barge was, the crew endeavoured to regain the St. George, but before that could be achieved the gallant old admiral was drowned, "his hands," according to his memoir, " taking so dead a hold of the side of the boat that when it came to float he was found with his head and shoulders above water." The writers of his age are profuse in their praises of the valour of Sir Edward Spragge, and also of that of Van Tromp ; " for these men," says Bishop Parker, in his history of his own times, "having mutually agreed to attack each other, not out of hatred, but a thirst of glory, they engaged with all the rage, or, as it were, with all the sport of war. They came so close to one another that, like an army of foot, they fought at once with their guns and swords. Almost at every turn both their ships, though not sunk, were yet bored through with common gun-shot ; neither did one ball fall into the sea, but each ship pierced the other as if they had fought with spears." During these events Prince Rupert had been maintaining a retreating combat before the united squadrons of De Ruyter and Bankhart; but the latter, considering Van Tromp in danger, altered their course and bore up to his assistance, while the prince did the same to succour the Blue squadron. This made the engagement once again general. The prince sent two fire-ships, under the steering of Captain Legg, among the enemy, and the appearance of these perilous craft put them in such confusion that had the Count D'Estrees once again come from the windward, where he lay idle, the Dutch must have been defeated; the battle continued, however, till nightfall, when amid the darkness and the smoke it ceased, and Prince Rupert bore away for the mouth of Thames, as the Dutch did for their own coast. In this undecided battle the English lost the Henrietta, yacht, which was sunk ; Captains Richard New, of the Edgar, and John Rice, of the Mari- gold, fire-ship, and Captain Merryweather, an infantry officer, were killed, together with a very great number of men, in consequence of the ships being filled with troops, while the Dutch had two vice- admirals, Sweers and De Liefde, three captains, and about 1,000 men of all ranks slain. They admitted having lost four fire-ships ; but Lord Ossory asserted Maestricht.3 FIRST USE OF THE BAYONET. 34S , in a letter that he had seen two of their largest men- I of-war sunk, This was the last battle fought by sea in this most useless war. In this year separate cabins were first given to naval officers, and also for the first time half-pay was granted to certain captains, and the experiment of sheathing war-ships with lead was tried. Eight years later saw the fall of the gallant Michael Adrian De Ruyter in battle with the French, after fifty years' sea-service ; and now he lies under an elaborately-sculptured tomb of marble, in the Nieuwe Kirk of Amsterdam, so called, though built in 1408, and he is styled in his somewhat boastful epitaph, " Imensi Tremor Oceani," CHAPTER LXII. THE BRITISH TROOPS UNDER MARSHAL TURENNE, During these operations by sea, a combined force of 6,000 Enghsh and Scottish troops had been dis- patched to join the French army in Flanders, then nominally under Louis XIV., but in reaUty con- ducted by the greatest soldiers of the age, Marshal Turenne and the Prince of Conde. The command of this expedition was entrusted by Charles II. to his own son, James Fitzroy, whom he had created Duke of Monmouth, giving him at the same time in marriage Anne, Countess of Buccleuch, the richest heiress in Scotland. He was made a Knight of the Garter, and was captain of the Enghsh Life Guards in 1665. To form one regiment for this expedition, ten men were drawn out of each of the twelve com- panies of the Coldstream Guards as its nucleus, in February, 1672 : and by April the whole of the troops were embarked, and had sailed for Flanders. It is in this year, 1672, in a Royal Warrant, dated the 2nd of April, that we first find mention of "the bayonet, or great knife," as a portion of the neces- sary equipment of the British soldier. The Scottish regiment of Lord Douglas (now ist Royals), con- sisting of two strong battalions, was already with the French army under Turenne. Several fortified towns had been captured; and in June this corps, when encamped in the vicinity of Nimeguen, was detached with other troops, under the Comte de Chamilly, to besiege Grave, on the left bank of the Maese, in North Brabant. The attack on the town commenced towards the end of June, and in July the governor surrendered. A number of British subjects, chiefly Scots, being found in Grave, they were permitted to take service under Louis XIV., and were given as recruits to Lord Douglas. The land war was conducted by France with the greatest vigour and address ; 100,000 Frenchmen, led in every movement by Turenne and Cond6, j stormed in rapid succession the fortresses of Orsai, Burick, Wesel, and the Rhinberg. Near Schenck they passed the river in the face of the enemy's cannon ; compelled Arnheira, Naerden, Utrecht, Deventer, Zutphen, and Nimeguen to surrender; and overcoming three of the United Provinces, in a few months had advanced their outposts to the vicinity of Amsterdam. Throughout all these operations the little "hand- ful" of British forces bore an active part, and many officers distinguished themselves ; but few so much as Churchill, the future Duke of Marlborough, who was known in the army by the sobriquet of "The Handsome EngUshman," and at the siege of Nimeguen he drew special attention to himself, when only a captain. Having repeatedlyvolunteered to execute services requiring more than ordinary coolness and decision, he was at length selected by Marshal Turenne to recover a post from which a French lieutenant- colonel had been driven. " I will wager a supper and a dozen of claret,'' said the marshal, " tliat my ' handsome English- man ' will, with half the number of men, retake the ground which has been lost." The wager was accepted; Churchill advanced to the attack with a detachment of English troops, and not only regained, but kept possession of the post, amid the plaudits of the whole army ("Gleig's Memoirs "). As the war progressed, to check the terrible pro- gress of the French, the Dutch, acting under the orders of the stem William of Orange, broke down their dykes, which cost such enormous sums to main- tain, and had an officer in every district, called the dykgrave, to watch them. Then the foaming waters rushed over the level land, and in many places the French soldiers had to flee for their lives. 346 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Maestricht, their cavalry riding on the spur to seek for eminences. In August the Scots regiment was withdrawn from Grave, and rejoined the forces of Turenne ; and when, in 1673, the siege of Maestricht was under- taken with Monmouth's troops and the battahons of Douglas, the British mustered 8,000 men. The forces with the duke consisted of a squadron of the English Life Guards, the English regiments of Monmouth and Peterborough, and the Scottish regiments of Sir George Hamilton and another colonel unnamed. All these troops were engaged at ihe siege of Maestricht, which was undertaken by the King of France in person, and lasted thirteen days, with open trenches. Bishop Burnet says that at this siege the Duke of Monmouth distinguished himself greatly, " and was much considered upon it." The investment was conducted by the Count de Lorges ; the fortifications were strong, and the garrison con- sisted of 6,000 men, under General Farjaux, a brave officer, who had distinguished himself in the Spanish service at the defence of Valenciennes. After the arrival of Louis the lines around Maes- tricht were drawn to perfection ; three great batteries were raised against it, and then two more. By the 24th of June the besiegers had pushed their sap to the edge of the ditch ; 300 grenadiers — a new species of force — supported by the First, or Cheva- lier d'Artagnan's, Company of Mousquetaires Gris, and four battalions of the regiment of Guards, led by the Comte de Montbrun, were ordered, about eleven o'clock at night, to attack the counterscarp near the gate leading to Tongres; but this force was gallantly encountered by a great body of volunteers who had thrown themselves into the place, and a furious combat ensued. It was main- tained resolutely on both sides, till most of the officers of the besieged were killed or wounded, when they quitted the advanced half-moon. If this is the assault referred to in the " Lives of Eminent British Commanders,'' Monmouth, and not Montbrun, held the command, thus : — " The next operation which furnished to Captain Churchill the means of gathering fresh laurels was the siege and assault of Maestricht. Having ac- companied the storming party, of which the Duke of Monmouth had the command, he was the first to plant the allied standard on the rampart; and he was one of twelve who, on the springing of a mine, maintained themselves in the demi-lune till supported." Three times was that fatal work taken and re- taken. Farjaux sprang two other mines, and the Dutch remained roasters of it, with a heap of corpses, among which was that of the gallant Gascon adventurer, the Chevalier Claude de Batz de Castelmar d'Artagnan, who was captain of the Mousquetaires Gris, and with whose name the brilliant romance of Dumas has rendered us so familiar. It was found next day, when the Duke of Monmouth, at that time lieutenant-general in the trenches, retook the demi-lune, as he had sworn to do, or die in the attempt. After 3,000 of the garrison had fallen, and the dry season had made all the rivers and canals around it fordable, Maestricht surrendered on the 2nd of July. The only British officer of consideration who fell there was Robert Douglas, son of the Earl of Queensberry, who served with his brother John in the Scottish contingent. Captain Churchill, for his conspicuous gallantry, was pubhcly thanked by Louis XIV., "while by his own sovereign, to whom Monmouth recom- mended him as the preserver of his life, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel;" and on the 3rd of April, 1674, he was appointed to the command of the Earl of Peterbotough's English regiment. By the "Historical Record of the English Life Guards," we learn that at Maestricht twelve privates of that corps highly distinguished them- selves during the siege. Turenne, who commanded on the side of Ger- many, completed that high reputation which he had already won, of being the first general in Europe. In order to prevent a junction of different divi- sions of the German army, he passed the Rhine at Philipsburg. By this time Charles II. had con- cluded a treaty of peace with the Dutch Republic, and the Duke of Monmouth had returned home, but his troops still continued to serve Louis XIV. Thus we find the Enghsh corps of Monmouth and Churchill, and the Scots of Douglas and Hamilton, with the array of the Rhine, under Turenne. The Scots Royals were in brigade with the regiments of Plessis and La Ferte, under Brigadier-General the Marquis of Douglas, when the army took the field, and marched towards Heidelberg, to prevent the junction of the forces under the Duke of Lorraine and those under the Duke of Bournonville; and in the battle of the 16th of June, in which the former was defeated, " Le Regiment de Douglas" covered itself with distinction. At the head of 20,000 men, Turenne swept the Palatinate, and drew the allied princes beyond the Neckar and the Maine. " In all the encounters mentioned on this side," states the author of "Memoirs of the War, 1672— 1679," "no forces were oftener seen, or more felt, or gained more honour by their firmness and bravery, than the Molsheim.]] TURENNE SLAIN. 347 English regiments (still remaining in the Frencli service), to whom the Germans attributed wholly Monsieur Turenne's success ; but the divisions among the princes who made up the confederate armies may justly be said to have all the merit that was not personal in Monsieur Turenne." Information having reached the latter that the Germans had passed the Rhine and advanced to Molsheim, a town in Alsace, upon the river Brusch, ten miles from Strasburg, he quitted his camp an hour after midnight on the 3rd of October, and after a march of several hours arrived at the enemy's quarters, which were attacked with great spirit. In the conflict which took place in the grey light of dawn, amid woods and broken ground, the British troops displayed great gallantry, fighting with a spirit and resolution which even the stubborn Germans could not withstand. Many officers and men fell, but still the strife was continued, and Lord Duras had three horses killed under him. Eventually, however, the enemy were driven from the field, with the loss of ten pieces of cannon, thirty colours, and many prisoners \Londsn Gazette). Lord Duras was afterwards Earl of Feversham ; and Evelyn calls him " a valiant gendeman, whom His Majesty made an EngHsh baron of a cadet, and gave him his seate of Holmby, in Northamptonshire." The Germans were now reinforced by a number of fresh troops, when Marshal Turenne retired with the French and British forces, and took up a posi- tion near Elsace-Zaberne, by which he prevented the Imperialists deriving any advantage from their superiority in number. The Scots battalions of Douglas in the winter of 1675 were placed with other corps under the orders of the Marquis de Vauban, who was then besieging Dachstien, a town in the Bas-Rhin, on the right bank of the Brusch. It was still called "Le Regiment de Douglas," though its colonel had now been created Earl of Dumbarton in the peerage of Scotland, where the march of his regiment is still popular, and known as " Dumbarton's Drums." On the night of the 25th of January the trenches were opened, and on the night of the 28th the honour of storming the works was assigned to the Scottish veterans, who lost many officers and men. Among the killed was their major, who is stated by the French historians to have been an officer of great merit. On the following day, finding the Scottish troops close to the works, the Governor of Dachstien surrendered, and the army went into winter-quarters ("Records of the ist Royals"). May saw them again in the field near Stras- burg, when Turenne found an almost equal adver- sary in the Count de Montecuculi, who had won the victory of St. Gothard over the Turks, and outgeneralled Condd. During the summer of 1675, in the narrow strip of land between the Black Forest and the Rhine, these splendid leaders practised all the evolutions of war, one covering the empire and the other pro- tecting Alsace from hostile invasion. The regiment of Douglas, after serving with others in this harass- ing service, was suddenly sent to Treves to reinforce the garrison. Several sharp skirmishes ensued, and in one of these Captain John Douglas, another son of the second Earl of Queensberry, was killed. Want of provisions now began to be felt, and the memorialist before quoted states that this com- pelled Turenne to force one of the enemy's posts, near Treves. A warm skirmish began, and the French were severely galled by two pieces of cannon that stood on an eminence. Turenne resolved to have them dislodged, and went forward with Lieu- tenant-General St. Hiliare to reconnoitre. During this a shot came from the battery that wounded the latter in the shoulder, and after ricochetting thrice upon the groupd, struck Turenne upon the breast, and, without any wound that was apparent, laid him dead at the feet of his comrade. The soul of the French army had perished, and Montecuculi, on seeing that its movements had become paralysed, that the right wing had suddenly halted when advancing, with colours fluttering and waving, while the centre and left remained motion- less, soon divined that his great adversary was no more. "the command devolved on De Lorges, who began to recross the Rhine. A dreadful storm and a dark night concealed this movement from the Imperialists ; and " a nocturnal retreat in an enemy's country, diffidence in their generals, disunited councils, and contradictory orders," bewildered the French. In one mass of confusion, cavalry, in- fantry, artillery, and baggage sought a passage over the stream at the Kenig. The task of covering the rear was assigned to the Scottish infantry and Marshal Bouffler's dra- goons ; 4,000 foot and 2,000 horse attacked them. Reiterated charges were made under the eye of Montecuculi, but were steadily thrown back by dint of pike and musket, and the Records of the Royals state that, in " making this retrograde movement, the gallant conduct of two battaUons of veteran Scots saved the main army from severe loss. Treves was afterwards besieged by the Germans, and the British regiments highly distinguished themselves in the defence of the city, under the command of the Marquis de Crequi, to whom they 348 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Trtves. adhered when the French mutinied; and when the town surrendered they were bound by the articles of capitulation not to serve in fortress or field for three months after the sth of September. They formed a portion of the Army of the Rhine in the campaign of 1676, under the orders of Marshal Luxembourg. The Imperialists were under Charles V. of Lorraine, a general of that valour and capacity which were the best inheritance of his race, and who showed himself equal to Luxembourg that they consisted of only two squadrons of the Royal English Horse, the two battalions of Dum- barton's Scots, and one English batUlion of Mon- mouth's regiment. In the order of battle for the Army of the Rhine in that year, printed in the " Histoire Militaire de Louis le Grand," the first battalion of the Royal Scots appears formed in brigade with those of La Marine, Couronne, and Vendome ; and the second battalion is posted be- tween two cavalry brigades on the left of the Ime. VIEW OF TREVES, when their armies began to encounter in June. On the sth of that month, when the French were retreat- ing through the mountains near Saverne, the rear guard was attacked with great fury by the German cavalry, and several French squadrons were thrown into confusion ; but as the German horse galloped into the pass in fierce pursuit, the British infantry, having taken post on some high ground, opened upon them so tremendous a fire of musketry that the Lorraine Dragoons were nearly destroyed ; but in this encounter Sir George Hamilton, colonel of a Scots battalion, and many other officers of distinction, were killed. During the campaign of 1677, under the Marshal de Crequi, the British troops were so much reduced One of the oldest and quaintest streets in Bruges is still called the Rue d'Ecosse, or Scottinen Straet, in memory of some of those affairs. After much manoeuvring, the Prince of Saxe- Eisenach, who commanded a division of Germans, having been driven into an island of the Rhine, was forced to capitulate ; and soon after Charles II., having concluded a treaty with the Dutch, gave orders for the British troops in the French service to return home, and this order was obeyed by all save the Scots Guards, the Scots Gens- d'Armes, and some Irish regiments; and hence from the year 1678 the Scots Royals, or ist Foot, has been permanently on the British establishment. Three companies of the Foot Guards, which formed The Rhine.] GRENADIERS INSTITUTED. 349 a portion of the regiment of Monmouth, returned so early as 1674. Charles, having now determined on a war with France, to check the dangerous ambition of Louis XIV., issued a commission for an augmentation of 20,000 men to his army. To each of the battalions of English and Scottish infantry were in this year, 1678, first attached a number of men, each of whom carried a large leathern pouch filled with hand-grenades, an inven- tion as old as 1594. They wore fur caps, in lieu fierce ; and some had long hoods hanging down behind, as we picture fools — their clothing being likewise pyebald and yellow." Yet these were the first of our British grenadiers of immortal memory — the men whose march has led so often to glory and to victory. The first words of command for this force are given in the "Art of War," published at the " Look- ing Glass," on London Bridge, as follows : — " ist. Sling your firelocks. 2nd. Handle your THE CITY OF MONS (FROM AN OLD BIRD's-EYE VIEW). of beaver hats, and carried hatchets and swords in addition to their firelocks and plug-bayonets. They were instructed to ignite the fuses, and to cast the grenades into forts and trenches amid the enemy, where the explosion of these miniature bombs (which were about the size of oranges, and have unaccountably fallen into disuse) was calculated to do much execution; and the men, deriving their name from this missile, were styled " grenadiers." Evelyn's account of their first appearance on Hounslow Heath is somewhat absurd. "Now were brought into the service a new sort of soldiers, called grenadiers. They had furred caps with coped crowns, like janissaries, which made them look very matches. 3rd. Handle your grenadoes. 4th. Open your fuses, sth. Guard your fuse. 6th. Blow your matches. 7 th. Fire, and throw your grenadoes. Sth. Return your matches. 9th. Handle your slings. loth. Poise your firelocks." Grenadiers were first instituted in France in 1667, when five were added to each company of the line regiments. Their duties were deemed more arduous than those of the pikemen and musketeers, hence the tallest and strongest men were always selected fpr the grenadier company, which, long after the use of the grenade had been relinquished, constituted the right-flank company of every British regiment till the epoch of the Crimean War. 30 35° BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [FlandeK. At their institution, however, grenadiers were not confined to the infantry, for to each of the Horse Guard corps were added sixty-four grenadiers, with two lieutenants, four non-commissioned officers, two drummers, and two fifers, who were also dis- tinguished by fur caps and looped-up clothing (" Grose's Military Antiquities ") ; and to this day the Scots Greys wear grenades upon their ap- pointments. Chain bridles for the cavalry are first mentioned about this time, as being used by the Walloon horse in a fight near Bois-le-Duc. CHAPTER LXIII, ST. DENIS, 1678. The rapid conquests of the French in Flanders during this year filled the Dutch with alarm and the English with indignation; but Louis XIV. managed them both so judiciously that neither proved a bar to his ambition. By intrigues he increased a desire Tor peace among the former, by awakening a jealousy of the designs of the Prince of Orange, on account of his earnest desire for a continuance of the war. He secretly won over Charles II. ; but so great was the ardour of the people of England for war, arising probably from old hereditary hate of the French, that both king and Parliament were compelled to give way to it : an army of 20,000 men was enrolled in a few weeks, and a portion of this force was destined for the security of Ostend. This was about the time when the king was stipulating that the British standing army shsuld not be above 8,000 men, viz., 5,000 for England, and 3,000 for Scotland. By letters from the Duke of York to the Prince of Orange, printed in the Appendix to " Dalrym- ple'a Memoirs of Great Britain," it appears that in July the troops began to embark at Blackwall for Nieuport and Bruges, and that by the 26th of the same month we had in Flanders fourteen battalions of infantry, each 700 strong; twenty- seven troops of horse, sixty in each troop ; and twelve troops of dragoons, ea'ch of eighty files. The Earl of Feversham was in command at first. Great expense was incurred for the clothing of the troops, which was furnished out of "His Majesty's Great Wardrobe. For the trumpeters and kettledrummers were issued velvet coats and scarlet cloaks, trimmed with silver and silk lace, embroidered with the royal crown and cypher on their backs and breasts ;" also "rich embroidered banners, trimmed with gold and silver fringes, and painted banners, trimmed with silk fringes;" and colours for the King's Royal Regiment of Dragoons, and for the Queen's Regiment of Horse, " trimmed with gold and silver fringes, and strings and tassells suitable." On the loth of August, the Duke of Monmouth, who was in command of the united English and Scottish contingsnts, landed at Ostend, and in- spected them at their quarters in Nieuport. The city of Mons having been for some time blocked up by Marshal Luxembourg, and reduced to dire necessity, the Prince of Orange resolved to save it, and to signalise himself by a desperate attempt in the field. The Duke of Monmouth joined him with all his forces, while six regiments of British infantry were detached, under the Earl of Ossory, to act in conjunction with the Spaniards. There were the three English battalions of Mon- mouth and Colonels Wesley and Belasis ; and also the three Scottish battalions of Major-General Kirkpatrick, Sir Alexander Colyear, and Colonel Mackay. The latter body became, in future years, the Scots Brigade, or old 94th Regiment of the Line. On Sunday, the 14th of August, 1678, the Prince of Orange came in front of the united forces with his staff. In person he was somewhat undersized, with brown hair, a long pale face, keen cunning eyes, a huge Roman nose, yet one that had litrie majesty in it; and Bishop Burnet states that the weakness of his constitution caused him to make but an indifferent figure, whether on foot or horse- back. Giving the order to march, he broke up his camp at Soignies, a town of Flanders, in the province of Hainault, in the neighbourhood of a forest, at the southern extremity of which lies the famous field of Waterloo. Marching along highways bordered by trees and meadows or cornfields, all lately swamped and sodden by the cutting of the dykes and canals, the army passed Roches; and, to attempt the relief of Mons, came in sight of the enemy, whose right wing was posted at the abbey of St. St. Don!^.] ASSAULT OF THE ABBEY. 351 Denis, while their left rested on a place called in the London Gazette Mamoy St. Pierre. The woods of Hainault were in all their summer greenery, and amid the openings in the copse the white uniforms of the French infantry were dis- tinctly visible. Their position was strong, and could only be reached by narrow and tortuous lanes ; and besides the woods and rocks, there was a steep rugged slope, which the London Gazette calls a precipice. Luxembourg was so confident in the strength of his position, that in a letter to Marshal d'Estrades he wrote that he was so posted that if he had but 10,000 men, and the Prince of Orange 40,000, yet he was sure he could not be forced ; whereas he took his army to be stronger than that of the prince. He certainly deemed his ground inaccessible, and confidently awaited the advance of the allies, watching the scarlet uniforms of the British and the yellow of the Dutch, varied by the buff doublets and cuirasses of their officers, as they debouched firom the Soignies road, and formed in columns of attack, with colours flying and trumpets sounding. At twelve at noon the cannonade begun on both sides, when William of Orange sat down to dinner' in the open field. At the same time the Duke of Luxembourg and several of his officers were simi- larly occupied in the abbey; when some of the Orange dragoons made a dash into it, sword in hand, "like rude guests, and having forced the French general to rise from table, seized his plate and carried it away before those about him re- covered from their surprise" ("Life of William in.,"i7S4). About three in the afternoon, some battalions under Count Waldeck began to assault the abbey, the Prince of Orange in person encouraging the soldiers with his presence and by his example; and this attack was seconded by the regiments of the left wing. The woods were soon full of smoke, and re-echoing with musketry. In the meantime the Spanish troops, led by the Duke de Villa Hermosa, made a fierce attack on the French in the village of Casteau, seconded by the guards of the Prince of Orange, and the English and Scottish regiments under the Earl of Ossory, while a battery of guns was playing on the abbey of St. Denis. ' Under cover of this fire, the confederate dra- goons advanced with fury, and dismounting, with their muskets and plug-bayonets stormed the clois- ter ; while Adjutant-General Colyear pushed on to the body of the abbey, seconded by the Dutch under General Delnick. " They filed through the narrow passages and slid down the the precipices with an invincible courage, and drove the enemy, after a vigorous resistance, within their own lines. In the midst of this pell-mell was His Highness, accom- panied by the Duke of Monmouth, who fought all day by his side ; and animated with success, his eyes sparkling like fire, he cried out, ' To me ! to me 1 ' to encourage those regiments that were to second the foremost" ("Life of Prince William," 1688). There was no sparing of powder and shot, con- tinues this author ; and Count Horn, drawing his cannon nearer, fired into the valley upon the French battalions, and made dreadful havoc among them. From the point of St. Denis, the Prince of Orange hurried to aid in the attack, on Casteau, where the action was being hotly disputed by the French against the Spaniards of the right wing, and their supports, the Orange Foot Guards, .under Count Solmes, with the regiments of Rocque-Senes and Holstein, and the two brigades of British under the Earl of Ossory. It was at this point the most deadly struggle took place. It lasted for five hours, but the enemy were ultimately driven in, and pursued with pike and plug-bayonet " for a quarter of a league, through a field and down a precipice, where gUdes the river Haine, to the farther side of Casteau ; " and here occurred the most serious loss to the British officers. The English had the following casualties in this affair : — Monmouth's regiment, three officers killed and ten wounded ; Wesley's regiment, two killed and ten wounded ; Belasis' regiment, seven killed and five wounded, one mortally. Of the Scottish officers were the following: — Kirkpatrick's regiment, three killed, including the colonel (who was Governor Herzogenbush), and six wounded, including Lieutenant-Colonel Lauder, mortally ; Colyear's regiment, two killed and three wounded, two of them mortally ; Mackay's regi- ment, four killed and three wounded. Total, fifty- eight officers killed and wounded. The last-named corps belonged to the Scots Brigade in the Dutch service, and the command of it had been recently bestowed upon Colonel Hugh Mackay, of Scourie, in preference to Graham of Claverhouse, one of its officers, who at the. battle of Seneff saved the life of the Prince of Orange when he was defeated by the Prince of Cond^ ; and this favouritism led to Graham quitting the service of the States-General in disgust. WilUam of Orange, at the batde of St. Denis, displayed uncommon bravery. He advanced to 352 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. fDrumclog. the front, sword in hand, leading the attack "in the midst of fire and smoak, and bullets flying thick as hail, adventuring so far that he had been in imminent danger had not M. de Overkirk opposed himself to a daring captain that was just ready to charge the prince in full careere, and layd the brisk assailant dead upon the spot." Overkirk, or Auverquerque, shot the officer with his pistol. The brunt of this portion of the battle fell to infantry and dragoons (who could act on foot or in the saddle). The London Gazette says that owing to the nature of the ground the cavalry could not engage ; but " the English and Scots regiments did things to the admiration of those who beheld them." And in the " Life of the Duke of Ormond," we learn that their leader, Lord Ossory, received from the States of Holland, the Duke of Villa Hermosa, and the King of Spain, letters acknow- ledging the great services he performed in this campaign. Night put an end to the contest, and the con- federates remained masters of the Abbey of St. Denis. On the side of the alhes were 1,500 killed and wounded ) but on that of the enemy, more than 6,000 are said to have been the number of their united casualties. I'he Duke of Luxembourg having lost so im- portant a post, retired next day in confusion, and the Prince of Orange took possession of the camp he abandoned, and thus broke the blockade of Mons. For saving his life, he presented M. Over- kirk with a gold-hilted sword, a pair of horse- buckles of gold, and a pair of magnificent pistols mounted with the same metal. The Peace of Nimeguen, signed at tvvelve o'clsck on the night of the nth of August, three days before the battle, put an end to the war, and unfortunately for the honour and boasted humanity of William of Orange, he is alleged to have fought St. Denis with the treaty in his pocket, because, as General Napier has it, he was loth to lose a cheap lesson in his trade. CHAPTER LXIV. EOTHWELL BRIDGE, 1679. DtJRiNG all these years of the war with Holland, and then with France, the persecution of the Covenanters continued to stain with blood the Scottish Government. There during eight-and- twenty years of tyranny more than 18,000 persons had suffered death or banishment, or perished of their wounds in wild places ; 362 were executed in form of law; and 498 were slain in cold blood, without any form of law. The Duke of Lauderdale was at the head of this administration, which plun- dered and oppressed mthout mercy, till the suffer- ing people became goaded almost to madness. All meetings for prayer or sermon, according to the simple forms of the Kirk of Scotland, had to be held in arms, and in lonely places, with scouts abroad to give early notice of the approach of the king's troops, who had special orders to disperse at the point of the sword all such meetings. "It was a fair Sabbath morning, ist June, a.d. 1679, that an assembly of Covenanters sat down on the heathy hills of Drumclog," says Thomas Brownlee, " Laird of Torfoot, and an officer of the Presbyterian army," in his narrative. "We had assembled, not to fight, but to worship the God of our fathers. AVe were far from the tumult of cities ; the long dark heath waved around us, and we disturbed no living creatures save the pees- weep (i.e., lapwing) and the heather-cock. As usual, we had come armed. It was for self-defence; for desperate and ferocious men made bloody raids through the country, and, pretending to put down treason, they waged war against religion and morals. They spread ruin and havoc over the face of bleed- ing Scotland." On that Sunday morning, at the ver^ time these poor people were meeting for prayer in that wild part of -Lanarkshire, Colonel John Graham, of Claverhouse— the gallant Viscount Dundee of a nobler strife and time — was riding at the head of the Scottish Life Guards up the lovely vale of Avon, carrying with him two field-preachers, whom he had apprehended in the vicinity of Hamilton. His regiment, which in 1674 consisted of four squadrons, and was almost entirely composed of gentlemen, is now represented by the second troop of the I St Life Guards. In its ranks, serving as a private, rode Francis Stuart, the titular Earl of Bothwell, the cousin of the reigning monarch. To give timely notice of the approach of the military, and more especially of Claverhouse, whose Dramclsg.i THE CONVENTlCLfi. Hi name inspired terror, it was, we have said, cus- tomary to have scouts on the hills, and on that of Loudon some were now watching the approach of the Guards. They halted at the village of Strath- avon, after a ride of eight miles, and at that time the only inn of the place was the stone building still called the " Tower," opposite the churchyard, an •. therein Claverhouse took his dejeuner on the ist of June, and not at the castle of Tillietudlem, as narrated in Scott's romance. During this halt he learned that the conventicle he intended to prevent or to disperse was not to be held, and relying on this information, he marched towards Glasgow. He had not proceeded far when he found that the peasantry had deceived him, and the Covenanters were actually at prayer in the glen of Drumclog. "Tlveir blood be on their own heads ^ and be ' No quarter !' the word this day !" exclaimed Claverhouse (" Scotfs Worthies ") ; and " No quarter ! " rang from troop to troop of the Guards. Spurs were applied to the horses, and resuming their march towards the head of Avondale, the Cavalier Guards, after galloping over several miles of purple moor and waste land, about mid-day came in sight of the Covenanters, to the number of several hundreds or a thousand men, who were but indifferently armed ; and to these the scouts on Loudon Hill had given due notice of the approach of the enemy. On seeing the glittering array of the Life Guards, in all the bravery of plumed beavers, cuirasses, and scarlet doublets, pouring along the glen towards them, all the men of the conventicle came to the front, while the women and children gathered on an eminence, and, by their wailing and shrill cries, inspired their relatives to fight to the last. On the day of this skirmish at Drumclog, which formed the prelude to the battle of Bothwell Bridge, the Covenanters were led by John Balfour, of Kinloch, otherwise called, of Burleigh ; David Hackston, of Rathillet, who was concerned in the murder of Archbishop Sharp ; Robert, afterwards Sir Robert, Hamilton, of Preston, Bart. ; Woodburn, of Mains; Sergeant John Nisbet, of Hardhill; and William Clelland, an accomplished soldier and poet, who afterwards fell at the head of the 26th or Cameronian Regiment, at the defence of Dunkeld, as wc shall relate in a future chapter. Graham's Guardsmen were only 250 strong, and their horses were somewhat fatigued by a long morning's march, over bogs and heavy moorland, under a sultry June sun; yet their leader was deter- mined to attack those men whom he found assembled thus in arms, and who were forming themselves for resistance on a ridge, before which lay a morass. Near it is the farmhouse of High Drumclog, still inhabited by the descendants of those who then possessed it. Therein Claver- house placed his two prisoners. When the Guards formed line, it became apparent that if they and the Covenanters approached each other the conflict would take place in the marsh. Caught in the very act of prayer, the "hill-men," as they were named, knew that there was nothing before them but death or captivity; so their leaders formed them in three lines. The first was provided with matchlocks, and moved down to the edge of the morass. The second had pikes and halberds ; the third had scythes, hayforks, clubs, fish-spears, and other implements, suddenly im- provised as weapons for war. On each flank of these men were posted a few who were mounted, to act as cavalry. Unslinging their carbines, the Guards poured a volley on the Covenanters ; but as they v/ere in the act of kneel- ing the shots passed over their heads. The dragoons then closed to the front, under a steadier fire from the Covenanters ; and as their horses began to flounder in the morass, Cornet Graham, a kinsman of the colonel, fell dead from his saddle. " In the name of God," cried Claverhouse, "cross the bog and attack them ©n the flanks ! If we fail in crossing the morass we are lost !" "'The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon!'" was now the cry of the insurgents. " Pikemen to the front," exclaimed Hamilton ; " God and our country! Over the bog and at them, lads !" Then, while many were " pouring forth a con- siderable portion of nasal psalmody," the whole rushed upon the troops with such irresistible fury that the latter began to back their horses up hill, or wheel by threes to get on firmer ground. Some dreadful personal encounters took place, and these were characterised by all the furious hatred which each party entertained towards the other. Many gentlemen of the Guards were dragged from their saddles — among others, a captain named Arrol — and grappled hand to hand with their assailants in the morass, fighting with swords shortened, or with clubbed steel pistols seeking to beat out each others' brains. The morning was sultry, and during the conflict some were seen to drink the blood-stained water of the bog in which they fought. Torfoot avers that he did so out of his steel cap. Colonel Graham, a man then in the prime of life, whose handsome oval face was almost feminine in its softness of feature and wonderful regularity, did all that a brave officer could do to rally his 354 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Drumclog. broken squadrons ; but the fury and pressure of the triumphant insurgents was overwhelming, and he was repeatedly in great danger. His horse was shot under him. It was a black charger, of such remarkable beauty and swiftness that it was gene- rally believed so be a gift from the devil, if not the devil himself " This horse was so fleet, and its rider so expert," says Sir Walter Scott, " that they are said to have outstripped and 'coted,' or turned, a hare upon the Bran Law, near the head of retreat of his dragoons after they had given way ;" and the Covenanters averred that "they saw the bullets recoil from his jack-boots and buff coat like hailstones from a rock of granite, as he galloped to and fro." By one sword his white plume was shorn away; by another a shred was hewn from his butf coat. The Laird of Torfoot describes the confusion of the Life Guards thus : " Some shrieked, some groaned, some shouted ; horses neighed and pranced, and swords rang on steel helmets. I THE BATTLE OF BOTHWELL BRIDGE (see pO^e SjS). Moffat Water, where the descent is so precipitous that no merely earthly horse could keep its feet, or merely mortal rider keep the saddle." Its destruction was greeted now with yells of joy; and as the Covenanters had a fanatical and super- stitious idea that, like General Dalzell, its rider was impervious to lead, many an aim was taken at him with silver coins, and the narrow escapes he had were almost miraculous. " He has the proof of lead — take a piece of silver !" was the incessant cry of the Covenanters, as they loaded and cast about their matchlocks. " Easily distinguished by his rich dress, he was the foremost in all the charges he made at every favourable opportunity to arrest the pressure of the pursuers, and to cover the placed around me a few of my hardy men, and we rushed into the thickest in search of Claver'se. At that his trumpet sounded a retreat." He adds that Claverhouse was borne away by the press of his men, without sword or helmet. It was in vain, he found, to contend longer with an enemy to whom the nature of the ground had given every advantage over cavalry, whose horses became useless at everyplunge, and entangled more deeply in the morass. He ordered his trumpets to sound a retreat, which was achieved successfully ; but he left two officers and thirty-six of the Life Guards dead in the skirmish, while the insurgents lost only six, one of who;n, named Dingwall, had been among the slayers of Archbishop Sharp, tofumcldg.) A CHARMED LIFE, 35^ BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [BothwcU BiicJgl, and whose monumeiit yet remains in Strathavon churchy ard. As Ckverhouse galloped past the farm-house of Drumclog, with the entrails of his dying horse hanging outj one of his late prisoners, a field- preacher, cried to him, mockingly, " Stay, and tak the aflernooli's discourse alang wi' ye." It is to be regretted that in their fury and hate the Covenanters slashed and mutilated the bodies of the Cavalier Guards in a manner that was disgrace- ful. The body of Cornet Grahame " was found shockingly mangled," says Scott ; " his eyes were pulled out, and his features so much defaced that it was impossible to recognise him." Captain Arrol's body was found disembowelled; but that, the Laird of Torfoot says, was done by a horse's hoofs (see also " Cruikshank's History," Vol. I.). Elated by their victory in this skirmish, to com- memorate which a monument has been recently erected at Drumclog, and aware that they had now terribly compromised themselves with the local government, the insurgents resolved to take the field as aggressors ; and some thousands were brought together and organised before the 22nd of June, the day on which the battle of Bothwell Bridge was fought. Their principal banner, which is still preserved at Dunbar, was borne by Hall of Haughead, in Teviot- dale. It is of blue silk, and measures four and a half feet by three and a half, and has three in- scriptions upon it — the upper in Hebrew charac- ters, " Jehovah-nissi (Exodus xvii. 15) ;" the second in white letters, "For Christ and His Truths;" and the third is "No Quarter to ye Active Enemies of ye Covenant," and from the latter in- junction it takes its name of " The Bloody Banner." Another banner borne by them on this occasion, and preserved at Edinburgh, is also blue with a white St. Andrew's cross, and the motto, "Cove- nants, Religion, King, and Kingdomes." In the middle of June they marched down Avondale to Hamilton, resolved to fight a battle with any troops that might be sent against them. As soon as Charles II. heard of the affair at Drumclog and the spread of the insurrection, he ordered the celebrated and eventually unfortunate Duke of Monmouth to assume the command of the troops in Scotland. Forty copies of a speech made by Lord Shaftesbury in the Enghsh Parlia- ment (to the effect " that popery was intended to precede slavery in England, and that slavery had been the forerunner of popery in Scotland ") were dispatched to Edinburgh for circulation, and it became, says Dalrjmple, like the sound of a trumpet to the Scots. On the proposal being made that some forces should accompany Monmouth, Shaftesbury started an objection "that EngUsh troops could not be sent into Scotland without infringing the treaties between the two nations;'' and several of the Whig party refused to serve, among others Lord Grey, who was to have commanded the cavalry ; and the city of London petitioned against any expedition into Scotland : so that ultimately only four troops of English cavalry, under Major Main, and '' clad in coats of a reddish hue," according to the old Cameronian ballad, accompanied the duke, who left London on the isth of June, and on the 19th reached Edinburgh, a remarkable instance of speed when we consider what was then the state of the roads between these two cities. Prior to his arrival, on the 6th of June, the Earl of Linhthgow, on being appointed Major-General of the Scottish land forces in lieu of Sir George Munro, had ordered a rendezvous at Falkirk, where he was joined by Lord Ross and Claverhouse ; and on marching to Larbert Muir he was joined by his own regiment, under his son. Lord Livingstone. The forces present were : Life Guards, one squadron ; independent horse, three squadrons ; the Foot Guards, two battahons; Lord Mar's Fusiliers, two battalions (21st Foot). In addition to these regulars were some militia from counties well affected to the Government, the most re- solute of these being the Lennox Highlanders. The Haddingtonshire Regiment was led by George Seton, Earl of Winton. Those of Lothian were clad in blue uniforms ; and about this time hats, in lieu of bonnets, were first worn by them. Save Main's dragoons, there were no English troops with the duke, though Scott, in his romance of " Old Mortality," writes again and again of " the Enghsh Foot Guards " at Bothwell Bridge ; and the appearance of these dragoons did not add in Scotland to the popularity of the duke, who, at the head of 10,000 men and a fine park of artillery, marched against the insurgents at mid- summer. The duke had left London with ideas favour- able to the outlawed Presbyterians ; yet he was rather surprised, on arriving at Edinburgh, to receive orders " not to treat with rebels." But the language of the persecutors was, says a writer, so to speak — crois a VuHge Gabriel au je te tue ! — a species of despotism which none could have borne with so long and so patiently but those who evinced in their humble submission the power of religion over the mind. Beyond adopting the means of self-defence, and signifying their resolution to maintain their faith Bothwdl Bridge.] THE FLAG OF TRUCE. 357 inviolate, tliey did not proceed ; and nothing but a gross perversion of language on the part of the king and his Scottish ministry could cause this rebellion. The appearance of the royal army as it defiled over Bothwell Muir is said to have been so im- posing — the regular aspect of the checkered squads of pikemen and musketeers, the Guards, horse, dragoons, and artillery, making up a glittering whole — that it seemed as if nothing short of an actual miracle could prevent the total rout and destruction of the ill-equipped and ill-ordered forces of the insurgents, who had now taken possession of the bridge which led across the Clyde to the preaching camp which they had formed on the opposite side of the river. The famous General Dalzell was not present on this occasion with the army, though described as being so in Scott's romance. " Upon the duke being made com- mander-in-chief, Dalzell refused to serve under him," says Captain Crichton, "and remained at his lodgings in Edinburgh till his Grace was super- seded, which happened about a fortnight after." According to the London Gazette, it was at seven in the morning when the Scottish regular troops began to approach the bridge of Bothwell ; but prior to that the Covenanters had seen them ad- vancing in the dark or before daybreak, by their lighted matches, which seemed like thousands of glowworms in the moorland. The Covenanters were now under 8,000 strong ; but save those already named few gentlemen of note and not one of the nobility had joined them, the field-preachers being in fact their generals : though it is shrewdly suspected that they were secretly instigated to proceed to desperate measures by some influential men in Scotland, who acted in combination with Lord Shaftesbury and other popular leaders in England. Yet these poor people showed great judgment in their choice of a position, if they failed in skill or the means for defending it. The ancient bridge, now so celebrated in history, was then very different from what it appears now. It was long and narrow, with four arches, about 120 feet in length; but in breadth, exclusive of the parapets, it measured not more than 12 feet. It was paved with round unhewn stones, taken from the bed of the river which flows beneath it. In the centre was a fortified gateway, which was frequently the case on Scottish bridges in those days. This gateway rose from the pier nearest the southern bank, and the keeper's house occupied the other extremity. It also served as a kind of inn, or travellers' rest. Three-fourths of the bridge w§re left open and unprotected bjr the gateway upon that side from which annoyance might proceed. On one side was a hollow, where the road is now filled up ; and this gave the bridge a rise of twenty feet in its centre, and such was its aspect until 1826. The banks of the Clyde were fringed by thickets of hazel and alder trees. The ground occupied by the insurgents was a plain open field, interspersed by a few clumps of trees ; consequently, as they were without efficient cavalry or artillery, on the defence of the bridge depended all their chances of success or of safety. The appearance of the country around is dif- ferent now from what it was then. The great muir or moor of Bothwell, over which the royal army advanced in such imposing order, is now a beau- tiful and fertile district ; and a villa crowns the summit of the green knoll where the Duke of Monmouth, mounted on a superb white charger, and clad in all the Cavalier bravery of the day, with wig, and plume, and breastplate, and with the Garter glistening on his breast, was seen, baton in hand, directing the motions of the troops and the fire of the artillery ; and all the ground occupied by the insurgents is now turned into well-enclosed fields and thriving plantations. Encouraged by the recent repulse of the Life Guards at Drumclog, the Covenanters prepared confidently to dispute the passage of the bridge. The central toll-house or gateway they had very strongly barricaded by stones, carts, wheels, and banks of earth; and to defend the hostelry of the warder was the special task of Hackston of Rathillet and Hall of Haughead, with 300 chosen marksmen. A cannon or two they had in position to sweep the approach to the bridge and gate ; and along the bank of the river were all the horse they possessed, under Sergeant John Nisbet ; and a body of matchlocks, under the grim and stem Balfour of Burleigh, occupied the thickets and bushes. The main body lay in dense masses within a quarter of a mile from the bridge. As the king's troops drew neai-, the insurgents could be seen in'clamorous confusion. Instead of being in quiet order of battle, listening only to their officers or leaders, they were crowding around the preachers, while discord, timidity, and irresolu- tion began to prevail. Some proposed to lay their grierances before the Duke of Monmouth, a mea- sure strongly opposed by Balfour and others, yet it took place. Messengers with a flag of truce were sent to the duke, who received them on the green knoll with great courtesy; but he told them no negotiation would b§ entertained unless they surrendered as 358 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Bothwell Bridge. prisoners of war, unconditionally. They were fur- ther informed that if they would trust to the royal clemency they would be favourably received. "Yes, and hung next!" was the scornful re- sponse of the messengers. They were allowed half an hour to consider the conditions, which eventually were fiercely and sorrowfully rejected by these desperate men, who were in no way suited to compete with the forces brought against them, and who were without order, and almost without ammunition; for one large barrel, which had come from a dealer in Hamilton, and was supposed to contain powder, on being opened was found to be filled with raisins ! While the royal troops formed in battalions and squadrons on one side of the Clyde, on the other could be seen the masses of the insurgents, with pikes glittering and banners displayed, but in no order. Thousands of tongues were vociferating, and no one was listening. To some parties the field-preachers were haranguing on their usual bitter topics, blending passages from the Old Testa- ment with fierce denunciations of the king, of Claverhouse, of Erastians, Nullifidians, Prelatists, and Anti-Covenanters. At length, when a few shots, at the expiry of the half hour, were exchanged between the advanced guard and the matchlock- men at the bridge, they suffered themselves to be formed into ranks, and, after the manner of Drum- clog, they struck up a psalm ; but it was observed by the superstitious that it sounded more like " a penitentiary stave than the bold strain which had resounded along the wild heath of Loudon Hill, in anticipation of that day's victory. The melancholy melody soon received a rough accom- paniment, for the cannon began to fire on one side and the musketry on both, and the bridge of Bothwell, with the wooded banks adjacent, were involved in wreaths of smoke.'' Led by Lord Livingstone, the ist and 2nd bat- talions of the Scots Foot Guards, and those of the Earl of Mar's Fusiliers, under cover of a fire from the artillery, formed in four contiguous close columns, rushed double-quick, with colours flying, to the margin of the Clyde, and speedily deployed into line along its right bank, and then heavy file firing ensued from both ends of the bridge. " I shall never forget the effect of our fire from our battery where my men stood," says the Laird of Torfoot. " We saw the line of the foe advance in all the military glory of brave and beautiful men ; the horses pranced, the armour gleamed. In one moment nothing was seen but a shocking mass of mortality — human limbs, and the bodies and limbs of horses, mingled in one huge heap, or blown to a great distance. Another column at- tempted to cross above the bridge, and some threw themselves into the current ; but one well-directed fire from Burleigh's troops threw them into dis- order, and drove them back.'' Elsewhere we find that he describes the Reverend Donald Cargill, who was afterwards executed with singular barbarity at Edinburgh, mounted upon an extempore pulpit, amid all the hurly-burly of the conflict, pouring forth a rhapsody like this ; — " Behold the banners of the enemy ! " cried he ; "hear ye not the fire of the foe, and of your own brethren? Our fathers and brothers are falling beneath their swords ! Hasten to their aid (mean- ing those who were in defence of the bridge). See the flag of the Covenant ! See the motto in letters of gold — ' Christ's Crown and Covenant ! ' Hear the voice of your weeping country ! Hear the wailings of the bleeding Kirk ! Banish discord, and let us as a band of brothers present a bold front to the foe. Follow me, all ye who love your country and the Covenant; I go to die in the front of the battle ! " So resolute was the defence made of the long narrow bridge, swept as it was by the concentrated fire of 300 picked marksmen, that the Foot Guards gave way, on which the Duke of Monmouth leaped from his horse, and proceeded to rally and re-form them, sword in hand. Then it was that the Macfarlane clan, with their badge, tufts of the cloud-berry bush in their bon- nets, and led by their chief, raised their cathghainn, or shrill wild battle-cry, of " Lochsloy ! Lochsloy ! " taken from a lake at the head of Loch Lomond, the centre of their ancient possessions, and rushed on with sword and target to storm the gateway, at the very moment when the ammunition of its defenders began to fail. Over the killed and wounded of the Foot Guards they sprang lightly, and with axes and hammers beat the portal to pieces ; the trees, carts, wheels, and other obstructions which formed the barricade were cast into the river. Then the roll of the musketry had ceased, for the ammunition was done on one hand, and on the other the in- fantry battalions had plugged their bayonets, as was still the fashion, in the muzzles of their match- locks. The Lennox Highlanders now led the way, opposing their targets, claymores, and poleaxes to the halberts, pikes, and partisans of those who came on, under Burleigh and others, to succour the men who fought under Rathillet and Haughead. A brief but bloody conflict ensued; the Covenant- ers were driven back in front, and many of those in the rear began to fly, while the troops with all Bothwell Bridge,]' THE SLAUGHTEE. 359 speed continued to defile across the bridge, and form by regiments on the opposite bank, unscrew- ing their wooden-hafted bayonets, and opening fire as they came up upon the recoiHng masses. The moment the last man of the infantry was over, the fiery Claverhouse, "who, like a hawk perched on a rock, and eyeing the time to pounce upon its prey, had watched the event of the action from the opposite bank," now, with reins loose and brandished sword, led over all the cavalry, formmg them in squadrons almost at a gallop, and then wheeling them at full speed in the open ground round the flanks of .the Foot Guards and Line, fell upon the Covenanters, whose loose and dis- heartened masses were in no condition to encounter a charge of horse, with all its terrible accompani- ments of speed, sight, and sound. Burning to avenge their recent defeat at Drum- clog, the terrible Life Guards, cuirassed and plumed, and armed with swords of enormous length, were first among them, cutting down the unfortunates on all hands. The latter gave one disorderly or scattered volley, made one attempt to form a stand of pikes, and then all was over, and the Guards, the mounted Militia, and Main's Enghsh dragoons, called by some Oglethorpe's Horse, were riding through the living masses as thrsugh a field of ripened corn. The slaughter was terrible ; the screams and cries of the wounded and dying were heard at a vast distance, and the Duke of Mon- mouth, on his white charger, was seen to ride in every direction to arrest the pursuit of the fugitives, and save their lives if possible. A column of 1,200 men, on finding themsehes surrounded and cut off, surrendered at discretion, though in most instances they had better have died on the field, as the axe and the gibbet, torture by steel boots and thumbscrews, captivity, slavery, and shipwreck, were before them. In this battle, as in many others, the numbers present, killed, or taken vary in every account. In Blackadder's Memoirs, we are told that the Life Guards in the pursuit could not resist cutting down some of Main's dragoons and certain of the mounted militia, " being grieved to see the English- men delighting so much to shed their countrymen's blood." The pursuit continued long after the trumpets had sounded a retreat, and in their despair the fugitives made a last attempt to rally and defend the streets of Hamilton, under the command of John Balfour of Burleigh and Captain Paton, when the former received a bullet which broke his right arm. " Ma^ the hand that fired the shot be withered!" he exclaimed, fiercely, as the sword fell from his grasp. " I can fight no longer now." Turning his horse's head, he galloped away, and made his escape to Holland. According to the London Gazette about 800 were killed on the field. Many of the fugitives found a refuge in the leafy recesses of Cadzow Forest and the wooded domain of Hamilton Palace, where they were defiantly pro- tected by the Duchess Anne, the eldest surviving daughter of James, Duke of Hamilton and Chatel- herault, who had been beheaded for his loyalty to Charles, in March, 1649. Her Grace sent a message to the Duke of Monmouth desiring him " to prevent his soldiers from trespassing upon lier grounds." Robert Hamilton, of Preston, the commander, reached Ayrshire in safety, and died a baronet in 1701J but Hackston of Rathillet, and Sergeant Nisbet, taken at dift'erent times, with two of the field-preachers, were executed at Edinburgh, and their heads were fixed on the Tolbooth wall. On the field of Bothwell, the pursuit was scarcely over and the troops had just returned to their colours, when old General Dalzell arrived on horse- back from Edinburgh, in hot haste, lest he should be too late for the fighting. Pie brought with him a new commission, appointing him commander-in- chief, but not entirely superseding the Duke of Monmouth, whom he is said to have upbraided for liis clemency to the prisoners, and especially for the orders he had issued that morning. These were "to yield quarter to all who asked it ; to take as many prisoners as possible, and to spare life." " Had my commission come before the battle," said Sir Thomas, grimly, "these rogues should never more have troubled king or country." He then marched the troops to Glasgow, all save Main's dragoons. These returned to England with Monmouth, who en route received, says Lord Kingston, a splendid banquet, on the 6th of Jul)', from the Earl of Winton, at his house of Seton. The London Gazette announces that the news of the victory at Bothwell Bridge was received in the capital with intense satisfaction. Bonfires were set ablaze, bells pealed, and cannon boomed, with other signs of rejoicing over the defeat of those unfortunates whose wrongs the citizens cared not to comprehend, and who had come forth to do battle "for an oppressed Kirk and broken Covenant ; " and it must be acknowledged that for the sake of their religious opinions the Scots have made bloody sacrifices, to which there is no parallel in the records of England ; and well did their Church assume the motto, " Behold the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumedi" 360 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Tangiers. CHAPTER LXV. TANGIERS, 1680-4. " One of those remnants of history which," as Bacon has it, " has survived the shipwreck of time " may be deemed the defence of Tangiers by the British troops, in the last years of the reign of Charles II. Then, as now, Tangiers was a con- venient port in the kingdom of Mo- rocco, and a place of considerable strength, which had been ceded to the English Govern- ment by Alphonso VI. of Portugal, as a portion of the dowry of his sister, Donna Catherina, the In- fanta, who brought with it also our right to the Isle of Bom- bay. Charles II., her spouse, thereupon declared Tangiers a free port, invested it with great privileges, spent on a new mole two millions, a vast sum in those days, strengthened its for- tifications, and placed therein a ganison, which was frequently assailed by the Moors, who resented the intru- sion of European infidels on theirsoilj but more particu- larly in 1663 and 1664. They killed in action during the latter year, General Andrew Rutherford, the Scottish Earl of Teviot, and nineteen other officers, whose names are now unknown save one, Captain David Gray, son of Lord Gray, of Kinfauns. PLUG BAYONET (PERIOD OF JAMES II., 1686). Pepys states that they fell into an ambush. I'eviot had succeeded the Earl of Peterborough as governor, and had served under Gustavus Adolphus in his wars with the Em- pire. At his death, John, Earl of Mid- dleton, on being de- prived of all his high posts in Scotland, was appointed by the king to com- mand at Tangiers, where he died in 1673, after sustain- ing many desperate encounters with the Moors. Among the troops under his orders were those regiments which are now numbered as the 2nd and 4th of the Line ; the former being spe- cially named "The Old Tangiers,'' or "Queen Catherine's Own Regiment," and having borne since those days the Paschal lamb on its colours and appoint- ments, but with an ironical meaning — this corps, for the conduct of its colo- nel, rather than that of the officers and men, was known in after years as Piercy Kirk's "lambs." Muley Ismael, Emperor of Mo- rocco and of Africa, as he designated himself, King of Fez, Sus, and Gago, Lord of Derah and Guinea, and Great Xerif of Mahomet, was exceedingly anxious to get Tangiers into his hands, and actually proposed an alliance with Charles II., in a remark- Tangicrs.] FORT HAMILTON. 361 able letter, which will be found in "Ogleb/s Africa." In 1679 he made a sudden attack upon the town in person ; but retired, after destroying two forts that lay in front of it. At this time the Scots Royals, or Regiment of Dumbarton, which we wrote of last when under Louis XIV., consisted of twenty-one companies, which were stationed in Ireland, and four of these were ordered to reinforce the Tangiers garrison, commanded by Sir Palmes Fairborne, colonel of the By the time these reinforcements arrived, Fort Henrietta — named after the queen of Charles I. — was closely besieged by the Moors ; but the chief strength of the place was the castle of Tangiers, ■which stands on an eminence overlooking the town, and is surrounded by bastions now crumbling to ruins. In aspect it resembles the Alcazar of Seville, having vaulted roofs, richly ornamented, embossed, arabesqued, and painted in brilliant colours, though much of these are obscured by whitewash. TANGIERS CASTLE. 2nd Foot ; and they embarked at Kinsale on the 4th of April, 1680, on board defames and Swan frigates. In the subsequent July strong detach- ments of the Coldstream and English Guards, and other corps, the whole of which were styled " The King's Battalion," sailed for Tangiers, under the command of John, Earl of Mulgrave, concerning whom Johnson, in his " Lives of the Poets," men- tions a curious story, to the effect that he was intentionally exposed on this occasion to peril in a leaky ship, to gratify some jealous pique of King Charles, whose health he would never permit to be drunk at table till he found himself on dry land. It was during this voyage that he composed a poem called " The Vision." Screened by the Atlas chain from those burning winds that sweep over the sandy wastes of Sahara, Tangiers is situated in a land of beauty and fertility, where the palm, the orange, and vine grow in luxuriance, and where the fields are teeming with flowers in January. Fort Hamilton stood at some distance from the town. The cannon of the Moors had made two breaches in the walls, which had, moreover, been undermined by them; hence it became evident that the garrison could no longer defend it : so a sally from the castle was proposed to relieve them, to the end that they might blow up the tower, and cut a passage through the Moors back to the town. For this most perilous service there volunteered 31 3<>2 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Tangiers. Captain Hume, Lieutenant Pierson, Lieutenant Bayley (of the family of Polkemmet), four sergeants, and eighty rank and file, all of the Royals. On the 1 2th of May, at eight o'clock in the morn- ing, this resolute band loaded, lighted their matches, and, led by their three officers, armed with pike and rapier, issued from Tangiers ; while at the ■ same moment the troops in the tower blew up their ma- gazine, and rushed out to cut a passage through the investing force, and unite their strength with that of the coming succour. With wild and diabolical yells, the Moors on horse and foot came rushing from all quarters to cut them off, to slay, hew, and decapitate. Forcing the first intrenchment with clubbed matchlock, and at push of pike and partisan, the English soon stormed the second, though the ditch was fully twelve feet deep ; but ere they effected a junction with their Scottish comrades. Captain Trelawney and 1 20 men were killed and barbarously muti- lated, while only forty-four succeeded in reaching Captain Hume's advancing .detachment, which was assailed by a great body of Moorish horse, with lances and bucklers. But though he was ridden down and wounded, with fifteen of his men, he retired skirmishing and in good order, until all were — as the London Gazette records — safe under the guns of the castle of Tangiers ; and a few days after this, twelve additional com- panies of the Royals landed, under the command of Major Sir James Halkett, a native of Fife- shire. Each company now consisted of one hundred men — thirty of these were pikemen, whose weapon was fast falling into disuse ; sixty were armed with matchlocks or snaphance muskets ; and ten, on the flanks, were armed with light fusils called fowling-pieces, to pick off conspicuous leaders. The snaphance musket, or true Brown Bess of later wars, was a weapon first used by the Dutch marauders termed snapjians, or poiiltry-stealers, who, as they could not afford to purchase the more expensive wheel-lock, adopted a flint for the pyrite, and a furrowed piece of steel above the priming-pan, which on being snapped elicited the sparks. In January 1683-4 the English Guards were supplied with snaphance muskets and pikes only ; matchlocks were discontinued, though used in the Scots Guards and Line to a later period. The grenadiers alone had conical caps, and doublets looped or slashed; those of the battalion companies were wide and of scarlet cloth, with blue petticoat V breeches in the Royals, and broad hats with white feathers, the officers when on duty being accoutred with cuirass and gorget. The Scottish regiments were distinguished by a white shoulder-scarf; those of the English were of various colours. According to Nathan Brook's Army List, pub- lished in 1684, all Scottish grenadiers had "caps lined with white, the lion's face crowned ; the flies St. Andrew's cross with the thistle and crown ; in the centre " Nemo me impune lacessit;" A few months' truce having come to an end, the entire garrison quitted the town and encamped under the walls, when, on a general parade that took place. Sir Palmes Fairborne, the Lieutenant- Governor made a spirited address to the troops, but in particular to the sixteen companies of the Royals, which is given in " Tangiers' Raecue " (by John Ross, 1 681), " Countrymen and brother soldiers," said he, in the quaint and euphuistic manner of the age, " let not your approved valour be derogated from at this time, neither degenerate from your ancient and former glory abroad ; and as you are looked upon here to be brave and experienced soldiers, con- stant and successive victory having hitherto at- tended your conquering swordSj do not come short of the great hopes we have in you and the pro- pitious procedures we expect from you at this time. For the glory of your nation, if you cannot surpass, you may imitate the bravest, and be emulous of their praises and renown." Whereupon, we are told, " there ensued a prp- digious amount of cheering, and waving of plumed beavers, muskets, and pikes ; " and inspired by the praise of the old EngUsh Cavalier, and emulous of maintaining their old regimental and national reputation, the Royals covered themselves with distinction in all the encounters that ensued. On the 20th and 22nd of September two very sharp conflicts took place, over ground where the Moorish vintage -Was past, and where the Grena- diers, .tinder Captain Hodges, behaved with re- markable bravery, encountering the dusky sons of 'Africa' both' on foot and horseback, and using their Hatdhets, grenades, and broadswords with wonderful rapidity.. The whole of the 22nd was spent in fighting, and we are told that throughout the entire day " the Scots, and the English seamen from the fleet, were hotly engaged, and beat the Moors out of several trenches." On this day a Moorish emir, who had shown remarkable bravery, when just about to pass his gaily-tasselled lance through an officer of the Royals, was shot, and fell from his beautiful horse. "On this a Scots grenadier of undaunted courage, being desirous of possessing the Moor's charger, leaped over the trenches and seized it ; but this brave man was immediately cut to pieces Tangiers.] MULEY ISMAEL. 363 by a party of Moors, who came galloping forward at the moment he was about to retire with the horse. On the same day it was resolved, in con- sequence of a newly-erected fort being completed, to retire within the walls (of Tangiers), when Sir James Halkett, at the head of Dumbarton's Scots, covered the retrograde movement, and repulsed several furious charges made by the Moorish lancers.'' Inspired by monotonous Moorish songs, and stories of Gebel-at-Tarik, who first led the Moors into Spain, of Musa Ben Nozier, who led his shining legions through Andalusia, and set up his tents by the Guadiana, and similar incentives, the turbaned horsemen of Muley Ismael made many desperate but futile attacks, riding onward launching darts and lances, or brandishing their keen crooked scimitars with shrill cries of " Allah ackbar ! " and when repelled or routed, crying with defiant resig- nation, " Wa la ghalib illah Allah ! " (" There is no true conqueror but God ! "). In a sally on the 24th of September, Sir Palmes Fairbome, of the Queen's Regiment, and Captain Forbes, of the Royals, fell mortally wounded. The former was succeeded as lieutenant-governor by Colonel Edward Sackville, of the Coldstream Guards, an officer who afterwards resigned his commission into the hands of James, at Rochester, in 1688. On the 27 th it was resolved to make a general sally on the Moorish lines, where more than 15,000 half-barbarian warriors were strongly and not unskilfully intrenched, under the banner of the Emperor Muley Ismael. Without beat of drum or sound of trumpet, in silence and darkness, the garrison, about three in the morning, issued from the embattled gates, and formed in order in front of the town. There were four troops of Edward Viscount Cornbury's English horse (now known as the ist Dragoons) ; three troops of Spanish horse, which were disbanded in 1683; a mixed battalion, com- posed of the two regiments of English Guards ; the Scots Royals ; the Earl of Inchiquin's Tangiers Regi- ment (now 2nd Foot); and Vice-Admiral Herbert's (afterwards Earl of Torrington) English battalion of seamen and marines. The cavalry were all accoutred in back, breast, and head-pieces, that were pistol proof. According to the " Royal Orders of the Day," the cuirasses and gorgets of captains were of the colour of gold ; those of lieutenants were black, studded with gold-headed nails, as those of the ensigns were with silver. The barrels of all fire- arms were bright steel, and in addition to his other ammunition, every soldier bore a priming-horn, and till within a very few years ago such an appendage was carried by every corporal of a sec- tion. In the year previous to the Revolution, the Tangiers or Queen's Regiment wore red frock coats with the skirts buttoned back, and white facings, baggy green knickerbockers, broad-brimmed black beaver hats looped up on one side, and shoes with huge rosettes ; and such very probably was their dress on that morning before the gates of Tangiers. To the Scots Royals, in right of seniority, was assigned the van ; and, on the signal being given, their grenadiers, led by Captain Hodges, and fol- lowed by the other fifteen companies of the corps, reached the Moorish intrenchments in the dark, and rushed upon them with a fury that was irresistible. " The Scots," says the author of " Tangiers' Rescue," " charged first, if there was any time at all between the charging ; for, like fire and lightning, they all went on at once." The enemy, who deemed themselves secure in their trenches, were taken by surprise, and many lay asleep upon their weapons. The mighty rush of many thousand feet was heard, and loud and reiterated hurrahs, as Hodges' company blew their fuses and cast their grenades — the special terror of the Moors — in bursting showers among them ; and then faUing on with sword or hammer-hatchet, his " lads in the looped-up clothes " did dreadful execution on every hand. Startled and confused, yet the Moors were in no way daunted. To their arms — the iong slender lance, the matchlock, scimitar, and dagger — they stood resolutely, and the battle soon became gene- ral along the line of their intrenchments. By the time that day had broken on the picturesque old castle, with its towers and galleries, the far-stretch- ing mole, and the blue Mediterranean, " nothiifg was heard," says the quaint old folio already quoted, " biit the roar of cannon, the firing of muskets, and the loud acclamations of the Christians, who ever and anon, when they stormed any trench from the enemy, raised a shout (the hearty old British cheer, no doubt) which pierced the clouds and echoed into the sky." The Royals stormed the first ditch, scouring out the defenders with their pikes, and throwing in the breastworks to afford a readier passage for the seven troops of English and Spanish cavalry, who galloped through, and were speedily at work with rapier and pistol, trampling down or slashing to pieces the yelling hordes of infuriated Moors, on whose tliick white turbans, however, many a trooper showered his trenchant strokes in vain. In close ranks, and charging shoulder to shoul- der, the steady British pikemen bore all before 3^4 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Sedgemoor. them, while the musketeers, slinging their muskets, advanced to closer quarters with their swords. Thus an incredible number of personal and hand-to- hand conflicts ensued. "These, however, generally terminated in favour of the British ; and the Scots Royals, particularly Captain Hodge and his grena- dier company, were distinguished for the number they slew.'' The Guards and Marines took four pieces of cannon; and the Moors, defeated on all hands, were swept in utter rout, with the loss of four standards. One of these, the remarkably beautiful banner of Muley Ismael, was taken by the Royals, who within an hour had 154 of all ranks made hors de combat. Among their mortally wounded was Captain Julius Lockart, son of Sir William Lockart, of -Lee (who had named him after Cardinal Maza- rin), and nephew of Oliver Cromwell. The total loss of the army in killed and wounded, was 35 officers and 434 men, and 63 horses; but the siege of Tangiers was instantly raised, and the power of the Moors was so completely broken that they were fain to make a six months' truce with Sir Edward Sackville, the new governor. Lieutenant-Colonel Piercy Kirk, of the 2nd Foot, a cruel and merciless officer, of whom here- after, was sent by the latter on the perilous duty of ambassador to the exasperated Muley Ismael, with whom he concluded a treaty of peace in the spring of i68i, and this document Captain Lang- ston placed in the hands of Charles II., with whom the English House of Commons was at that time in extreme ill-humour. So when he applied for money to enable him to retain Tangiers, they voted an address which was in reality a remonstrance. All the abuses of Government, the alliance with France, the Dutch War, and " the damnable and helUsh plots ascribed to the machinations of the Papists " were referred to ; and as it was dreaded by those short-seeing individuals that Tangiers would become a nursery for " the Popish soldiery " of his successor, the members refused to grant the neces- sary supply. Towards the end of 1683, Admiral Lord Dart- mouth arrived there with twenty men-of-war, with the king's orders to choke up the harbour, and to destroy the castle, mole, and town. The magnifi- cent mole ran for 600 yards into the sea, and was so firmly built, says Mr. Josiah Burchett, that the admiral had to blow it up with gunpowder, and its destruction alone occupied the army and navy six months. " By the king's directions, there were buried among the ruins a good number of milled crown pieces of His Majesty's reign, which per- haps many centuries hence, when other memory of it shall be lost, may declare to succeeding ages that this place was once a member of the British Empire." After its abandonment, Tangiers soon became a nest for pirates and corsairs. For its services there, in the autumn of 1684, King Charles II. ordered Dumbarton's corps to assume the distinctive appellation of "The Royal Regiment," borne by its two battalions until the 15th of December, 187 1, when Her Majesty Queen Victoria ordered them to resume their old title of the ist or "Royal Scots Regiment of Foot," the name by which it has ever been termed in Scotland. CHAPTER LXVL SEDGEMOOR, 1685. After the death of Charles II., whose loss, with all his faults, was so much deplored that there was scarcely even a housemaid in London who did not wear crape on the occasion, and after the accession of his brother, King James, plots and religious and political discontents at home increased the number of British exiles abroad. Amsterdam was the place where the leaders of these assembled. Thither Game Monmouth (expatriated since the Ryehouse Plot) from Brabant, and Argyle from Friesland. The latter, son of that Argyle who had been beheaded for complicity with Cromwell, after being sentenced to death for treason, had escaped from the castle of Edinburgh in 1681. These two great fugitives and their followers had few sentiments in common, save antagonism to King James and the desire of return. The English and Scotch were jealous of each other. Monmouth's aims at royalty were distasteful to Argyle, a Celtic chief of .long descent, and the legitimate representative of the Scottish kings. Compromising their differences, it was agreed at last that they should make an. attempt on Britain to secure the throne fgr MgnniQuth ^ that Argyl? Sedgemoor.] THE FALL OF ARGYLE. 365 should lead the way for the former, by landing on the western coast of Scotland. He was to hold that country, and Monmouth England. Maccallum Mhor, as he was named by his clansmen, landed in Cantyre, and sent forth the fiery cross to summon the Campbells in arms ; but only 2,000 claymores obeyed the call; yet with these he had the hardihood to commence his march for Glasgow. He was opposed by the Earl of Dumbarton, then commanding the forces in Scot- land, and at a place called Muirdykes, in Dumbar- tonshire, was irretrievably defeated. Disguised by a long beard, at a time when most men were closely shaven, and clad in the humble attire of a peasant, he was overtaken by five Lowland militiamen when crossing the river Cart, near Paisley. The nobility of his bearing excited their suspicions. He sprang into the water and kept them at bay for a time, though the immersion had wetted the taatches of his pistols and rendered them useless. He was overpowered and struck down. " Alas ! " he exclaimed, as he fell to the earth ; "alas, unfortunate Argyle!" Touched by his misfortunes, and respecting his rank, the militiamen were generously about to set him at liberty, when Lieutenant Shaw, of Greenock, approached, and recognising the marquis, ordered him to be bound hand and foot and conducted to Edinburgh, where, by order of the Secret Council, he was executed, and his head was placed on the Tolbooth, while his body was laid in the tomb of the Campbells, at Kilmuna, on the shore of the Holy Loch, in Argyleshire. So ended the attempt of Argyle. June, the month in which he perished, was far spent when his compatriot, Monmouth, after sailing from the Texel, and being nineteen days at sea, appeared off the coast of Dorsetshire, and landed at Lyme Regis from the Helderenberg, 26 guns. The town was then a mere clump of steep and narrow alleys, built of blue rag-stone, lying on a bleak and rocky coast that is beaten by a stormy sea, with a pier of unhewn stones named the Cob, old as the days of the Plantagenets. " The appear- ance of three ships, foreign built and without colours, perplexed the inhabitants of Lyme; and their uneasiness increased when it was found that the customs officers, who had gone on board according to usage, did not return. The townspeople repaired to the cliffs and gazed long and anxiously, but could find no solution of the mystery. At length seven boats put off from the largest of the strange vessels, and rowed to the shore. From these boats landed about eighty men, well armed and appointed." Among these men were the Duke of Monmouth, Lord Grey, Anthony Buyse, a Brandenburg officer, and two Scotsmen — Robert Fergusson, styled "The Plotter," a famous Independent preacher; and Andrew Fletcher, of Saltoun, a stern and resolute Republican. Commanding silence, Monmouth knelt on the shore and said, " I thank God for having preserved the friends of liberty and pure religion from the perils of the sea." He then implored a Divine blessing on that which was yet to be done by land; and drawing his sword, led his little band of ad- venturers over the cliffs into Lyme Regis, where, on hearing who he was, the people greeted him with enthusiasm, and shouts went from alley to alley, "A Monmouth ! A Monmouth and the Protestant religion !" His standard of blue silk was unfurled in the market-place, his stores were deposited in the town, and his Declaration, penned by Fergusson, was read at the market-cross. It denounced the religion and government of King James, and sum- moned all true Protestants to join Monmouth, who assumed the title of James II., and offered ;^5,ooo for his uncle, the king, dead or alive (Rapin). The roeds were strewn with boughs before the former, and by the time he reached Chard, in Somersetshire, he was attended by 8,000 horse. Not the least remarkable part of the show was made by 900 young men, clad in white uniform, who marched before him when he entered Taunton. There he was hailed as "The good duke ! the Protestant duke ! the rightful heir, whom a vile Popish Conspiracy kept from the crown !" And a belief in the marriage of Charles II. to his mother, Lucy Walters, was assumed by many, arfd asserted by not a few. These, however, belonged for the most part to the common people ; educated men knew better, and felt that Monmouth could never be king. At present, however, all things looked prosperous and encouraging. A party of the young ladies of Taunton presented him with a Bible and a richly- embroidered banner. " I come to defend the truths contained in this, and to seal them with my blood !" he exclaimed, as he kissed the Bible. From Taunton he marched to Bridgewater, and then advanced upon Bristol, at that time the second city in England; but finding it loo strongly de- fended by the Royal army, he marched to Bath, where he was equally misuccessful. His followers had been hitherto unanimous, but the first sign of ill- omen came from Fletcher of Saltoun, a fierce and impetuous man, who in a quarrel with the Mayor of Lyme about a horse which he had seized for his own use, shot that functionary dead, as he was in the 366 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [SedgemoOr. act of shaking a switch at him. He had to take instant flight, and reached Hungary, where he took service against the Turks. The train-bands were gathering -now, and already Monmouth's heart, though a gallant one, was be- ginning to fail him. Being accustomed, says Dalrymple, in his " Memoirs of Great Britain," to the formalities observed by regular troops m time of peace, and not having the genius to see that in desperate enterprises sudden movements strike Gravesend ; and that the Earl of Feversham, with about 3,000 regular troops and sixteen pieces of cannon, was in full march against him, and that other troops were mustering elsewhere. The earl, a Frenchman by birth, and nephew of the great Turenne and brother of the Marshals Duras and Da Lorges, was Louis de Duras, who in 1673, had been created Baron Duras of Holmby, and five years after was Viscount Sondes, Earl of Feversham and Knight of the Garter. A'' LANDING OF MONMOUTH (see page 365). with terror, but that by delays men come to re- collect themselves, and to slight the danger they dreaded at first, he would not permit his followers, when 6,000 strong, to fight some mihtia under the Dake of Albemarle who were only ,4,000, and cold in the cause they were mustered to defend ; while, with a view to discipline his men, his marches were slow and his halts many. _ • Repelled at Bath, wliere the citizens shut their gates and shot his herald, he fell back on Frome- Selwood, an old, narrow, and ill-paved town, then situated on the skirts of an ancient forest, and there he first learned tidings of the defeat and capture of Argyle in the north. He heard more— that the Scots regiments from Holland had landed at A militia force was collecting in Bridport to fight against Monmouth. Thither came the Red Regiment of Dorsetshire ; and the Yellow, or Somer- setshire, under Sir William Portman, of Bryanston, a Cavalier of great note, was mustering elsewhere ; but the king had no great confidence in his militia. Under Sir Edward Sackville, whom we last saw at Tangiers, he sent forward a battalion of the Cold- stream Guards, with two battaUons of the ist or English Guards, five companies of Dumbarton's Scots, and a small battalion under Colonel Piercy Kirke. This infantry force made in all 2,800 men. The cavalry were 700 strong, and were composed, according to the king's own account (in the Harleian MSS.), of 150 men drawn from the three troops of Sedgemoof. ] THE ROYAL FORCES IN MOTION, 368 BJllflSH BATT'LES OM LAND A^fD gEA. [SeJgemoor. Horse Guards, and sixty grenadiers on horseback, under an officer named Villars ; seven troops of the Horse Guards, under Sir Francis Compton, and four troops of Cornbury's Royal Dragoons. Dum- barton's Scots, under Colonel Archibald Douglas, were the only^ troops that still adhered to the ancient matchlock ; by seeing the light of which Monmouth was made aware of the movements of the king's troops in the dark. The field-pieces were nine from the Tower and seven from Ports- mouth. Shots were first exchanged at Phillips Norton, where an indecisive encounter took place. The Earl of Feversham, hearing that Monmouth was posted at this place, sent forward a chosen detach- ment of 500 horse and foot, under the Duke of Grafton, with orders to make a detour, and attack the duke in the rear, while he, with the main body, should attack him in front. Monmouth suspecting some such movement, had lined the hedgerows of Phillips Norton Lane with his musketeers. By that approach he knew the Royalists must pass. Grafton, a youth of fire and spirit, anxious to show that he had no share in the disloyal schemes of his half-brother, dashed on at the head of his party, till in a deep green lane he found all progress impeded by barricades, and a volley of musketry opened upon him from these, and on bqth flanks. His men at once fell back ; but the London Gazette states that before they were disentangled from the lane more than a hundred of them were left there killed or wounded. The young duke cut his way out sword in hand, and escaped untouched. Puffendorf states that he would certainly have been either taken or slain there, had not his close resemblance to Monmouth led to a mistake, of which he hastened to avail himself, by leaping over a wall ; and the approach of night not affording any further opportunity for action, the Earl of Feversham marched towards Somerton, and the Duke of Monmouth fell back upon Bridgewater. The rain had fallen latterly in continuous torrents, and the old highways which intersected the country had become veritable quagmires. The pusillanimous now began to desert him ; the brave remained, but many discovered more emo- tion for the danger that now menaced him than for themselves, a generosity that keenly touched the really generous heart of Monmouth. From the summit of a high tower, that of the parish church at Bridgewater, he looked sadly over the far extent of meadow and fenny marshes which characterise the scenery of Somersetshire, and seemed to be taking a farewell view of the land he would soon, he feared, have to quit for ever. While thus employed with his telescope, his eye suddenly caught the gleam of arms in the evening sunshine, and he could see, at the distance of three miles, the horse and foot of Feversham's army encamped on Sedgemoor. He saw that they were somewhat apart ; that the guards were carelessly posted, from an idea of over-security with regard to a retreating foe; and knowing that the earl was a weak and indolent general, he resolved immediately to attack him. Beneath the eye of Monmouth, says one Avho has tracked all his ^motions closely, lay a flat ex- panse, now rich with cornfields and apple trees, but then a dreary morass, flooded by the Parret when rains were heavy and its tributaries overflowed their banks. Sedgemoor formed part of an enormous swamp, which in early times had arrested the march of two races of invaders ; given shelter to the Celts against the kings of the AVest Saxons ; and to Alfred had been a hiding-place in the days of the Danes, when his half-savage people paddled about it in their coracles and canoes. In the days of Monmouth, Sedgemoor was partly re- claimed, and the rank jungle, whilom the lair of the deer and the wild swine, had been intersected by deep and wide trenches, which ' in Somerset are called " rhines," and in some parts of Scotland spelt "rhinns." Monmouth could see amid the moor the spire and village of Weston Zoyland, where Feversham lay with the royal cavalry ; and many persons still living have seen, states Macaulay, the daughter of the servant who waited on him at dinner that day ; and a large dish of Persian ware which was set before him is still preserved in the neighbourhood. "He could distinguish among the liostile ranks that gallant band," he continues, " which was then called from the name of its colonel, ' Dumbarton's Regiment,' which has long been known as the ist of the Line, and which in all the four quarters of the world has so nobly supported its early reputation. ' I know those men," said Monmouth ; ' they Avill fight. If I had but them, all would go well ! ' " Descending from the spire, he resolved to hazard an attack ; and preparations were instantly made for its taking place at night. When the moon was full and the northern streamers shone brilliantly, the army of the duke got in motion ; but their movements were con- ' cealed by the marsh mist, which lay dense and deep on Sedgemoor. From the Records of the Scots Royals, it appears that their five companies were on the right of the line, and posted in rear of a deep ditch, one of the Sedgemoor.] "SOHO!" 369 rhines referred to. A squadron of horse and fifty dragoons were sent forward as a species of out- picket, which one hundred of tlie Royals were constantly under arms to support. When Monmouth put himself at the head of his army to quit Bridgewater, at eleven at night, it was observed by those about him that he was not in the frame of mind which is required by one who is about to strike a decisive blow; and that the very children who pressed to see him pass observed, and in after years remembered, that his look was sad and somewhat hopeless. Passing through a place still called War Lane, he marched at the head of his infantry. The horse were led by Lord Grey. Strict orders were issued that no drum was to be beaten and not a shot to be fired. "Soho !"was the watchword, by which his people were to recognise each other amid the darkness and obscurity of the foggy night, selected in allusion to his residence at Soho Fields, London ; and by one in the morning of Monday, the 6th of July, the whole of the forces of this ill-fated but ambitious son of Charles II. were out on the open moorland. Between them and Lord Feversham lay three deep trenches filled with water and soft mud. Two of these, called the Black Ditch and the Langmoor Rhine, the duke knew he must pass ; but, strange to say, the existence of a third, called the Sussex Rhine, beyond which the Royals lay resting on their arms, he knew nothing of. While his ammunition wagons remained at the entrance of the moor, his horse and foot, in long and slender columns, defiled across the Black Ditch by a slippery causeway of rough stones. At the Langmoor Rhine was a similar causeway ; but the guide missed it in the fog. Delay and confusion at once ensued, and though the passage was ultimately achieved in silence, the explosion of a pistol caused immediate alarm. It was fired, says Dalrymple, by a Captain Hacker, to give an alarm, after which, he immediately rode off to solicit the king's pardon. The advanced cavalry videttes, who were men of the Horse Guards, instantly fired their carbines ; Dumbarton's drums beat to arms, and as the men fell into their ranks, the glow of their lighted matches showed the men of Monmouth distinctly in what direction to pour tlieir fire. He ordered Lord Grey to push on with his cavalry, which he did, till before them yawned unexpectedly the black depths of the Bussex Rhine, beyond which were the king's infantry jn line. *' For whom are you?" Remanded an officer of the Guards, as he saw the dusky masses debouching amid the gloom. " For the king," replied Lord Grey, or one of his people. " For which king ? " resumed the officer. "For King Monmouth — and God with us!" was the defiant response. In a moment every butt was at the shoulder, a line of fire ran like a garland along the black edge of the ditch, and Monmouth's cavalry were falling over each other, or galloping madly in all directions. The animals on which they were mounted, were, says Kennet, only marsh mares and colts, which could not stand even the sound of the drums. "All is lost, my lord duke," Grey rashly cried; and I must shift for myself ! " The finest cavalry in the world could not have acted against infantry on such ground ; and these were all untrained, and rode horses unused to stand fire. But now Mon- mouth advancing, pike in hand, at the head of his infantry, found himself compelled to halt by the margin of the fatal ditch, of the existence of which he had been totally ignorant. The Royals and Guards were still firing, and now his men responded, and for three-quarters of an hour an incessant roar of musketry rang across the black trench amid the mist of the moor. The Somersetshire peasants, " Anabaptists and poore clothworkers of the country," as Evel)m calls them, stood to their perilous task with great bravery, but they levelled their barrels too high, and the balls flew over the plumed beavers of the royal troops, to lodge in the marshy soil beyond. At Sedgemoor the Guards from London did not behave well. " Feversham's troops," says Dalrymple, the annalist, " as often happens in combats with an irregular army, at first gave way, all except Lord Dumbarton's companies of Scotch ; " and the king tells us that the whole brunt of the rebels' fire fell on them and the regiment now known as the Grena- dier Guards. But the duke, by his care to keep his men in order, and to make them fire with regularity, instead of rushing into the ranks of the enemy, when the rhine could be crossed, with their swords, the only weapons by which that superiority given by discipline to regular over irregular troops can be avoided, lost in the end the first advantage chance had given him. While this futil? cross-fire was maintained at the ditch, the Life Guards and Oxford Blues came in on the spur from Weston Zoyland, at the very moment that Grey's fugitive horsemen were spread- ing panic in the rear, where the train of wagoners whipped up their cattle, drove off at full speed, and never drew rein till they were miles froni the fiel4 37° BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Sedgemoor, of battle. The unfortunate Monmouth was seen on foot encouraging his now abandoned infantry by precept and example ; but he was too well acquainted with the art of war not to know that all was lost. Though thus deserted, his infantry made a most honourable resistance. But Lord Feversham, who had been abed, was now in the field. Day was breaking, and, well horsed and cuirassed, the Life Guards assailed their right flank, the Blues their left ; bat with pike and scythe, and musket clubbed, the clowns of Somersetshire met them with resolute bravery, and the Mendip miners, Evelyn relates, " did deadly execution with their tools, and sold their lives dearly, dying with the cri-dc-gucrre of ' Soho ! ' on their lips." The (iuke's followers, says Dalrymple, now lost all regard for the orders of their leader. Every man pressed where he thought his presence was needed most, but chiefly were he saw the bravest of his friends, using sometimes the musket and sometimes the sword ; and often, with blind fury grappling the body when weapons failed, man rolled over man in blood and the slime of the marshland. They then thrgw themselves into a solid mass shoulder to shoulder, and thus moved or halted, fought and died together. For three hours this bloody work went on. At last Feversham's cannon were brought up, but they were so ill served that they had to be worked by the Royals, who had brought nine field-pieces with them ; and for loading and firing these on this day a gratuity of ^^40 was paid by the king to Sergeant Wemyss of that regiment. By the time these guns had come up, the sun was shining upon Sedgemoor, and Monmouth had fled, riding for twenty miles, not knowing whither he was going, and had quitted his horse, unresolved as to shelter. From the rising ground above Chedzoy, where he concealed his blue ribbon, he witnessed the flashing and smoke of the last volley fired by his desperate and despairing ad- herents. When the cannon began to bowl their deadly lanes through the dense mass of these, cries were heard of " Ammunition ! for God's sake, ammunition !" but powder and ball were spent. The pikes and scythes began to shake and sink. The mass broke, and fled wildly in all direc- tions, pursued and cut down by the royal cavalry. Many were surrounded and made prisoners in the adjacent fields; and when the infantry poured across the Bussex Rhine, the Royals had the honour of capturing the Duke of Monmouth's standard, with his motto in letters of gold — " Fear none but God" (" Fountciinliaira Diary"], The battle was over, but the miseries conse- quent to it were not yet ended. It was past four in the morning ; the July sui.. had been up more than half an hour, and the routed army came pouring into the streets of Bridgewater. " The uproar, the blood, the gashes, the ghastly figures which sank down and never rose again, spread horror and dismay through the town. The pursuers, too, were close behind ; and those inhabitants who had favoured the insurrec- tion expected sack and massacre." Burnet says 1,000 rebels were killed on the spot, while 1,500 were taken prisoners. Of the king's troops there fell 300 only. Two officers of militia, Sherrington Talbot and a Captain Low, had a quarrel as to whose men had acted best in the action, and the latter decided the matter by passing his rapier through the body of Talbot. Handsome gratuities were given to all the troops engaged at Sedgemoor ; and to the wounded of the Royals, who were seventy of all ranks, James gave ^If)"], to the Horse Guards ^^41 7, and to all other corps in proportion. During all the 6th of July the pursuit continued; and it was long a tradition in the adjacent villages with what a stormy sound of cheers, curses, and the clatter of steel the cavalry swept past. Before the evening sun had faded from the summits of the Mendip Hills, 500 wretched creatures had been penned like sheep in the church of Weston Zoyland. Of these eighty were wounded, and some expired ; and all this while the chimes in the old spire rang joyously, and the infantry made merry on the moor, whither the adjacent farmers sent them many hogs- heads of cider and beer. Next day a long line of gibbets appeared on the road that led to Bridgewater. On each hung a prisoner by the neck, and four of these were left to infect the air in irons. " Colonel Kirk," says Puff'endorf, " one of the commanders in the Royal army, did order above ninety w&unded prisoners, taken in the battle of Sedgemoor, to be hanged im.mediately, without any process ; this fact being charged upon him after the Revolution." Rapin tells us that nineteen persons were hanged by Kirk at Taunton, amid " pipes playing, drums beating, and trumpets sounding." The pipes referred to must have been those of Dumbarton's regiment, which has never been without them to the present day. Two days after that disastrous field, the fugitive duke, who had changed clothes with a peasant, )vas taken without r§sist£^nc? near Ringwood, in Edinburgh Castle,] THE DUKE OF GORDON. 371 Dorsetshire, lying in a wayside ditch covered with ferns. His beard was prematurely grey, he trem- bled, and was unable to speak. He had not slept for three nights, and from exhaustion of spirits the gazettes state that he wept and fainted ; and those who looked on doubted if this wretched creature could be the once gay and brilliant Monmouth, the favourite son of Charles II. Sir William Port- man searched his pockets, and, with his watch, his purse, his diamond Geoi^e, were found " some raw peas gathered in the rage of hunger." He was at once made prisoner, and his Order of the Gaiter was dispatched to King James in token of the fact. How, while on his way to London, he wrote an imploring letter to a justly incensed king, and when admitted to the royal presence, fettered with a silken cord, he lay grovelling on the floor, and wet the feet of James with his tears, laying the blame of all on Fergusson, the Scot, acting thus as Argyle would have scorned to do; and how he was doomed to immediate execution, and died by five strokes at the hand of John Ketch, oa %)wer Hill, belong to the common history of the country. Sedgemoor was the last pitched battle fought in England. CHAPTER LXVII. LAST SIEGE OF EDINBURGH CASTLE, 1 689. On tidings reaching the Scottish capital of the intended invasion of Britain by William of Orange ■ — for until his success was complete, it was viewed in that light — the whole of the standing forces of Scotland, Guards, horse and foot, were marched south under Lieutenant-General Douglas, to form a junction with those of England, under Lord Feversham, on Salisbury Plain ; and the castle of Edinburgh was ordered to be placed on the war establishment. Its governor at this time was George, Duke of Gordon, a noble highly esteemed for his honour and probity. He was a Catholic, yet had procured a dispensation from taking the test oath required by Scottish law, and fulfilled his trust with fidelity during the four stormy years he held it. His fidelity had been mistrusted by the king, who curtailed his privileges over his vassals in Badenoch, and interfered with his garrison orders. These matters the duke resented so far that he tendered the resignation of his governorship, which James declined to accept ; he therefore returned to Edinburgh, determined " to preserve its castle for the king, though the Prince of Orange should obtain possession of every other fortress in the kingdom." An artillery company, composed principally of Dutchmen, was added to the usual garrison by General Douglas, Master of the Scottish Ordnance, who had free access to the magazines; and the result of this freedom was the embezzlement or removal of a great part of the arms and ammuni- tion to the castle of Stirling, and these, when it surrendered to the Revolutionary generals, were employed against the garrison of the Duke of Gordon. On the landing of William in England, the magistrates of Edinburgh, who had been most loud only two years before in their protestations of loyalty to the king as James VII. of Scotland, with singular baseness, were among the first to make similar offers to the invader. The city filled rapidly with west country Whigs, and these maltreated every person of Cavalier priniciples within the walls. Since his appointment as governor of the castle, the Duke of Gordon had generally resided in the town house of his family, an old edifice, situated at the foot of Blair's Close, on the Castle HilL Tall, massive, and gloomy, this mansion has a western exposure to the fortress, and its Gothic doorway is still adorned by his arms, surmounted by a large coronet, and supported by two hounds. There was a dangerous tumult in the city on the night of the 9th of December, and the duke immedi- ately retired into the castle. Prior to this he had visited the house of the Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Perth, to invite him into the fortress as the only place of security ; but he and other loyal nobles had fled, leaving the streets crowded with armed Presbyterians, who, maddened by fanatic zeal, and inflamed by the wines and ale found in the houses of the Cavaliers, proceeded to pillage and destroy on every hand. They set on fire the stately mansions of Lord Perth and the Barons of Blairdrummond and Niddry; while a vast mob, armed on all points, BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND. AND SEA. _^72 poured like a flood down the Canongate, with drums beating, and, led by the captains of the Trained Band, stormed the gates of Holyrood. There an independent company, under a captain named William Wallace, fought bravely till surrounded, and after surrendering on the promise of quarter, was well-nigh exterminated. The palace was then assailed, the chapel royal was ravaged and de- stroyed, Catholic ladies of noble family were dragged through the streets and brutally used, and [Edinburgh Casele. sent him ; and the duke had other difficulties to encounter. His soldiers were divided in their political and religious opinions. They were mutinous in spirit, and were constantly forming dangerous conspiracies, which required all his tact and deter- mination to subdue. On the night of the first tumult in the city, he discovered that many of his soldiers had resolved to revolt ; he therefore called a council of officers BRIDGEWATER CASTLE. thus, amid a thousand crimes, was commemorated in Edinburgh the achievement of the Revolution of 1688, and the downfall for ever of the House of Stuart. For three days the city was a chaos of confusion and outrage. The Duke of Gordon, on finding matters in this state, and that the rabble were firing wantonly upon his sentinels, drew up the wooden bridge which crossed the castle moat, supplying its place by a single plank, which could be removed with ease. He requested the Town Council to supply him with 120 more men, and with provisions for three months, in addition to 300 bolls of meal and malt then in store; but only a twentieth part of the biscuit and a fifth part of the beer necessary were to frustrate the design, and the lieutenant-governor undertook to watch the men. This officer was Colonel John Winram, of Over Liberton and the Inch House, a major of the Scots Foot Guards in 1683, and a descendant of the Winrams of Wiston, in Clydesdale. At midnight he sent an officer in haste to acquaint the duke that the mutineers were in arms, and that some were in the act of dragging their more loyal comrades from bed. Gordon appeared among them sword in hand, and by his presence and resolute conduct restored order ; but next morning he paraded the garrison, administered an oath to the faithful, and forty-four soldiers, who were hopeless malcontents, were marched to the Edinburgh Castle.] THE ILLEGAL CONVENTION. 373 barrier-gate, stripped of their uniforms, and ex- pelled into the city. Thirty-three Highlanders joined him on the ^ith of November; and these were soon followed by forty-five of his own clan, who landed at Leith, under Francis Gordon, of Midstrath. Discontents still continued, and were increased when a Catholic soldier stabbed a Protestant comrade with his bayonet. On the 2oth of December, the Scottish Privy A troop of gentlemen of the Scots Life Guards, together with a few of the Greys, who had declined to desert to William, and who had reached Scot- land under the gallant Viscount Dundee, on their arrival in the city supported the spirit of the king's partyj but the Duke of Hamilton and other friends of the Revolution brought in several companies of infantry, who were concealed in garrets and cellars, or in the suburbs ; and the 30th of May saw 6,000 Cameronians march in from the West. Their EDINBURGH CASTLE. Council, finding that their army had revolted to the invader, sent a deputation to the duke, re- quiring him, as a Catholic, to surrender the castle ; but he declined; adding, "I am bound only to obey the king." So the winter passed away, and on the 14th of March, 1689, an illegally-constituted Convention of the Scottish Estates, which was attended by only thirty Whig leaders, did not hesitate to declare "that James VII. had forfeited all tide to the throne," thereby making a vacancy, after which they offered it to the Prince, of Orange. Imme- diately upon this there was another revolt in Gordon's garrison, and Lieutenant John Achmuty, who refused to obey his orders, was dismissed. standards bore an open Bible, and the motto, " For Reformation according to the Word of God." These volunteers rejected all offers of pay or re- muneration ; and nobly saying, " We have come to serve our country," declined anything but the thanks of the Convention. Another conspiracy forced the luckless Duke of Gordon to exact a new oath of fidelity from his soldiers, and they swore it solemnly and severally on the Bible, to the chaplain, Mr. Forrester, an officer who distinguished himself greatly during the subsequent siege ; but the duke was compelled to eject many of the gunners. ' A design which was formed by the friends of William to murder Lord Dundee and Sir Gedrgo 374 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA, fEdinburgh Castle. Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, caused the issue of a pro- clamation for all strangers to quit the city ; and the second refusal of the duke to surrender was the signal for all loyalists to retire. At the head of his forlorn band, consisting of sixty Cavalier troopers — Guardsmen and Greys mingled — Dundee, the idol of his party, quitted Edinburgh by the Leith Wynd Port ; and through a telescope the Duke of Gordon watched them with anxiety, as they wound past the venerable church of the Holy Trinity, among the cottages and gardens of Moultries Hill, and as they rode westward by the Long Gate, a solitary roadway bordered by fields and farmhouses. On seeing a soldier waving a standard at the west postern of the castle, Dundee halted his troop, and galloping down the Kirkbrae, dis- mounted at the base of the steep castle rock, up which he climbed, in his jack-boots, buif coat, and head-piece, and for half an hour he held a confer-' ence with the duke. He is said to have advised the latter to leave the castle in charge of Colonel Winrara, on whose skill and courage they could depend, and then to share his fortune in the High- lands ; , but the duke declined, adding that " a soldier could not with honour quit the post assigned him. But whither go you, Dundee?" To this the gallant Grahame replied, poetically and pensively, " Wherever the shade of Montrose may direct me." After exhorting the duke to defend the castle to the last extremity, he departed, and Gordon con- tinued ^to watch the gHttering accoutrements of his troopers as they proceeded westward — "The trumpets were blown, The kettledrums clashed, and the horsemen rode on ; Till by Ravelston cliifs and on Clermistonlee Dieii away the wild war-notes of bonnie Dundee.'' The moment the latter was fairly gone, the Cameronian drums beat to arms, and the troops of the Duke of Hamilton, emerging from their places of concealment, mustered for immediate service. The Earls of Lothian and Tweeddale appeared before the castle gate in the name of the Estates, requiring the duke to leave it within four- and-twenty hours under the charge of the senior Protestant officer, and offering a year's pay to every soldier who would desert from him. "My lords," replied the duke courteously, "it is inconsistent with my honour to give up this castle without the express orders of my royal master, James VIL" The castle was therefore summoned again, but with great formality, by sound of trumpet, and by heralds and pursuivants in their tabards, and the duke was proclaimed a traitor. " Gentlemen," said he, laughingly, as he gave some gold to the pursuivants to drink the health of James, " I would advise you not to proclaim men traitors who wear the king's coat till they have turned it." All persons were now forbidden, under the most severe penalties, to correspond with him or his garrison ; and the Convention ordered Colonel the Earl of Leven to block up the castle with the Cameronians. To these were added 300 High- landers, under the Marquis of Argyle. The former were the followers and adherents of Richard Cameron, a zealous preacher and mart)^: of the Church of Scotland, a native of Falkland, who was slain at the head of his men in a conflict with the Grey Dragoons, at Airsmoss, in July, 1680. Out of this body of men there were formed in one day, and in a few hours, two battalions which still exist — the 25 th, or old Edinburgh Regiment, and the 26th, or Cilmeronians — their first service being the blockade of the castle ; while a Scots brigade, consisting of three regiments, which had been long in the Dutch service, and had accompanied William to England, was on the march for Scotland under Lieutenant-General Hugh Mackay, of Scoury, to assist in the reduction of the fortress. The duke harangued his slender garrison after the heralds had retired, and concluded thus : — " Soldiers ! you behold the dangers we are about to encounter ; for my own part, I shall not be frightened from the duty I owe to God and my lawful prince. The brave and loyal will stay with me; the false or cowardly, may depart, and shall receive their arrears of pay.'' On this two gunners stepped from tlie ranks, and, requiring their discharges, were dismissed. Next day, a lieutenant, the master gunner, the surgeon, the sutler, two sergeants, two drummers, and seventy-four rank and file, "iemanded their dis- charges. Accordingly, they were stripped of their uniforms and expelled. Then the gates were shut, and the prepai-ations for a desperate J-esistance made. Two loyal gentleman, Sir James Grant, of Dalvey, and Gordon, of Edintore, contrived to give a supply of provisions to the duke, who wrote to King James to the effect that, unless he was re- lieved the castle could not possibly hold out beyond the month of June. The strength and situation of the casde of Edinburgh are so well known as scarcely to require much description. Its steep and precipitous rock covers a space of eleven acres, and is separated from the old city by the esplanade, a level space, 510 feet in length, by 300 in breadth, and 274 feet in height, On this area stood the ancient Edinburgh Castle,] THE SIEGE. 37S spur J and its site has witnessed many a severe conflict, and many a revolting execution, by the axe or stake, for heresy, treason, and sorcery. The aspect of the castle from the eastward was almost the same in 1688 that it is at the present time ; its chief defence being the great half-moon battery built in the reign of James VI. In the " Journal of the Siege," the resources and strength of the garrison are given thus : — " Men : One governor, the duke; one lieut.-govemor, Colonel Winram ; one ensign, Winchester; four ser- geants (one sick), sixty privates, and twenty gentle- man volunteers. Brass cannon : One forty-two- pounder, one thirty-six ditto, four twenty-four ditto, one eighteen ditto, two twelve ditto, one fourteen- inch mortar, and seventeen bombs. Iron cannon : Several twelve, sixteen, and twenty-four-pounders, and light field-pieces ; " but " no gvmners, no sur- geon, no carpenter, no engineers, and — no money !" Sixty barrels of powder, each half empty. The garrison had formerly consisted of three strong companies — the governor's, the lieutenant's, and ensign's — now these were reduced by defection to two small divisions of thirty files. Gordon of Midstrath commanded the first, and Ensign Win- chester the second. The principal posts were the upper and lower guard-houses and the west pos- tern, the only point where the castle rock is accessible. Every night a guard was mounted, consisting of one captain, two sergeants, two cor- porals, and forty musketeers ; consequently the duties of the forlorn band, now isolated on that lofty rock, were most arduous. The castle was fully invested on the 18th by the Earl of Leven, who, though he had acquired some experience in the service of the Elector of Bran- denburg, did not acquit himself so well as his grandfather, old Marshal Leslie, did, when besieging the same fortress in the wars of Charles I. From the western gate of Edinburgh to St. Cuthbert's Church, a distance of nearly a mile, he dug a useless line of circumvallation, which was per- formed so ignorantly that, according to a Cavalier writer, had not the Duke of Gordon been merciful, a great slaughter might have ensued. The earl placed strong pickets at the Weigh House on the castle hill, and at each flank of the trenches. On the night of the 19th the battlements were all aflame with bonfires and blazing tar-barrels, while all the gvms were discharged thrice round in honour of King James's safe arrival in Ireland. Leven continued the blockade without success until the .J5th, when General Mackay arrived with the three regiments of the Scots Brigade, each con- sisting of t^yelve companies, a train of cannon, and a vast quantity of woolpacks to make breastworks. Forming a junction with the Cameronian batta- lions, the Argyle Highlanders,' and all the trained bands of the city, he commenced more effective operations for reducing the duke and the few brave fellows who adhered to him. As those who had been wounded by gunshot suffered greatly from the want of medical attend- ance, the duke secretly sent a soldier into the city, when he prevailed on a Dr. English to join the garrison ; but when about to enter the postern his courage failed him, and sliding down the rocks he withdrew. Soon after, however, the duke was joined by his own family physician. His guns briskly cannonaded the western parallels on the 31st of March, and for several nights the operations of the working parties were retarded by shot and shell. Gordon of Midstrath made a sally, cut a passage through the trench guards, and returned in safety, with a quantity of straw, as wadding for the cannon. General Mackay now formed a battery of eighteen-pounders at an old ruined tower on the Highrigs ; another of twenty-four-pounders he opposed to the royal lodging, in which James VI. was bom, and the gun-ports of the half-moon. On the 3rd of April, the duke, discovering that the ancient tower of Coates, the seat of Sir John Byres, of that ilk, was filled with soldiers, he cannonaded it from the Mortar Battery, beat down the outer wall, and did considerable execution ; and that night he was joined by the young Laird of Killyhuntly with a few volunteers. On the following day, as the remains of the Lord President, Sir George Lockhart, who had been assassinated by Chiesly of Dairy, were to be com- mitted to the grave in the Greyfriars churchyard, a total cessation of hostilities was granted by beat of drum. In the castle provisions now were be- coming very scarce. The duke depended chiefly on a few loyal citizens, who at great personal risk brought some occasionally to the postern in the night; but the trench-guards soon shut up that solitary avenue. Fresh troops, under Lieutenant-Generals Sir John Lanier and James Douglas, of Queensberry, now arrived, with a battering and howitzer train, under Captain Brown, to co-operate with Leven and Mackay. Among these new forces were the Royal Scots Dragoons (the Greys), Lord Colches- ter's Cuirassiers, now 5th Dragoon Guards, and the Princess Anne of Denmark's Dragoons, now 4th Hussars, and against such forces the resistance of the duke was hopeless. The batteries were wmed ^new, and a third wag 376 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [E(liuburgh Castle. erected on the hill where now the Register House stands, and 'a fourth at Heriot's Hospital, in rear of which Captain Brown planted his mortars, from which he shot eighteen great bombs on the 6th of April. The battery at the Highrigs breached the western wall near the postern, but the steep nature of the rock rendered an assault imprac- ticable. On Sunday, the 19th of May, another great battery of cannon and mortars opened on the western walls and citadel. The bombs were thrown in pairs ; but all went over the castle, split on the parapets, or fell into the Portsburgh, to the consternation of the inhabitants. On the 20th of May there was a severe storm of snow ; on the faces of the inner rock it fell two feet deep, and the soldiers industriously saved it for water, regardless of the incessant bombs, with their showers of splinters, which were their greatest source of dread and peril. On the 21st, Sixteen fell into the fortress ; one burst under the chapel stair, blew up the stone steps, and hurled them on the soldiers. The duke after this kept all those men who were not working the cannon in the southern vaults ; but after a time they learned to avoid their troublesome visitors by posting a sentinel on a lofty place ; thus, when a bomb was seen to soar in the air, all lay prostrate under the parapets, till it could burst behind them. Every building in the place was roofless by the 22nd, "and the poor soldiers were half-naked," yet they stood bravely by their guns, though the snow lay almost knee-deep in the shattered bastions; and while labouring under a severe fever, the gallant duke, by his presence and exhortations in King James's cause, kept their enthusiasm alive. A sol- dier's wife being taken in labour on the 23rd, the duke beat a parley to request medical assistance, which was inhumanly refused. On that night there fell into the castle twenty bombs. One burst in the magazine ; another in the Registry, among the State Records; and two broke a brass gun. »Two days later saw the upper chambers of the palace or royal lodging defaced, the balcony beaten down, and the church on the north of the Grand Parade so utterly ruined that on Sunday the chaplain had to read his sermon in tlie vaults ; and at ten o'clock on the morning of the 31st, Sir John Lanier began to intrench his troops near the half- moon, but under a rattling fire of musketry. The 4th of June saw the besiegers shooting showers of hand-grenades from their mortars ; and these proved so destructive that Colonel Winram, of the Guards, proposed a sally, to which the duke objected, urging the smallness of their force. On the following day he destroyed four guns on their batteries, and breached the wall of St. Cuthbert!s Church, which the enemy's pickets then abandoned, leaving half their number killed or wounded; but now into the castle the bombs fell faster than ever. " The scarcity of food and water, together with the incessant hardships they endured, by ex- posure among the the open ruins in weather so singularly inclement for the season, soon made the little garrison sickly, and their courage began to sink. Mr. John Grant, a volunteer, went out in the night to discover if there was any hope of relief, and two days after he signalled from the Long Gate, " None ! " On the 6th the brave young Laird of Midstrath again sallied out in the night ; and with only six men, by sheer dint of sword and dirk, drove the whole guard from the trench on the castle hill." According to the "Journal of the Siege," matters were now becoming serious with Gordon and his officers. So great were their losses that there were scarcely men left to relieve the sentinels, and still less to man the numerous breaches that now yawned in the outer walls. Those soldiers " who were best able to endure hardship " stood sentinel from ten at night till three in the mornings and were regu- larly, during the whole time, employed in " ditching, securing, raising, and removing batteries, working the guns, &c." The North Loch, at the base Of the rock, was now drained for the purpose of drying up the last remaining well ; but the latter still retained a few feet of putrid and unwholesome liquid. For ten consecutive days this handful of brave fellows, environed as they were by a regul^u: British army, subsisted on dry bread and salt herrings eaten raw, for they were now without other food,' and the snow yet covered all the ruins. Their ammunition was nearly expended ; and the duke, despairing of relief from King James in Ireland, beat a parley. On the evening of the nth of June, at six o'clock, the Union Jack was lowered on the half-moon, and a white flag ascended slowly in its place. On this Sir John Lanier sent up Major Somerville and another officer to confer with the duke, who met them at the edge of the ditch. " He was dressed in his scarlet uniform, as an officer of King James VII., and wore the Order of the Thistle. He de- sired to capitulate." The major returned after a time with Sir John Lanier, Richard Savage, Lord Colchester, and Colonel Balfour of the Scots Brigade, who all demanded hostages for the due fulfilment of any articles agreed upon. While they v/ere arranging these, a message came from the Duke of Hamilton, Edinburgh Castle.] THE CAPITULATIOM. 377 to the effect that " they were neither to givp nor take hostages." The treaty ended abruptly oij this, and once again the cannonading was resumed. The parley was renewed on the following day, and during the interim Mr. John Grant rejoined the garrison, on which Sir John Lanier threatened to break off all negotiations, as this was contrary to the usage of war. Major Somerville, now per- emptorily requested the duke to meet Sir John Lanier midway between the castle and city, adding that Lanier "would not break his word for six times the value of the castle of Edinburgh." " Sir," said Ensign Winchester, sternly, " he has broken his word and his oath to a better man than any here among us." Stung by the taunt, the major retired, storming, and swearing that he would • h^ve every man, woman, and child in the place put to the sword ; and, as an earnest of what might ensue, that night a Lieutenant Hay and a woman were hanged in the trenches, for sending the duke spme intelligence. Gordon now became excited, and in turn pro- posed to Colonel Winram to sally forth sword in hand in the night, cut a passage through Lanier's lines, seize boats, and cross the North Loch, which the melting snows had again filled ; but the pro- posal was abandoned as too desperate. That evening he inform.ed hjc soldiers, that as he had neither hope of mercy nor capitulation, all who were afraid might depart by the postern. " We shall live and die with your Grace \," they replied, with three cheers. When midnight came near, a column of infantry crept up the north side of , the castle hill ; but a fire of musketry from the south angle of the tHe-du-pont drove them dowp in disorder to the riiargin of the loch which Occupied the hollow where now the Prince's Street Gardens lie, though their ofiicers were seen to brandish their swords, and heard to cry angrily — - " Advance, you dogs ! advance ! " The same column advanced again next morning, and made a lodgment across the castle hill, by laying before them a most effective breastwork of woolpacks. There were only nineteen men on the lower parapet at this time, yet they poured on them a fire that proved very destructive, all the while singing merrily in chorus — " The king shall enjoy his ain again." During the whole of that day and nighty the firing was maintained on both sides with great determination, and only slackened at about two in the morning. In the castle only one man was killed, a gunner, whom a cannon-ball cut in two, through a gun-port ; but many were weltering in their blood behind the woolpacks and in the trenches, where the number of slain amounted to 500 men. The duke, whose health was now most seriously impaired, at daybreak on the 13th of June again replaced the Union by a white flag, and sent to the general commanding a paper entitled, " Seven Articles of Surrender for the Castle of Edinburgh." These were as follows : — "I. Colonel Winram, the lieutenant-governor, will submit himself to King William's pleasure, his life being spared. The rest of the garrison shall have their lives, liberties, fortunes, and passports. " II. They shall march out with sword and baggage. "III. All gentlemen volunteers and others to have the same terms. " IV. All persons who have corresponded with, or have aided the garrison, but have not been in arms, shall have the full benefit of the first article. "V. All sick soldiers to have liberty to go where they choose. "VI. All officers and gentlemen shall have the benefits of other lieges, they living peaceably. " VII. Immediately after the garrison receive security for the performance of these articles, a considerable portion of the walls shall be put in possession of General Lanier's troops." J K Lord Colchester appeared about three in the afternoon at the steps which then led to the outer castle gate, when the duke and Colonel Winram received from him eight other 'articles proposed by Sir John Lanier, .which were most disadvantageous. They were both to become prisoners of war ; but ultimately it was arranged that the soldiers should be firee, and that the lieutenant-governor should have his life and estates secured. The articles were signed by ten o'clock ; and in the dark Major Somerville, at the head of 200 infantry, took possession of all the posts, except the gate of the citadel, the great hall, and the Grand Parade, where the duke drew up his little band, con- sisting now of only fifty officers and men, to return them thanks for their valour and faithful service. "Gentlemen and soldiers," said he, "I know not wherein I have been unkind to any of you ; but if I have ever wronged any man in your ranks, let him speak ere we part for ever. Do not brawl mth the new comers, for you are too few to conquer, and too many to sacrifice." He gave each a small sum to convey him home ; and as he shook hands with them all, " there was not an eye unmoistened in all that forlorn company." Sir John Lanier took possession of the gates on the 14th of June, and the duke marched out at 378 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. tEdinturgh Castle. the head of his soldiers, who, though emaciated by long toil, starvation, sickness, and ill-dressed wounds, were cruelly maltreated by a Presbyterian rabble. In their stores there were found only five barrels of powder, spoiled by rain, six bolls of malt, one barrel of salt beef, two stones of butter, and fined as a close prisoner to his mansion in Blair's Close. William III. sent an order to release him on his parole, or to place him as a prisoner in the castle he had so gallantly defended. The duke gave his word of honour not to serve against William till he THE PASS OF KILLYCRANKIE. one of cheese ; but all so useless and decayed that for the five days preceding their surrender tlie duke and his gallant comrades had subsisted on a little oatmeal per man, mixed in putrid water. The articles of capitulation were violated, as Colonel Winram was detained as a prisoner of war. Sir John Lanier and Lord Colchester led the Duke of Gordon to the Duke of Hamilton, with whom he dined, and thereafter he was con- saw him personally; and soon after he was pre- sented to him in London, but without a sword. To the gallant Dundee, then wandering in the wilds of Lochaber, the fall of the fortress must have beeh cheerless tidings ; but within a brief space afterwards many of the duke's comrkdes fell by his side in the Pass of Killycrankie. The Duke of Gordon died in peace and retirement at Castle Gordon, in the year 1716. SdiiiLurgh Castle.] THE END OF THE SIEGE. 379 < X o o bRlTISH BATTLES ON LAND ANO SEA. tKiIiycranKie. CHAPTER LXVIIL KILLYCRANKIE, 1 689. The next great battle in British history was fought in Scotland, and unhappily it was not fated to be the last in that stormy and divided kingdom. The Revolution of 1688, which placed William of Orange on the throne of these kingdoms, was opposed in Scotland by a great and powerful party, especially by the majority of the Highland chiefs and their clans. The event, which had been brought about in the Lowlands by a self- elected Convention of the Estates, at once sum- moned certain of their leaders to attempt the restoration of their old hereditary line of kings, as tlieir fathers had done under the great Montrose. Their new commander was not a Highlander, yet he won the confidence of the clans, as being a cadet of the house of the illustrious marquis. He had marched to London with the Scottish forces, which, horse, foot, guards, and artillery, all deserted, as their English comrades did, to the invader; King James had then made him a peer of Scotland, by the title of Viscount Dundee ; but he was still remembered in the Lowlands as "the bloody Claverhouse." It should be borne in mind that the officers of the Scottish standing forces took an oath of fealty, not to the reigning sovereign, but to the Estates of Scotland, at this time and till 1707. The friends of King James did not exhibit in his cause the fiery zeal and romantic enthusiasm which inspired the handsome Dundee, who met with hourly disgusts. Some of the Highland chiefs and nobles had gone over to the Revolutionary party ; others had retired to their country seats, to watch the course of events ; and very few resolved to join the viscount, who made so little a secret of his pur- pose that in the spring of 1689 the Convention, which he detested, and whose legal authority he denounced, sent a party of horse to seize him and the Earl of Balcarris. The latter was taken, but Dundee found shelter in the Highlands, where none dared to follow him. He was thus compelled for his own safety, as well as for King James's cause, to commence hos- tilities. With his troop of faithful Cavaliers, he continued to wander from place to place in the Highlands, then remote and all but inaccessible' to strangers, until the beginning of May, when he ap- peared at the head of 2,000 clansmen, led by Sir Donald Macdonald, and the chiefs of Glengarry, Maclean, Lochiel, and Clanranald — all names which in Scotland are ever associated with a glorious past, and with the purest ideas of loyalty, chivalry, and valour. He had about 120 horse, who were com- manded by Sir William Wallace, a brave CavaUer ; and every member of this little troop was a gentle-' man. The army he led, says Dairy mple, was chiefly composed of Highlanders, " a people un- touched by the Roman or Saxon invasions on the east or west skirts of; their country — the unmixed remains of that Celtic empire which once stretched from the Pillars of Hercules to Archangel." Lieutenant-General Hugh Mackay, of Scourie, now commander-in-chief of the Scottish forces, colonel- commandant of the Scots Brigade, and Privy Coun- cillor of Scotland, marched against him with 5,000 infantry and a considerable force of cavalry. Neither the tidings that a force so overwhelming was coming, the recent fall of Edinburgh Castle, nor the disap- pointment of assistance from Ireland, which King James had promised, damped die heroic ardour . of Dundee, though deficiency of. provisions frequently had compelled him to shift his quarters ; and his devoted followers, who served without pay, endured ' without a murmur the greatest privations. Like his predecessor and prototype, Montrose, and like Charles Edward in the war of future years, he was eminently calculated to be a leader of Scottish Highlanders. In his buff coat and head-piece, he generally marched on foot, now by the side of one clan, and anon by the ranks of another, addressing the soldiers in their native Gaelic, flattering their long genealogies, and animating their proud rivahy by reciting the deeds of their forefathers and the stirring verses of their ancient bards. " My maxim has been," said he to one of his officers, " that no general should command an irre- gular army in the field without becoming acquainted with every man in it." Hence his lofty courage, his winning manner, and the wonderful manly beauty of his face and person, caused him to be idolised by his followers. On the 27th of June, 1689, he marched to the celebrated Pass of Killycrankie, which lies fifteen miles north of the town of Dunkeld, where the dark i and lofty mountains of Athole rise abmpdy and ' precipitously on both sides of the narrow vale of the Garry. In those days it was traversed by an old Fingalian war-path, so narrow that two men could scarce move abreast, and it lay so close to the Killycrankie.] MACKAY'S ARMY. 381 terrible precipice that the traveller who dared to venture thither had need of a firm foot and a steady eye ; and with all the beauty of its scenery, no Saxon, says Macaulay, deemed a visit to Killy- crankie "a pleasure till experience taught the English Government that the weapons by which the Celtic clans would be most effectually subdued were the pickaxe and the spade." On one side of this perilous path was the bare acclivitous ascent of the hills, with masses of grey rock towards their summits, and here and there tufts of dark verdure or silver birch. On the other lay, and still lies, the Garry, hoarse and tumultuous, foaming and storming on its way to seek the Tum- mel, in many places its current invisible by the . profusion of birches, which tenaciously cling to the clefts of the rocks, and so shroud it that the pre- sence of the stream is only made known by the roar of its descent ; and when it does come in view it appears rolling headlong over a precipice, and lashing the waters of a dark pool into snow-white ■ foam. Here, then, amid the most wild and magnificent scenery in Scotland, the last of her great Cavaliers awaited with his slender force the approach of General Mackay. Ten days after Dundee had halted there, in the Pa.ss of Rin Ruari, as the clans name it, the drums of the enemy were heard wakening the echoes of the Athole woods. With Mackay came three Scottish regiments, all veterans, who had served in Holland, and were called after their respective colonels, Mackay himself, Balfour, and Ramsay. With these he had Buchan's ■ regiment, the Royal Scots Fusileers (21st Foot), and also two new corps recently raised in the Lowlands. , One of these was commanded by Alexander Gordon, Viscount Kenmure. The other was the regiment of Lord Leven. The latter, as we have stated^ with that of the Earl of Angus, had both been raised in one day, out of a force of 6,000 Came- ronians, who came to assist at the siege of Edin- burgh Castle. Leven's corps, which still carries the arms of Edinburgh on its colours, was, during the last century, in consequence of a petty quarrel with the Lord Provost of that city, designated " The King's Own Borderers." Mackay had with him two corps of Scottish horse — one led by Hamilton of Biel, Lord Belhaven ; the other by William, Earl of Annandale — and he had one solitary regiment of English infantry, Ferdinand Hastings' Foot, under Colonel Leslie, now the 13th of the Line, and in 1786 first styled the "York- shire East Riding." The equipment of the British infantry at this period has been already described in a previous chapter ; but the reign of James saw some changes in that of the horse. Though the king wore a helmet, it was almost laid aside in the field, and the full flowing wig fell somewhat incongruously over the red coat and steel cuirass. The carabineers, formed at this time, wore back and breast-plates, with steel skull-caps sewn into their beaver hats, with long black leather boots reaching to the thigh. The large square cuffs of all officers were usually turned well-up, to display the delicate sleeves of white lawn and deep point lace below, for there was a curious mixture of the civil and the militarj' in the costume of our troops at the epoch of the Restora- tion ; and as a sample of the mode of drill in those days, when our fashions were borrowed from the pon- derous Dutch, we may extract from a book of 1689, entitled, " Perfection of Discipline ; or, the Indus- trious Souldier's Golden Treasury of Knowledge,'' the following twenty-six words of command for firing one volley : '' — " Musketeers, have a care of the exercise, and see that you carry your arms well ! " " Lay your right hands on your muskets." " Rest your mus- kets." " Cock your muskets." " Guard your mus- kets." " Present." " Fire." " Recover your arms." " Half bend your muskets." " Clean your pans." " Handle your primers." " Prime." " Shut your pans." " Blow off your loose corns " (i.e., powder). " Cast about to charge " (i.e., load). " Handle your charges'' (i.e., cartridges).- "Open them with your teeth." " Charge with powder." " Draw forth your scourers." " Shorten them to an inch." " Charge with bullet." " Ram down powder and bullet." " Withdraw your scourers." " Poise your muskets." " Shoulder your muskets." " Order your muskets." In the field these words must have been greatly reduced and simplified. A Treasury Minute of November in this year fixes the price of an jfnglish soldier's kit at £2 iss. 6d., so his Scottish comrade's must have been much about the same. On the morning of Sunday, the 27th of July, 1689, the troops of Mackay began to approach the tre- mendous ravine of Killycrankie. He had quitted Perth on the preceding day, and halted at Dun- keld, so celebrated for the romantic grandeur of its scenery. There, at midnight, he received an express from Lord TuUybardine, announcing that the fieiy and impatient Dundee had entered Athole, in con- sequence of which event he informed him that he had retreated from the Royalist castle of Blair, which he— TuUybardine — had for some time block- aded j and that though he had left the strait and 382 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Killycranlae. ' difficult pass of Killycrankie open to Dundee, he had posted a guard of his clan at the lower ex- tremity, to secure a free entrance to Mackay's troops through the pass, of which he feared those of Dun- dee were already in possession. Mackay seems to have doubted the latter event, and his suspicions were confirmed by the fact that Lieutenant-Colonel Lauder, whom he dispatched instantly with a party to secure the entrance to the pass from the vale of Blair, could not see a single Highlander on his arrival there. Discouraging as ail this intelligence was, for one of his chief objects was to reach the little garrison in Blair Castle, Mackay resolved to persevere in his march ; and having dispatched orders to Perth to hasten the arrival of six troops of horse which he had left there, he put his troops in motion, and by ten o'clock on Sunday morning he was at the mouth of the pass. On this morning General Stewart mentions a singular instance of the desertion of a Highland chief by his people. " Lord Tullybardine, eldest son of the Marquis of Athole, had collected a numerous body of Athole Highlanders, together with 300 Erasers, under the command of Hugh, Lord Lovat, who had married a daughter of the marquis. These men believed they were destined to support the abdicated king, but were in reality assembled to serve WilHam. When in front of Blair Castle, their real destination was dis- closed to them by Lord Tullybardine. Instantly they rushed from their ranks, and filling their bonnets with water from the adjoining stream of of Banavy, drank to the health of King James ; and then, with colours flying and pipes playing, 1,500 of the men of Athole, as reputable for arms as any in the kingdom, put themselves under the com- mand of the Laird of Ballechin (Stewart), and marched off to join Lord Dundee," to whom they no doubt proved a welcome accession. This suc- cessful revolt was managed by Simon Eraser, of Lovat, then a youth, and who, fifty-eight years after, was fated to lose his head on Tower Hill for the House of Stuart. Tullybardine with only 400 men, now moved down into the pass, wliere he was joined by Colonel Lauder with 200 of the Royal Scots Fusiliers, sent forward by Mackay to secure its entrance; and the rest of the Lowland army soon followed. The idea that no opposition would be offered to their passage through that terrific defile, which seemed to forbid approach, may have afforded some con- solation to the troops of Mackay as they entered it; but when they found themselves fairly within its gorge, even as Lowland Scotsmen they must have been impressed by the savage nature of t the mountain solitude around them. But they marched steadily on, and finally cleared it, wth the loss of a single horseman, who, according to Athole tradition, was shot by an intrepid High- land marksman and scout, named Ian Beg Mac Ran, who, by a single shot fired across the Garry, brought his victim down near a spring still named from that circumstance, " Fuamn u Trupar" or " The Well of the Horseman." On learning that Mackay was actually threading the pass of Killycrankie, Dundee found prompt measures necessary, and summoned a Council of' War in the castle of Blair. His Lowland officers were averse to fighting at that juncture, not so the fiery Celtic chiefs. Glengarry and Sir Evan Cameron, of Lochiel, whose Memoirs have appeared in a handsome quarto. " Fight, my lord," said he, " and fight instantly. Eight, if you have only one to three. Our men are in heart, and their only fear is lest the enemy should escape. Give them their way, and be assured that they will either gain a complete victory or perish. But if you restrain them, if you compel them to remain on the defensive, I answer for nothing. If we do not fight, we had better break up, and retire to our mountains." The speaker was a man of undoubted valour ; and his portrait represents him as very handsome, with an aquiline nose, and wig curling to his breast- plate. "You hear, gentlemen," said Dundee to the Lowlanders, as his countenance brightened and his dark eyes sparkled ; " you hear the opinion of one who understands the mode of Highland war better than any of us." There was no further dissent, and in high spirits, with all their pipes playing, the loyal clans set forth to meet the enemy. It is doubtful if Dundee's forces could have held much longer together, as the Earl of Balcarris, in his Memoirs, published at Edinburgh in 1754, tells us that by this time " many of the best gentlemen, who had followed him for several weeks, had seen neither bread nor salt, nor any drink except water." King William's Scottish troops were meanwhile toiling up the pass by the old Eingalian road. The foot generally went by twos or threes, the horse by single files'; and 1,200 animals laden with baggage made thus a long and straggling line. By the time the head of the column emerged on the table-land the rear-guard had not yet entered the pass ; and when the whole were through, and began to close up into battalion and squadron, they found them- selves ill a small glen ; the hills rose on their right Klllycrankic] THE ORDER OF BATTLE. 383 flank, on the left foamed the Garry; and they threw themselves on the heather to take some rest and refreshment between the bells of arms — the last rest on earth it proved to many. Noon was barely past when tidings came that the Highlanders were near. The drums beat to arms ; the pikfes and muskets were unpiled, and all stood to their colours ; and soon after the whole slope in their front seemed alive with bon- nets and. plaids — with fluttering tartans and the glitter of steel — as clan after clan came fast into position. Dundee rode to the front to reconnoitre the force on the result of the encounter with which so much depended'; and afterwards formed his men with as much skill as their peculiar wishes and tactics permitted him to exert. There could be no formation of regiment or brigade ; each clan had to be kept apart, with a space between it and the rest. The men of one tribe could not be mixed with those of another. Three ranks deep was the usual formation. In the centre of the front rank was the chief, surrounded by his leim chrios (i.e. mail shirt), the nearest in blood to himself. On the right were the clan Gillian, under Sir John Maclean; on the left was another body of Macleans, with the Macdonalds of Sleat In the immediate centre were 300 men who had recently come in under Colonel Cannon, with the Camerons under Sir Evan, the Macdonalds of the clan Ranald, and the Macdonells of Glengarry, a tall and stately chief, who was very conspicuous, as he bore the royal standard of James VII. The covering force was a small party of horse, already mentioned, under Sjr William Wallace. Their cattle looked lean and worn, having been ill-fed and ill-tended among the Grampians. Mackay's formation was thus : — On the right of his line was the regiment of the Earl of Leven, lately colonel of infantry under the Elector of Brandenburg. On the left were the Royal Scots Fusiliers. In the centre were the three battalions of the Scots Brigade, and Colonel Leslie's English regiment In the immediate centre lay a piece of marshy ground, in rear of which he placed the horse of Belhaven and Annandale, to succour each flank as required. His artillery, which consisted of small field- pieces, proved of very Htde use. For two hours the hostile armies faced each other. On the one hand were the Highlanders, arrayed each in the glaring tartans of their native tribes, with their kilts belted tightly about them, their brass-studded targets, long claymores, pon- detous Lochaber axes, and long-barrelled Spanish rifles shining in the summer sun; on the other, the steady and precise array of the Lowland regiments, whose pikes and bright steel barrels gleamed steadily as the men stood with their arms ordered. The Fusiliers and the Edinburgh and Hastings regiments wore the scarlet uniform, which was yet to become so famous ; but those of Balfour, Buchan, and Ramsay wore the uniform of the Scots in the Dutch service. The cavalry had coats of yellow buff; and caps of pohshed steel. It is related that as the practised eye of Mackay reconnoitred the position of his old brother-officer Dundee, he pointed out the Camerons to young Lochiel, a captain in the Scots Fusiliers, who rode near him, and said — " Behold your father and his wild savages ! How would you like to be with him ? " "It matters little," replied the young man, haughtily, and not a little disgusted to hear Mac- kay, himself a Highlander, speak thus ; " but I recommend you to be well prepared, or my father and his 'wild savages' before night may be nearer you than you wish.'' In the Highlands war was not yet a science, hence personal prowess was the first requisite of a com- mander. Old Lochiel, aware how much the co- hesion of their little army and its ultimate success depended on the life of Dundee, besought him not to peril it rashly. " Your lordship's business," said he, with refer- ence to this, "is to overlook everything, and to issue your orders. Ours is to execute them bravely and promptly." " There is much in what you say, but I must •establish my character for high courage. Your people expect to see their leader in the thickest of the battle, and to-day they shall see me there. I promise you on my honour that in future fights I shall take more care of myself." But, alas for Dundee ! he stood on the last of his battle-fields. While speaking, he exchanged his scarlet coat for one of buff, richly laced with silver, and over it he tied a scarf of green, which the Highlanders considered ominous of evil, and as he leaped on horseback a shout of impatience burst from their ranks. In this battle, and some others yet to be detailed, it will be well to keep in mind the Highlanders' mode of charging. There were five motions, ist. To fix the bonnet firmly on his head ; 2nd, To stoop behind his target, and to rush within fifty paces of the enemies' line; 3rd, Then fire and drop his musket ; 4th, To dart forward, fire, and fling his steel 3'84 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Killycrankie. pistols among them ; sth, Draw dirk and claymore, and close at once in battle. The manner of handling the pistol and dirk was a great part of the Highland Manual Exercise, which, Sir Walter Scott says, in the Notes to " Waverley," he had seen practised by men who had learned it in their youth. As the lines drew nearer, Sir Evan went along the front of his clan, and every Cameron gave him a promise "to conquer or die*' ("Memoirs of Lochiel"). The answer to the fierce shout of the High- landers was so feeble that Sir Evan said, exult- The Macleans cut the left wing literally to pieces. The regiment of Balfour was broken through and through, and he himself was cloven down ; that of Ramsay, though trained long in the Dutch wars, faced about and threw away its arms ; that of Mackay was swept away by the Camerons, and vainly did his brother and nephew seek to rally the soldiers. The former was slain by one stroke of a broadsword, and the latter in a moment received no less than eight wounds, yet he fought his way through the tumult and carnage by the side of his uncle. MATCHLOCK (TIME OF WILLIAM III.). ingly, " We will do it now ; that is not the cry of men who are going to win." A fire of musketry had begun ; the smoke lay thick between the two hosts, and many High- landers were dropping killed and wounded. At half-past seven o'clock, when the sun was dipping behind the mountains, Dundee gave the word to charge ; and throwing aside their plaids, the clans advanced firing in line, and when within fifty paces of the Lowlanders they tossed aside their muskets, drew their claymores, and with a united yell rushed amid the smoke upon the foe. The bayonets of the latter were barely plugged into the muzzles of their firelocks ere the latter were struck up by the targets ; and a living flood of Camerons, Macdonalds, Macleans, and Stewarts, hewing with axe and sword, or stabbingwith the dirk, overbore on all sides the triple ranks of Mackay. In two minutes the battle was lost and won ! In vain did the latter order up the horse as sup- ports. Belhaven is said to have behaved gal- lantly ; but his men were appalled by the sudden and disastrous rout of their infantry, and wheeling about, galloped away, followed by those of the Marquis of Annandale. Then all indeed was over, and through that wild ravine, when the shadows of evening were deepening, and when every sound re- verberated with a hundred echoes, went surging madly down a mingled mass of flying red-coats and infuriated Highlanders, who were cheering, shout- ing, and almost raving in their triumph. The Cavalier historians allege that Lord Leven was among the first who fled. Accompanied by one trusty servant, General Mackay spurred through the press till he gained an elevated point from where he could view the field ; and found that his whole army had disappeared, with the exception of the English regiment, and some of that of Angus, Killycrankie.l THE LAST WORDS OF DUNDEE. 385 which still remained together, and continued to fire on the Highlanders. He hastened at once to lead them across the Garry, and then he halted for a little time to consider his situaticm ; for his route through the pass was now choked by 1,200 baggie-horses, his three pieces of cannon, and All night he retreated, but there was no appear- ance of Dundee. He then began to suspect that which had really happened — that the great Cavalier was no more. It chanced that, at the beginning of the action, the latter had placed himself at the head of his little DUNKELD CATH^bSAL. the bodies of the slain ; moreover, the ^"PB^-l landers were there. Aware of Dundee's skill aiid activity, the general expected to be instantly pur- sued by him, and on being joined by 300 run- aways of Ramsay's regiment, in the darkness and without a guide, he commenced to march through the Highland desert in the direction of Weems Castle, and ultimately he reached Stirljng, at the head of only 400 men. ..6and of Lowland horse, and bade them follow him. As they seemed to hesitate, he turned round, and, standing in his stirrups, brandished his sword to encourage them. At that moment a random shot struck him under the arm, between the buflF coat and cuirass, and he fell from his horse, which reared wildly, and then vanished into Vhe smoke. A gentleman named Johnstone caught the vis- count in his arms as he fell from the saddle. 33 386 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Dunkeld, "How goes the day, Johnstoiie?" he asked, faintly. " Well for King James," replied Johnstone ; "but I am sorry for your lordship." " If it is well for him," replied the dying Cavaher, it matters the less for me." He never spoke again ; and half an hour after, James Seton, Earl of Dunfermline, had his body wrapped in two tartan plaids, and it was borne sorrowfully to the castle of Blair. A rude obelisk still marks the spot where the death-shot struck him, and it is regarded by the mountaineers with regret and respect as the Tombh Claverse. His remains were hurriedly interred in the rural kirk of Blair Athol ; and the cause of King James, in Scotland at least, was buried with him. His brother assumed his title, but died in penury in France, in 1700. His buff coat, showing the orifice made by the faUl ball, and stained with his blood, his helmet, and other relics, are still preserved in the ducal castle of Blair. He fell in the very flower of manhood. Mackay lost his tents, baggage, artillery, pro- visions, and standards; and he had 2,000 men slain and 500 taken prisoners. Of the Highland loss we have no comptttatiop. In the "Memons of Lochiel," we learn that 120 Cameronians were slain, and it is probable the other clans suffered, in proportion. Dundee's friend, Haliburton ofi Pitcuri who, it is said, "like a moving casde, -threw fire and 'sword on all sides" about him. Colonel Gilbert Ramsay, Macdonald of Largo, his tutor and all his sons, with five cousins of Sir Donald Macdonald of the Isles, fell in the ranks of King James. The Macdonalds are alleged to have suffered most severely, sixteen landed gentlemen of their tribe alone were killed ; but in the charge and pu^ suit, Donald the Blue-eyed (Glengarry's son) killed no less than eighteen Lowlanders with his sword. On the following morning the field of battle, and the Garry as far as the pass, and the pass itself, presented the dreadful spectacle of hundreds - of dead bodies fearfully mutilated by sword wounds; while interspersed among them, lay plumed hats, grenadier caps, drums, broken pikes, and swords which had been snapped asunder by the axe and sharp claymore. Swaying the latter with both hands clenched in the basket-hilt, the clans- men "cut down," says an old author, "many of Mackay's officers and soldiers through skull and neck to the very breast; some had their bodies and cross-belts cut through^at one blow ; pikes and~swords were cut like willows; and who. ever doubts this may consult the witnesses of the tragedy." As if they had been torn off by cannon-shot, heads, hands, legs, and arms lay everywhere about, lopped from the bodies. A curious story was related about this time concerning the appearance of the spectre of Claverhouse, bloody and pale, with buff coat, cuirass, and Cavalier wig, to his friend Colin, Earl of Balcarris, then a prisoner in the castle of Edinburgh, informing him that he had been shot by a silver bullet in the pass of Killycrankie, after which the appearance melted away. CHAPTER LXIX. DUNKELD AND CROMDALE, 1 689. It has been related in its place that two of our present Scottish infantry regiments were formed out of the Caineronians who came from the West to besiege the casde of Edinburgh. Various other corps were raised for the service of the Three Estates about the same time. The Earls of Argyle, Mar, and Glencaim levied each a battalion of 600 .men"; that of the Earl of Angus, to be com- manded by Lord Cardross, consisted of 1,200 m^n, and is now the 26th Regiment. Argyle's regiment, which perpetrated the Glencoe massacre, was disbanded, at the Peace of Ryswick. The Lords Strathnaim, Blantyre, Barganie, and the Laird of Grant, levied four corps of 60Q men each— that of the latter consisted of Strathspey Highlanders — and the Lord Polworth a troop of horse. Glencairn's lieutenant-colonel was John Houston, of that ilk ; Angus's was Captain William Clelland, an officer well-known in the wars of the Covenant. " Ilk one of the said regiments to be divided into ten companies, of sixty men ilk com- pany," except that of Angus, which was to consist of twenty. _ _ . Several other^ troops were embodied .in Scotland, but some of these were broken up before the Union. Cunningham's Light. Dragoons, raised in 1690, were disbanded in 1713, but re-formed two years after, their nucleus being two troops of the Dunkeld.] CAMERONIAN REGIMENT. 387 Greys and two of the Royal Dragoons, and are now the 7th Hussars. In 1696, when Sir Thomas Livingstone was at the head of the Scottish army, we read of the famous Lord Lovat being captain of grenadiers in the regiment of Macgill, and that "these grenadiers were superior to any others in Scotland, being wholly composed of young gentle- men, uniformly tall and well-shaped>" After the abduction of the Dowager Lady Lovat, when troops were dispatched against the Eraser clan, the regiments of Macgill and Lord Tullybardine, with the Lord Forbes's Dragoons, were disbanded ".for lukewarmness." When the tf 6th Regiment was embodied, on the 19th of April, 16&9, the men stipulated "that their officers should exclusively be men such as in con- science they could submit to.'' A chaplain, the well-known Alexander SheiUs, was appointed to the corps, with one elder to each of the twenty com- panies; a Bible to be in every man's knapsack, whether on the march or in the field. Their first colonel, James, Earl of Angus, was son of the Marquis of Douglas, and came of that long and lordly line, so many of whom have fireely shed their blood for their country. He must have been quite a youth at the time of the Revolution, as he was -killed at the head of the regiment in the battle of Steenkirke, yet to be related, when ia his twenty- first year ; but the five-pointed star, one of the three mullets of the paternal coat of Douglas, is borne at this hour on the appointments of the Cameronian regiment. Their first lieutenant-colonel was an accom- plished soldier and poet, and, though young in years, had been a captain of Covenanting infantry at the battles of Drumclog and Bothwell. He was author of several bitter Hudibrastic works, and shortly before his appointment to the corps, had been lurking as an outlaw among the hills of Lanarkshire. " It is impossible," says Robert Chambers, " to read the accounts that are given of this Cameronian regiment without sympathising with the'eamestness of purpose, the conscientious scruples, and heroic feeling of self-devotion under which it was estab- lished, and seeing in them demonstrations of what is highest and best in the Scottish character." After the Duke of Gordon's surrender, the next service of the regiment was the severe defence of Dunkeld, where, as the Jacobite song had it— " For murders too, as soldiers true, You were advanced well, boys ; For you fought like devils, your only rivals, When you were at Dunkeld, boys." After the fall of Lord Dundee, the command of the Highland forces devolved upon Colonel Can- non, who began his march towards Athole, encou- raged by the injudicious measures of the Scottish Privy Council, which always interfered with and thwarted Mackay, the leader of the new king's troops. Thus, for some reason that is not apparent now, they directed the Cameronian Regiment to garrison Dunkeld, on the north bank of the Tay, in a beautiful and finely-wooded valley, through which the river flows, deep, broad, and silent, towards the plain of Perth. This order was given in opposition to the remonstrances of Mackay, who in vain indicated the risk run by a small force in an open town, commanded on all sides by ranges of hills, in the midst of numerous warlike and hostile clans, such as the Murrays, the Drummonds, and the Robertsons, and at a distance from all support — especially a regiment so hated by the Jacobites as the Cameronians were known to be. And now, as the wary old veteran of many wars had foreseen — for Mackay had served with the Royals under Turenne, and against the Turks in the service of Venice — the moment the Came- ronians entered Dunkeld, a plan was fonried by Colonel Cannon to cut them off. He sent notice to the Atholemen to lose no time in doing so. These Highlanders were then encamped at Strath- logie, and at once began their march southward for this purpose. It was on the i8th of August, 1689, that the regiment entered Dunkeld, 1,200 strong, and began to intrench itself in rear of the enclosure of the Marquis of Athole's house. A detachment was placed in the square tower of the old cathedral, and ere. noon was past parties of armed High- landers were seen to hover on the adjacent hills. The ancient episcopal city, whose name is derived from Duncalden, or "The Hill of Hazel Trees," had then dwindled down to a village, the scared .in- habitants of which sought shelter in the rums, of the church, which is situated close to the river. The tower referred to is at the west eiid of the north aisle. It is a structure of great elegance, and though begun in the reign of James III,, was not completed till 1501. " The Exact Narrative of the Conflict at Dun- keld betwixt the Earl of Angus's Regiment and the Rebels," pubhshed by order of the Council at Edinburgh, in 1689, is most minute in its details. Colonel Clelland directed his soldiers to repair several breaches in the garden walls, to make loop- holes and other impromptu means of defence, and scafiblded many places for musketry to sweep and enfilade the approaches. In the afternoon, 300 armed Highlanders appeared northward of th? 388 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Diinkdd, r- town with a white handkerchief displayed at the head of a halberd. The bearer of this boldly ap- proached the intrenchraents, and gave Clelland the following missive, which was unsigned : — " We, the gentlemen assembled, being informed that ye intend to burn the town, desire to know whether ye cpnje for peace or war ; and do certifie that if ye bum one house, we shall destroy you." " We are faithful subjects to King William and Queen Mary, and enemies to their enemies," wrote Clelland in reply; "and if you who send these threats make any hostile appearance, we shall burn all that belongs to you, and otherwise chastise you as you deserve." Five troops of horse and dragoons having now appeared, under Henry, Lord Cardross, these men retired into the forest; but that night the fiery cross traversed the whole district, and the dawn saw more than a thousand men in arms at the muster-place named, on the hiUs above Dunkeld. Under Captain Munro, a detachment of the regiment, consisting of forty fusiliers and fifteen halberdiers, issued from the town, accompanied by thirty dragoons, under Sir James Agnew, of Loch- naw, to reconnoitre, as Cardross's cavalry had ridden to Perth ; while Captains John Campbell, Robert Hume, Harris, and William Borthwick (who afterwards fell at Ramillies), with 300 of the Came- ronians — musketeers and pikemen — ^marched to a glen two miles from Dunkeld. There they encountered a body of Highlanders, whom they repulsed, with the Joss of only one man killed and three wounded. "William Sandilands, a nephew of the Lord Torphichen, discharged his fusil upon the enemy ]| no J less than eleven times," a feat evidently thought more of in those days of bullet- bags and bandoleers than it would be in these days of breech-loaders. By the fire of the 26th thirty Highlanders fell. The departure of the cavalry, and the appearance of the advanced guard of Colonel Cannon's force, fresh from their victory at Killycrankie, and hurrying to avenge the fall of Lord Dundee, caused some murmuring in the ranks of the Cameronians. They exclaimed that they were betrayed, and there were a few who thought of mounting horses and escaping. On this Lieutenant-Colonel Clelland ordered every horse in Dunkeld to be shot, and declared his resolution, and that of his officers, to stand by their post to the last gasp. This announcement caused an immediate reaction in the minds of the soldiers, who begged their leader not to destroy the horses, especially those of the mounted officers, and assured him that " they would, defend themselves to the last extremity," ,. ■•■ At the head of, 5,000 Highlanders, Colonel Cannon appeared next morning above Dunkeld j but, according: to. the Earl of Balcarris's "Account of the Scots ''Affairs," he was short of artillery ammunition, though so much had been captured with Macka/s train at Killycrankie. > Coming on with their usual fuiy, with sword in hand, and head stooped behind the target, the Highlanders at seven o'clock drove jn Clelland's outposts; while at the same tiine Cannon's guns were in position and unlimbergd on a hill com- manding the town ; and a chosen storming party of 1 00 men, all accoutred with back and breast- plates and helmets, covered by a battalion of in- fantry, pushed on close to the place on one side,_ while two bodies of cavalry menaced it on another, between the cathedral and the ford of the Tay. Bravely to his post stood every Cameronian officer, , and several are mentioned by name in the detailed account. Captain William Hay and Ensign Lock- . hart held a stone wall with twenty-eight musketeers, who, after maintaining a brisk fire, were driven from it " by the rebels who were in armour and the foresaid battalion," into a house which, they de- fended for a time, till it was taken; and they retired , into the heart of the town, conveying thither their captain, whose leg was broken by a musket-shot. With twenty men. Lieutenant Stuart held a barricade at the market cross, where he was killed, after being joined by another subaltern, who with eighteen men, had defended the eastern end of the town so long as it was tenable. Lieutenant Forrester (afterwards colonel of the 4th troop of Scots Horse Guards) and Ensign Campbell, with twenty-four men, held some walls at the western end, but were driven back by the enemy's cavalry, and forced into the cathe- dral, which was held by two lieutenants and 100 musketeers, who kept up a heavy fire from the great tower. In the streets of the little town, from every barricaded door and kailyard-dyke, from the roofs and windows, the pikes were brist- ling and the shot hissing; but the resolute High- landers, fighting in their own fashion, with sword and shield — ^the fashion of their fathers before the days of Csesar — closed in upon them, and hewed at the pikeheads, the halberts, and muskets of the defenders. Colonel Clelland, while in the act of exhort- ing his officers and men to "do their duty and , fear not," fell from his horse, pierced by two mortal wounds — one through the head and the other through the liver. He did not die im- mediately, but endeavoured to crawl Heeding into a house, " so that his soldiers, by whom he was Cromdale.] DEFElSrCE OF THE CATHEDRAL. 389 much beloved, might not be discouraged by the sight of his dead body." He failed in the attempt, and' expired in the street. The command of the defence was now assumed by Major Henderson ;, but he was almost imme- diately after disabled by several wounds, of which he died four days after. Captain Caldewell, the next senior officer, was shot in tjie arm, apd Captain Steele in the shoulder; but he had the wound bound up, and rejoined his company. The command now devolved upon Captain Munro, who, on finding that the heaviest fire came firom some thatched houses of which the Highlanders had possessed themselves, dispatched a party of the regiment with burning faggots on the points of their pikes. These set fire to the roofs, and all under them were burnt alive, but- ere they perished their yells added to the horror of the fi-ay. In one house alone sixteen men were burned; and every edifice in the town now perished by fire in succes- sion, save those which were fiiU of Cameronian mus- keteers. All the unfortunate mhabitants who- had not fled to the woods and hills were received by the soldiers into the great church, and protected .there. After the conflict had lasted four hours, ammuni- tion began to fail, and the Cameronians were com- pelled to strip the lead firom the roof of the Marquis of Adiole's house, and cut it into slugs. Next the powder ran short, and the regiment was about to adopt the desperate resort of retiring into Dunkeld House, and defending it with sword and pike rather than yield ; when at that critical mo- ment the fire and fury of the enemy began to slacken, and, wearied by the resistance they experi- enced. Cannon's Highlanders, thoroughly dis- heartened, drew off firom the smoking ruins of Dunkeld, "and declaring that they could fight men, but not devils," began their retreat to Blair. Thus did 1,200 men make good their post against more than 5,000. Of the Highlanders, 300'lay'dead in the streets, with a vast number of wounded ; while the entire losses of the Cameronians — so well were they posted — ^were only forty-five of all ranks. When the -Highlanders retired, the victors threw their hats into the air, flourished their colours, and beat their drums in derisive triumph; but they spent a considerable portion of the night in singing psahns, in making up fresh ammunition, cutting down an abattis, repairing the walls and breaches to be in readiness for the next attack ; yet none was made, though Cannon's force was so far superior, and the fact of his not having can- nonaded the place shows that he must have been without artillery ammunition. The stately cathedral was the only building in Dunkeld which escaped without damage. It stands apart from the town, which consists of little more than a single street, and is surrounded by fine old trees. Though much dilapidated, it is still a magnificent building, the principal aisle being singularly grand. The place where the dead were interred is still pointed out. t It is to the south of the old cathedral church, in which there remains a tomb with a doggrel epitaph to the memory of the commander of the Cameronians, who we may mention was the father of William CleUand, said in after years, by some of the annotators on Pope, to have been the original Will Honeycomb of the Spectator, The Haughs of Cromdale; The mortifying repulse which the loyal High- landers sustained at Dunkeld, filled up the measure of their dissatisfaction with their Irish commander. The latter was not a bad ofiicer, but he was quite un- acquainted with the disposition of the Highlanders, and unable to manage troops so various, so capri- cious, and hot-tempered. He is taxed by the Earl of Balcarris with the ludicrous oversight of having had more cannon than he had balls, in the attack on Dunkeld ; but this probably came of the mis- takes of his Celtic storekeepers. Victory and defeat were alike fatal to the long continuance in the field of a Highland army, and, according to their usual custom, the clansmen deserted now in hundreds. On reaching the castle of Blair, the chiefs signed a bond of association^ pledging themselves to sup- port the cause of King James, and to meet again on a futiure day. Dispersing after this, they re- turned each to his own home, leaving the Lowland officers to shift for themselves. Colonel Cannon sought safety in the Isle of Mull, with the chief of the Macleans ; and thus, in spite of the brilliant victory won so recently at Killycrankie, the results were most unfavourable to the cause of the king. Had ■Dundee not perished, the story of the Revolution might have been very different. : It was then the general idea that had he sur- vived, and come down on the Lowlands a triumph- ant and unassailable conqueror, William's cause would have fallen, in Scotland at least. He and King James, from their intimate knowledge of Dundee's character, justified, each in his own way, the popular idea. When the former heard of the battle and the total rout of his army, " Then I am sure Dundee has fallen," said he, "for otherwise I should have heard at the same time of his bemg in possession of Edinburgh." And in his own i9o BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. CCromdale. personal memoirs, King James says that it gave him a fresh occasion of adoring Providence,, and con- templating the instability of human affairs, when a single shot from a routed and flsdng enemy decided, in all appearance, the fate of more than one kingdom. Now in no part of the country were his adherents soUcited money and arms for a continuance of the war; but no attention was paid to their requests until the spring of 1690, when the king sent a small vessel from Ireland, with a trifling supply of arms, money, and ammunition, together with a Major-General Buchan, whose commission ap- CLAVERHOUSE (FROM AN AUTHENTIC PORTRAIT). able to keep the field. Without a shot being fired, the castle of Blair fell into the hands of the Scot- tish troops ; Finlarig Castle, at the head of Loch Tay, also received a garrison of them ; and General Mackay, though himself a Highlander, was at length enabled to attempt his long-cherished scheme of a chain of forts, to keep the turbulent clans in check. After the combat at Dunkeld, the Highland chiefs represented to their exiled monarch the fail- ing state of his cause in Scotland, and earnestly pointed him commander-in-chief of all the Jacobite forces in Scotland, Cannon to be his second in command. The new general, however, proved as incapable of leading Highlanders as his predeces- sor. On his arrival, at a time when James in Ire- land was making every preparation to meet King William in .batde, a gathering was held at Keppocli, to deliberate upon the course to be pursued. To this many were prevented from coming by the garrisons which Mackay had planted among them ; others by English ships of war, which hovered in the salt Cromdate.j FAILURE OF JAMES'S ADHERENTS. •35t 392 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. tCrpmdale. lochs and bays ; and even among those who did come, there broke out the genuine Highland love for local warfare Etnd feudal revenge on certain neighbours. Sir Evan Cameron, of Lochiel, for instance, following up the feud of ages, urged a descent with fire and sword on Argyle. But for his influence, however, many would have abandoned the, task as hopeless. He had adhered, he said, to the cause of Charles II. when it was more desperate than that of his royal brother now was ; and for his part, he would neither listen to terms with a foreign usurper, nor sheath his sword without the express orders of King James. The urgent remonstrances of this brave and faith- ful Cavalier so inflamed the assembled chiefs, that they resolved before the end of summer to muster their clans and renew the strife ; and in the mean- time, 1,200 men were placed at the disposal of Buchan, that he might hover on the Highland border, and keep the Lowlanders in a state of per- petual alarm. With this view he marched down Strathspey, and, with the most singular want of tact and judg- ment, encamped on the 30th of April on a haugh or level plain called Cromdale, on the right bank of the foaming Spey, a short distance below Grant- town, a spot where troops like Highlanders were most' open to attack and least capable of making a successful resistance, being, though accomplished swordsmen, quite destitute of discipline. Sir Thomas Livingstone was at that time lying with a body of the king's troops within eight miles of Strathspey, on the grounds of the Laird of Grant, when he received notice from a captain in the regiment of that chief that Buchan was march- ing down the Strath, The captain at the time, with a company, was keeping possession of Castle Grant for the Government. Desirous of attacking Buchan before he should be joined by the country-people, Livingstone, an able and experienced officer, at the head of 1,200 select men, including 400 of the clan and surname of Grant, and with several troops of cavalry and dragoons, immediately began his march at four o'clock in the evening of the same day, in search of the Jacobites. He continued his toute through the fir forests which cover all that district, till he came within two miles of Castle Grant. It was then dark, and the night was far advanced, and as a diflicult pass lay between him and the castle, Livingstone proposed to halt and bivouac; but not finding a suitable place for that purpose, by persuasion of an officer named Grant, who under- took to guide him through it, he resumed his route, and safely arrived at the Dairiade, or hill-top above the castle, where the troops halted at two in the morning. General Buchan's men were then reposing in fancied security near Lethendie, in the Haughs of Cromdale ; and the fires of their camp, glowing redly thrqugh the gloom, wiere pointed out to Living- stone by the captain of Castle Grant, and he thus found himself nearer the enemy than he had the least idea of. General Mackay states in his " Memoirs " that had Livingstone been aware that the Highlanders were encamped so near that perilous pass of Auchincarrow, he would not have ventured through it in the night, as he had but little confidence in the people of Strathspey ; nor would the Jacobites, had they suspected his marchj have encamped on an open plain, distant from any secure position, "just as if they had been led thither by the hand, like an ox to the slaughter." As several gentlemen of the adjacent county, whose principles were whiggish, had sought shelter in Castle Grant, the commander there, to ensure that no knowledge of the coming foe should be communicated to Buchan, shut the gates to pro- hibit all egress J and after a half-hour's halt the march was resumed in silence towards the Spej, the roar of whose waters would suffice to conceal any casual sound. Finding that a ford below Dellachaple which he approached was guarded by 200 Highlanders, he left a detachment of infantry and a few dragoons to amuse them, while, led tlirough the pine-woods by some gentlemen of the name of Grant, on horse- back, his main body crossed the stream at another ford a mile distant. Livingstone rode at tlie head of three troops of horse, while another troop and a company of Highlanders formed hie advanced guard. _ On reaching the opposite bank of this river, which is the most rapid in Scotland, he could perceive the insurgent Highlanders, who had re- ceived notice of his approach by the carbine and musketry firing at the upper ford, retiriiig in great confusion towards the hills. CaUing in with all speed the troops he had left; at the river, but witliout waiting for them, he at once dashed forward at-Tull galloi^, hoping to get between the fugitives^the greater part of whom were naked, having just started from bed — and the hills towards which they were flying. A most singular combat now took place in the grey misty dawn. The Highlanders could be seen running in all directions through the street of , the adjacent village and the level grounds in the neigh- bourhood. Some were quite panic-struck, and dis' Bantry. Bay. J- - JFQRT^WIjXIAJM ERECTED. 39?. posed only. to escape ; but hy far the greater part of them, shouting tlie faA^-tem,. or war-cry of their cl^n, fought sturdily with, clayinQreiiiiS target as they retired. ., Livingstone's helmeted and buJGf-ciaEited dragoons mingled fiercely with them, and did some terrible execution with their long straight swords, for there was now a bitter animosity between the adherents of the old and those of the new Government. In one little hamlet a party of Macdonalds defended themselves with the roost resolute bravery, " though not a man among them had the least particle of clothing on his body, except the target, which at once protected his shame and his life." The very commanders were taken as niuch by surprise as their men. General Buchan escaped in his shirt and nightcap, minus even his wig, and without sword, hat, or coat. As it fi:equently happens in the Highlands about dawn, a thick mist covered the summits of the ihountaihs, while all was clear below. Thus, when on reaching- the base of the heath-clad hill of Cromdale, after the fugi- tives faced about and made a resolute stand, they began to ascend with the nimbleness of their race ; and man after man vanished into the dim bosom of the vapour, like men received up into the clouds, while the baffled troopers remained in perplexity below. According to Mackay, 400 Highlanders were here killed or taken, while Livingstone did not lose a man, and had only seven horses shot. But Lord Balcarris records his loss at 100 killed and many prisoners, and the author of Dundee's Memoirs, says that many of the cavalry fell. A party of mingled CameronS and Macleans, who in the fight had separated from their com- pamons in misfortune, crossed the Spey on the following day; but being pursued by some of Livingstone's Scots caval^, were overtaken on. a moqrheaj Aviemdre, in the Grants' country, where many of them were kijled,' According to tfe "Records of the 4th Hussars," thare fell here loo ■ Macleaiis,l)ut only one captain and six men of that regiment, then called Berkeley's. The rest took shelter among the rocks of Craigellachie, and made an attempt to storm the ca:stle of Lochinclan, in Rothiefnuchus, but were repulsed by the pro- prietor and his men. The air, " Coll a DhoUaidh," known in the Low- lands as " The Haughs of Cromdale," and much used as ,a quickstep by the Scottish regiments, commemorates this combat, and is the only oiie associated with the victories of the Whigs. The result of this affair satisfied the Jacobite chiefs that the war could no longer be maintained against their Lowland fellow-subjects. Buchan fled to Glengarry, and Cannon to the Western Isles; and Mackay carried out his plan by the erection of a fortress at Inverlochy, to coinmand the chain of lakes which now form the peacefiil Caledonian Canal. Accordingly, some ships were sent thither firom Greenock, under a Major FergUS- son, while Mackay marched into Lochaber at the head of 3,000 men, to oversee the works, which were armed with demi-culverins firom a Scottish ship of war. In honour of the new king, it was named Fort William. Mackay then took his departure for ser- vice in Ireland, leaving a garrison of 1,000 men in the new and, to the Highlanders, most obnoxious stronghold, under the command of an old officer named Sir John HUl, who must have been a man of some ability, as Captain Carleton, in his Memoirs, states that he had been placed there by Oliver Cromwell over his garrison of Inverlochy, and had retained his government amid all the changes that had taken place in the intervening period. V CHAPTER LXX. BANTRY BAY, 1689. The events which were occurring collaterally at this time in Ireland were of greater importance than those, in the Highlands of Scotland. King James, surrounded by the loyal and gallant Celtic Irish, was looked upon as a distinguished martyr to.that faith to which, in all their viscissitudes, they had ever been staunch and true, and at their head he resolved to make a last bold struggle for the crown which had fallen from his brow. Louis of France encouraged him; and Tyrconnell, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, raised a Catholic army, 40,000 strong ; while Lord Mountjoy, the leader of the Irish Protestants, on bemg enticed to Paris, was placed in the Bastille. The first shots in this new scene of strife were .those fired in Bantry Bay. 394 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. tBantry "ay. King William being aware of the importance of having a strong fleet at sea this' year, and more particularly to prevent the French king from sending James a body of his own troops into Ireland, made every preparation to accomplish this end. On the 14th of March, Admiral Herbert was appointed to command the fleet, in which bomb- vessels now made their appearance for the first time. In 1681, Renaud, a Frenchman, was the first who constructed ketches for throwing shells, and the experiment was first used by the French against Algiers, which they destroyed ; but it was not until 1686 that King James ordered the first bomb-vessel to be built at Chatham. The 20th of March saw the admiral at Ports- mouth, where he found that certain ships which were ordered to join him from the east lay wind- bound in the Downs. He had some time before learned that King James — that royal master against whom he had now orders to turn his cannon at the behest of a foreigner — ^had on the 12 th of the same month landed at Kinsale, in Ireland. With all the ships he could collect, he therefore sailed for that coast, in hopes to intercept King James's convoy on its return ; ordering the rest of his fleet to follow, and to sail singly without waiting for each other, that no time might be lost. On the 17th of April he was off Cork, with only twelve ships of w^ar, one fire-ship, and four other small vessels, when the tidings of the king's land- ing were confirmed. This led him to haul up for Brest, and then to cruise in the soundings, in the hope of finding some vessels which were to convey military stores from France for the gathering Irish army. Disappointed in this, he once more returned to the coast of Ireland; and on the 29th of April he discovered off Kinsale a fleet of forty-four vessels, " keeping their wind, which made him keep his likewise, to hinder their getting in." Next day. they had disappeared, and he heard that they had gone into Baltimore, on which he stood towards that place, only to be disappointed ; so, supposing that they must be to the westward of him, he bore away for Cape Clear, and in the evening, to his joy, he saw them standing into Bantry Bay, a spacious inlet in the county of Cork, overlooked by the Berehaven mountains, and sur- rounded by beautiful scenery. He lay off' the bay till morning, and then stood in towards them. By this time he had increased his strength to eighteen sail, with the Dartmouth frigate and some tenders. " The French were at anchor, being," says Lediard, " twenty-eight men- of-war, most of them from sixty to upwards of eighty guns, and some larger, with five fire-ships, under the command of Monsieur Chateau-Renaud." The other admirals were Messieurs Cabaret and Forent. The transports, which had recently brought 5,000 men to Ireland, were at sdme distance, plying to windward. As the dawn of the ist of May came in, the French weighed anchor, set their canvas, and stood out to meet Herbert, who had, with some difficulty, worked to within two miles of them. They bore down in a very orderly line, with their ensigns flying. One of their ships which led the van got within musket-shot of the Defiance, on which Chateau-Renaud hoisted the signal for battle. These two ships at once engaged with their great guns and small-arms, and in quick succession flashes and smoke spouted firom the port-holes of the others. As they came up in line, Admiral Herbert, whose [flagship was the Elizabeth, find- ing his fleet was sustaining considerable damage from the superior numbers, and consequently heavier fire of the enemy, tacked several times, in hope to gain the weather-gage ; but the Count de Chateau-Renaud handled his ships with con- summate skill, and kept his wind securely. A ship commanded by the Chevalier de Coet- logon was set on fire by a cannon-ball which fell among some hand-grenades ; a powder-barrel then exploded, and part of her stem was [blown away. After fighting bravely for some time. Admiral Her- bert, finding that the contest was very unequal, stretched off" to sea, not only to get his ships into line, but, if possible, to get the weather-gage ; but the French were so cautious of bearing down that he found no opportunity for gaining that end. The count continued, however, to follow him, and thus a running fight was maintained by the cannon chiefly till five in the afternoon, when Chateau-Renaud tacked, put about, and returned into Bantry Bay, content with the honour he had won. The Elizabeth and several other British ships had suffered severely in their masts and rigging, " so that not one-half of them were in a condition for further action ;" and, on the other hand, the enemy had received a considerable mauUng. " The loss of men was inconsiderable on both sides," says Smollett, "and where the odds were so great, the victor could not reap much glory." There were 94 killed and about 300 wounded. Captain George Aylmer, of the Portland, and one lieutenant were the only officers killed. The damage done to the ships was chiefly aloft. Herbert, leaving the French thus fully in posses- sion of the bay, sailed for his rendezvous, ten I/ondondeny.] IRELAND FOR KING JAMES. 395 leagues westward, of Scilly, in hope to meet some additional force that might enable him to have revenge; but failing in this he returned to Spit- head, where orders were issued for the immediate irefitting of the fleet. All his officers and men were very much discontented. They could not but remember how gallantly in times past the king against whom they were now fighting had led them in battle, for James had ever been a favourite with the navy. They complained bitterly that they had been sent upon service with a force far inferior to that of the enemy; yet the British, like the French, claimed the victory, and the EngUsh House of Commons passed a vote of thanks to Herbert. To appease the discontent^ King William made a special journey to Portsmouth, where he dined with the. admiral on board his ship the Elizabeth. He did more, as he created him Earl of Torrington, and knighted Captains John Ashley and Cloudes- ley Shovel. On the day after a Te Deum had been sung in all the churches of Dublin for this repulse of Her- bert's fleet, the Irish Parliament convoked by James assembled ; but only fourteen temporal peers (out of some 200) attended, and of these, ten were Catholics. In the House of Commons 250 mem- bers took their seats, and of these only six were Protestants. The first great operation of the king was the siege of Londonderry, the stronghold of the Ulster Protestants. CHAPTER LXXL SIEGE OF LONDONDERRY, 1689. Save Deny and Enniskillen, all Ireland declared for King James, and Ireland was now destined to be the ground on which he was to contend for the crown of his ancestors. Londonderry had closed its gates against Lord Antrim, and many Protestants bad taken refuge there. The governor, Lundy, was in reality a par- tisan of James, and was ready to admit him, to betray the garrison, and sacrifice the new cause; hence the king expected to obtain quiet possession of the seaport town, before which he appeared with his Irish and French troops, on the 20th of April. The French generals who had come with him firom Brest were in his train ; and twa of them, Rosen and Maumont, he placed over the head of Richard Hamilton, sprung firom a noble Scottish stock, which had long been settled in Ireland, and pro- fessed the Catholic religion. Conrad de Rosen, Comte de Bolvieller, a Marshal of France in 1703, was at this time a lieutenant-general; he was a native of Livonia, and a fierce and resolute soldier. Of Maumont little is known, but that little is to his honour. The fortifications of Londonderry, which were erected during several years, commencing jn 1609, consisted, of a simple wall overgrown with grass and iweeds ; there was not even a ditch b^for^, the gates, .the; drawbridges had long, been neglected, the counterpoises were rusty : and these feeble de- fences were commanded by heights on every side, and had never been meant for more than the exclu- sion of the turbulent Celtic peasantry. Avaux, the French ambassador, had assured Louvois, the French Minister of War, that a single battalion of France could take such a wretched place with ease. Within it the stock of provisions at this present crisis was smaU, and the population had been swollen to eight times its ordinary number, by the multitude of colonists who had fled thither for shelter; and Robert Lundy from the moment the king's- army entered Ulster, seems to have given up all intention of a serious resistance. This city, which was to become the scene of so many horrors, is beautifully situated on an oval hill called the Isknd of Deny, and is nearly insu- lated by a majestic sweep of the broad and volumin- ous Foyle. One new suburb, called the Waterside, extends to the opposite bank of the river ; but the ancient part of the city rises tier above tier, till it culminates in the spire of the cathedral. The river Foyle, rolling amid urban beauty, expands imnie- diately below it, and terminates in the broad waters of Lough Foyle. On the arrival of two regiments from Britain to reinforce the garrison, Robert Lundy persuaded the colonels of them to re-embark,'as a defence was impossible, and more prisoners would fall into the hands of the enemy, to whom he sent assurances that the city would surrender in peace on the first formal summons; and.long after dusk on the even- 396 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Londonderry. ing of the 17th of April it was found that the gates had been mysteriously left open, and that their keys had disappeared ! The officers -Vfho dis- covered this doubled the guards and changed the password. King James's army was at that time only four miles distant. -Lundy had given tirders that there was to be no firing on the advancing foe ; but his authority had passed away, and voices were heard exclaiming that his brains should be blown out, or that he tion in the North of Ireland— fled in the disguise of a porter, leaving the city without a head and its people without a leader. The effective men in it numbered 7,000, all zealous Protestants, tinged with rabid Puritanism, and, fortunately for themselves, all more or less trained to arms. Two governors were at once elected. Major Baker and George Walker. The males were formed into eight regiments, properly officered. Every man knew his post, and could L0ND0KUERK.Y. should be hanged over the walls. Two officers of courage. Major Henry Baker and Captain Adam Murray, now called the men of Derry to arms ; and they were assisted by the eloquence of an aged clergyman, George Walker, the Rector of Donagh- more, who witl^ many of his people had sought refuge in the city, where all seemed now to be moved by one common impulse. All rushed to the walls and manned the cannon. The king, who, confident of success, had approached within a hundred yards of the southern gate, was received with uncouth yells and cries of " No sur- render ! " while a fire was ppened upon him from the nearest bastion, and an officer fell dead by his side ; and Lundy — at this hour held up to execra- repair to it when the drums beat ; and preachmg, and praying, and making up ammunition occupied a large-portion of every day, while twenty-six clergy- men exerted themselves to sustain the ardour of all. Cannon were slung up to the broad tower of the old cathedral. The king waited twenty-four hours, and in that time the arrangements to resist were complete. On the following day Claude Hamilton, Lord Stra- bane, was met at the gate by Adam Murray, the colonel of one of the city regiments, under a flag of truce. Strabane offered a free pardon to all who would lay down their arms, and to Murray himself a colonelcy in the king's service, with ;^I,000. Londonderry.] TWO SALLIES. 397 " The men of Londonderry have done nothing that requires a pardon," replied Murray, " and own no rovereigns but King William and Queen Mary. It will neither be safe for your lordship to stay longer, nor to return on the same errand. Let me see you through the lines." On finding that he was mistaken in his hopes, James broke loose fi-om the control of his coun- sellor, Melfort, and resolved to return to Dublin. The peer named John Drummond took his title of in mind that the defenders of Londonderry, being colonists, were men of a mixed race ; and having more of the dogged and stubborn Saxon and Scot- tish blood in their veins, were very different in character from the Celts opposed to them. Mau- mont,, at the head of a body of cavalry, galloped to the place where the fight was raging, and fell killed by a musket-ball. Many officers and 200 men fell before the sally was driven in. Murray had his horse killed under him, and was DEFENCE OF LONDONDERRY. Lord and Duke, not from France as many sup- pose, but from his patrimony, a farm in Argyle- shire. Conrad de Rosen accompanied the king, who had thus no share in the horrors that ensued ; the direction of the siege was entrusted to Mau- mbnt ; Hamilton was second in command, and Brigadier Persignan was third. The batteries soon opened j the city was fired in several places ; roofs and upper stories were beaten to ruins that fell upon the inmates or passers-by, and the streets became encumbered by mangled corpses ; but so high was the spirit of the people, that on the 21st of April a sally was actually made, under the command of Adam Murray, and a furious contest took place. But it should be borne surrounded, but he hewed a passage to the gates, when old Walker came forth with a party to his rescue. Richard Hamilton now succeeded to the com- mand. He was a brave but unskilful soldier, and a fortnight later he had to deplore the loss of the gal- lant Persignan, who fell in repulsing another sortie, in which the garrison captured many standards. May passed into June, and still Londonderry held out, amid many bloody sallies and skirmishes. In these two French standards were taken, and hung in the cathedral; and, before turning the siege into a close blockade, it was resolved to try the eflfect of an assault on an outwork called Wind- mill Hill, near the southern gate. S4 39S BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Londonderry. Religious stimulants were not wanting to inspire the forlorn hope with courage ; and the volunteers for it bound themselves by a solemn oath to cut a passage in, or perish in the attempt. Led by Captain Butler, son of Lord Mountgarret, they rushed to the attack, but found the colonists on the walls, drawn up three ranks deep , to receive them, the office of those in rear being simply to pass loaded muskets to those who were in front. With shrieks, and yells, and frightful clamour, the Irish came on, but only to be repulsed, with the loss of 400 men. In one place, where the wall was only seven feet high, Butler and some of his " sworn men " succeeded in reaching the summit, but only to be all shot down or bayoneted. Where the fire was hottest, the wives of the colonists were seen handing ammunition to their husbands and brothers. It was now resolved to try the slow effects of starvation, in a place where the supplies were totally cut off and the stock of provisions was known to be slender ; so every avenue was guarded. " On the south," says Macaulay, " were encamped along the left bank of the Foyle the horsemen who had followed Lord Galway from the valley of the Barrow. Their chief was, of all the Irish captains, the most dreaded and abhorred by the Protestants, for he had disciplined his men with rare skill and care, and many frightful stories were told of his barbarity and perfidy. Long lines of tents occupied by the infantry of Butler and O'Neil, of Lord Sloane and Lord Gormanstown, by Nugent's Westmeath men, by Eustace's Kildare men, and by Cavanagh's Kerry men, extended northward till they again reached the water-side. The river was fringed with forts and batteries, which no vessel could pass without great peril." To barricade the stream, " several boats full of stones were sunk ; a row of stakes was driven into the bottom of the river. Large pieces of firwood strongly bound together formed a boom, which was more than a quarter of a mile in length, and was firmly fastened to both shores by cables a foot thick. A huge stone to which the cable on the left bank was attached, was removed many years kterfor the purpose of being shaped into a column, but the intention was abandoned, and the rugged mass still lies not many yards from its original site, amid the shades which surround a pleasant country house, named Boom Hall. Hard by is a well from which the besiegers drank. A little farther off is a burial ground, where they laid their slain, and where, even in our own timej the spade of the gardener has struck upon many skulls and thigh bones, at a short distance beneath the turf and flowers," Meanwhile the blockade of Londonderry, and the bravery and sufferings of its people, were exciting sympathy in England and Scotland. Lundy, to whose treachery its calamities were perhaps unjustly ascribed, was committed to the Tower, and Colonel Cunningham, who had failed to land his soldiers, was sent to the Gate House. Troops for the relief of the city sailed from Liverpool under the command of Colonel Piercy Kirk, an officer who won an unenviable notoriety in other times, and who had served at Tangiers. They sailed on the i6th of May, but were long detained by contrary winds under the lee of the Isle of Man ; and it was not until the 15th of June that the look-out on the summit of the cathedral saw their sails gleaming on the blue bosom of Lough Foyle. By this time the distress of the colonists was intense. The line of posts around them re- mained unbroken as ever. By the 8th of June horseflesh was the only meat that could be pur- chased, and it became necessary to make up the deficiency with tallow, and even that was doled out parsimoniously. But now a gallant messenger from the fleet dived beneath the boom, and swimming towards the city, announced that Kirk had arrived from England with troops, arms, and ammunition — ^more than all, with provisions. Kirk had with him the Dartmouth, 36 guns, the Bonaventure, the Swallow, and a fleet of transports ; and to these were added three ships of Sir George Rooke's squadron, which had been searching for some French ships who had captured two Scottish frigates off Carrickfergus, after a sharp engagement. The first feverish joy of the isolated colonists was followed by weeks of misery, for Kirk, deem- ing it unsafe to land or attempt to break the boom, lay for some time irresolute and inactive off Lough Foyle. In this time the pressure of famine grew maddening, and the stock of cannon-balls was becoming exhausted, so their place was sup- plied by brickbats cased in lead, And now pesti- lence followed in the train of hunger. Governor Baker and fifteen other officers died, and the place of the former was taken by Colonel John Mitchel- bume. The arrival of Kirk caused great excitement in Dublin, whence King James sent down Conrad de Rosen to take the command of the blockade. He attempted a mine in vain, with the loss of 100 of his men. "Then," says Macaulay, on the authority of Hamilton, Walker, Leslie, &c., " his Londonderry.J "NO SURRENDER!" 399 fury rose to a strong pitch. He, an old soldier, a Marshal of France in expectancy, accustomed during many years to scientific war, to be baffled by a mob of country gentlemen, farmers, and shop- keepers, who were protected only by a wall which any good engineer would at once have pronounced untenable ! He raved, he blasphemed in a lan- guage of his own, made up of all the dialects spoken from the Baltic to the Atlantic. He would raze the city to the ground ; he would spare no living being — ^not the young girls ; no, not the babies at the breast. As to the leaders, death was too light a punishment for them ; he would rack them, he would roast them aUve. In his rage he ordered a shell to be thrown into the town, with a letter containing a horrible menace. He would, he said, gather into one body all the Protestants who re- mained in their houses between Chariemont and the sea — old men, women, and children — ^under the walls of Londonderrj', there to be starved to death in sight of their countrymen, their friends, and their kinsmen. This was no idle threat !" Accordingly, cavalry were sent out in all direc- tions to collect these innocent victims; and by dawn on the 2nd of July hundreds of Protestants who were guiltless of crime, and who were in- capable of bearing arms, and many of whom bore King James's protection, were driven towards the gates of the city. This piteous sight only roused the colonists to greater fiiry. A gallows was erected on one of the bastions, and a message sent to Rosen, to announce that thereon should be hanged every prisoner they possessed, and requesting him to send a confessor to prepare his comrades for death. For forty-eight hours he persisted ; at length he gave way, or feigned to relent, and after many poor creatures had perished, permitted the survivors to withdraw. When tidings of these things reached Dublin, Macaulay tells us, though by no means favourable to the king, that " he was startled by an atrocity of which the Civil Wars of England had furnished no such example, and was displeased by learning that protection given by his authority, and guaranteed by his honour, had been publicly de- clared to be nullities ; and said with warmth, which the occasion fully justified, that Rosen was a bar- barous Muscovite." Rosen was recalled to Dublin, and the com- mand of the siege was again deputed to Richard Hamilton, who tried various but gentler plans to lure the garrison into submission, but in vain ; and by the time that July was far advanced the state of the starving citizens was frightful. Famine, fire, and disease were thinning their numbers fast. Again and again their walls were breached ; but again and again they were repaired by fighting- men so reduced and emaciated that they could scarcely keep their legs, for many fell down when working on the bastions or handling their muskets. " Dogs, fattened on the blood of the slain, who lay unburied about the town, were luxuries which few could afford to purchase. The price of a whelp's paw was five shilUngs and sixpence. Nine horses were alive, but barely alive ; they were so lean that little meat was likely to be found on them. It was, however, determined to slaughter them for food. The people perished so fast that it was impossible for the survivors to perform the rites of sepulture. There was scarcely a cellar in which some corpse was not decaying ; and such was the extremity of distress, that the rats who came to feast in these hideous dens were eagerly hunted and greedily devoured." Yet " No surrender !" was still the cry, and some there were who muttered grimly — " First the horses and their hides, then the pri- soners, and then each other ! " And now Kirk received imperative orders to break the boom at all hazards and relieve the city. Among the ships in his convoy were two mer- chantmen : one laden with provisions, the Mount- joy, the master of which was a native of London- derry ; the other a Scottish ship — called by Daniel a ship of Coleraine — the master of which, Andrew Douglas, had brought a cargo of oatmeal. These two gallant skippers volunteered to make the at- tempt, provided that they were escorted by the Dartmouth frigate, commanded by Captain (after- wards Admiral) Leake, who in after years relieved Gibraltar, and destroyed a great part of the squadron of Pointis. The evening sun had set on the 28th of July, when the sentinels on the tower of the cathedral saw the three vessels before the wind and tide, says Burnet, under a press of canvas, running boldly up the Foyle. All were soon astir in the city, and also in the Irish camp for miles along the river. The fiigate acted nobly, and with her guns covered the merchantmen from the fire of the batteries; and forward they went with all their weight and force at the boom. The Mountjoy took the lead, and before her bows the great barrier gave way with a crash. Yells rose from the banks, and the Irish rushed to their boats, but one broadside settled them for ever. The Mount- joy passed on, but stuck in the mud ; while the Phanix dashed through the breach her stem had made, and bore speedily on. Ere long the rising tide floated off her companion, 400 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA.i [Newton Butler. whose captain had been slain ; and amid the flash- ing of guns, yells, and shouts, and many hideous noises, by ten at night both ships were mpored alongside the quay, where they were welcomed with tears of joy by a ghastly and emaciated multitude. Andrew .Douglas sent on shore instantly 6,000 bushels of oatmeal. Then from the Moimtjoy came flitches of bacon, cheeses, kegs of butter, of biscuits, of brandy, and sacks of peas. All night the ships were being unloaded and the food was being distributed; and all night was heard the boom of the cannon alon^ the banks of the Foyle, as the king's batteries and Kirk's squadron .fought each other, and high in the air rang the bells of the rescued city. When morning dawned, the camp of the besiegers had become heaps of smouldering ashes, and a long line of glittering bayonets and fluttering standards, lessening up the left bank of the river towards Strabane, was all that remained of the retreating army of Hamilton. Thus ended, on the ist of August, 1689, after 105 days, the most memorable and desperate siege recorded in the annals of the British Isles. The loss of the garrison was 3,000, and of the blockad- ing force is supposed to have been fully 8,000. The history of William's reign (1744) makes it 10,000 ; and states that Walker came over to wait on the king at London, when he received a gift of ^S, 000, but was afterwards killed by a musket- shot at the battle of the Boyne. "Five generations have passed away," says Macaulay, " and still the walls of Londonderry are to the Protestants of Ulster what the trophy of Marathon was to the Athenians. A lofty pillar, rising from a bastion which bore during many weeks the heaviest fire of the enemy, is seen far up and down the Foyle. On the summit is the statue of Walker, such as when, in the last sind most ter- rible emergency, his eloquence roused the fainting courage of his brethen. In one hand he grasps a Bible ; the other, pointing down the river, seems to direct the eyes of his famished audience to the British topmasts in the distant bay. Such a monu- ment was well deserved ; yet it was scarcely needed, for in truth the whole city is a monument of the great deliverance. The wall is carefully preserved; nor would any plea of health or convenience be held by the inhabitants sufficient to justify the demolition of that sacred enclosure which in the evil time gave shelter to their race and religion. The summit of the ramparts forms a pleasant walk. The bastions have been turned into httle gardens, and here and there, among the shrubs and leaves, may be seen the old culverins which scattered bricks cased with lead among the Irish ranks. One antique gun, the gift of the fish- mongers of London, was distinguished during the 105 days by the loudness of its report, and still bears the name of " Roaring Meg," The cathedral is filled with relics and trophies. In the vestibule is a huge shell, one of many hundreds thrown into the city. Over the altar are still seen the French flagstaves, taken by the garrison in a desperate sally. The white ensigns of the House of Bourbon have long been dust ; but their place has been supplied by new banners, the work of the fairest hands in Ulster. The anniversary of the day on which the gates were closed, and the anniversary of the day on which the siege was raised, have been down to our own times celebrated by salutes, processions, banquets, and sermons ; and the sword said by tradition to be that of Maumont has on great occasions been carried in triumph." From the days of the rebeUion of Shane O'Neil, Londonderry had ever been deemed the rallying- point and city of refuge for the EngUsh and Scot- tish colonists. CHAPTER LXXII. NEWTON BUTLER, 1689. The Irish troops who had retreated from London- derry to the market-town of Strabane halted there but a very short time ; and if the spirit of these hastily-levied forces was depressed by their recent failure, it was soon to be almost crushed by another disaster. In Dublin, it was determined by the king and his Irish ministry that ^n attack should be made upon the Enniskilleners, who were marked by their antagonism to James, and conspicuous for the de- cided part they took in the cause of the Revolution They were to be assailed from several points at once, and to be reduced by the sword to submis- sion. With this view. General Macarthy, whom the king, for his services in Munster, had created Viscount Mountcashel, marched towards Lough ifewton Butler.] THE ENNISKILLENERS. 46i Erne (a beautiful sheet of water, said to rival Lake Leman itself), with three regiments of infantry, two of dragoons, and some troops of horse. The Duke of Berwick was to advance from the North with a body of cavahy, while a considerable force that lay encamped near the mouth of the river .Drowes was to march from the West. The men of Enniskillen were ignorant of the entire plan for their subjection; but they knew that Mountcashel was marching towards them with a force far exceeding any that they could bring into the field, and they sent a deputation to General Kirk for assistance. He could not spare them a single soldier; but he sent them some muskets, some ammunition, and certain ofiicers of experience, the chief of whom were Colonel Wolseley, a native of Staffordshire, and Colonel Berry. By sea these officers had come round the coast of Donegal ; and on Sunday, the 29th of July, their boat, after running up the Erne, drew near the Isle of Enniskillen, which is situated above the debouch of the river into the Lower Erne, and has the appearance of a flattened, edificed, and stupendous earthwork, or huge oblong mound, surmounted by a fosse, and connected with the land by bridges. The whole population rushed to the shore to greet them, and we are told that "it was with difficulty they made their way to the CasUe, through the crowds that hung on them, blessing God that dear old England had not quite forgotten the Eng- lishmen who were upholding her cause against great odds in the heart of Ireland." Colonel Wolesley was a staunch Protestant, who had recently distinguished himself among the York- shiremen and Staffordshiremen who had risen for the Prince of Orange ; even before the landing of whom, in the exuberance of his zeal, he had caused the Mayor of Scarborough to be tossed in a blanket in the market-place for issuing an address in favour of the monarch then reigning. Though a regularly- trained officer, he seemed to have a peculiar apti- tude for the leading of irregular troops, and he had scarcely assumed the command of the men of Enniskillen when he received tidings that Mount- cashel had laid siege to Crum Castle, the frontier garrison of the Protestant colonists of Fermanagh, and the ruins of which may still be seen on a finely- wooded promontory that overlooks Lough Erne. Resolving to raise the siege without delay, Wolseley sent forward Lieutenant-Colonel Berry with all the new-levied troops that were in readi- ness, intending to follow with the rest. After marching some miles, Berry came suddenly upon thirteen troops of Mountcashel's dragoons, commanded by Anthony Hamilton, the most bril- liant and accomplished of all who bore that ancient Scottish name, "but much less successful as a soldier than as a courtier, a lover, and a writer ;" for though not a Frenchman, he wrote a book which is of all books, says our great historian, the most exquisitely French, both in spirit and manner. On the approach of Berry, his Irish dragoons fled at the first volley of musketry ; he was severely wounded, and his second in command was shot dead. Quitting Castle Crum, Mountcashel came up with all speed to support Hamilton, while at the same time Colonel Wolseley hurried on to aid Berry. The viscount was at the head of 5,000 men, with a train of light guns ; Wolseley was without this arm ; his men were under 3,000 strong, and had marched in such haste that they had but one day's provisions per man in their haversacks. Face to face now, there was nothing for it but to fight or retreat. Colonel Wolseley, before doing either, resolved to consult the wishes and ascertain the temper of his slender force, which was made up of gentlemen and yeomen, fighting not for pay, but for their wives and children, and the heritages they had won in Ireland by their swords. Halting them in line, he put the simple ques- tion, " Shall we advance or retreat?" "Advance ! advance !" was the eager response. " No Popery ! " cried Wolseley; and accepting this as a cri de guerre, they uttered a hearty shout. As they approached, the Irish, to their great surprise, began to fall back, which made the Enniskilleners increase their pace ; but, suspecting a snare or ambush, Wolseley forbade them to break their ranks or attempt any wild pursuit. Thus one force continued to retreat, and the other to advance in good order, till they both passed through the little town of Newton Butler, in the county of Fermanagh, and thirteen and a half miles from Enniskillen. There the Irish faced about, and made a stand at last, about a mile beyond it. Mountcashel's position was well chosen, on the face of a green hill, at the bottom of which lay a brown and muddy bog. Across this a narrow rough causeway was the only path by which the few Enniskillen cavalry could pass to the front, for on both flanks were pools, quagmires, and turf-pits full of slimy water; and the viscount placed his cannon in such a way as to enable him to sweep this only approach to his post. Wolseley, however, ordered an attack. Through the perilous bog the Enniskillen infantr}- rushed on the guns, and short, but desperate was the fight around them, till the Irish cannoneers were all destroyed by bayonet or sword. Then, no longer afraid of being slaughtered helplessly on 402 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Newton Butler. the causeway, the mounted Enniskilleners dashed across it; but ere they could form up to the front, the Irish dragoons fled without striking a blow or firing. a shot. Their horse followed this disgraceful example, and so intense was the panic of the fugitives, that many of them spurred their horses till the animals sank under them, after which they continued the flight on foot, throwingawaycarbines, swords, even their buflf coats, and all that might impede their flight. On seeing their can- non captured, and themselves deserted thus at the same moment, the infantry fired an irregularvolley, and then tlirowing aside theirmusketsandpikes, fled for their lives in all directions. One author reports that this panic was caused by |:he blunder of an officer, who called out, " Right about face," instead of " Right face ;" but this is extremely improba- ble, as no such order could be required at such a crisis, with an enemy rushing on. Macaulay says that "the dragoons, who gave the example of flight, were not i;i the habit of waiting for orders to turn their backs on the enemy; they had run away once before on that very day." But now ensued one of the scenes of butcherly ferocity which are so often read of in Irish civil war. Terrible was the remorseless slaughter! Fully 1,500 of the vanquished fugitives were cut down by the sword, while 500 more, who, in their ignorance of the country, took a road that led to Lough Erne, plunged into its waters tO escape their pursuers, and nearly all perished. Abandoned thus by his recreant troops. Viscount Mountcashel rushed amid the pursuers sword in SPONTOONS (tower COLLECTION) hand. He was unhorsed, wounded in several places, struck down, and was on the point of being brained by the bulfcend of a clubbed musket, when he was recognised, and had quarter granted him. The colonists took 400 prisoners, seven pieces of cannon, fourteen barrels of powder, and all the colours and drums of the vanquished; while their own loss was only twenty killed and ^fty wounded. The raising of the siege of Londonderry and this defeat at New- ton , Butler, together with the evil tidings that came from Scot- land, caused conster- nation among the ad- herents of James in Ireland. Flinging their stores into the Moume, the Irish troops fled from Strabane to Omagh, and thence to Charlemont. Sarsfield abandoned Sligo, which was immediately occu- pied by the troops of Kirk ; and King James thought of again retir- ing to France. " It is curious," says Macaulay, " that the two most remarkable battles that perhaps were ever gained by iiTegular over regular troops, should have been fought in the same week — Killy- crankie and Newton Butler. In both the panic of the regular troops, in spite of the conspicuous example of courage set by their gene- rals, was singularly disgraceful. It ought also to be noted that of these extraordinary victories, one was gained by Celts over Saxons, the other by Saxons over Cehs The Anglo-Saxon and the Celt have been reconciled in Scotland, and have never been reconciled in Ireland. In Scotland all the great actions of both races have been thrown into a common stock, and are considered as making up the glory which belongs to the whole country." Newton Butler.] THE ENNISKILLENERS. 403 . I 464 BRITISH BATTLtS ON LAND AiSTD S£A. iflass feocb. CHAPTER LXXIII. SURPRISE OF THE BASS ROCK, . 1689-94. Before quitting Scotland to .detail those battles which King William had to fight ere he com- pletely prostrated the power of his unfortunate father-in-law, we shall take the opportunity of re- lating one of the most singular events of the age — the defiant resistance of the new Govern- ment, and the resolute defence of a Scotch island- fortress by land and sea, by only thirteen men, for the space of four years. The Prince of Orange and his wife had been duly proclaimed at Edinburgh, as William II. and Mary II., according to the enumeration of the sovereigns of Scotland, three months after their proclamation in England, where they took the coronation oath of the former kingdom in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, before certain Scottish commissioners. In the spring of 1689 there were sent as pri- soners to the castle on the Bass Rock, four young officers who adhered to King James, when the mass of his Scottish forces deserted in England to King William. Their names were Lieutenants Haliburton and Michael Middleton, and Ensigns Ray and Dunbar, who had been taken in the north by General Sir Thomas Livingstone, when on their way to join Viscount Dundee. Inspired by hatred of their captors, at a time when civil, religious, and political opinions were peculiarly rancorous and bitter, these adventurous Cavaliers commenced at once to scheme for freedom ; and in that most hopeless prison, surrounded by the waves, they soon found an opportunity of outwit- ting their warders — a party of the Scots Foot Guards under Lieutenant Wood. This Scottish Bastille stands in the Firth of Forth, three miles and a half distant from North Berwick, and is about seven acres in extent. It resembles in form tlie base of a sugar-loaf cut across at an angle of forty-five degrees. On its apex, a sheer cliff, 420 feet above the Water, were a flagstaff and a piece of cannon as a signal-gun. Precipitous and sheer on all sides, the only land- ing-place it possesses is a little shelf of rock over- looked by its castle, the chief feature of which is a long crenelated rampart, where in those days twenty-one pieces of heavy cannon faced and de- fended the strait between it and TantaJlan. Be- neath this platform, tier above tier, are the grated windows of the small arched dungeons in which the State prisoners were confined. However calm the weather, a heavy surf for ever boils around the Bass, of which there is as much below water as above; and boatmen have to cling hard to iron rings in the rock when parties land there, to save their craft from being dashed to pieces. The actual point of landing is a steep and slippery chasm that leads to the plateau of rock before the gate, and this is always covered by dead gannets and Nor- wegian rabbits; these together with the guano, which is the soil of the isle, taint most unpleasantly even the keen sea-breeze. To the left of this land- ing-place, guarded by a loopholed tower, are still the remains of the iron crane used by the gar- rison for raising their boat to the outer wall. A portcullis of iron, three strong gates, and a lofty spur projecting southward, and having within it a covered gallery, loopholed on both sides for musketry, are its chief securities. Prisoners have frequendy escaped from the Chateau d'lf, from the Tower of London, and even from the loftier Castle of Edinburgh ; but none ever escaped from the Bass, which has never been taken by storm, and which, as we are about to narrate, defied a block- ade by land and sea for four years after the battle of Killycrankie. The Scots Foot Guards furnished the garrison of this place in those days, and till nearly the middle of the last century, at least certainly for some time after the removal of the regiment permanently to London, though the fortifications were dismantled in 1701. The four prisoners in this castle were young and daring ; ahd the idea of a hopeless captivity in a place so secluded as that island castle washed by the sea became so intolerable that they con- ceived the idea of capturing it for King James. A scheme for the same purpose is said to have been concocted about the same time by certain Jaco- bites on the opposite shore. These held their meetings in the manor-house of Garleton, the seat of Sir George Seton, near Drem, who was after- wards arrested by the State in consequence ; and it is also said to have been first suggested by Cap- tain Charles Maitland — brother of General Mait- land, a Scottish Guards officer — the superseded deputy-governor for King James. At all events, he had several meetings concerning the project with two young Jacobites, David Blair, son of the Bass Rock.] THE SEIZURE. 405 Laird of Ardblair, and WilKam Crawford of Ard- millan, who, with some others, lurked for a time, disguised as seamen, in a village near the shore. Lieutenant Middleton and his three fellow- prisoners, having observed that when a boat came periodically with coals and provisions for the gar- rison, it was the custom for the whole detachment, save three sentinels, to descend to the l^ncjing-place outside the walls, and, sure in the peif(?ct security of all prisoners, to assist in the unloading ; on the 15th of June, 1689, they availed themselves of this circumstance to seize upon arms and take the castle by surprise. They simply rushed upon the portcullis, let it drop, and closed and secured the gates. By this they made themselves com' pletely masters of the whole castle. They then threatened to open a fire of both cannon and musketry upon the excluded detach- ment of Lieutenant Wood, who were thus com- pelled to abandon the island, and pull ashore in the coal-boat, which a single cannon-shot might have knocked to pieces. A sergeant, named La Fosse, Swan, the master-gunner, and one Foot Guardsman on whom they could depend, were alone retained by Middleton and his three com- panions, who now hoisted the standard of King James, and fired a few pieces of cannon. Captain Maitland, the late deputy-governor, David Blair, and Crawford of Ardmillan, came off to them next day. Though styled of Ardmillan, the latter was the eldest son of Crawford of Baid- land (who was also of Ardmillan in right of his wife), and he joined in this rash and most useless enterprise, though on the very eve of his marriage with Margaret Kennedy, of Balderstone, a young lady possessed of great beauty and attractions, from whom he was now to be separated for four years. With him came his servant, and two Irishmen named Newport and Cornelius O'Brien, with whom he put off to the Bass on a dark night, seizing a boat that was moored on the coast near Dirlton to effect his purpose. The Irishmen had just effected their escape from the Tolbooth of Leith, to which they had been committed as spies of King James, from Ireland, which it is extremely probable they were, when they could put them- selves so readily in communication with Crawford. So now Captain Maitland, with twelve men, pre- pared to defy all Britain ! The Scottish Privy Council, on hearing of their proceedings, and fearing that they might only be the prelude to something more dangerous or im- portant, were very indignant. Lieutenant Wood, who had absented himself without leave from his detachment, and whom they found amiising him- self at Edinburgh, was immediately put under arrest for neglect of duty, and a party of troops was posted in the village of Castleton, immediately opposite- the island, to cut off all communication between it and the mainland. Sir Thomas Living- stone, commander of the Scottish forces, sent a still stronge?- force soqn g,fter, voider three active officers, moxei effectually to blockad? the rock and and starve out its new proprietors. But months elapsed,, and the impregnable islet fortress wag watched in vain. King William had fill the British Isles ; but seven acres of rock amid the sea still defied him. Maitland's little garrison resisted all efforts to subdue them, and kept King James's flag flying in defiance of the Scottish Government ; leading a merry life amid those clouds of snow- white sea-birds, whose special haunt and home is the Bass and the vast ocean cavern by which it is perforated, and through which adventurous fisher- men have sometimes passed at low water. By rock and sea they had no lack of stimng adventures, and despite Sir Thomas Livingstone's detachments and chains of sentinels, young Ard- millan, anxious perhaps to hear something . of his betrothed, boldly went more than once ashore, and in returning generally brought off a good supply of provisions. But times there were when the ocean was rough, the weather stormy, and the mighty waves rose almost to the castle wall ; and then they were fain to content them with the rancid flesh of the solan geese, dressed with their eggs and. the sea- weeds about the landing-place, or with such poor pot- herbs as they could cultivate in the soldiers' garden which still hes in the hollow of the rock ; and where, though the isle is now a deserted wilderness, still the pale narcissus and the common daffodil are growing rank and wild. To enforce the blockade, two armed vessels were now ordered to cruise between the island and the shore ; but this soon proved perilous work, as four- teen of the twenty-one cannon could be levelled in that special direction. The officer commanding at Castleton, on finding that the two armed ships could achieve nothing, sent off a boat, with a sergeant and a drummer, carrying a flag of truce, with a summons of sur- render to the holders of the Bass, who allowed them to land, but immediately disarmed them and made them prisoners. A boat was then sent round with an officer to a part of the isle where there were no cannon, and where the totally inaccessible nature of the rock renders even walls unnecessary.- The officer demanded their release, and the surrender of the craft in which they had come. They were ultimately surrendered; but their boat was 4o6 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Bass Rock. retained, and by means of the crane hoisted into the castle. A Danish ship, whose crew were ignorant of this state of affairs at the mouth of the river, ran between the mainland and the island. A shot from the latter made her shorten sail ; she was compelled to come close to the rock, and was sacked of all she contained, though Britain was then at peace with Denmark. After this, as if to complete the exasperation of the Council, when the winter nights were dark and long, the little garrison made boating expeditions along the coast on both sides, " and laid all between the Tyne and the Tay under contribution," and brought off many a cask of beer and runlet of wine, in which to drink to the confusion of King William, and to the health of King James VII., while the Government at Edinburgh found itself helpless ! The distance between the island and the main- land of East Lothian was too far for the cannon of those days to be of any avail ; and its cliff-built battlements were too high to be reached by the artillery of any ship, unless she were heeled over to a degree that would be dangerous ; while the guns of the castle were of heavy calibre, and well supplied with shot and shell, and were moreover m the hands of desperate men who knew well how to use them, and who were fighting with halters round their necks. Though the blockading detachments never thought of attempting to storm a place where cold shot, simply dropped from the hand, might dash their boats to pieces, an essay was made to cut off the two boats of the petty garrison. One of these they usually drew up to the ramparts by means of their powerful crane, part of which is still lying there ; and the other was the boat taken by Ardmillan, which was capable of holding twenty men. This they deemed secure enough when drawn up high and dry on the plateau of rock beneath the loopholed spur; but one dark night, nine adventurous infantrymen from Castleton landed quietly and unseen, crept up the chasm, launched the boat, and towed it to the opposite shore. , This loss was a severe one ; but Middleton and Ardmillan landed soon after in the skiff, near the ruins of Tantallan, promising to return in a fortnight, at latest, with provisions. All means of communicating with the mainland were thus cut off, by the capture of one boat and the absence of the other. Provisions were growing scanty. Two weeks expired; a few more days passed, and still there was no appearance of suc- cour, and doubtless the sea-birds had long since palled upon them as food. Myriads of these snow-white geese cover all the sides of the rock, and, by holding a perpetual jubilee in the air around it, give the Bass somewhat the aspect of an enchanted island. A quaint old English naturalist, writing in 1651, describes it as it is at the present hour. " The surface is almost wholly covered during the months of May and June with nests, eggs, and young birds, so that it is scarcely possible to walk with- out treading on them ; and their noise is such that you cannot without difficulty hear your next neigh- bour's voice. If you look down upon the sea from the top of the precipice, you will see it on every side covered with infinite numbers of birds of different kinds, swimming and hunting for their prey. If in sailing round the island you survey the overhanging cliffs, you see on every crag and in every fissure innumerable birds of various sorts and sizes, more than the stars of heaven when viewed in a serene night. If from afar you see the distant flocks, either flying to or from the island, you would imagine them to be a swarm of bees." Despite the quantity of birds about them, Cap- tain Maitland and his ten comrades were beginning to lose courage. He made a signal to the officer at Castleton for a boat, an^ sent off Ensign Dunbar to confer about a capitulation ; but ere the arrangements were complete, a large barge with her sails set was seen to run in between the main- land and the Bass, under the guns of which it brought to safely, ere the guns from the shore or those of the armed ships could intercept her. Cannon were now fired in defiance, and in token' that the hostilities were resumed ; but the luckless Ensign Dunbar was detained as a prisoner and traitor. Five days after this a patrol contrived tb seize the same boat when she was leaving the isle in the night; and there were found in her four sailors, four women. Swan the gunner, and the Foot Guardsman who had been retained when the castle was surprised. Sixteen men were now the force of the little garrison. They had thirteen sheep, two hundred- weight of biscuit, fifteen bolls of oatmeal, two barrels of butter, peas, salt, coals, candles, hard fish, and salt junk in plenty, and a great hogshead of brandy found in the Danish ship. In the centre of the isle is a good spring of the purest water. They had fourteen iron cannon, sixty stand of snaphance muskets, ten casks of gunpowder, plenty of ball cartridge, and 400 cannon balls, most of which had been fired into the island. All this ammunition they stored in the little chapel of St. Baldred, and in the oratory in which history and tradition alike record he lived and died. Bass Rock.] THE LAST TO YIELD IN BRITAIN, 407 A whole year had passed away, and still these brave adventurers, within sight of the city of Edin- burgh, in their castle secure as the eyrie of the eagle, defied all the efforts of two governments to subdue them. In the March of 1692, the Lords of the Admiralty sent orders to Captain Anthony Roope, commander of the ship Sheerness, lying in Leith Roads, and to Captain Orton, of the London Merchant, to attack the Bass immediately. According to a MS. History of the Bass in North Berwick House (quoted by Crichton), their instructions were " to do it what prejudice they could, by breaking the crane, dis- mounting the cannon, and ruining what houses were upon it." In all this, however, the Sheerness, a fifth-rate, and her consort, signally failed; and also could not prevent the garrison from doubling their store of powder, taking all the wheat and barley out of certain sloops going to Dunbar, canying away all the coals from the lighthouse on the Isle of May, and actually seizing a large pinnace in the harbour of Dundee, nearly forty miles distant ! A fifty-gun ship, the Lion, commanded by Cap- tain Edmund Burd, assisted by a large armed pinnace of Kirkaldy, under a Captain Boswell, and a dogger of six guns, failed to reduce the island either ; and on the sudden appearance of a French frigate, they either put to sea or fled up the river. This was in August, 1693, when some Jacobites in France, having heard of this smgularly pro- tracted resistance, sent the frigate to the island with supplies. A heavily-armed frigate and a large launch were now ordered by the Scottish Ministry to cruise constantly near the Bass. A man named Trotter, who had been in the habit of secretly supplying the little garrison, fell into the hands of the au- thorities ; and the land blockade was entrusted to Thomas Drury, chief of the Scots Engineers, whose drawing of the castle in its original state is pub- lished in Blackadder's Memoirs. The beginning of 1694 saw the possessors of the Bass reduced to the verge of starvation ; and in April, Lieutenant Middleton, who now conducted the defence, hoisted a white flag, and made pro- posals of capitulation. Certain articles were drawn up, and placed in the hands of a major named Reid, who, with some other officers went off to the Bass. They found the long-secluded defenders of the rock in remark- ably high spirits. Middleton gave them luncheon, with plenty of the ;best of French wine ; and on their departure, the forlorn band gave them three hearty cheers, and the walls were lined with stuffed figures in red coats and old regimental beaver hats. The terms on which they insisted, and which were granted, were, that they should march out with the honours of war, with baggage and arms, and land where they pleased in their own boats ; that all, if they chose,' should be landed free in France, and that those who cared not to go might remain in Scotland without molestation. They were to sell and appropriate all they had amassed, and the four years' back pay of all the officers was to be paid by the Exchequer; all of which was done, and on the 20th of April, 1694, the -little garrison marched out by the east gate, and put ofiE in their boats, and on the 30th the cannon were removed from the rock. In its soil many traces of this singular siege are found from time to time, in the shape of cannon-shot and fragments of exploded bombs half buried in the turf. Crawford of Ardmillan remained at home, and married Margaret Kennedy of Balderstone; but owing to the hardships he had undergone on the Bass Rock he died soon after. Captain Charles Maitland was presented to King William in Flan- ders, where he offered him a commission, which he declined. David Blair joined King James in France, where he died an exile ; but his mother survived him long, and died at Ardblair, in Perthshire, in ninety-seventh year, in 1752, after her having been, as her obituary records, " married fifty years and twenty-eight a widow." Captain Maitland was succeeded as captain of the Bass by Fletcher of Saltoun, the same fiery individual who, as we have related in our sixty- sixth chapter, pistolled Dare, the Mayor of Lyme Regis. The island now belongs to the Laird of North Berwick, who pays to the crown therefore an annual fee of one penny Scots, with a yearly tribute of seven solan geese to the minister on the mainland. The castle contained accommodation for a hun- dred soldiers and sixty prisoners. The ruins of these buildings are still very entire ; but the phapel — the last edifice consecrated in Scotland before the Reformation — is roofless. It was from this island fortress that the Earl of Carrick (son of Robert III.), afterwards James I., embarked in 1405 for France, that he might pursue his studies in safety from the intrigues of his uncle Albany. In the time of the Great Civil Wars, Lauder of the Bass was a distinguished Royalist ; and it is a daughter of his' whose name is identified wth the " Maggie Lauder " of the well-known Scottish , song. 4oS BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Beachy Head. CHAPTER LXXIV. BEACHY HEAD, 1690. War was still continued with France, Britain and Holland being in alliance against her ; and a signal engagement and defeat, the terror of which was long remembered in London, took place at sea in 1690. Much in England depended on the issue of this battle. King William was absent in Ireland ; London was swarming mth Jacobites and mal- contents. Louis was victorious in Flanders ; his THE BASS ROCK. About dawn on the 30th of June, that year, great crowds of people on the Sussex coast resorted to Beachy Head, the loftiest cliff on that part of the shore. It is 573 feet high, and perforated by many caverns— the scene of many a shipwreck in stormy weather, and the resort of multitudes of sea-fowl. On that morning the French fleet, under Anne Hilarion de Costentin, the Count de Tour- ville, consisting of seventy-eight men-of-war and twenty-two fire-ships, was seen hovering off the coast, and ere long the allied English and Dutch fleets, the former consisting of thirty-four sail and the latter of twenty-two, under the Eari of Torring- ton, -hove in sight. De Tourvillfe was made a Marshal of France in 1693. powerful fleet had long menaced the Channel coast, while nor far from that of France— but a little way inland indeed— a considerable army was cantoned, under the orders of a celebrated marshal, Louis de Crevant, Due d'Humieres, waiting to embark for England ; and the defeat of Torrington might bring 20,000 French veterans oh the sands at Deal, at a time when the whole united forces in Britain did not exceed 10,000 men. Hence it was with no small anxiety the good folks of Sussex on that June morning assembled on the chalky crest of Beachy Head, and turned their eyes and telescopes seaward. Aware of how much depended on the issue of a battle, Admiral Torrington had been loth to risk it. Beachy Head.] TORRINGTON'S PLANS. 409 He had wavered for some time, till discontent became audible in London ; and at length peremp- tory orders were given him to fight the French at all hazards, and these orders reached him when he was drawing near Beachy Head. The Earl of Torrington was a man of undoubted bravery, whose whole life had been passed face to face with death and danger ; but that he shrunk nervously from the terrible responsibiUty incurred by encountering a hundred sail with only fifty-six, Ashley, with Rear-Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovel, led the Blue squadron. The French fleet was formed in three divisions. The van was led by Jean, the Count d'Estr^es and de Tourbes, Marshal of France, in La Grande, 86 guns, with twenty-six sail (a Dutch account says it was led by M. de Chateau Reynaud, Marquis and Marshal of France in 1693) ; the centre by the Count de Tourville, in the Royal Sun, 100 guns, with twenty-six sail j the rear by Admiral d'Amfre- BEACHY HEAD. and at that actual crisis, is undoubted. He resolved to obey the orders he had received, and yet in doing so not hazard all. He conceived the idea of letting a portion of his fleet skirmish with the enemy while the main body, should not if possible engage ; thus he formed his order of battle so that the heaviest brunt of the action should fall upon the Dutch, already in dis- favour in England, so much so that the destruction of their whole fleet would have caused less murmur- ing there than the loss of one of our smallest ■ frigates. With these views and plans he stood towards the enemy. George Rooke was vice-admiral, and led the Red squadron. Admiral Russell and Sir John ville, in the Magnificent, 80 guns, with twenty-five sail. Their fire-ships hovered on the flanks. The original intention of the French was, if possible, to divide their fleet, of which one part was to stand up the Thames, while the Jacobites in London rose in arms and seized the Queen and her Ministry ; the other portion was to join their galleys and land troops at Torbay; while a squadron in the Irish Sea cut off King William's return from Ireland. But now the approach of Torrington put all the future to the event of a battle. The French had actually been so close in on the coast that on the 21st of June their boats had taken some loiterers on board. These were handled pretty roughly, and then set on shore. 85 410 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Beachy Head. One of them was charged with a letter addressed to Admiral Torrington, from Sir William Jennings, who had commanded an English ship at the time of the Revolution, but had followed his royal master to exile, and now served as third captain under Tourville; and in that document he prof- fered pardon to all captains that would abandon the Dutch usurper, and adhere to the cause of King James. When the signal to close in action was hoisted by the Earl of Torrington, the French were under easy sail upon a wind, with their heads lying north- wards, off Beachy Head ; but on seeing the English forming line, " they braced their head-sails to the mast and lay by ; '' and at nine o'clock a few puffs of snow-white smoke upon the sea announced to the crowds upon the headland and those away by East- bourne that the battle had begun. Promptly did the Dutch, who were in the van, under Admiral Calembourg, respond to the signal, seconded by the English Blue squadron, under Sir Cloudesley Shovel; but the Red, or centre squadron, being, by Torrington's intention, kept somewhat apart, left a great opening, of which the French hastened to take advantage, to surround Shovel and the Dutch. Pfere Daniel says that on this day the French had the advantage both of the wind and tide. Evertzen and his countrymen fought with the most stubborn bravery ; and, in spite of national prejudice, it was fully admitted by the English and French that " in none of Van Tromp's or De Ruy- ter's battles had the honour of the Batavian flag been more gallantly upheld." Two of their rear-admirals, Dick and Brackel, with many captains and seamen, were slain; a vast number of wounded, horribly mutilated by round and chain-shot, encumbered all the decks and lay about the guns, and their hulls and rigging were battered and torn to pieces in a manner they could not have been had they been properly seconded by Lord Torrington. " The Dutch began the fight," records Burchett, as also did some of the English; but not being seconded by the rest of the fleet, which unex- pectedly stood away, several of the Dutch ships, after they had, fought most gallantly, were either burnt, sunk, or disabled, and the English that engaged were very much shattered. During many hours the van, with the Blue squadron, in which Captain Sir David Mitchell, in the Elizabeth, 70 guns, greatly distinguished himself, maintained the unequal contest without adequate assistance from the other part of the fleet. At length the Dutch drew off, leaving one shattered hull in the hands of the enemy ; and to save themselves from utter destruction came to anchor. On examining the state of his fleet, the Earl of Torrington found tiie ships of the Blue squadron had suffered considerably, and came to the con- clusion that no advantage could be won by a renewal of the action. By five in the afternoon the wind died away, and he came to anchor; whUe several of the French ships, with their boats ahead, were being towed out of range of cannon-shot. In the night the English fleet weighed anchor, and stood eastward. Next day Torrington called a Council of War, which decided that it was most advisable to pre- serve the fleet by retreating, and to destroy all disabled ships, rather than lose time by protecting them. This was accordingly done. Many Dutch ships were scuttled and sunk; the rest were taken in tow by the English fleet, which sailed along the Kentish coast with all speed for the Thames. In this unfortunate battle their loss was two captains, Botham and Pomeroy, with two captains of marines in Torrington's own regiment, and 330 men. Such is the account given in Torrington's own dispatch, dated, " Off Beachy, July ist, one in the afternoon," in " Dalrymple's Annals." The French were still pursuing; when off Rye Bay, in sight of the ancient town — one of the famous old Cinque Ports — the people had the mortification to see an English ship, the Anne, 70 guns, which was entirely dismasted, forced on shore by the enemy, and set in flames. Captain John Tyrrel, her commander, who had fought her gallantly, escaped. They next attempted to destroy a Dutch sixty- four gun ship, as she lay half-aground near Peven- sey ; but Pufifendorf says her captain defended her so resolutely that they were compelled to relinquish the attempt ; that three others were burnt by their own crews, and that the total loss of the Dutch was six first-rate men-of-war. But more than all did they deplore the deaths of Jan Dick and Brackel, Admirals of the Maese and North Holland. Pfere Daniel states that the largest Dutch ship was taken by the Marquis de Nesmonde. Torrington sought refuge in the Thames, where he ordered all the buoys to be torn up, which made the navigation of the river so dangerous that he could not be followed by the Count de Tour- ville, who came to anchor in Torbay; but great, were the terror and consternation in London. There, we are told, " the shame was insupportable, the peril imminent. What if the victorious enemy should do what De Ruyter had done? The Eoyne.] NEW REGIMENTS. 411 What if the dockyard of Chatham should again be destroyed ? What if the Tower itself should be bombarded ? What if the vast wood of masts and yard-arms below London Bridge should be in a blaze ? Nor was this all ; evil tidings had just .arrived from the Low Countries." These tidings were that the allied forces, under Prince Waldeck, had encountered near Fleurus the French, commanded by the Duke de Luxem- bourg, and that, after a long and fierce conflict, the latter had been victorious. Could this double disaster be true ? The people in London refused to believe it ' After menacing the coast till the sth of August, the Count de Tourville sailed from Torbay to Brest. Admiral the Earl of Torrington was sent to the Tower, and tried by a court-martial at Sheemess ; and though he was fully acquitted, Burnet says King William most unjustly deprived him of his commission, to satisfy the clamour of his beloved countrymen the Dutch. But such was the effect, for a time, of this battle off Beachy Head, that, according to Macaulay, "between the coast of Artois and the Nore, not a single ship bearing the red cross of St. George could venture to show herself" CHAPTER LXXV. THE BOYNE, 169O. On the very day when the Earl of Torrington was penning his dispatch off Beachy Head, the ist of July, 1690, was fought the famous battle of the Boyne in Ireland. In the latter country it was destined that Wilham and King James were to contend for the crown. The King of France had furnished James with a fleet, with which he sailed to Ireland, where he landed, at Kinsale, on the 29th of March, 1689. Tyrconnell, the Lord Deputy, was one of his most devoted adherents, and received him at the head of nearly 40,000 men. Save Deny and Ennis- killen, all Ireland declared for its lawful and legitimate sovereign. Deny was besieged, but the inhabitants held out till the city was reUeved. By order of William, on the 12 th August Marshal Schomberg embarked for Ireland, at the head of 16,000 men. With him were many newly- raised corps, which now form a portion of the British army, and to trace them may interest the reader. Horse. — Sir John Lanier's, now ist Dragoon Guards; Edward ViUiers'^now 2nd Dragoon Guards; John Coy's, now 5th Dragoon Guards; Viscount Hewitf s, now 6th Dragoon Guards ; Lord Caven- dish's,now 7th Dragoon Guards; Colonel Delamere's and Colonel Langston's, disbanded. Dragoons. — Hayford's, now ist Royal Dragoons; Leveson's, now 3rd Hussars. Infantry. — James Beaumont's, now Sth Foot; Henry Wharton's, now 12th Foot; Ferdinando Hastings', now 13th Foot; Earl of Meath's, now I Sth Foot (Royal Irish) ; GustaVus Hamilton's, now 20th Foot; Duke of Norfolk's, now 22nd Foot; Charles Herbert's, now 23rd Foot (Welsh FusiUers) ; Sir Edward Deering's, now 24th Foot ; Erie's, Kingston's, Drogheda's,Gower's,Ingoldsby's, Lovelace's, Roscommon's, Lisbume's, and Hastings', disbanded. Lanier's Horse, Hayford's Dragoons, and Hastings' Foot, came from Scotland, after KiUycrankie. The Duke of Schomberg had also his own regiment of French Protestant Horse, two battalions of Dutch Guards, and the three French regiments of La Meloniere, Du Cambon, and La Caillemote. Rapin de Thoyras, the future historian of England, was then serving as a subaltern in the regiment of Lord Kingston. The Marshal Duke de Schomberg, was one of the many foreigners who crowded to the standard of William of Orange, just as six hundred years before the rabble of Europe had followed that of his Norman namesake ; but the marshal was of a noble family of the Lower Rhine. He had commanded the French with success in the Nether- lands, and having offered his sword to William, he obtained, like many other foreigners, the highest rank in England; he was created Marquis of Harwich, Duke of Schomberg, K.G., Master of the Ordnance, and Colonel of the Scots Royals. He was now in his eighty-fourth year. After reducing Carrickfergus, and driving the Irish loyalists from Newiy and Dundalk, and passing the winter in quiet quarters, the army took the field in the spring of 1690, when William III. came in person to command it, bringing with him Prince George of Denmark, the Duke of Ormond, and the Earl of Oxford; the Scots Foot Guards, under Lieutenant-General James Douglas, of /,I2 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [The Boyne. Queensberry; several Dutch forces j De Ghinkel's horse, Solmes' Blues, 2,000 strong; a Danish brigade under the Duke of Wirtemberg, and more forces, which made up his army to 30,000 men. On the 30th of June these troops, marching in three lines, passed the ancient walled town of Ardee, in the county of Louth, and the advanced guard of horse, under Sir John Lanier, halted on the banks of the river Boyne, on the oppo- site side of which King James's Irish forces were strongly posted, and formed in order of battle, for James had embraced a resolution which, though rash, was nevertheless worthy of a monarch who was contending for his lost kingdom. Though his army was inferior in number, constitution, and discipline, yet he resolved to put all to the test of the sword. Early in the day King William, wearing his feather-bound beaver and buff coat, rode slowly along the river's bank, reconnoitring the position of his father-in-law, from which he was little more than seventy yards distant. Schomberg, Solmes, the Prince of Hesse, and others, were by his side. " The Irish army is small," remarked a Dutch officer, reckoning about 16,000 men who were visible. " They may be stronger than they look,'' replied William ; " but weak or strong, I shall soon know all about them." Many of the Irish regiments were concealed by the undulating nature of the ground. At a place now marked by an obelisk, he cooUy ordered breakfast to be spread ; his sumpter-horses were brought up, a cloth was laid on the grass, and he proceeded with his repast, while a group of horsemen came close down to the opposite bank of the Boyne. They were so close that "among them," says Macaulay, " his attendants could discern some who had once been conspicuous at reviews in Hyde Park, and at balls in the gallery of White- hall — the youthful Duke of Berwick; the small fair-haired Lauzun ; Tyrconnell, once admired by the maids of honour as the model of manly vigour and beauty, but now bent down by years and crip- pled by gout ; and, overtopping all, the stately head of Sarsfield." The latter were not long in discovering who the jackbooted personage was, around whose im- promptu repast there' stood a glittering staff. Screened from view by a line of cavalr}-, a couple of field-pieces were drawn to the verge of the river, and run through a hedge; and William suddenly found himself the mark of both. The Jirst shot killed the horse of th^ Prince of Hesse, As it sank under him, William exclaimed, as he mounted with all speed — " Ah, the poor prince is, killed !" As he spoke, the next ball, a six-pound shot, grazed his shoulder and drew blood. The pain and concussion caused William's head to sink on his horse's mane. Both armies saw that he had been struck, and the yell of exultation raised by the Irish seemed to rend the welkin, while Solmes burst into tears. " There is no harm done," said William ; " but the bullet was quite near enough." The wound was soon dressed by Colonel Con- ingsby's handkerchief, which is still preserved at Hampton Court, Worcestershire; and William rode along his lines, where so many nationalities were represented, amid loud acclamations from all. With marvellous rapidity, tidings reached Paris that the usurper was slain. The city was illuminated, and the guns of the Bastille were fired in honour of the event. All that day a cannonade was continued on both sides across the river. William watched narrowly the eff'ect of the firing on the newly-raised English regiments, such as Wharton's, Hastings', and Lord Herbert's Welsh Fusiliers. " All is right," said he ; " they stand fire well." After darkness fell he made a torchlight inspec- tion of the lines, as the passage of the river was to be forced on the morrow. " Every man was to have a green bough or sprig fastened in his hat, to distinguish him from the Irish, who wore bits of white paper" (" Records of the 23rd Foot") ; and by daybreak on the ist of July the whole army was in motion ; the baggage and great-coats were sent to the rear ; and the watchword was " Westminster." A lack of generalship was displayed by both leaders in neglecting the bridge of Slane. The Irish omitted to blow it up, and the English to possess themselves of it. The Irish also neglected the fords of the Boyne, where they ought to have had batteries of cannon; and to destroy certain hedges which obstructed the charges of their cavalry. More than all, they should not have fought at the Boyne Water, but have retired beyond the Shannon, and harassed William's troops by a desultory warfare. The scene of this great Irish conflict, which is to this hour a bitter party word in Ireland, is some- what changed now from what it was then. The usually sluggish Boyne, which rises in the dreary Bog of Allen, in its passage seaward has in many places little better scenery than a tame plain ; but in its course through the rich champaign country of Meath, and between that county and Louth, it has 'the feoyne.] tHE BRIDGE OF SLAJf^. 4t3 a '"delightful variety of motion and scenery, and many a hill and name by its margin is full of sad or beautiful historical associations to the Irish, William's resolution to cross the Boyne was dis- approved of by some of his leaders ; and when tlae old Duke of Schomberg received the orders in his tent, he said sullenly — " I have been more used to give such than to receive them." They were fated to be the last he was to receive in this world. Under one of his sons — Count Meinhart von Schomberg — the right wing of the English [army was ordered to march by the bridge of Slane, and crossing the river there, to menace the Irish left In this he was to be assisted by Portland and Lieutenant-General Douglas. James, in antici- pation of some such movement, had already manned the bridge by a regiment of dragoons under Sir Neil O'Neil, when barricades and can- non would have been more effectual. The little town of Slane is delightfully situated on tlie left bank of the river; and though reduced to a village, it had been in palmier days a borough in the palatinate of Meath. On this day the English artillery were very numerous, while the Irish had only fifteen field- pieces, and these but poorly served. For an entire hour, says O'Connor, the dragoons of O'Neil resisted the passage of the bridge at Slane, "exposed to the fire of a numerous, artillery, and charges of cavalry greatly their superiors in their number. Tyrconnell's and Parker's regiments charged several times with the utmost bravery, and drove the Dutch Guards and Schomberg's regiment back into the river, with the loss of a great part of their officers." Sir Neil behaved like 'a brave Irish gentleman, but fell from his horse mortally wounded ; on this his men fled, leaving the narrow passage of the bridge half-choked with dead and dying. Then the English right wing crossed the river, and formed in columns on the opposite side. The achievement of this movement, which King James witnessed from the hill of Dunore, made Lauzun, his French general, uneasy, for if the English right wing got round into the Irish rear, all might be lost Four miles south of the feoyne, where the Dublin road was so narrow that two horsemen could barely pass, was a place called Duleek, on the Nanny Water, and if the Enghsh succeeded in occiipyingit the retreat of the Irish would be impossible. If they failed to conquer they would be cut off to a man. To prevent this, Lauzun marched instantly, with all the trained French troops and Sarsfield's horse, in the direction of Slane, leaving the im- portant fords at Oldbridge to be^defended by the Irish alone. The village clocks were now striking ten, when William put himself at the head of the cavalry of his left wing, and prepared to cross the river sword in hand, not far from Drogheda. His centre, consisting solely of infantry, which he committed to the care of Marshal Schomberg, was formed in columns of regiments opposite Old- bridge, where the whole Irish army — Sarsfield's corps alone expected — was in array; and now, under the bright July sun, the whole Meath bank was glittering with pikes and bayonets on snaphance muskets, and in not a few instances on the already old-fashioned matchlock. The French engineers, the further to protect the river, had thrown up close to its bank a field-work, formed of materials taken from the nearest cottages, cabins, and en- closures. It was lined by cannon and musketry, and there were Tyrcoraiell, Hamilton, a,nd Alex- ander Macdonnell, Earl of Antrim. " Forward !" cried the aged field-marshal, waving his baton. Then the Dutch Foot Guards, known as Solmes' Blues, marched, with the Orange colours flying and all their dnims beating, steadily and doggedly into the river, ten files abreast Then the drums died away, and the roar of the Irish musketry alone was heard, but their shot did little execution. The columns of Londonderry and Enniskillen next plunged into the current, on which their great square skirts and ammunition-pouches floated; and with muskets upheld to keep locks and priming dry, and with colours waving, regiment after regi- ment followed. On the left of the English, the ford was so deep that the refugee battalion of CaiUemote was up to the armpit in water. Farther down the stream the red-coated Danes were crossing, and in a few minutes the whole course of the stream was alive with plumed hats and bristling with uplifted weapons. Many felL under the fire of the Irish, and many a head and hand rose and fell wildly, as their owner sank a corpse beneath the stream, to be swept past Drogheda into the sea. The crossing troops were barely midchannel over, ere the perils and diflSculties of the attempt seemed to thicken. As already stated, the undulations of the ground had concealed the real strength of James's army; and now standard after standard seemed to start from the earth, and rank after rank of , musketeers and pikemen appeared, with wild yells of defiance, to man the hostile shore. 414 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [The BoyM. , But unimpressed by this, the dogged Dutch Blues, ten men abreast, led the van in solid oblong columns; and, dismayed by the steadiness and reso- lution of their aspect and discipline, in another moment the whole Irish line gave way ! Then a cry of despair escaped the Earl of Tyr- connell. He was a man of undoubted bravery; but his skill was small, and many of his best officers fell while gallantly attempting to rally the fugitives. Hamilton ordered a body of Irish back into the Boyne, which they did while inspired by the old hereditary hatred of the Scandinavians, which has been inherent in the Irish since the days of Clontarf. He then led them against the three French Protestant regiments, which were all musketeers, without any mixture of pikemen, but to the former force the art of " receiving cavalry " was as yet unknown. La Caillemote feU mortally wounded, and was borne out of the stream to his tent, whence he continued to shout encourage- PLAN OF THE BATTLE OF THE BOYNE. to attack the battalions of La Meloniere, Du Cam- bon, and La Caillemote, who were still struggling in water so deep as to be incapable of reloading after they had fired ; and sword in hand he led the way to the river, but he was left alone by his men. Elsewhere the division of Antrim " ran like sheep at the approach of the English column. Whole regiments flung away arms, colours, and cloaks, and scampered off to the hills without striking a blow or firing a shot." Richard Hamilton, at the head of a bfcdy of cavalry, made a gallant but futile attempt to retrieve the fortune of the day, by maintaining a desperate conflict with Solmes' Blues in the bed of the river. They succeeded in hurling the Danes ment to his men, who were still fighting desperately, up to their armpits in the Boyne. "Ala gloire, mes enfants ! k la gloire !" was his incessant cry. Seeing the struggle was becoming protracted, old Marshal Schomberg rode forward to rally the French Brigade, whom the fall of Colonel La Caillemote had dismayed. "En avant!"he cried; "come on, gentlemen. Voila messieurs vos persecuteurs ! — ^here are your Catholic persecutors ! " But these' were th s last words he spoke. For a moment the Irisii horse were around him, and when they drew back he had fallen from his saddle, and lay by the margin of the stream dead, with two sword-cuts in his head and a pistol-shot in his neck. A French captain who rushed to his The EoVHe.] CROSSING THE BOYNE. 4IS pa H X s 4i6 BRITISH BATTLES 0^ LAND AND SEA. tlTie fioyns; assistance had an arm broken by a shot (" Life of King William ")• Puffendorf says that King James's regiment of horse, composed of English and Scots, charged the regiment of La Caillemote so furiously that forty of them broke quite through its ranks,, and not being able to charge back, they had to pass a village, where they were all shot down save six Or eight ; and that " it was near this village the Duke of Schomberg was killed by a mortal wound." This conflict between horse and foot lasted half an hour, and the tide and stream were running fast, so much so that William, with his sword in his left hand, and his,bandaged aim managing his bridle, had to swim his horse across, with the water flowing over his holsters ; and his arrival on the other side decided the fate of the battle, though the Irish horse, long since abandoned by their infantry, continued to resist desperately. De Ghinkel, afterwards Earl of Athlone, being outnumbered by the Irish in a narrow lane, his cavalry gave way. The dragoons of Cunningham (now 7th Hussars) and those of Leveson (now 3rd Hussars) lined the hedges, and with their carbines emptying many a saddle, bore the Irish back. But led by General Hamilton and the Duke, of Berwick, their cavalry made no less than ten suc- cessive charges. William was many times in peril. One ball struck his holsters, another tore away the heel of his jackboot, and then killed a horse near him ; but inspired by his presence and example, his troops now bore all before them. At a place called Plottin Castle, a mile and a half from the field, the Irish horse made their last grand stand, and routed William's Enniskilleners with the loss of fifty men ; but were ultimately com- pelled to give way and fly, while their leado', Lieu- tenant-General Richard Hamilton, was wounded and taken prisoner. On being brought before William, the latter asked, " Is this business ended ? Do you think the Irish troops will make any further resistance ?" " YeSj'sir," replied Hamilton; "upon' my honour, 1 believe they will." The expression reminding William of some pre- vious treacherous conduct of this officer, in a negotiation he had undertaken for him with the Earl of Tyrconnell, he gave him a look of disdain. "Your honour!" said he; "your honour!" and turned from him without another word. The battle was now over. The whirlwind of smoke, and din, and dust that had swept along the southern shore of the Boyne had all passed away ; but the dead and the dying lay thick on its margin. and many a corpse was rolling on its current, to be carried out to sea by the ebb tide. When the Irish cavalry were among William's infantry, the battle, says Dalrymple in his Annals, represented in the standards, the looks, the dresses, the cries and language .of the combatants, all the horrors of civil and of foreign war. While different nations were oppospd in some places, in others Briton met Briton, and Frenchman met French- man. From the hill of Donore, King James had witnessed the impotent struggle. He had seen his left wing outflanked at the bridge of Slane, his centre broken, his right inactive. He had seen his army, which Macaulay stigmatises as a " cowardly mob of cow-stealers," flying before William's steady battaUons of English and Scots, French, Dutch, and Danes, but he made no attempt to regain the field or perish on it. The spirit of his youth had departed; the elasticity which gives nerve for enterprise was gone, and he whose heroism on the plains of Flanders had excited the admiration of Turenne, and whose valour at sea on many a corpse-strewn d-eck made him long the idol of his Enghsh navy, sheathed his sword and left the field, under the influence of Lauzun, who wished the contest in Ireland ended, being eager to quit a country where he could reap no harvest of glory. He advised James to seek safety in flight — to re- turn to France, and thus escape being made prisoner by his own son-in-law — and this injurious counsel was seconded by Talbot, Earl of Tyrcon- nell, who was brave in danger but pusillanimous in disaster. Lauzan, says the Memoir of Berwick, would have given his right hand to have accompanied King James ; but his duty commanded him to guide the retreat of the French and Swiss troops, or to perish with them. The unfortunate king reached Dublin on the day of the battie ; and the flight of the Irish at the Boyne brought for a time such disgrace upon that gallant people' that Colonel Kelly, of Aughrim, in his Narrative, tells us that Irish merchants in the French seaports could not walk the streets without being insulted. Yet the Irish cavalry fought nobly. They had been cut to pieces by squadrons, and in one regiment there were not more than thirty unwounded left. The retreat of the Irish was covered by the French, who had more than once to open fire on the torrent of runaways that pressed onward to the narrow pass of Duleek, and by their masses and terror threatened to break the formation of the division. Aughxim.] THE MOAT OF GRENOQUE. 417 The loss of the conquerors was about 500 men. TJiat of the Irish exceeded 1,509 (Daliymple says 2,000) j but among the fqrmer was the aged Marshal Schomberg, the f^rst vrarr^or of the age, to whom a great public funeral in Westminster was first proposed, for vfli\,\ch, purpose his body was embalmed in lead ; but he \vas buried in St. Patrick's, Dublin, where a stone with an inscription was placed over his tomb by the Dean and Chapter of the cathedral. Many of the Irish deserted in the night, and returned to their homes. Sunrise on the second day after the battle saw King James on board a French frigate, and watch- ing with haggard eyes the sinking coast pf Ireland, as he sailed for Brest, to the land of his exile. He complained bitterly of the flight of the infantry; and in Dublin said that never again would he trust his fate to an Irish army (Story). The mess of one British regiment retains to this day a Klic of the Boyne. The spurs worn on th^t field by Major Toby Purcell, who l^d the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, are still preserved by the corps, and are always in possession of the senior major for the time being (" Records of the 23rd Foot"). f he whole of the tents, baggage, arms, and am- munition of the Irish fell into the hands of the victors, with niany standards, carriages, horses, and prisoners. Dublin was filled with terrified run- aways ; but at four in the morning the French and Swiss troops of Lauzun marched in in perfect order, with tlieir dnipis beating and colours flying, their white uniforms blackened by dust, and in many instances splashed with blood. CHAPTER LXXVI AUGHRIM, 1691. At Aughrim (or Aghrimas it is sometimes named), a village in the county of Roscommon, was fought the last great battle between the strangely-mixed forces of William III. and the Irish of James II. About the beginning of May, the Baron de Ghinkel, who had served in the preceding year under the late Duke of Schomberg, had been ap- pointed to succeed Count Solmes in the office of commander-in-chief, and had assumed the leader- ship of the army in Ireland, where, notwithstand- ing the victory of the Boyne, and the withdrawal of King James to France, the state of the country was far from being settled, or reduced under William's authority ; the great mass of the Irish being still loyal to the House of Stuart, and strong reinforcements having arrived from France, under St. Ruth, an officer of high reputation. At this time William's army in Ireland consisted of about 20,000 men, of six different nations, under their own native generals, viz. : — English, Major- General Thomas Talmash; Scots, Major-General Sir Hugh Mackay ; French, the Marquis de Ru- vignd and Major-General La Meloniere ; Dutch, the Count of Nassau; Germans, the Prince of Hesse Darmstadt; Danes, Major-General de Tettau. The cavalry and infantry were respectively under the orders of Major-General de Schravemore and Lieut-enant-General the Duke of Wirtemberg ; the command of the whole being reposed in General the Baron de Ghinkel, Some brave exploits and stiring operations pre- ceded the decisive battle of Aughrim. The Irish were in considerable force at Bally- more, then, as now, a long, straggling, and ill-built town on the road between Athlone and MuUingar. Clothing had come from France, so that " every private soldier could boast of a pair of breeches and a pair of brogues," though their clamours for food were incessant. They were devoid of dis- ciphne, and the army that was to oppose them was in splendid order. De Ghinkel had as his seconds Talmash and Mackay, two of the best officers in the British Isles; and the Marquis de Ruvign^, eldest brother of Colonel La Caillemote, who fell at the Boyne, was also a well-trained soldier. The whole of the troops were now uniformly clad in scarlet, though it was not until 1698 that William III. ordained "that no person whatsoever should presume to wear scarlet or red cloth for livery, except such as are in His Majesty's service, or the Guards." Major-General Sir John Lanier advanced first from Streamstown, with a body of horse and foot, towards Ballymore, where, upon a peninsula sur- rounded by a swamp, stood an ancient fortification called the Moat of Grenoque, towards which the Irish fled ; and thence to a hill, where .their main body was drawn up. They subsequently fled like hares into the town, at the entrance to which they had thrown up a trench ; but not finding it defen- sible, they abandoned the plac?, 4i8 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. tAughrim. The whole army then moved westward, and on the 19th of June appeared before the walls of Atlilone, as the ramparts of earth around it were named. The town had then an English and a Celtic quarter. The former, once well-built houses, had been burned, and was then in ruins ; the latter consisted of mere wigwams. Deep and rapid, through the town rushed the Shannon, crossed by a bridge of stone. Sixty yards below it was a ford ; and above it rose a Norman castle, with a tower seventyfeet high, and a curtain-wall having a frontage of about sixty yards to the river. This town formed the great pass between Connaught and Leinster. The army of St. Ruth, 25,000 strong, lay encamped within a short distance of it. The English got their guns into position, and opened fire on the 20th, for De Ghinkel was re- solved to force the passage of the Shannon, and an assault was ordered at five in the afternoon. The escalade was led by a French officer, with his sword in one hand, and a lighted grenade in the other. He was slain in the breach ; but the stormers swarmed through it with tumultous cheers, and the Irish fled towards the bridge of the Shan- non, where many were crushed to death amid the fierce pressure in the narrow way, and others forced over the parapets to drown in the stream below ; and in a few hours De Ghinkel was master of the English quarter, with the loss only of sixty killed and wounded. Between him and the Celtic quarter there yet flowed the Shannon, the bridge of which the Irish had broken down in their retreat, and the \yay to which was swept by the guns of the old castle. Several days were spent in the erection of batteries to cover the passage of the troops, and in attempts to repair the bridge. The arrangements being fully concluded, at six o'clock in the morning of the 2nd of July, 2,000 infantry, chiefly Scots, prepared for the daring, if not desperate, enterprise of cross- ing in the face of the enemy a rapid river, passable only during the heat of the summer when the water was low, and then but for a space hardly sufficient to admit twenty men abreast. A peal of bells from the steeple was the signal of the assault. The forlorn hope consisted of sixty grenadiers in breast- plates, led by Captain Sandys and two lieutenants. The corps which led the way on this occasion was composed of the 20th regiment, under Gustavus Hamilton, and Mackay's own regiment of the old Scots Brigade, led by his son. Colonel Angus Mackay ("Records of the 23rd Foot"). On the other side, Maxwell, a Scots officer, who openly expressed his contempt of the Irish, de- fended the works which faced the river. Maior- General Mackay having stationed an aide-de-camp on the bank to repeat his instructions to each regiment as it entered the river, fearlessly plunged into it himself, under a terrible fire of round shot, grenades, grape, and musketry, which sowed the stream like rain. The grenadiers lifted the Duke of Wirtemberg on their shoulders, and crossed at a place where the water was so deep that it rose to their cravats ; fifty pieces of cannon and mortars were at that moment firing on them (" Kane's Memoirs "). Immediately on gaining the opposite bank, Mac- kay formed the troops in two divisions : in person he led one to the right ; under Major-General de" Tettau (of the Danes), he sent the other to the left. The ramparts were speedily stormed, and scoured with bayonet and pike. Mackay heard his Scots swearing and grumbling as they stumbled among the fallen masonry and rubbish of the shattered walls, and rebuked them even amid the uproar of the assault. " My lads," said the grave old Highlander, " you are brave fellows, but do not swear. We have more reason to thank God for the goodness which He has shown to us this day than to take His name in vain.'' The stout fellows of his Scots Brigade and of Hamilton's regiment now placed planks over the bridge ; a line of pontoons was drawn across the river ; the whole army began to cross, and with the loss of only forty-two men killed and wounded — so rapidly was the movement made — the troops of King William forced their way beyond the Shan- non, and entered Connaught. Of the Irish, 1,000 were slain by the king's troops, who wheeled round the guns upon the camp of St. Ruth, who as little expected the capture of the town as the passage of the Shannon. " Taken ! " he exclaimed ; " a town taken while I was close by with an army to defend it! It cannot be.'' He was now compelled to strike his tents and retire, together with the fugitive Irish, under cloud of night ; and from the higher parts of Athlone, at dawn next day, the gleam of steel showed where his rear-guard was disappearing into the then wild and dreary district that lay between the waters of the Shannon and those of the Suck. St. Ruth retired in the direction of Ballinasloe, and assumed a strong position near the village of Aughrim, where he determined to make a last stand, less for the Irish, whom he had hitherto treated with indifference or contemptuous severity, than for the redemption of his own honour, and his credit with the Court of Fr?ince, which the Aughrim.] THE ATTACK. 419 capture of Athlone in the face of his army had seriously compromised. He attempted to infuse religious ardour into his soldiers. Masses were solemnly celebrated in camp, and beneath the uplifted host the •soldiers swore to stand by their colours ; and he harangued them in person. To the Irish he said : — " You are fighting for your religion and liberty, your king and your honour. Unhappy events, too widely circulated, have brought a reproach on your national character. Irish soldiership is everywhere spoken off with a sneer ; and if you wish to retrieve the fame of your country, this is the time, and this is the place !" Story puts a somewhat different speech into the mouth of this gallant French officer, who is made to boast of, his achievements in the persecution of the Protestants ia France, in the exaltation of the Catholic Church, and in her defence against hell and heresy. General de Ghinkel, having garrisoned Athlone, and fixed his head-quarters at Ballinasloe, on the I ith of July he rode out with his staff to reconnoitre the position of St. Ruth, four, miles distant ; and "on his return gave orders for an immediate inspection of arms, flints, and ammunition, with directions that by daybreak next morning all shoidd be under their colours. Two battalions were detailed as a camp and baggage-guard ; and by six o'clock on the morning of the 12th the whole army, 18,000 strong, unencumbered by greatcoats or knapsacks, was on the march for Aughrim, where St Ruth had 20,000 infantry and 5,000 horse in order of battle. He made no preparation for a retreat ; but left his camp, says General Kane, standing with all the baggage, to induce his army " to fight for their all — a sure indication of his determined resolution to conquer or die.'' In firm and orderly array the troops of King William, "their ranks ablaze with scarlet," after some delay caused by a thick fog, which till noon hung over the marshy valley of the Suck, came in sight of the white-coated battalions of St. Ruth. Another delay was caused by a skirmish which took place between the Irish outposts and Cun- ningham's (6th IrmiskiUing) Dragoons, which had been thrown forward to dislodge them from some garden grounds, about a mile distant from the enemy's right, which it was deemed expedient to occupy by the left wing of the British. Eppingefs Danish dragoons came up as supports; but the Irish made so stem a resistance that ultimately the whole left wing was ordered to occupy the disputed ground. When the two armies confronted each other in the afternoon, they had only a space of bog and a few garden walls between them. The army of De Ghinkel was formed in two lines, and consisted, according to Story's " History of Ireland," of forty-seven squadrons of horse and twenty-eight battalions of foot, in two lines. In the first line, Lieutenant-General Schravemore led the right wing, and Brigadier La Foust the left ; General Mackay led the right centre, and De Tettau the left centre. In the second line, Ruving^ had the right. General Holstaple the left The Count of Nassau supported De Tettau's division, and Talmash that of Mackay. Leveson, Wyne, and Cunningham's horse covered the right flanks of both lines, and Eppinger's Danish dragoons the left De Ghinkel consulted with his principal officers as to whether the attack should be made now or next morning. As a Dutchman he was constitu- tionally slow; but Mackay, a resolute and active Celt, was for attacking instantly. His opinion prevailed, and at five o'clock in the evening began the memorable battle of Aughrim. " Major-General Mackay," says the " Records of the 23rd Foot," " ordered four regiments — Brewer's (12th), Erie's' (19th), Herbert's (23rd), and Crich- ton's — to advance. He then moved himself with the regiments of Kirk (2nd Foot), Hamilton (20th), Sir Henry Bellasis, and Lord George Hamilton, and drove the enemy from the lines of hedges in firont, and from the right and left of the castle of Aughrim." To drive them, however, was not such easy work, as these troops had to advance over slippery and uneven ground, where at every foot of the way they sank deep in mud or bog, and the walls and hedges were vigorously defended. " The Irish were never known to fight with more resolution," according to the London Gazette. Again and again the English infantry were driven back ; but again and again they reformed and re- newed the attack. In this conflict Colonel Charles Herbert, of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, brother of the Earl of Tor- rington, led his regiment through a part of the bog where the men sank to the knee, and drove the Irish from some hedges ; but he was taken prisoner, and barbarously murdered by them in cold blood, when they saw the regiment coming to his rescue under Major Toby Purcell. Mackay 's division was once broken and repulsed; but Talmash and Stuart came up with the sup^ ports ; yet when evening was closing, the advan- tage seemed still with the Irish and French, and De Ghinkel began to meditate a retreat 420 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA: [Aughrim. In attacking and defending the hedges and ditches, the troops fell into great confusion. When beaten from one, the Irish retired to another ; and the conflict was renewed amid corpses, blood, and slime. " We still pursued them," records General Kane, '' until we drove them out of four or five rows of those ditches into an open plain, where were some of their horse drawn up. In climbing those ditches, and still following them from one to another, no coated and cuirassed, succeeded in crossing the bog at a place where only two files could ride abreast ; and St. Ruth laughed at what he deemed the madness of this proceeding under a heavy fire, which every moment emptied a saddle, and sent a riderless horse to flounder in terror amid the quagmire. " What do they mean ?" he exclaimed. " It is a pity to see such fine fellows rushing on their own destruction. Let them cross, however ; the more that come the more we shall kill." ATHLONE CASTLE. one can imagine we could keep our order. In this hurry there were six battalions so intermingled that we were at a loss what to do ; and certainly their horse would have made fine work with us, if ours had not found means to get round into the plain and engage those of the enemy." At this moment the hopes of St. Ruth were high. " The day is ours, my boys," he cried, waving his hat in the air ; " we shall drive them before us to the walls of Dublin !" But even as he spoke the tide of batde was turning against him. General Mackay and the Marquis de Ruvigne, at the head of the Royal Horse Guards (Blues), and the regiments now num- bered as the 2nd and 3rd Dragoon Guards, buff- But the slender files poured on, though many fell ; from files they formed into troops, and from troops into squadrons, and wheeled round to the charge with ringing cheers, and flashing swords that glittered in the evening sun. St. Ruth now prepared to reinforce his cavalry, when a random cannon-shot from the EngUsh brigade of guns that faced his centre took his head away clean by the neck, as he was in the act of crying " They are beaten ! they are beaten !" His corpse was muffled in a mantle, carried from thefield, and laid with all secrecy in consecrated ground, among the ruins of an old abbey at Loughrea ; and till the battle was ended neither arpiy knew that the brilliant French chevalier was no more. AughriiiLj ROUT OF THE IRISH. 421 His fall was like that of Turenne at Salsbach, or Tilly's at Norlingen. " Cut off in his early bloom from high command in the French armies," says the historian of the Irish brigades — " from honour and from glory — from the renown whicli accompanied Turenne and Luxembourg, Villars and Vendome — from a monument in St. Denis or in the Invalides; his mortal remains lie hidden and unnoticed on the hill of Kilcommodon." When he fell the crisis of the battle had arrived. At the moment when Mackay made the flank movement at the head of the Guards and dragoons, Tal- mash made a vig- orous front move- ment, and then the whole of the Irish gave way, and a most, horrible mas- sacre of them ensu- ed, in consequence of the report of the murder of the col- onel of the Welsh Fusiliers and other English prisoners, to ' whom quarter had first - been granted. But for a moonless night, made more gloomy by a fall of rain, very ' few would have escaped the English cavalry. Again, as at the Boyne, the whole of the cannon, tents, and baggage became the spoil of the victors, to- gether with twelve standards and twenty-nine pairs of colours, some of which were very beautiful. Of the king's troops 600 were killed and 1,000 wounded. Kane raises this number to 4,000 killed and wounded, and adds that the Irish prisoners were forced to inter their own slain. Macaulay, on other authorities, says, " The van- quished were left unburied, a strange and ghastly spectacle. 4,000 Irish corpses were counted on the field of battle ; 150 lay in one small enclosure, 120 in another. One who was there tells us that from the top of the hill on which the Celtic camp had been pitched, he saw the country to the dis- tance of nearly four miles white with the naked bodies of the slain. The plain looked like an immense pasture covered with flocks of sheep. But it seems probable that the number of Irish who fell was not less than 7,000. Soon a multitude of dogs came to feast on the carnage. These beasts became so fierce, and acquired such a taste for human flesh, that it was long dangerous for men to travel that road otherwise than in companies." For half a century after, says O'Connor, the heights of Kilcommodon were whitened by the un- buried bones of the Irish loyalists. The roads around Aughrim were covered with abandoned weap- ons. De Ginckel offered sixpence for each musket; but such vast quantities were brought in that he reduced the sum to twopence. On the day after the battle, the army encamped a mile distant from the field, on the road to Loughrea; and soon after, for their services, the Gene- rals Baron de Ginckel and the Marquis deRuvign^, were raised to the Irish peerage, the former by the titles of Earl of Athlone and Viscount Aughrim, and the latter by the style of Baron Galway. The veteran Mac- kay was passed over; but this was a time when neither Scottish soldiers nor English seamen found much favour at the somewhat Dutch Court of King William at Kensington. The victors marched first against Galway. D'Usson was there with seven battalions under his command, but thinned ,by the slaughter of Aughrim, disheartened, and demoralised. The last hope of the garrison and of the Catholic inhabi- tants was that the promised deliverer of the Irish race, Boldeary O'Donnel, would come to the rescue ; but he was not to be duped by the super- stitious and Celtic veneration of which he was the object; so while there was any doubt about the issue between the Saxon and the Celt, he stood aloof. 36 PLAN OF THE BATTLE OF AUGHRIM. 422 BRITISH BATTLES "ON LAND AND SEA. [Limerick. CHAPTER LXXVII. LIMERICK, 1 69 1, Immediately after the overthrow of King James at the battle of the Boyne, the Duke of Berwick and General Sarsfield, with the best troops of the Irish army, strongly garrisoned Limerick, and success- ftiUy resisted King William's efforts to take the city. In the autumn of the next year, after the cap- ture of Athlone, the battle of Aughrim, and the sur- render of Galway, the Jacobite army under St. Ruth took post in Limerick as their last tenable place in Ireland. The city stands on low ground, at an insulating division of the Shannon, and in the midst of an extensive plain. The suburb of Thomond Gate stands on the western bank of the main stream. The division of the city called English Town occu- pies the south end of the island ; that called Irish Town stands on the right bank of the branch known as the Abbey River. After the Boyne, the French officers are said to have ridiculed the idea of defending Limerick. Accustomed as they were to such fortifications as those of Lisle and Mons, Philipsburg and Tournay, they stigmatised those of Limerick as " heaps of dirt;" and the Count de Lauzun said, "It is unnecessary for the English to bring cannon against such a place as this. 'V^Tiat you call your ramparts might be battered down with roasted apples." However, after the fall of Galway, Limerick was fated to be the last asylum of a loyal but van- quished race. There the authority of Tyrconnell was supreme, and he made every preparation for defending the place. He repaired the fortifications, such as they were, and sent out foraging parties to bring in provisions. For miles around they swept the country, and a vast quantity of cattle and fodder was brought in, while a necessary stock of biscuit came from France. Within the walls of Limerick were assembled 15,000 infantry; their horse and dragoons, mustering some 4,000 more, were encamped on the Clare side of the Shannon, and the communication between them and the city was maintained by the Thomond Bridge. Though the means of defence were far from poor, the loss of Athlone and the slaughter of Aughrim had crushed the spirit of the ' Irish army ; and a small party, at the head of whom were Sarsfield and a gallant Scottish officer named Wauchope, alone cherished the hope that the progress of General D^ Ginckel might be arrested by the same ramparts which had curbed the course of William in the preceding year. But many of the Irish leaders urged capitulation, and Colonel Henry Luttrel entered into secret negotiations with the advancing English. This traitor. General Kane tells us in his Memoirs, "having a plentiful fortune in the kingdom, and bemg loth to lose it, promised when he had the guard of the river to give us an opportunity of throwing bridges over it. When the night came that he had the guard, he gave us notice, and ordere-d his patrols a difterent way, so that we laid our bridges and passed part of the army over before day." One of his letters was intercepted prior to this, and he was put under arrest. Tyrconnell was con- vinced that King James's cause was lost, and he could only hope for a prolongation of the contest till he received final orders from the king to aban- don it, and he bound the desponding Irish army by an oath not to capitulate till such orders came. Not long after this Tyrconnell, worn by disease and care, expired, and on the very day of his de- cease the advanced guard of the British army came in sight of Limerick, and the main body rapidly closed up. Their leader, the Dutchman, Goderat de Ginckel, Earl of Athlone, encamped on the same ground which William's troops had occupied in the preceding year; and his bat- teries, which were heavily armed, played day and night on Limerick. In every part of the city the brick walls fell with astounding crashes, and by the bombs whole streets were set in flames, while several ships of war came up the Shannon, and anchored about a mile below the beleaguered city, which still held manfully out. In numerical strength the garrison was but little inferior to the blockading force, and there seemed every probability that the defence might be pro- longed till the equinoctial rains should compel the latter to retire; hence, then, De Ginckel re- solved to take sharp and sudden measures. In the whole circle of the fortifications, no point seemed more important or more secure than the Thomond Bridge, which connected the city with the Irish cavalry camp on the Clare shore of the Shannon ; and his plan was to separate the infantry within from the cavalry without the ramparts. Across the river he laid a bridge of boats, by which a strong body of troops passed. These drove before thero in confusion 1,500 dragoons, after Limerick.] THOMOND BRIDGE STORMED. 423 which they marched towards the quarters of the Irish horse, who on this day failed to sustain the reputation they had won at the Boyne. " Indeed," says Macaulay, " that reputation had been purchased by the almost entire destruction of the best regiments. Recruits had been without much difficulty found; but the loss of 1,500 ex- cellent soldiers was not to be repaired. The camp was abandoned without a blow. Some of the cavalry fled into the city ; the rest, driving before them as many cattle as could be collected in that moment of panic, retired to the hills. Much beef, brandy, and harness were found in the magazines ; and the marshy plain of the Shannon was covered sated with slaughter, and the Irish corpses lay in heaps above the parapet. Of 800 men who gar- risoned the fort, only 120 escaped into the city. Infuriated by this affair, the Irish were resolved to have the blood of the Town Major who had drawn up the bridge in the face their fugitive coun- trymen ; and he was only saved from the fury of the mob by having received, when closing the Thomond Gate, a mortal wound. The spirit of the garrison was completely broken now, and louder than ever grew the clamours for capitulation. Even the gallant Sarsfield had lost heart, and he became willing to treat. Everywhere in Ireland King James's cause was lost ; and even Major > f,^, ( La Forrest. Brig. ; ^"'- lEppinger. Tetlau. La Melonlere. 1st Line. Mackay. Bellasis. S M P f P wow Lt.-Gen. Sa ViUers. ■avem ore. ^ 1 1 1 n llllilEI mmmmmmmi isaiaEEzigaia o E13 ||f]||||||U0ga Major ■) fv.„ fHolstaple. Brig, j ^°- I Shack. Count Nassau. Prince of Hesse. Supports. Talmash. Stuart. Ruvign^. Leveson. n 'n S! f" d I s c gi S ^ ^ p I 1 p 3 3 911 ■ ■ ■■■ m^mmmmm mmiiiEiiJEaoEa ■■■■■■■■■II AUGHRIM LINE OF BATTLE, JULY I2TH, 1696. LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GINCKEL ; DUKE OF WIRTEMBERG. Englishi- 17.000 in the field — 47 squadrons of horse, 38 battalions of foot. Irish: Stooo horse. 25,000 foot in the field. with firelocks and hand grenades, which the fugi- tives had thrown away." De Ginckel was not content with this success ; he resolved to cut off all communication between the city and the county of Clare. Crossing the Shannon again at the head of several regiments, he assailed the fort which guarded the Thomond Bridge, and stormed it at the point of the sword ; its defenders fled towards the city. The Town Major, who commanded at the Thomond Gate, was a French officer, and being apprehensive lest tlie victors might enter with the vanquished, he ordered the bridge to be drawn up ; hence hundreds of the fugitive Irish went headlong into the stream, and perished miserably. Others called for quarter, and held up handkerchiefs in token of submission ; but their conquerors were alike remorseless and cruel, per would they take a single prisoner till they were if a French fleet arrived, it would find the mouth of the Shannon guarded by the guns of a British one. The stock of provisions was fast passing away. " And if De Ginckel should enter through the breach, or should be implored by a multitude perishing with hunger to dictate his own terms, what could be expected but a tyranny more in- exorably severe than that of Cromwell ? Would it not, then, be wise to try what conditions could be obtained while the victors had something to fear from the rage and despair of the vanquished ; while the last Irish army could still make some show of resistance behind the walls of the last Irish fortress ? " On the evening subsequent to the fight at the Thomond Gate, and while many a corpse lay yet unburied there, the Irish drums beat a parley, and firom one of the towers Wauchope hailed the ad- vanced posts, and requested Ruvignd to grant an 424 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Limerick. interview to Saisfield. The former had been exiled from France as a Protestant, and the brave Irish- man was now about to become an exile for his attachment to the faith of his forefathers. DeGinckel consented to an armistice, for many and cogent reasons, being anxious to possess the city, and thus end the war. The Irish offered to surrender, on condition "that offences should be covered with oblivion, and that perfect freedom of worship should be allowed to the native population ; that every parish should have its Roman Catholic priest ; and that Irish Roman Catholics should be capable of holding all offices, civil and military, and of enjoying all municipal privileges." These just and moderate requirements to the English mind of that age were deemed alike preposterous and extravagant; and equally so did they appear to De Ginckel. " I am a stranger here," said he ; "I am ignorant of the constitution of these kingdoms ; but I am assured that what you ask is inconsistent with that constitution, and, therefore, I cannot with honour consent." And, breaking off the treaty, he ordered an additional battery, armed with cannon and mortars, to be thfown up. Ultimately it was agreed that there should be " a cessation of arms, not only by land, but in the ports and bays of Munster, and that a fleet of French transports should be suffered to come up the Shannon in peace, and to depart in peace. The signing of the treaty was deferred till the Lords Justices, who represented William at Dublin, should arrive at De Ginckel's quarters.'' There Thomas Coningsby, Paymaster-General under William III., and Sir Charles Porter, two of the Lords, arrived on the ist of October, 1691, and it was soon arranged that all the Irish troops who preferred exile in France to the dominion of a foreign king at home should be conveyed by French vessels from Munster to Brittany. Part of Limerick was to be immediately delivered up to the army of De Ginckel; but the island, on which the cathedral and the castle stood, was to remain in possession, for a time, of the Irish. To all inhabitants of Limerick, and to all officers and soldiers of the Jacobite army who should submit to William, and take an oath of allegiance to him, an entire amnesty was promised. As soon as the instruments were signed, the British troops marched into the city, where a deep but narrow branch of the Shannon separated them from the quarter which was still in possession of the Irish. DeGinckel was unwilling to permit this great body of trained soldiers to land in France, and swell tloe ranks of a monarch with whom his master was then at war ; while Sarsfield, who had determined to become an exile, had secret hopes that if the army remained unbroken, and France invaded Ireland, they and their lawful king might yet enjoy their own again. He and Wauchope exerted all their influence to take all that would volunteer to France; while, on the other hand, De Ginckel circulated a proclamation to the effect that all who wished to retire to their homes were at liberty to do so, and that such as preferred a military life would be re- ceived into the service of Kihg William. The Irish troops were thus required to make their election between their own country and France. When the eventful day to do so came, the garri- son, consisting of 14,000 infantry, was drawn up in the great green meadow on the Clare bank of the Shannon. Printed copies of Ginckel's proclamation were scattered thickly about, and many British officers went through ,the ranks, "imploring the men not to ruin themselves, and describing to them the advantages which the soldiers of King William enjoyed." But soon the moment for decision came. They were ordered to march past in review order, and those who vidshed to remain in Ireland were directed to file off at a particular point, while those who marched past it were supposed to have accepted a lifelong exile. The march began, and with painful anxiety it was watched by the Lords Justices on one side, and by Sarsfield and his Scottish comrade, Wauchope, on the other ; while the French officers are said to have viewed the parade with uncon- cealed derision. "The clamour, the confusion, the grotesque appearance of an army in which there could scarcely be seen a shirt, a pair of pantaloons, a shoe, or a stocking, presented so ludicrous a contrast to the orderly and brilliant appearance of their master's troops, that they amused themselves by wondering what the Parisians would say to see such a force mustered on the plain of Griselle " (Macaulay). Shirtless aftd shoeless they might be then, but their hearts were stout and true. First marched the Royal Regiment of Ireland, 1,400 strong, and all save seven passed the fatal point, preferring exile with their king to relinquishing the faith of their fathers. When the long and sad procession closed — a. scene which none, Irishmen especially, could have beheld without emotion — ^it was found that only a thousand, and these were chidly men of Ulster, volunteered for the service of William. Many, however, deserted; and when the day of embarkation came, more sorrowful still was the scene by the Shannon. " After the soldiers had embarked," says Mac- aulay, " there remained on the water-side a great multitude clamouring piteously to be taken on La Hogue.] THE IRISH BRIGADE. 425 board. As the last boats put off there was a rush into the surf. Some women caught hold of the ropes, were dragged out of their depth, clung till their fingers were cut through, and perished in the waves. The ships began to move. A wild and terrible wail rose from the shore, and excited unwonted compassion in hearts steeled by hatred of the Irish race and of the Romish faith. . . . The sails disappeared The emaciated and heart- broken crowd of those whom a stroke more cruel than that of death had made widows and orphans dispersed, to beg their way home through a wasted land, or to lie down and die by the wayside of grief and hunger." These exiles were joined by many others, who in the years and wars that were to follow have made the very name of the Irish Brigade of France synonymous with all that is glorious and gallant ; and hence it was that when the Duke of Fitzjames, in 1791, was advancing the claims of the Irish soldiers to Louis XVI., he said — "Sire, my grandfather came not into France alone ! His brave companions are now mine, and the dearest friends of my heart ! He was accompanied by 30,000 Irishmen, who abandoned home, fortune, and honour, to follow their unfortunate king." Six regiments of this brigade were received into the British service in 1794, and were soon after disbanded; so this fine force, with its traditions and sad history, passed away for ever. On Thomond Bridge, over the Shannon, is still to be seen the stone on which was signed the treaty that made William King of Ireland; that confiscated one million of her acres to the Crown, and drove their former possessors to seek their bread in the camps of the French and Spaniards. CHAPTER LXXVIII. LA HOGUE, 1692. To humble Louis XIV. of France was the great object of King William's, foreign policy. The latter had been long looked upon as tiie great captain of the Protestant armies ; and Louis, gt'asp- ing gladly at the illegal dethronement of Jatnes as a just cause for war, prepared, in 1692, for a mighty invasion of England. To oppose or anticipate the movements of this land and sea armament. Admiral Edward Russell collected a powerful fleet of English and Dutch ships at St Helen's. The Red squadron, which he led in person, con- sisted of 31 sail, with 2,220 guns and 13,985 men. The Blue squadron, under Admirals Sir John Ashby, Rooke, and Carter, was 32 sail, with 2,310 guns and 14,675 men. The Dutch squadron, under Admirals Allemande, Calembourg, and Vandergoes, amounted to 36 sail, with 2,614 guns and 13,051 men. The whole fleet made a grand total of 99 sail, mounted with 6,676 pieces of cannon, and manned by 41,621 seamen and marines. So great was the expedition used, that one of the first-rates in the Red squadron was equipped and went to sea in ten days after she was launohed. The enemy's fleet under the Count de Tour- ville, after being joined by the Rochefort squadron, consisted of 63 ships and 20,000 men; but had not the Count d'Estr^es, who commanded the Toulon squadroiL_,been disabled by a storm off Gibraltar, the' opposing- force must have exceeded that of the Allies. An assembly of flag-officers met in the cabin of the' Britannia, a splendid three-decker, at St Helen's. Admiral Russell's flag was flying at the masthead, and all stood bareheaded to hear a letter read from the queen, the king being then in Flanders. Certain officers had recently been dis- missed for their affection for the exiled king, her father. Among many others were Randal Mac- donald, who destroyed the corsairs in the harbour of Mamora, William Viscount Dunbar, Thomas Ash- ton, and Edmund Elliot, all captains of bravery : but now the letter stated that Her Majesty was resolved to believe nothing against servants of the State, as the officers of her husband's fleet ; so the listeners became enthusiastically loyal as soon as they were assured of the entire confidence of the queen. They signed an address to her, asserting their resolution to defend her rights (whatever they might mean), the freedom of England, and the Pro- testant religion, against all French and Popish invaders. " God," they added, " direct your coun- sels, preserve your person and prosper your arms, and let all your people say 'Amen.' " Soon after this the topsails of the French fleet 426 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [La llogue. were visible from the white cliffs of Portland ; and from Dorsetshire one messenger took the tidings to London, another bqre it to Admiral Russell, a gun from whose ship was the signal for sailing ; and when the early sunlight was stealing over the sea on the morning of the 17th of May, the allied fleets spread their canvas to the wind The orders of the Count de Tourville from Ver- sailles were to protect or cover the invasion of England ; but not to decline a battle if such be- 19th of May was reddening the bluff of Point Bar- fleur, a few leagues distant from his fleet, he saw the combined armament of the Allies — the largest fleet that had ever been in the Channel since the days of the Spanish Armada — stretching in a vast line across the whole blue horizon to the eastward, and he boldly steered towards them before the wiiid.' By eight a.m., says Smollett, the line of battje was formed by the English fleet. The Dutch LIMERICK. came necessary. He had been reprimanded for remissness afte-r his victory at Beachy Head, when he might have done more than De Ruyter dared to do; and he believed, on the authority of King James, and John, Earl of Melfort, K.T. (who, before the Revolution, had been general of the Scottish artillery), that the English seamen were Jacobites to a man, and consequently would fight indifferently for William ; and with these ideas he now found himself in sight of St. Alban's Head and the undulating, coast of Dorsetshire. He tacked, however, and stood across the Channel towards Cape la Hogue, where the army he was to convoy to England had already began to embark in the transports. When the sunrise of the squadron was in the van, the Blue squadron in the rear, the Red formed the centre. He also makes the French fleet amount to sixty-three; and states that, as they were to windward, De Tourville might have avoided a battle, but that he had received positive orders to fight, on the supposition that the Dutch were absent. _ Prior to the fleets closing. Admiral Russell had visited most of the English ships, and. exhorted the crews to do their duty. "If any of your officers play false," he added, " overboard with him, and with myself among the first." ^ This stern advice had direct reference to those with Jacobite sympathies, for there were no doubt La ttogue. ] FUkWUS CA]^JM0NAi)£. 427 42§ BRITISH BATTLES 0^f LAND AND SEA. [La Hogue, many in the fleet who remembered with love and admiration that Duke of York who had led them to victory in other days. He had barely returned to his own ship, the Britannia, loo guns, ere De Tourville, in the Rising Sun, 104 guns, was alongside of her, and round shot, chain shot, grape, and musketry were exchanged with indescribable fury. This was at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, and in a few minutes after the whole squadron, many of the Dutch ships excepted, were engaged, and the roar of the cannon and small-arms could be heard in the French and Irish camp at La Hogue, and all along the coast, from Barfleur to the ancient streets of Bayeux. Admiral Richard Carter was the first who broke the French line ; but he was mortally wounded by a splinter torn from one of his own spars, and fell dying on the deck, frorli which he would not allow himself to be borne, neither would he permit his sword to be taken from his hand. "Fight the ship as long as she will swim!" said he to his captain, William Wright, and soon after expired (Smolleft). Colonel Hastings, of the marines on board the Sandwich, was killed. Both fleets phed their guns with equal fury from eleven o'clock till one. During the earlier part of the conflict the wind had been with the French, the smoke of whose artillery constantly enveloped the English. They had been opposed to the greater portion only of the allied fleet, and against that portion they had fought well and valiantly. The Count de Tourville now thought he had done enough to vindicate the honour of the silver lilies, and to clear himself firom aspersions that had been thrown upon him by M. de Seignelay, the Minister of Marine ; and the fire from his ship having carried away Russell's fore-topmast, on finding the Rising Sun sorely disabled, he had her towed out of. the line of fire by his boats, while five fresh ships, by a terrible cannonade, covered his retreat. She was so full of men that no attempt was made to board her; but the slaughter between her decks was fearful. It was not until after sunset that she got clear of her assailants, and crept towards the coast of Normandy, " having so many men in her slain," says the " Life of King William," " that the blood running out of her scuppers discoloured the ocean." She had suffered so much that De Tour- ville had to shift his flag to Xh& Ambitious, 90 guns. Some French ships were blown up, and others sent to the bottom with all their rigging standing, and with the dead and dying between decks. A fog that fell about four in the afternoon alone preserved the French fleet from instant and inevi- table rain, by concealing and scattering it far over the sea. Twenty of the smaller vessels made their escape by steering a course that was, too perilous for any but those whose courage was bom of despair or desperation. With all sail crowded, under cover of the dense fog and the cloud of a moonless night, they ran through the boiling breakers past those treacherous rocks called the Caskets, which form the Race of Aldemey, between that isle and Cape La Hogue, the place where Prince William, son of Henry I., perished in 11 19, where the Victory, with 1,000 men on board, was cast away in 1744, and countless other wrecks have occurred ; and from thence they reached St. Malo's. Thus, says Dalrymple, did fog, calm, tides, and veering winds save France firom English vengeance for one day — but one day only ! The ships of the line, whose draught of water had rendered this course impossible, fled to the havens of Cotentin. ITie Soleil Royal, and two other three-deckers, the Admirable, go guns. Captain Beaujean, and the Conqiierant, 80 guns, Captain du Magnon, reached Cherbourg in comparative safety; but there they were driven ashore and set in flames by Sir Ralph Delaval, who found them hauled up in shoal water. He therefore attacked them with his fire-ships and boats. The crews fled ashore, and the Soleil Royal — the pride of the French navy — and her two stately consorts, were speedily sheeted with flames. Foulis, a Scottish sea-captain, who was the first to board her, was driven off by her cretv, and had his own ship set on fire. Inexorably bent on the total destruction of the French armament. Admiral Russell was meanwhile blocking up the bay of La Hogue, where, as at Cherbourg, the French war-ships were moored in shoal water, close to the camp of that army which was destined for the invasion of England, under Bernard Gigatit, Marquis de Bellefonds and Marshal of France. Six sail lay anchored under a fort named Lisset, the rest were under the guns of St. Vaast, wherein King James had his quarters, and on the walls of which were displayed the white banner of Bourbon and the flags of England and Scotland. De Bellefonds had thrown up some batteries, which he flattered himself would deter any enemy from approaching either of these forts. But King James, .who knew better the mettle of English seamen, recommended that troops should be put on board the ships for their protection. "But De Tourville," says Macaulay, "would not consent to put such a slur on his profession" — a curious expression, when we bear in mind that the Count de Tourville was a Marshal of France. La Hogue.] DESTRUCTION OF THE FRENCH SQUADRON. 429 The chief fortress stands on a narrow isthmus, which connects a small peninsula with the main- land, and defends the extensive roadstead that lies within the Bank du Bee, the Cape, and the Isle of Tatihon. At low tide it is still surrounded by water, its only communication with the land being a narrow channel caUed the Sillon. The English admiral was preparing for an attack in a mode which rather surprised the French ; and by the evening of the 23rd of May, a flotilla, con- sisting of sloops, of fire-ships, and all the boats of the fleet, 200 in number, full of armed men, put ofif under the command of Sir George Rooke, who in after years was to add Gibraltar to the British territories. His orders were to destroy everything in the bay; and with the Union-Jack floating from the stem of each boat, with loud cheers, and in the highest spirits, the crews bent to their oars, and the whole division swept within the Bank du Bee, and pulled straight for the three-deckers that lay in fancied security under the batteries of Fort Lisset, while the twilight of evesing was darkening all the coast of Normandy. By some strange fatality, there was on this occasion a panic in the fleet and in the camp of De Bellefonds. The latter got the French and Irish regiments under arms, and marched them in all haste to the beach, when, after firing a little, they retired and drew off ! The "Count de Tourville ordered the seamen to man their boats and pinnaces, but his orders were issued in vain. They turned and fled ; and louder than ever rang the deep hearty hiurahs of the English sailors, though the guns of Fort Lisset now opened upon them, and every shot that struck a craft so frail as a boat was death to all her crew. The boats vied with each other which should be first on board the enemy. Exposed to a dreadful but ill-directed cannonade from the forts and bat- teries, the English boarded the three-deckers in succession, capturing or tossing overboard all w;ho dared to withstand them, and lashing all the vessels together, they set them in flames ; and with little or no loss, and with three hearty cheers, dropped out of the bay with the ebb tide, leaving La Hogue one 'sheet of fire. During all the night the great ships blazed, and the explosion was heard from time to time of their loaded cannon as the fire reached them, till six culminating crashes an- nounced that the flames had reached their maga- zines, and then sea and sky became sheeted with burning brands. At eight o'clock the tide turned, and Sir George Rooke with his 200 boats' crews came back with it, to destroy the ships that were moored under the guns of Fort St. Vaast. These guns knocked a few boats to pieces, and sent their crews to flounder in the water ; but the vessels were soon won. Cheering, the English seamen came sheering alongside and drew their cutlasses, and as they came swarming up on one side the French were seen pouring out on the other, and the instant their ships were taken their gims were levelled at the batteries on the shore, and the fire from them was speedily sjlenced. King James, the Duke of Berwick, the Earl of MeU fort, and Marshals De Bellefonds and De Tourville, were looking on this terrible spectacle. Amid those flames the unhappy monarch of Great Britain saw the extinction for ever of all his hopes of restora- tion, yet when he beheld the irrepressible valour of the seamen, honest admiration became mingled with his regret " Ah," he exclaimed to the Scottish earl, when he saw the French squadron in flames, " none but my brave English tars could have performed so gallant an action ! " A few minutes after, Dalrymple states that a gun exploded in one of the vessels which was nearly biuiied to the water-edge, and the shot kUled one of the king's attendants by his side. Struck by this circumstance, James exclaimed with de- spair, " Heaven itself fights against me ! " and then retired to his tent; and there he heard the flotilla [of Rooke, after having insulted the camp, silenced the batteries, and destroyed all the vessels, including transport and store-ships, pulling seaward to the fleet, and making the sky echo with "God Save the King." In this last expedition Pufiendorf states our loss to have been only ten men, with a few that were blown up in a long-boat. Thus ended the great battle of La Hogue, in which sixteen of the noblest ships of France, ranging from the Soleil Royal, 104 guns, to the Sanspariel, 60, were destroyed, together with an incredible number of smaller craft. For five days by sea and shore had the strife continued, and England lost only one fire-ship ! The Soleil Royal was entirely mounted with guns of polished brass ; and in her great cabin was a statue of Louis XIV., seated on the throne, " with the figures of many kings and princes in chains at his feet " (" Life of King William "). The result of La Hogue fell heavily on King James, who never forgot the sad impression it made upon him; and concerning it he wrote the fol- lowing melancholy letter to the King of France : — " Monsieur my Brother, — I have hitherto borne with something of constancy and resolution those misfortunes which it hath blessed «Heaven to 43° BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [L'IsIe d'Ecosse. lay upon me, so long as myself was the only suf- ferer ; but I must acknowledge that this last disaster utterly overwhelms me. I am altogether comfortless in reference to what concerns your Majesty, through the loss that has befallen your fleets. I know too well that it is my unlucky star which has drawn this misfortune upon your forces, always victorious, save when they fought for my interests. And this it is which plainly tells me I no longer merit the support of so great a monarch — one who is always sure to vanquish when he fights for himself. For which reason it is that I request your Majesty no longer to concern yourself for a prince so unfortunate as I ; but permit me to retire to some corner of the world, where I may cease to obstruct the course of your prosperity and conquest. " It is not just that the most potent monarch in the world, and the most flourishing, above all others should share in my disgrace. 'Tis better that I should retire till it please omnipotent Providence to be more propitious to my affairs. But how- soever it pleases overruling Heaven to dispose of me and mine, I can assure your Majesty that X shall always preserve to the last gasp of my breath that due acknowledgment which I shall retain of your favour and constant friendship. Nor can anything contribute more to my consolation than to hear, as I hope to do, when I have wholly quitted your dominions, of the quick return of all your wonted triumphs, both by sea and land, over your enemies and mine, when my interest shall be no longer mixed with yours. — I am, monsieur my brother, yours, &c., " James Rex." The King of France assigned him the palace of St. Germain's, and promised never to forsake him, even in his worst extremity. La Hogue sealed for ever the doom of all those Irish and Scottish exiles who had followed the banners of King James, by consigning them to perpetual and hopeless expatriation. The double victory, for such it was, on the sea and in the bay, excited the greatest exultation in London; and the disaster at Beachy Head was forgotten. Again England was safe, and, thanks to the valour of Russell, Rooke, and Delaval, with their men, no French drums would wake the echoes of her woods and valleys. London was illuminated. Bonfires were lit in the streets, and flags hung from the steeples. Admiral Carter and Colonel Hastings were in- terred with the honours of war ; and fifty surgeons, amply supplied with lint, bandages, medicines, and mstruments, left London for Portsmouth, to suc- cour the wounded of the fleet. In her delight. Queen Mary ordered medals to be struck in honour of the victory, and ;^3o,ooo to be distributed among the seamen ; and promised that at last the stately palace by the Thames com- menced by Charles II., at Greenwich, should be assigned as a home and retreat for all those who were disabled in the sea-service of the country. CHAPTER LXXIX. THE ISLAND OF THE SCOTS, 1 6 93-7. In all our military annals, there is no story more melancholy than that which tells the fate of the Scottish officers of King James's army, after the death of Dundee. Even at this lapse of time, it fills the heart with sorrow, for their valour and magnanijnity were worthy of the most glorious ages of Athens and of Sparta. A list preserved shows that they were about 150 in number, all men of noble spirit, unblemished honoiy, and the representatives of some of the first families in Scotland. Amid "the revolting displays of political in- sanity and actual dishonour which degrade the Revolution in that country," says Chambers, "it is delightful to record the generous abandonment of all selfish considerations, and the utter devotedness to a lofty and beautiful moral principle, which goiierned the actions of this noble band of gentle- men." On terms being made with the Government, the regular troops who had served under Viscount Dundee were conveyed to France, where the officers had their rank confirmed, according to the tenor of their Scottish commissions. They were distributed throughout the various garrisons in the North of France ; and, though nominally in Jhe service of James, derived their whole means of subsistence from Louis XIV. So long as a descent on the coast of, Britain to effect a second Re- storation was probable, these officers assented to the arrangement ; but the destruction of the French fleet under Admiral De Tourville blasted their hopes; L'Isle d'Ecosse.] THE SCOTTISH COMPANY. 431 and on the paltry pretext of public expedience, their pay was withdrawn. Then the whole of those unfortunate gentlemen, who, by their unflinching loyalty, had forfeited their rank when they might have won new honours, in the army of the invader, found themselves destitute in a fijreign land. We are told that, with a noble spirit of generosity, they shared their little funds for the benefit of those who were penniless, making a common stock of their gilded corselets, laced uniforms, rings, watches, and so forth ; but ere long, finding the horror of starvation before them, the unfortunate Scottish officers petitioned King James for leave to form themselves into a company of private soldiers for the service of King Louis, asking no other favour than permission to elect their own officers; and the king, unable to ■ maintain the ruined dependants who made St. Germain's their rallying-point, reluctantly consented. Those high-spirited cavaliers were immediately furnished with the clothing and arms of French private soldiers ; and previously to their incorpo- ration with the French army under Marshal Noailles, they repaired to St. Germain's to be reviewed by the king, and to take a long — to many it proved a last — adieu of him. The captain of this remarkable company was Colonel Thomas Brown ; the two lieutenants were Colonels Andrew Scott and Alexander Gordon ; the ensign was Major James Buchan ; the sergeants were Captain James Jenner and Lieu- tenants Gordon and Lyon. In the rank and file were two colonels, one major, and forty-two captains ; the rest were subaltern officers. One of the captains, was John Ogilvie, author of the well-known song — " Adieu for evermore, my love. Adieu for evermore." Poor Ogilvie was killed by a cannon-shot, ian the banks of the Rhine. On the morning they marched to St. Germain's, the king chanced to be coming forth to hunt, and on perceiving suddenly a company in French uni- form, with fixed bayonets shining in the sun, formed in line in the park, he asked what troops they were. "Your Majesty's most faithful subjects and de- voted followers," replied a gentleman in attendance. " Yesterday they bore your Majesty's commission, to-day they are privates in the army of France." Then the line presented arms, as the king leaped from his horse, and with his eyes full of tears ap- proached them, and after a time spoke thus : — "Gentlemen, my own misfortunes are not so nigh my heart as yours. It grieves me beyond what I can express to see so many brave and worthy men, who had once the prospect of being the chief officers of my army, reduced to the station of private sentinels. The sense of all you have undergone for your loyalty hath made so deep an impression upon my heart, that if it ever please God to restore me, it is impossible I can be forget- ful of your services and sufferings ; neither can there be any posts in the armies of my dominions but what you have just pretensions to. As for my son, your ppince, he is of your own blood ; and as his education will be from you, it is not to be supposed that he will forget your merits. At your own desire, you are now going on a long march, far distant from me. Fear God, and love one another. Write your wants particularly to me, and depend upon it always to find me your father and your king." According to the " Account of Dundee's Officers, London, 17 14," the company listened to his words with the deepest emotion. He then went slowly along the line, asking each officer's name, inserting it in his note-book, and returning him personal thanks. He then turned to leave them, but came back once more, and covering his face with his handkerchief, burst into tears. The sobs of the unhappy king were so audible that the whole line sank at once upon their knees and bowed their heads. After a time their emotions became subdued; the company passed him in review order, and then " parted for ever on this earth, the dethroned monarch and his exUed subjects.'' Their destination was Perpignan, in Rousillon, where they were to join the army under Marshal de Noailles ; but though death in the field, disease in the camp, poverty, and despair, did much to thin their ranks, they performed a march of 900 miles, carrying their own camp-kettles and other equip- ments, and their indomitable endurance ehcited the praise of the French. " Le gentilhomme," said a general, in praise of their readiness to face everything, "est toujours gentilhomme, et se montre toujours tel dans besoin et dans danger." The kind ladies of Perpignan presented them with a purse containing 200 pistoles, and bought all their rings as relics of les qfficiers Ecossais. Where- ever they passed they were received with tears by the women and admiration by the men. They were the foremost in battle and the last in retreat ; and of all the troops in the service of France, they were the most obedient to orders. The spirit of Dundee seemed to accompany them. On the 27th of May, 1693, the company of officers BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA [L'Isle d'Ecosse. _432 and some other Scottish companies were joined by two of Irish exiles, to make up a battahon to mount the trenches at the siege of Roses, m Catalonia. Major Rutherford led the Scottish grenadiers, and Colonel Brown commanded the whole One of these companies was entirely com- posed of cavaher deserters from the ist Royals. The company of officers, in the assault of the fort, advanced with such fury, followed up by Ruther- ford's grenadiers, that the governor beat a cMmade, many, but the spirits of the survivors never flagged. As the French pay of three-halfpence daily was failing to support them, Marshal Noailles presented each with one pistole, two shirts, two cravats, and a pair of shoes. On this disastrous march, an attack being appre- hended from the rear, all the pickets were ordered forward, but as the greater part df the array had not come up to the ground, "the corporals could not make out all the companies. In this dilemma, CAPE LA HOGUE. and surrendered the town. He then inquired of the marshal what troops those were that fired so hotly and displayed such resolution. " Ces sont mes enfants," repUed the marshal, smiling; "they are the King of Britain's Scottish officers, who share his obscurity and exile, and who do me the honour to serve under my com- mand." "By Santiago, they alone have made me sur- render 1" said the Spaniard. They marched from Roses to Piscador ; and of an army of 26,000 men, 16,000 perished by the way- side of starvation. The atmosphere was mtensely hot, the water muddy, and their only rations were horse-bean' and garlic. Famine and the bullet slew the Scottish company in camp mounted for their comrades, and marched to the parade of the pickets, where they ranked themselves up in good order, and held themselves ready for whatever duty might occur." At Silistadt the horrors of famine grew deeper around them. All their jewellery had long since gone ; and now they had to part with their buckles, their periwigs, their cravats, and stockings. Bread was so dear that they were unable to buy it ; and ' their only food was horse-beans, varied with turnips and colewort. Many died in the hospital there. The survivors, with two other companies of in- ferior Scottish refiigees, in 1695 marched to Old Brissac, and December, 1697, found them on the L'IsIe d'Ecosse.l FORDING THE RHINE. 433 Rliine, where they performed the most brilliant of their exploits. General Stirk having advanced with 16,000 men to the bank of the river, the Marquis de Selle drew out all the garrisons in Alsace fo oppose him, and among the rest the Scottish companies. In the middle of the Rhine, and between the armies, there chanced to be an island, where a battery planted by the Imperial general might have played with the most fatal effect on the French camp, besides it to France ; and when darkness fell they pro- ceeded to put their plan in execution. They got quietly under arms, and tied their shoes, stockings, and ammunition round their necks to keep them dry. They then advanced stealthily to the verge of the stream, which there was deep and rapid; and now one of the old customs of their native land was found of some avail. They formed line, and holding each other firmly by the hand, waded steadily, with collected minds and NAMUR. affording a pier for a bridge by which the Germans might cross into Alsace. This was at once seen by General Stirk, who lost not a moment in throwing over a bridge to the island, and establishing thereon 500 men, who began to entrench themselves and throw up a battery. The Marquis de Selle was filled with intense annoyance, almost with despair, at finding himself thus anticipated ; and by the want of boats he found it impossible to arrest their operations, and a few short hours would see the battery armed. In this dilemma "the infallible gentilhommes Ecossais " came to his aid. It struck the mind of these daring men that by wading the stream they might storm the island in the night, expel the Germans, and restore resolute purpose, into the depths of the Rhine. After passing the deepest part they paused, unslung their cartridge-boxes, loaded, and then pushed on to the dry land and put on their shoes. This boldness had all its proper effect in sur- prising the enemy, none of whom — supposing them- selves secure by the depth of the stream — had the least expectation of an assault. They poured one well-directed volley into the midst of the intrench- ments, and then rushed on sword in hand. The Germans were instantiy routed. As they fled the Scottish officers pursued them, and slew many. The survivors broke down the bridge in their flight, thus leaving the company in complete possession of the island. And thus sings one who may well 37 434 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Sieenkirke, be deemed the last of the Scottish bards, of this j exploit : — "The German heart is stout and true ; the German arm is j strong ; I The German foot goes seldom back where armfed foemen I throng : I But never had they faced in field a charge so stern before, j And never had they felt the sweep of Scotland's broad clay- more. I What saw the winter moon that night, as struggling through the rain. She poured a wan and fitful light on marsh, and stream, and plain? A dreary spot, with corpseB strewn, and bayonets glistening round ; A broken bridge, a stranded boat, a-bare and battered mound ; And one huge watchfire's kindled pile, that sent a quivering glare. To tell the leaders of the host the conquering Scots were there." When the Marquis de Selle learned what had taken plac£, he signed the cross on his forehead and breast, and was lost in admiration. By daybreak —or as soon as a boat could be procured — ^he went to the island, and, embracing each ,individual officer, thanked him in the warmest manner for his services. He declared that he never knew a braver action done in the field j and to this day the island, in memory of the event, is named L'Ide d'Ecosse. They saw Ijttle service after this event ; but we are told that King William refused to commence those proceedings which led to the .Treaty of Rys- wick " till the company of officers which had per- forrned so many brave exploits against his allies should be broken up. It was accordingly dissolved at Silistad." Sixteen were alive when the story of their adven- tures was published at London, in 17 14, but only four ever saw their native land again. CHAPTER LXXX. STEENKIRKE, 1 69 3. In the eventful May of 1692, in the prosecution of the war against Holland, the Marshal Duke of Luxembourg, with 120,000 men, had laid siege to Namur, and was speedily followed by the King of France, attended by a magnificent cortege of princes, princesses, and others of the then mag- nificent French Court ; " by the effeminate pomp of an Asiatic emperor," according to Smollett, " at- tended by his mistresses and parasites, his band of music, his dancers, his opera, and, in a word, all the ministers of luxury and sensual pleasure." Namur had always been considered one of the strongest fortifications in Europe, and it had re- cently been strengthened under the direction of Cphorn, a celebrated Dutch engineer. To him was opposed Vauban, a French engineer of equal celebrity, whose works at Lisle and Tournay have ever won the admiration of military men. The siege of Namur was thus novel and imposing — the two most powerful monarchs then in Europe at the head of their respective armies, with the two greatest engineers of the age, to put forth all their efforts of combined genius and science in oppo- sition to each other, till Cohorn was dangerously wounded. King WiUiam advanced with his army to relieve the town ; but his march being impeded by heavy rains, which had caused the riy§rs and canals of that low-lying country to overflow, his object was frustrated. He failed to effect the relief, and Namur, after an obstinate defence, opened its gates to the enemy on the ist of July, and King Louis, elated with his success, returned to Paris. King William was encamped at Melld when Namur surrendered; and on the ist of August he marched to Genappe, on the plains of which he reviewed the allied armies, accompanied by the' Elector pf Bavaria. On that day the English contingent, consisting of fifteen battahons of infantry, included three of the Guards, two of the Dutch Guards, and Count Solmes' Blues. The count was a branch of the family of Nassau, and took his title from a district of the west of Germany, in Wetteravia. The Scots, who were separately reviewed, con- sisted of ten battalions of infantry and two of Guards, led by Lieutenant-General Mackay. There was also a Danish contingent, and on being reinforced by 8, too Hanoverians and two regiments of English horse, the Allies broke up from Genappe, and marched towards Halle, for the purpose of attacking the French at Steenkirke, and seeking to retrieve the honour they had lost in failing to relieve the castle of Namur. Of the English regiments present at this time the follQWing are still in existence ;— The . Roy4 Steenkirkc. ] THE TREACHERY OF MILLEVOIX. 435 Horse Guards : Viscount Fitzhardinge's Dragoons (now the 4th or Queenis Hussars); the Grenadier and Coldstream Guards; Trelawney'sFoot, or King's Tangier Regiment (now 4th of the Line) ; Prince George of Hesse-Darmstadt's (6th Foot) ; Earl of Bath's (loth Foot) ; Hodges' Foot (now i6th), then commanded by Robert Hodges,- formerly captain of the Royal Scots Grenadiers at Tangiers. Of the Scottish regiments present the following are still in existence : — The Scots Fusilier Guards ; O'Farrel's (now 21st Foot, or Royal Scots Fusiliers); Douglas's ( I st Royals) ; the Earl of Leven's, or Old Edinburgh Regiment (now 25th, or King's Own Borderers) ; the Earl of Angus's (26th, or Came- ronians). Mackay's, or the old 94th (represented by the present corps, embodied at Glasgow in 1823, in place of the old Scots Brigade, disbanded a year or two before, after having been more than two centuries in existence). The second in command to King William was Count Solmes, and under the latter were the Duke of Wirtemberg and the Bavarian Elector. Lieutenant-General Hugh Mackay commanded the whole of the British infantry. The French were fully prepared for an attack, so far as order went, and were formed in two lines by their leader, the brilliant Francois Henri, Due de Luxemboiu'g, and yet they were taken by surprise. The nature of the ground which lay between King William's army and the French position was extremely awkward for manoeuvres, as it was in- tersected by a vast number of thick hedges and deep muddy ditches, and there was no mode of approaching Steenkirke save through long, narrow, and rough lanes and defiles. The marshal had no idea that lie was about to be attacked. He was confident in the strength of his position, and he had some contempt for the tactics of a -king who had failed to relieve Namur. He had corrupted by gold an adventurer named Millevoix, who was private secretary to the King of Bavaria, and this man sent regularly to the French headquarters authentic details concerning the de- signs and strength of the allied armies. It chanced that a peasant had picked up in a field a letter which contained ample proofs of the villany of Millevoix, and he conveyed it at once to the tent of the Elector of Bavaria. The guards were summoned, the perfidious secretary was seized; a pen was placed in his hand and a cocked pistol was held to his head. On pain of instant death, he had to write a letter dictated by William III. to mislead Luxembourg, by informing him that next day the Allies meant to send out a large party to forage ; and that, in order ^ to protect this party from attack, several battalions of. infantry, with some field-pieces, were to move .' forward in the night, and occupy those lanes and ■ defiles which we have said lay in front of the French position. The whole allied army got under arms as soon as the darkness fell. They mustered and formed in silence, and began to move towards Steenkirke when the Senne was reddened by the glare of the distant watchfires which, like a long garland of lights, marked the post of Luxembourg. Thick woods and laden orchards covered the eminences that rose above the plain. By battalions and brigades the forward movement continued, and the French patrols were galloping in to announce that " the enemy was approaching in great force." To these tidings, reiterated again and again, the marshal, who dearly loved his ease, turned a careless ear. Millevoix, his correspon- dent, had, he deemed, been as usual correct— these battalions on the march, and those field-pieces whose rumble came upon the night breeze, were the column sent out to protect the foragers. But alarms followed each other fast. At last officers emphatically asserted that all the defiles in front, the very avenues to their position, were now possessed by vast columns of horse and foot, with brigades of artillery, and that all were moving steadily on Steenkirke. Then Luxembourg mounted his horse and rode to the front, to find that his outposts were attacked, and that the Brigade de Bourbonnais, that lay half a mile in advance, had already been swept away, with the loss of seven field-guns. But the marshal in an incredibly short time got his troops into position, and dispatched pressing instructions to Marshal Boufflers, who lay six miles distant with a large division, to march instantly on Steenkirke. So far the plans of William were successful, but he did not find the French army in the state of alarm and confusion he had anticipated. More- over, he was somewhat ignorant of the real character of the ground over which he would have to pass ere he could hope to reach the heart of the French position. Though the- Bourbonnais were driven in, by ten o'clock on the morning of the 24th of July, the whole French army was under arms, in two long lines; and conspicuous there, for the splendour of their array were the household troops of Louis, and a glittering crowd of young French nobles and princes. In a doublet magnificent with embroidery above his gilded cuirass, the Duke of Luxembourg gal- loped from column -to column, urging his leaders 436 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Steenkirke. to do their duty, and to repair by bravery what the artifice of William and the supposed treachery of Millevoix had effected. The Dukes of Bourbon and Vendome were there, the Princes of Turenne and Cont^, with the Due de Chartres (son of Orleans, and nephew of the King of France), a youth of fifteen, whose almost feminine beauty made him the sport of that gay army. There, too, were the Marquis de Bellefonds, the young Duke of Berwick, the gallant Sarsfield (whom James II. had created Earl of Lucan), and several thousand chevaliers of noble birth and dashing bravery, whose presence, ardour, and example soon restored perfect order in the army so suddenly summoned to battle ; and as the morning mist rose up from the plain around the then obscure village of Steen- kirke, the entire army of the Protestant Confedera- tion, more than 100,000 strong, could be seen advancing as rapidly as the numerous thorn hedges, the muddy water-cuts, and stone walls, which inter- sected the yellow cornfields, would permit. On the preceding evening, the ist Battalion of the Scots Royals, under Sir Robert Douglas, with the 2nd Battalion of the English Foot Guards, Fitzpatrick's Regiment, the Scots FusiUers, and two battalions of Danes, had been ordered forward to commence the attack upon the French army ; and these troops were accompanied by. a detach- ment from each battalion of Churchill's brigade, with hatchets and spades, to cut and dig a passage through the woody ground between the armies. By ten on the day of the battle these troops had taken post in a dense thicket, beyond which there was a small valley, the green hedges of which were thickly lined by the white-coated infantry of the French line, and beyond it appeared their camp. On the right and left of this wood the Prince of Wirtemberg got several guns into position. These opened fire at eleven, and under cover of this cannonade the army passed through the principal defile, at a point where a large farmhouse was blazing, and began to deploy into line on a plain that lay on its right. The division which led the way was that of General Mackay. His Scots were all veterans ; but most of the English regiments were newly raised, yet they fought with incredible valour, and gave promise of what they were yet to achieve in the future wars of Flanders. They first encountered the Swiss infantry, and a close struggle ensued; for "in the hedge-fighting," says D'Auvergne, in his "Campaigns, 1692," "their fire was generally muzzle to muzzle, the hedge only generally sepa- rating the combatants." When this first column of the Allies engaged, and the roar of 40,000 muskets loaded the air with sound, the main body was still a mile in the rear, where WilHam was slowly, laboriously, and awkwardly getting them deployed into line. The Swiss were driven back, with the loss of 1,800 killed and a vast number of wounded. The English Guards dislodged the enemy from one of their batteries, and turned the guns on them as they fled. It was on this column that the whole brunt of the battle fell, for William had intended to support it by a strong body of horse and foot, but failed to do so. "Among the foremost in this action," says "Cannon's Records," "was seen the brave Sir Robert Douglas, of Glenbervie, at the head of the I St Battalion of the Royal Regiment, emulating the noblest actions recorded in the annals of war. Having led his battalion against the troops behind the first hedge, he soon cleared it of French com- batants, and drove one of the enemy's battalions from the field in f onfusion. A second hedge was attacked and carried by the Scots in a few minutes. A third was assaulted ; the French stood their ground, the combatants fought muzzle to muzzle, and again the Royals proved victorious, and the third hedge was won. The toil of the conflict did not cool the ardour of the veteran Scots, but forward they rushed with a loud huzza, and attacked the troops that lined the fourth hedge. Here the fighting was most severe ; but eventually the Royals overthrew a fourth French battalion, and drove a crowd of combatants from their cannon. In this conflict the ist Battalion lost one of its three colours. Sir Roljert Douglas perceived it in the hands of a French oflicer on the other side of a hedge. He leaped over the barrier, slew the bearer, and retook the colour, but was shot dead as he was retm-ning." " The bravery of our men," says the London Gazette, " was extraordinary, ten battalions of ours having engaged above thirty of the French at one time, and Sir Robert Douglas, at the head of one battalion of his regiment, having driven four batta- lions of the enemy from their cannon." While the Prince of Wirtemberg, with the Danes and four English regiments, supported by those of Cutts, Mackay, Angus, Graham, Lauder, Leven, and the Prince of Hesse, maintained a terrible and most unequal struggle, and was actually fighting his way into the French lines, no supports came up; and Count Solmes, to whom he repeatedly sent his aide-de-camp demanding succour, brutally derided him by saying, "Let us see what sport these British bulldogs will make us." Luxembourg admitted that he had never seen so Steenkitke.] DEATH OF MACKAY. 437 close and fierce a straggle ; and he now gave the order for the household troops to charge the column of Wirtemberg. The splendid Mousquetaires, Black and Grey, were in front, and all the horse and dragoons of the Guard, led by princes of the blood. " Sword in hand, messieurs !" was the cry as they came thundering on ; " sword in hand— no firing- let the cold steel do it, the cold steel only !" Slinging their carbines and musketoons, these splendid troops came like an avalanche on the now exhausted infantry of the first column, whom the king and Solmes seemed resolved to sacrifice be- tween them. Overpowered by numbers, they were now driven back, and began to retreat in disorder. The shock of the French charge was irresistible. The Scottish regiments were literally cut to pieces, and the English Guards nearly shared the same fate. Ten of their officers were killed in an instant. Mackay sent a last messagfe to Solmes entreating support, " as he and his men were left to certain destruction." " My troops can do no good," he repUed ; " and I shall not send them to be slaughtered." "God's will be done!" exclaimed the veteran Mackay ; and a minute after he fell from his horse dead. James Douglas, the youthful Earl of Angus, fell at the head of his Cameronians; Sir John Lanier, Colonel Lauder, Colonel George Hamilton (of Abercom), Colonel Wauchope, Colonel Hodges, William Stuart, Viscount Mountjoy (a volunteer), Lieutenant-Colonel FuUerton, and Major Kerr, of Angus's, eight officers of Viscount Fitzhardinge's Regiment (4th Hussars), six of the Scots Fusiliers, and an incredible number more, were killed and wounded ; while the Prince of Cont^, at the head of the household cavalry, bore all before him. Macaulay, slow to admit any shortcoming on the part of his hero William, says, " Five fine regiments were cut entirely to pieces. No part of this devoted band would have escaped but for the courage and conduct of Auverquerque, who came to the rescue in the moment of extremity with two fresh bat- talions. The gallant manner in which he brought off the remains of Mackay's division was long talked of with grateful admiration by the British camp- fires. The ground where the conflict had raged was piled with corpses ; and those who buried the slain remarked that almost all the wounds had been given in close fighting, by the sword or the bayonet." The troops of Marshal Boiifflers were now fast coming into action, regiment after regiment, and William had determined to fall back on his original position at Lambeque, after having won nothing, done less, and lost many brave officers and men ; and this defeat he saffered after having lost Namur. He had 2,000 men killed and 3,000 wounded ; two English colours were taken and several pieces of cannon. The losses of the French were nearly the same, including the Prince of Turenne, the Marquis de Bellefonds, Tilladete, Fernagon, and many other brave chevaliers ; but they remained masters of the field, over which they suspended from a lofty gibbet Luxembourg's luckless confi- dant, the spy and intriguer Millevoix. The casualty returns of several regiments were never published ; but in the brigade to which the Royals belonged there were killed and wounded no less than 102 officers, and 1,114 non-commis- sioned officers and rank and file. Macaulay has it that the allied army retired un- pursued and in unbroken order. Puffendorf states that when the Marquis of BoufHers' dragoons came in the fight was continued till night, and that the army made good its retreat " by the good conduct of the English grenadiers," who were continually halting, facing about, and throwing their grenades, so "that they — the French — durst not approach within reach of our firearms.'' Hence there must have been a pretty close pursuit. Paris was full of joyous exultation, and the people lined the roads to see the princes and nobles re- turning from the field. None was hailed with more rapture than the boy Duke de Chartres, who had received a ball through his laced coat and a wound in the shoulder. The name of .Steenkirke was applied now to everything, to buckles and snuff- boxes, hats and wigs, to perfumes and a new fashion of cravat, in memory of the Brigade de Bourbonnais, who had come of flying half dressed into camp, when routed by the troops of Wirtem- berg and Mackay. On the other hand,' the camp of the AHies was the scene of disunion, discontent, and dejection. The manner of Solmes was arrogant and his temper high. British officers would brook neither, and in their tents they spoke regretfully of their dear friends and old comrades who had fallen through his selfish obstinacy and the king's incapacity in his mode of handling the main body. They felt that the division of Mackay had been sacrificed to save the Dutch Blues and other troops. The English officers complained that incompetent foreigners were incessantly put in high command over them, the Dutch more especially ; and in this mood the arrny once more prepared to meet that of Louis XIV., and to encounter fresh disasters under the baton of King WiUiam. 438 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Lailden. CHAPTER LXXXL LANDEN, 1693. The losses at Steenkirke were more than replaced by the fresh troops that arrived from Britain. Under General Thomas Talmash (son of Sir Lionel Talmash and Lady Elizabeth Murray, Count- ess of Dysart in the peerage of Scotland), five tilities with Louis, whom, though he failed to humble, he kept in check ; a matter of some importance to Europe, and particularly to his well-beloved Holland, the war in defence of which cost Britain the then enormous sum of ^^32,643,764 : so to William of BREECH-LOADER (ABOUT I7OO). battalions had been detached, "chiefly English I and Scotch," says D'Auvergne, " viz., his own, of j (Coldstream) Guards ; 2nd Battalion Scots Guards, Colonel Trelawney's English FusiUers (now 7th), coijimanded by Colonel Fitzpatrick ; and the regi- ment that was Colonel Hodges' (i6th), now Colonel Stanley's," arrived at Bruges, and joined another detachment under Brigadier George Ramsay. The troops under Talmash were to unite with the Duke of Leinster (a title bestowed on Meinhardt de Schomberg), who aftived at Ostend with fifteen British regiments. Thirty squadrons also joined ander Brigadier Boncourt. Every summer now saw William on the Continent, in spite of his delicate health, and engaged in hos- Orange she owes the beginning of the National Debt, which was afterwards increased by the cru-' sades in defence of Hanover. At the head of the allied army, consisting of 60,850 men, William advanced from his camp at Parck to Lifege, in July, 1693. At Tongres, nine miles from that town, he found that the castle of Hiiy, a strong place situated on a height above the Maese, had capitulated, and that Luxembourg was advancing on Lifege; he therefore detached ten battalions, which with diffi- culty entered the town. After this, all offers of neutrality made by the Marshal Duke to the British in lAhge were rejected. The king returned to his position at Neerhespen, Landen. ] ORIGIN OF THE NATIONAL DEBT. 439 440 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SfiA. [Landen. and Luxembourg encamped at Hellick. The French then made a feint on Lifege, their real intention being to attack the confederates at Neerhespen, as the latter were much weakened by the absence of those columns dispatched by William to Liege and Maestricht Hence, according to Harris's History of WiUiam's Life, the French were supposed to be at least 35,000 stronger. The enemy quitted their camp at Hellick ; their advanced guard met at Waremme, on the Jaar, thirteen miles westward of Liege, one of those patrols which William was in the habit of sending forth daily to gain intelligence. It was still in his power to retreat ; but, by another mistake in policy and generalship, in spite of all advice, he resolved to fight. He could easily have placed the deep and rapid waters of the Gette, then swollen by continued rains, between him and those 80,000 who were coming on in four vast columns; but he thought his position sufficiently strong to resist them, and resolved to make it stronger. , For fighting the battle of Landen, or Neerwinden, that ensued, William has been greatly censured by all military men, when the great disparity in numbers between the two armies is considered by them. , Strong parties of workmen under officers were detailed, and the musket and pike were, for a time, replaced by the pickaxe and shovel. In the avenues to the position, breastworks were thrown up of the earth dug from the ditches in front of them. In other places abattis were made and paUsades planted. The sunrise of the 19th of July saw the whole position of the Allies entrenched, flanked by field-works in the form of redoubts and demi-lunes, over which 100 pieces of cannon'peered grimly at the foe. On the right flank of the position lay the little Belgian village of Neerwinden, with its red-brick and red-tiled cottages. On the left flank was the village of RomsdorfF, beside which flows the Landen, a sluggish little stream, from which the English chose to name the battle. After the fashion of the old Walloon provinces, both of these ham- lets were surrounded by wet moats and strong fences, and within these boundaries were the dwell- ings of the people, with their gardens, ricks, and cattle, their hives and honeysuckles, and all around were stretching meadows, bordered by weeping willows, or poppy-covered fields, where the cavalry of Luxembourg devoured or trod to mire the standing corn. The old village barricades which flanked his position were fairly utilised by William ; and the Duke of St. Simon, who, subsequently to the battle, surveyed the ground, expressed surprise at the rapidity with which entrenchments so vast and strong had been prepared. The enemy's left wing of cavalry advanced at_ six o'clock on the evening of the i8th, under Jean Armand, the Marquis de Joyeuse, who in that year had been made a Marshal of France, and was burning to distinguish himself. The infantry and the greater part of the artillery came up about two hours after, but as it was too late to engage, Lux- embourg made his arrangements to attack next morning ; so for that night both armies rested on their arms — the last night on earth it proved to thousands of them. Brigadier Ramsay, with his brigade consisting of five battaUons, had the extreme right, with orders to guard some hedges and ravines that covered his wing on the village of La^r. The Brandenburg regiments were stationed in the village itself, under Prince Charles of Brandenburg; and the Hanoverian infantry on their left, under Lieutenant-General Du- mont, whose duty it was to defend the village of Neerwinden, which covered the camp, between the right wing of the cavalry and the main body of the army. He was afterwards reinforced by three bat- tahons of the Enghsh, Scots, and Dutch Guards (" Coldstream Records."). On the left of NeerwindenVere the first battalion of the Royal Scots, Selwyn's (2nd), Trelawney's (4th), and the Kentish Buffs (3rd), with Prince Frederick's battalion of Danes, and Fayel's. Be- tween Neerwinden and Neerlanden there was an open space. During the night, by William's order, a breastwork was formed from one end to the other, connecting the two, to cover the line of infantry. On the left, the dragoons guarded the pass at the village of Dormal, on the brook of Beck, whence the cavalry reached to Neerlanden, where they were covered by the stream that flowed to the right, in rear of the infantry. So now all ^those hitherto peaceful Flemish villages and secluded homesteads were alive with troops preparing for mortal strife, and- bristling with steel and waving standards. When the dawn of the 19th of June stole over the flat and level landscape, the French army was dis- covered in columns of attack, and within cannon- shot, so the allied batteries instantly opened. A hundred pieces of cannon sent their thunder on the air, and did considerable execution among the troops of Luxembourg, ere the latter could bring his guns into position to reply. At six o'clock the French line advanced firing ; but so steady were the volleyts of the confederate Landen. ] THE DUKE OF BERWICK TAKEN. 441 army, that they filed off towards the flank; as Luxembourg found that to force the position it would be necessary to storm the villages of La^r and Neerwinden. The latter was deemed by both commanders the pivot of operations — the point on which the battle rested. By General Rubantel on the right, by the Duke of Berwick in the centre, and by Montchevreuil, a veteran officer of high reputation, on the left, it was furiously assailed at once. Similar orders to take La.61 were also given. The French brigades attacking Neerwinden were the I St Battalion of the Bourbonnais, the Lyonnais, the Regiments of Anjou and Artois, and King James's Royal Regiment, or the Irish Guards. Benvick led the assault, and the French came on with wonder- ful e/an. He cut his way, at the point of the bayonet, into the village. The first to encounter him at this place were the Royal Scots, under the fire of whom the head of Berwick's column perished; while their grenadiers " threw their grenades with unerring aim from the windows of a house they occupied. The French, however, pressed forward, and the battalion, unable to resist the host of combatants which assailed it, was forced to retire ; at the same time the house occupied by their grenadiers was set on fire " (" Re- cords of the 1st Foot"). At this critical moment the Queen Dowager's English regiment, through smoke and flame and a storm of shot, came rushing with charged pikes to the succour of their Scottish comrades; and shoulder to shoulder both battalions renewed the conflict with splendid bravery. Prince Frederick's Danes, in crimson doublets, and Fayel's Dutch, in yellow, advanced to the support of the ist and 2nd Royals, while at the same moment King William came galloping to that part of the position, and by his presence and ardour inspired the hearts of all. With pike and bayonet the French disputed the possession of Neerwinden for some time ; but after a struggle that had lasted for two hours they gave way, " and were driven through the defile into the plain; and the Royal and Queen Dowagers bat- talions, which had fought together at Tangiers in Africa, stood triumphant at the end of the village, and were thanked for their gallantry by the king." In their hands had remained the leader of the assault, the young Duke of Berwick, then rising fast to eminence among the captains of the seventeenth century. He had been taken, with his aide-de- camp. Captain Achmuty, a Scottish exile, while en- deavouring to rally the fugitives. Concealing his white cockade — the Bourbon badge — ^he sought, by the use of his native tongue, to pass himself off as an officer of the English army ; but he was re- cognised by one of his mother's brothers, George Churchill, who on that" day was at the head of a brigade. A hasty greeting was exchanged between them, and the brigadier presented the captive duke to the king. The meeting of these two royal per- sonages, " united by such close ties," says Macaulay, "and divided by such inexpiable injuries, was a strange sight. Both behaved as became them. William uncovered, and addressed to his prisoner a few words of courteous greeting. Berwick's only reply was a solemn bow. The king put on his hat, the duke put on his hat; and the cousins parted for ever." The battle meanwhile had been raging along the whole line of entrenchments; and on both sides cannon and musket, carbine and pistol, were doing their deadly work. Having failed at Neerwinden on the right, an attempt was vigorously made by the enemy on the left at Neerlanden, where only four battalions were posted, the rest having marched, by the rear, to re- inforce Brigadier Ramsay. Four French regiments of dragoons passed the Beck, and attacked the allied flank at the village. Frangois de Crequy, Marquis de Marines, and Marshal of France, who com- manded the brigades posted at Landen, ordered them to charge at the same nwment. As on the right, two hours' sharp fighting ensued here ; but! the enemy were ultimately repulsed, and hurled from the village into the plain. William was present part of the time with Selwyn's Regiment (2nd Foot), and witnessed the flight of the enemy. In the centre, the Duke of Luxembourg again and again led the white-coated French infantry, with wild shouts and colours flying, within less than half musket-shot of the well-manned breast- work that lay between the Belgian hamlets and where old General Talmash held command. But again and again they recoiled before the withering fire that rattled ceaselessly over the rude earthen rampart ; and when they retreated for the last time over lines of their own dead, after the attack on the villages had failed, it seemed as if all was over, and that William must triumph. Galloping to a point that was out of gun-shot, he summoned a few officers to hasty council. They were seen conversing with animation for a brief space, and then they separated, each repairing to his perilous post. Then it became known that the decision of Luxembourg was, that a last attempt must be made to storm Neerwinden ; and that the hitherto invincible Household Troops of France must lead the way. 442 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Landen, They advanced in a manner worthy of their high renown and ancient reputation for headlong valour ; while William, leaving Neerlanden, led the British battalions twice to the charge, fighting with the spirit they had shown all day. Until this period the Allies had successfully repulsed all the attacks of the enemy ; but now once more the roar of battle was deepening amid the clouds of smoke and dust that shrouded Neerwinden. The Mousquetaires, in their splendid apparel, with advanced banner, sliowing a bomb falling on a burning town, and the motto " Duo Ruit et Lethun," the Frencli and Swiss Guards, the Gens- darmes Ecossais, the Gensdarmes Bourguignons, De Flandres, and De la Reine, with all the other Household Troops, under the Prince of Contd, and three other brigades, advanced against Neerwinden, and broke the Hanoverian cavalry; while the second line of horse and the reserve advanced on the left against the hedges of Ladr. The Marquis d'Harcourt, who had been sent for from the castle of Huy, came in at this most critical moment with twenty-two squadrons of fresh cavalry. Villeroi pushed in on the right of the entrench- ment, the possession of which was disputed by the British and Danes with the most undaunted courage; and thus even thp splendid Household Troops of France were successfully repulsed — but for a time only. By the fiery ardour and the strenuous exertions of tlie Duke de Chartres, their broken ranks were rallied; and the attack was resumed for a third time, and the entrenchment levelled to make entrance for an overwhelming force of cavalry. " However, they did not come in on easy terms," says D'Auvergne, in his "Campaigns'' (1693). " The first troop of Life Guards, of which Luxem- bourg was colonel, lost their standard, which was taken by a soldier of the Coldstream Guards (Tal- mash's). The Fusiliers suffered very much in this action. " The king behaved with great gallantry, and narrowly escaped ■ the musket-shots," continues D'Auvergne. " One passed through the flowing curls of his periwig, and rendered him deaf for a time." Burnet says it went through his hat. A second pelssed through his coat ; a third carried off the knot of his scarf, and left a small contusion on his side ; and his two led horses were killed close to him. In "Ormond's Memoirs" we learn that he charged repeatedly at the head of the troops ; and the duke himself, when charging at the head of one of Lord Lumley's squadrons of horse, had his steed shot under him, and was wounded by a soldier who was on the point of killing him, when one of the French Guards — a Mousquetaire, probably — suppos- ing by a diamond ring which sparkled on his finger that he must be a man of distinction, took him prisoner. He was afterwards exchanged for the Duke of Berwick; "but this misfortune of his Grace was a blessing to a great many of the poor prisoners of the allied troops, who were confined in the same town (Namur), as he distributed among them a considerable sum of money." The Elector of Bavaria, who made a stern at- tempt to resist the progress of the French Guards, was driven to the river Gette, and succeeded in gaining possession of a bridge, at the other end of which he ralHed some cavalry and infantry to pro- tect those ready to cross. This was about four in the afternoon, when the white banner of Bourbon was waving over Neer- winden, and the whole allied line had given way. Confusion and slaughter reigned everywhere. Count Solmes received one mortal wound, and died in the hands of the enemy, regretted perhaps by his Dutch Blues, but certainly not by the British, who never forgave him for his conduct at Steenkirke. The Marquis de Ruvignd, fighting against France with all the rancour of a religious renegade, was taken prisoner, but saved his head by escaping. Standards, arms, and drums were cast away on all hands by the flying Allies ; the horse rode down the foot, and the artillery cut the tracee of the cannon, abandoning them to the foe. The bridges and fords of the Gette were choked with killed and wounded, and hundreds perished miserably amid its waters ; after King William, on finding that his right wing was completely overthrown, took care to place the river between himself and the enemy, and then gave the order to fall back on Dormal, which was occupied by the dragoons of the left wing, who had not been engaged. All who were unable to gain the passes threw themselves into the river. Such was the fate of the right wing of the horse, and part of the left, as well as of the infantry engaged at Neenvihden and Laer. The cannon and artillery-wagons were wedged in the narrow ways, and easily captured. General Talmash was entrusted with the care of the main body of infantry that retreated by Dor- mal to Leene, which he conducted with a prudence only equalled by the skill and courage he had dis- played in the defence of the long breastwork. When William passed the river at Neeriiespen, he united part of the English and Scots Foot Guards, and all that survived of Ramsay's brigade, to the cavaliy of the left wing. With these and the Lagos Bay.] DREADFUL CARNAGE. 443 troops he had brought with him, he joined the Elector of Bavaria, and began his melancholy re- treat to Bautechera, near Tirlemont (" Coldstream Records ")• " Never, perhaps," says Macaulay, " was the change which the progress of civilisation has pro- duced in the art of war more strikingly illustrated than on that day," After referring to the days of Horatius, Richard of England, and Robert Bruce, " In such an age," he continues, " bodily vigour is the most indispensable qualification of a warrior. At Landen, two poor sickly beings, who in a rude state of society would have been regarded as too puny to bear any part in combats, were the souls of two great armies. In some heathen countries they would have been exposed while infants ; in Christendom, six hundred years earUer, they would have been sent to some quiet cloister. But their lot had fallen on a time when men had discovered that the strength of the muscles is far inferior in value to the strength of the mind. It is probable that among the 120,000 soldiers who were marshalled around Neerwinden under all the standards of Western Europe, the two feeblest in body were the hunchbacked dwarf who urged forward the fiery onset of France, and the asthmatic skeleton who covered the slow retreat of England." After seven hours of unavailing bravery, his army was again defeated, with the loss of 10,000 men, 69 pieces of cannon, and 60 standards. As the result of recent encounters with William, Luxembourg sent such a vast number of these embroidered trophies to Paris, that the Prince of Contd was wont to call him " the upholsterer of Notre Dame," the church in which they were hung. Th^loss of the French was 15,000 men, and their corpses were piled breast high in the streets of the villages on the flanks of the long breast- work. Masiy great lords were among the slain. Montchevreuil, and the gallant Patrick Sarsfield, the titular Earl of Lucan, were lying there mortally wounded. Poor Sarsfield did not fall at the head of the Irish Brigade, but in front of a French division, fighting for France, instead of the land he loved so well, and where his memory is still cherished with enthusiasm. Though defeated, William had two medals struck in honour of Landen ; on each of these is his own profile, with the legend, " Invictissimus Gvillemvs Mag." The losses of the French were so great that they derived little advantage from their victory, save the power of besieging Charleroi. Worn with fatigue, the French lay down to sleep in thousands upon that horrible field, totally un- able to pursue the Allies or follow up their victory. The officers and wealthy nobles had their sumpter horses brought up, a supper spread, and amid the dead and the dying they laughed and sang, talked exultingly of the past day's danger and glory, and drank to each other in goblets of champagne. For ages was Landen renowned as a terrible battle-field. " During many months," says Mac- aulay, quoting a letter from the Earl of Perth to his sister, " the ground was strewn with skulls and bones of men and horses, and with fragments of hats, shoes, saddles, and holsters. THe next summer the soil, fertilised by 20,000 corpses, broke forth into miUions of poppies. The traveller who, on the road from St. Tron to Tirlemont, saw that vast sheet of rich scarlet spreading from Landen to Neerwinden, could hardly help fancy- ing that the figurative prediction of the Hebrew prophet was literally accomplished, that the earth was disclosing her blood and refusing to cover the slain," CHAPTER LXXXII. LAGOS BAY — ST. MALO, 1693. Never since London was a city were there more gloom and depression within it than when tidings came, in 1693, of the result of Sir George Rooke's encounter with the French in Lagos Bay. At this time the plan of the French Government was that their Brest squadron, under the Count de Tourville, and that of Toulon, under the Count d'Estrees, should rendezvous near Gibraltar, and there look out for booty among the shipping of Britain and the United Provinces, The plan of the Allies was that seventy sail of the line, with thirty frigates and lesser vessels, should assemble in the Channel, under Killigrew and Delavel, two Lords of the Admiralty, to convoy the Smyrna fleet, as it was named, beyond those waters where it might be in peril of the Brest squadron ; after which the greater part of the arma- ment was to return to the Channel, leaving Rooke, with twenty sail, to convoy the traders beyond the squadron which lay at Toulon Under D'Estrees. 4^t BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Lagos Bay. The ^ring of the year came, and a great fleet, laden for the Spanish, Italian, and Turkish markets, had been gathered in the Thames and Texel. There were at least 400 ships, whose united cargoes were valued at several millions sterling ; and the united fleets were to escort this enormous mass of wealth. The slow movements of the Dutch had caused much delay, and the merchants complained loudly that they were losing more by that circum- tance than they could hope to gain by the most their absence to menace the coast of Devonshire, It never occurred to them that he might have stolen out of Brest, joined D'Estrees, and be quietly waiting for his prey in the Straits of Gibraltar. The admirals, therefore, on the 6th of June, after having convoyed the Smyrna fleet about 200 miles beyond Ushant, announced their intention to haul up for England, and to part company with Sir George Rooke. The latter expostulated with them, but did so in CHARGE AT THE BATTLE OF NEERWINDEN {seH page /^2.). successful voyage. The Amsterdam squadron was not off our coast till late in April, and that of Zealand did not appear till May. It was June before this vast united fleet of war and merchant ships lost sight of the white cliffs of England, and by that time the Count de Tourville was already on the sea, and steering southward, with sixty-three sail of the line, manned by 4,484 men. The combined fleet was of eighty-three sail. The admirals, Killigrew and Delavel, unfortu- nately were ignorant of the motions of Tourville, and took it for granted that he was still lying in Brest. They had certainly heard a rumour that some shipping had been seen to the northward, and hence supposed that he was taking advantage of vain. He was compelled to obey their orders, and to proceed towards the Mediterranean with his twenty men-of-war, while Killigrew and Sir Ralph Delavel returned to the Channel. It was known by this time that Tourville had left Brest, and the return of the main body of the fleet caused the greatest alarm in London. Rooke, says Bishop Burnet, "had a fair and strong gale of wind, so that no advice sent after him could overtake him ; nor did he meet with any ships at sea that could give notice of the danger that lay before him." He left by the way the vessels bound for Bilboa, Lisbon, and St. Ubes, under the convoy of two men-of-war, and pursued his course towards the Straits of Gibraltar with the 400 merchant Lagos Bay. ] THE ENEMY IN SIGHT. 445 ships, which, says Smollett, " belonged to England, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Hamburg, and Flan- ders." On the 17th of June, when sixty leagues off Cape St. Vincent, he dispatched the Lark, a sixth-rate, of twenty-four guns and no men, as being his swiftest sailer, to the vicinity of Lagos Bay to reconnoitre. She crept in shore and was becalmed. Next day his scouts discovered two of the enemy's ships, and gave them chase till noon, when the Nova was in sight ; the wind died away, and ten sail of the enemy were visible in the offing, with some smaller vessels, to which they set fire, and then stood off, with their boats ahead, to decoy the squadron and convoy into the heart of their fleet. By this time the Count d'Estrees had left Toulon with a strong force ; but he met with a heavy gale near Gibraltar, which so disabled and scattered his shipping that they had to seek shelter in various French ports. B-feA .'^ '%4^^MAm^ Chatkam, a fifty-gun ship, came up v/ith one which was armed with seventy guns, and immediately engaged her; but a few broadsides had barely been exchanged when the enemy's whole fleet came in sight, under Cape St. Vincent. Immediately on making this starding discovery, the captain of the Chatham housed his guns, and made all sail to report the circumstance to the admiral, who immediately summoned a Council of War, which was attended by the Dutch Admiral Vandergoes. Pursuant to a resolution they made, the fleet, making all sail, ran along the shore all night, and compelled, in passing, many of the enemy's ships to cut their cables in Lagos Bay. When day broke next morning the town of Villa 38 About noon the sea-breeze sprang up from west- north-west, when Sir George Rooke bore along the coast of Algarve, and every few minutes ship after ship of the enemy came in sight, till eighty-three could be distinctly seen in the offing. He then knew that, with his small force to guard so rich and numerous a convoy, he was face to face with the Count de Tourville. Only sixteen ships, however, bore up to him, with three flags flying, those of the Admiral, Vice-Admiral of the Blue, and Rear- Admiral of the White; "for the Vice-Admiral of the White stood off to sea, that he might weather our squadron and fall among the merchant ships, while the body of their fleet lay to leeward of one another as far as they could be seen." 446 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [St. Malo. To Sir George Rooke and all his officers this predicament, which was brought about by the un- wise return of Killigrew and Delaval, must have been a source of the keenest anxiety, entrusted as they were with such a vast amount of mercantile wealth. By three in the afternoon they were within four miles of the enemy. To contend against such odds would have been madness, and risking the utter destruction of everything. Yet he exerted all his skill ; and now the Dutch were adverse to fight- ing. Vice- Admiral Vandergoes suddenly brought to, and announced that they must avoid an action if possible, as he dreaded the loss of the merchant ships. To the brave Rooke it seemed that they had advanced too far to retreat without fighting ; but, says Lediard, " considering the blame would lie upon him should he expose himself to the hazard of so unequal a combat, contrary to the opinion and advice of the Dutch flag-officer, and miscarry, he brought to, and stood off under easy sail, that the Dutch and the heavy ships might work up to windward." He dispatched the Shcerness with orders to the smaller ships that were near the land and probably unable to keep up with the fleet, to run in shore during the night, and save themselves as best they could in Faro, Cadiz, or San Lucar. The Count de Tourville, with ten vessels under a press of canvas, followed our squadron, which made all the sail it might, and they came up with the leeward about six o'clock in the evening. There were three Dutch men-of-war, whose officers resolved to sacrifice themselves to save the convoy. Two of these vessels were commanded by Captains Schryver and Vander Poel. For five hours the three Dutchmen fought, first eleven and then seven French men-of-war, but were compelled at last to make sail and sheer off. The Dutch merchants now fled in shore, and as the count steered after them, our ships, which were to windward and far ahead, escaped. The admiral stood to sea all night under a press of canvas, with a fresh gale from the north-west, and on Sunday morning he had several of the men-of-war about him, but only fifty- four out of the four hundred merchant ships. With his charge thus reduced, he got safe to Madeira, and thence bore up for Ireland. But more than 350 of the vessels which he had con- voyed down the Channel were scattered far and wide over the sea. Some reached Ireland, some La Corunna, some Cadiz, and a few Lisbon ; many were taken, and more destroyed. Seven of the largest Smyrna ships fell into the hands of M. de Coetlogon, and four others he sank in the Bay of Gibraltar. Others perished in the same manner under the batteries of Malaga. The gain to France was not great ; but the loss to Britain, Holland, and the North of Europe was immense. Hence it was that, as Macaulay has it, " never within the memory of man had there been in the city a day of more gloom and agitation than that on which the news of the encounter in Lagos Bay arrived. Many traders, an eye-witness said, went away from the Royal Exchange as pale as if they had received sentence of death.'' The French admirals instead of following Rooke to Madeira, made an unsuccessful attempt upon Cadiz, and bombarded Gibraltar, where the mer- chants sank their ships by boring holes in them, that they might not enrich the enemy, one of whose frigates was very roughly handled by the fire of the batteries and shipping ; and on the return of the king from Holland a squadron was fitted out to punish France, and appease the discontents on 'Change, by bombarding St. Malo. This squadron, the command of which was as- signed to the famous Commodore Benbow, con- sisted of five-and-twenty sail, according to Pere Daniel ; of twelve ships of the line, armed each with sixty guns, four bomb-galiots, ten or twelve brigantines, and some sloops, according to De Larrey. In the middle of November it was off the quaint old town of St. Malo, which is situated on a rock in the sea, that completely insulates it twice daily, and had a strong castle, flanked with great towers, begirt by ditches, and manned by a good gar- rison. St. Malo then as now was small, gloomy, and wealthy ; by turns an island or peninsula, accord- ing to the flowing of the tide, says a vwiter, and bordered by filthy foetid rocks, where the seaweed rots in the sun ; and to a considerable distance round it extends a coast of white rocks, angular, and sharp as razors. With Danish colours flying, to delude the Bretons, Commodore Benbow brought his squadron as close as he could venture to the town, and was per- mitted to anchor his ships as he pleased, unmo- lested, at half a mile's distance from the walls. Suddenly on every ship the Union Jack replaced the white cross of Denmark ; the ports were triced up, and a furious bombardment began with shot and shell. For four days this was continued with more fury than success ; for only a few houses were destroyed, and part of the town wall was beaten down. This served, however, as Camp- bell states, to alarm the inhabitants so much that the spirit of privateering was considerably checked at St. Malo and many other ports on the coast of Camaret Bay.] THE "INFERNAL." 447 France. The commodore landed a body of sea- men, and destroyed a convent by fire. The night of the 19th of November proving very dark and stormy, he took advantage of a fresh gale and strong tide to send in a fire-ship of very remarkable construction, with intention to burn the whole town ; and to the effect of this vessel, called an " infernal," the French assert the British trusted more than to the use of their bombs. She was made after the model of those which the engineer Lambelli contrived for the destruc- tion of the bridge which Alexander of Parma threw over the Scheldt at the siege of Antwerp, in 1585. In the " Histoire de France sous Louis XIV.," this vessel is described as a new galiot of 300 tons. In the hold were placed above 100 barrels of gun- powder, covered with pitch, tar, rosin, tow, straw, and faggots; over all these were placed 340 car- cases or mortar-chests, filled with grenades, cannon- balls, iron chains, and firearms loaded with shot, wrapped in tarred tarpaulins. She was open in six places, like mouths to let out the flames, which no water could quench. The commodore's inten- tion was to have this amiable invention moored close to the town wall, where it was calculated by its explosion to blow all St. Malo to pieces. She ran in before the wind and tide, but struck upon a rock near the appointed place. The en- gineer fired the train, and pulled ofif with all speed in the boat In the gusty wind she was soon ablaze firom stem to stern, and from her deck to her mastheads, and continued to burn for some time, casting a lurid glare on the sea and castled rocks of St. Malo ; at last she blew up with a dreadful explosion. The whole town was shaken as if by an earthquake ; part of the wall fell into the sea ; more than 300 houses were unroofed in an instant ; and all the glass and earthenware for nine miles around were broken or destroyed; while her capstan was shot from her flaming deck right over the ramparts, where it fell on the roof of a house, and in an instant levelled it to the ground. Smollett states that the inhabitants were over- whelmed with such consternation that a very small number of troops might have taken the place without much resistance ; but Benbow had not a soldier on board his squadron. His seamen, how- ever, landed, stormed and demolished Fort Quince, and did considerable damage to the town, after which the ships put to sea. Though the affair was executed with great spirit and considerable success, for St. Malo had long been a nest of privateers who were the scourge of English commerce, the people were still far from satisfied, and could not forgive the terrible losses sustained in Lagos Bay. It was in this year that the ships of the royal navy were first permitted to take to sea spare top- masts and sails, to replace those that might be lost in storm or battle. Two years afterwards brass box-compasses were first invented, and issued to our ships of war. CHAPTER LXXXIII. CAMARET BAY, 1 6 94. One of the most remarkable events in the course of William's war with France was the expedition to Brest, by a British fleet and army, under Lord Berkeley and the gallant General Talmash. It was resolved to keep this expedition a pro- found secret from the enemy, but the resolution proved vain. The Jacobites were incessantly on the watch, and in London it soon became known that some enterprise in which the land forces were to be engaged was on the tapis, when thirteen com- panies from ^the English Guards, under Colonel John Hope, of the Coldstreams, were ordered to march from London for Plymouth on the 15th of May, and that Lieutenant-General Talmash, of the same regiment^ was to command the whole of the troops. The scene of the intended operations excited much speculation ; " some talked of the Isle of Rh^, some of Ol^ron, some of Rochelle,some of Rochefort. Many, till the fleet actually began to move westward, believed that it was bound for Dunkirk. Many guessed that Brest would be the point of attack ; but they only guessed this, for the secret was much better kept than most of the secrets of that age." While a combined Dutch and English fleet sailed for the Mediterranean under Admiral Russell, another under Charles, Earl of Berkeley, K.B., was to remain in British waters, and take on board 448 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Camaret Bay. the land forces under Talmash, for the attack of Brest, which, in the absence of the Count de Tour- ville's fleet, would, it was confidently supposed, prove an easy conquest. Under Talmash were 10,000 men and a great number of horses. The fleet of Berkeley consisted of thirty-eight sail of English vessels, and twenty- three Dutch, including fire and hospital ships, under Admirals AUemande, Schey, and Vander- put. John Churchill, Earl of Marlborough, who was secretly in the interest of King James, instantly wrote to him on the 4th of May, stating that he had " but that moment ascertained that twelve regiments of infantry and two regiments of marines, were about to embark, under the command of Tal- mash, for the purpose of destroying the harbour of Brest and the shipping that lay there. This," he added, " would be a great advantage to England ; but no consideration can, or ever shall, hinder me from letting you know what I think may be for your service." These tidings King James immediately com- municated to the Government of France, knowing well that whatever conduced to cripple the power of that country weakened the strength and influence of the Jacobite party ; and most prompt were the measures taken for the defence of Brest. The British forces were already on board, but adverse gales detained them for nearly a month in the Channel; while large bodies of troops were being concentrated in the vicinity of the point to be attacked, and to the great Vauban was assigned the duty of putting the defences in order. The town occupied the slope of a hill towards the harbour, the entrance to which was defended by a strong castle, built by Cardinal Richelieu, the founder of Brest, and partly excavated out of the solid rock. In addition to this there was a citadel. Under Vauban, batteries were planted to sweep every point where an invader might be likely to land, and eight large rafts, each carrying many mortars, were moored in the harbour, the entrance to which is from the south-west, by a narrow and difficult passage called the Goulet, or Gullet, about 1,800 yards wide. On every side cannon bristled, and some days before the arrival of the British expedition all was ready to give it a warm and most unexpected reception. On sailing from St. Helen's, Lord Berkeley issued his orders for "all the ships and vessels under his command, together with the tenders and well-boats (built for landing the troops), to keep near the flags whereunto they were respectively appointed, and to shift their pennants accordingly, that when the signal should be made for parting, each might follow his own proper flag without confusion." In case of casual separation at sea, Camaret Bay was appointed as the general rendezvous. "A red ensign at the foretopmast-head on board of Lord Berkeley's ship, with the firing of a gun, was the signal for the soldiers to embark on board the small craft and boats ; and the hauling down of that signal, with the firing of two guns, for their going on shore." Meanwhile Vauban had reported to the King of France that he need have no apprehension for the safety of Brest, as all the subterranean passages under the castle had been made bomb-proof; "that he had placed ninety mortars and three hundred pieces of cannon in proper places ; that all the ships were out of reach of an enemy's bombs, and all the troops in good order ; that there were 300 bombardiers in the place, 300 gentlemen, 4,000 regular troops, and a regiment of dragoons." On the 6th of June the allied fleet was off the French coast. Cape Finistfere, bearing fifteen leagues to the eastward, and steering for the coast of Brittany. They came to anchor just outside Camaret Bay, a small harbour, with a tiny village inhabited by pilchard fishers on the beach, in Brittany, and eight miles south of Brest. There General Talmash proposed to land, and marching upon the town, attack it in the rear. By this time the French cannoniers, finding the fleet within range, had opened a fire upon it from batteries on the western point of Camaret, and from a castle on a high rock in Bertheaume Bay. This was on the 7 th of June. Peregrine, Marquis of Carmarthen, K.G. (after- wards Duke of Leeds), who served under Berkeley as Admiral of the Blue, undertook to reconnoitre the bay. He was a brave but eccentric young noble, in whom a passion " for maritime adventure was unconquerable ;" and he had accompanied this expedition in his own yacht, the Peregrine, named from himself, and deemed then a masterpiece in the art of shipbuilding. He was accompanied by Lord Mohun, who was engaged in the murder of Mountford the actor, during a brawl about Anne Bracegirdle the actress ; and by John, Lord Cutts, who had been aide-de-camp to the Duke of Lor- raine in Hungary, and distinguished himself at the capture of Buda, in 1686, and who was now an officer of the Guards. The Peregrine ran into the bay under the fire of the enemy's cannon, and came out safely. The marquis reported that the defences, of which he had seen but a small portion, were extremely for- midable. But Berkeley and Talmash believed that Camaret Bay.^ THE LANDING. 449 he overrated the danger, and were both unaware that their designs had been known at Versailles before a single soldier had embarked, and that now an army was collected in rear of both Camaret and Brest, and that the entire coast had been forti- fied against them by the greatest military engineer the world had seen. Therefore they had not the slightest doubt but that the troops, under a pro- tecting fire from the shipping, lying broadside to the shore, might be landed with ease. It was ordered that the Monk and Diamond, two sixty-gun ships, should first enter the bay ; but the marquis represented that they would prove quite insufficient to cover the landing, because the enemy were better prepared, were entrenched behind breastworks and redoubts, which were supported by fourteen squadrons of horse. On the 8th of June a Council of War was held by the British and Dutch flag officers, and it was re- solved "that the lieutenant-general should go on shore with the troops as soon as possible, and en- deavour to make himself master of the fort of Camaret, and that six other men-of-war should be added to the other two — the Greenwich, 54 guns ; the Charles, galley, 32 guns ; the Shoreham, 32 guns ; the Darkenstien, 44 guns ; the Wesep, 30 guns ; and the Wolf, 30 guns.'' These the Marquis of Carmarthen undertook to post so that all their guns should bear upon the castle. All this, however, proved a work of the greatest difficulty and danger, for no sooner was the Monk within range of the French mortars than showers of bombs fell around her, lashing the waves to foam. From the western point of Camaret and the Point des Fillettes the fire was terrible, and each ship received it in succession as she entered the bay; while suddenly three other batteries, which had been masked or unnoticed, filled all the beach with smoke, as they poured a shower of iron upon the advancing squadron, which the brave marquis made all speed to post and anchor in such a manner as to cover the landing of the troops, who were fast crowding into the pinnaces and well- boats ; for now the red flag was flying at Berkeley's foretop, and the boom of the signal gun had mingled with the echoes of those that were then engaged. The fire of the eight ships drove the French twice out of the fort of Camaret ; but wherever there was any possibility of landing great bodies of troops were seen posted behind entrenchments, the whole lines of which were wreathed with fire and smoke. In consequence of all this, there could be no prosecution of the regular landing, "which my Lord Cutts proposed, and was before agreed upon," says the Marquis of Carmarthen, in his "Journal of the Brest Expedition." Talmash disdained to believe that the troops he saw were regulars, though in French uniform. He persisted in asserting that they were a mere rabble of peasants, and ordered the soldiers to be pulled in shore ; and closely packed, with their muskets between their knees, they advanced through a dreadful fire of cannon, and effected a landing, Tal- mash leading the way, sword in hand, at the head of a battalion of grenadiers, seconded by 900 men armed with muskets and pikes. He leaped ashore under cover of a small rock on the south side of the bay. Brisk firing instantly ensued on both sides, while flinging their grenades the grenadiers advanced, forming in ranks as they went on. But Pfere Daniel states that the Sieur de Beausire, captain of French marines, observing that there was some confusion among the British, sallied out sword in hand at the head of two companies, and attacked them with such vigour that many were slain, and the rest driven towards their boats. At this crisis, so momentous for Talmash, he was mor- tally wounded in the thigh by a cannon-ball, while the Count de Servon, Marshal-de-Camp, and the Sieurs de Vaise, Brigadier of Infantry, and Du Plessis, Brigadier of Horse, charged down to the shore with their troops, and compelled many of the British, whose boats were stranded in shoal water, to surrender, while the rest, who were afloat, pulled away under cover of the ships' guns with all speed. Amid this vile hurly-burly, a Dutch man-of-war was sunk at her anchors ; her captain was killed, and only eight of her crew escaped. Pere Daniel says the English lost 400 men in the descent, and that only five soldiers and forty officers were taken prisoners. Burnet says that of all who landed, not above one hundred came back. A bomb-vessel full of English soldiers blew up, and every man on board perished. The Monk, the Charles, galley, and the Shore- ham were nearly knocked to pieces, and in these ships alone one account says 112, another 400, men were killed ; while it was only after incredible labour, courage, and peril that the Marquis of Carmarthen got them out of Camaret Bay at all, and made an offing. Their rigging was cut to pieces, and all their spars and yards were dis- abled. "Monsieur de Vauban, who commanded at Brest," records Pere Daniel, "had taken all his precautions with an admirable skill, in the batteries 43° BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Camaret Bay. as well as the entrenchments, in which were placed a battalion of marines, under the Marquis de Langeron." In this futile expedition 700 British soldiers perished, and " during many days the waves con- tinued to throw up pierced and shattered corpses on the beach of Brittany." The battery from which Talmash received his wound is to this day called "The Enghshman's Death." A little before this he is said to have stated, " As I have lost my life in the performance of my duty to so good a king, I am easy as to that, but it was torture to think that I have been so basely betrayed by the Government" In the year of the Revolution he had been ap- pointed colonel of the 5 th Foot, and Governor of Portsmouth. In 1691 he was a lieutenant-general ; and after his death was succeeded by Lord Cutts as colonel of the Coldstream Guards. THE ATTACK OFF BREST. The unfortunate Talmash lay on a couch in his cabin, where a Council of War was held. ' ' Steer straight for Brest, and bombard the town ! " said he, passionately. But this suggestion was supposed to spring from the irritation of his mind and body. It was not adopted by the naval officers ; and the fleet stood over to the coast of England, and on the 15th of June came to anchor at St. Helen's, and in August the survivors of the Guards marched back to London. The agony of his spirit, which smarted under what he deemed defeat and disgrace, caused the wound of Talmash to gangrene, and he died at Plymouth, exclaiming with his last breath, " I was lured into a snare by treachery ! " Burnet tells us that he was a brave, generous, and good man, and greatly beloved and lamented by the army. " The nation," says Macaulay, " remem- bered the services of the unfortunate general, forgave his rashness, pitied his sufferings, and execrated the unknown traitors whose machinations had been so fatal to him. There were many con- jectures and many rumours. Some sturdy English- men, misled by national prejudice, swore that none of our plans would ever be kept a secret from the enemy while French refugees were kept in high military command. Some zealous Whigs, misled by party spirit, muttered that the Court of St. Germain's would never want good intelligence while a single Tory remained in the Cabinet 452 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. CKispaniola. Council. The real criminal was not named ; nor, till the archives of the House of Stuart were ex- plored was it known to the public that Talmash had perished by the basest of all the hundred villanies of Marlborough ! " These troops perished in Camaret Bay most use- lessly, and yet what says Sir Walter Scott ? "Never talk to me about brave blood being shed in vain ; it sends a roaring voice down through all coming time." CHAPTER LXXXIV. COMMODORE WILMOT'S EXPEDITION, 1695. In the year 1695 a squadron of ships, having on board a body of land forces, departed from Ply- mouth on the 14th of January, under Commodore Wilmot, who had sealed orders, which he was not to open till "he came into the latitude of forty degrees, and then to do it in presence of the com- mander-in-chief of the troops." This squadron consisted of a third, a fourth, and a fifth-rate, with two fire-ships, and twelve other vessels for the conveyance of the troops. He was in the first instance to sail towards America, where he was to take under his command two more fourth-rates and one fifth. The troops were under the orders of Colonel Luke Lillingston, who was colonel of the 6th Foot in 1674, and of the 38th in 1702. According to his published "Reflec- tions," they consisted of his own regiment, 1,200 strong. His brother, Jarvis Lillingston, was major. " Each company," he states, "had two lieutenants, one ensign, six sergeants, six corporals, two drums, and two hundred private sentinels, making two hundred and eighteen men in a company. The train of artillery consisted of twelve pieces of cannon, viz., two eighteen pounders, four twent}'- four pounders, six field-pieces, and two mortars, The stores were in all things proportioned to the design. We had eight-and-twenty gunners and firemen, 500 barrels of powder, with plenty of all manner of ammunition and other necessaries." Owing to the paucity of communication between places in those days, and the little that people residing in one part of the world knew of those residing in another, much of deep interest and mystery attended the departure of any expedition by land or sea ; while the dangers of the latter were greatly enhanced by the lack of proper charts and soundings, log-lines, patent anchors, chronometers, and life-boats ; and by innumerable terrors of which the modern seaman, though deeply imbued by superstition, knows nothing. Navigation was more dangerous, and reckonings more doubtful and obscure than in our days; and in the watches of the night the seamen told of mermaids and magic islands, of plague-ships and burning shores, of storms that were raised by sorcery, and downhill currents against which a fated ship might beat tUl her timbers parted. On reaching the fortieth degree of latitude, Commodore Wilmot, in presence of Colonel Lil- lingston, opened his sealed orders, which directed them to sail to Jamaica, and to co-operate with the Spaniards in Hispaniola against the French settlements in that island, and to destroy their fisheries on the banks of Newfoundland when hauling up for home. After coming safely to anchor in the old road- stead of St. Christopher's, he sailed thence for Savannah la Mer, at the eastern end of Hispa- niola; intending, if the Governor of San Domingo was ready to march against the French in Port de Paix, to sail round to the west side of the island and bombard the place from the seaward. The French at this time had nineteen privateers out of Guadaloupe and Martinique, with three ships of war of about forty guns each, one being a Dutch ship captured at Camaret Bay. The French general in Hispaniola had full notice that the expedition was coming, and was duly prepared for it with all the force he could muster. This was owing to the folly of Commodore Wilmot, whom Colonel Lil- hngston, in his " Reflections," not only accuses of disobeying the king's orders in many ways, but of attempting to "overset the design" by leaving behind a store-ship with the best of the artillery, and of attempting to lure him " into clandestine measures to enrich themselves," and of taking the most direct plans to make public at Antigua and Montserrat the purpose for which they had come and whither they were bound ; while, as if to add to this folly. Captain Butler, of the Winchester, as he sailed along the coast of Guadaloupe, fired several Hispaniola.] THE SWAN DISABLED. 453 shpts as " a plain intimation that we designed to visit them shortly." When the squadron arrived at Savannah, the commodore received a letter from the Spanish commander, assuring him of assistance in any attack upon the enemy ; on which he sailed with three ships of war and two fire-ships, sending the transports and the rest of the squadron to the Gulf of Samana, at the north-east end of the island, where the anchorage is safe and spacious, though the entrance is difficult and narrow. He pre- sented the King of Spain's letters, with which he was furnished, to the President of San Domingo, who, by some petty scruples on points of punctilio, caused a loss of twelve days, during which time the French were adding to their defences. It was, however, ultimately arranged that he should march with 1,700 Spaniards and 150 Englishmen to Man- chioneal Bay, at the mouth of the Diver river, where the whole squadron was to meet him. To these Spaniards and Lillingston's regiment, the commander was to add ultimately 500 seamen. The Spaniards were to add three men-of-war to the expedition, their commander hauling down his flag to avoid the silly old dispute about precedence on the seas. After "loitering six days in the bay, diverting himself with women and music," Commodore Wilmot sailed for Cape Francis ; and landing the troops, he then ran within gunshot of the fort, which opened a hot cannonade upon him, and soon disabled the Swan. It was mounted with forty pieces of cannon, and well garrisoned. It was planned that while the seamen should assault it in rear, where the ground was higher than the fort itself, the troops should storm it in front. But the French did not wait for this. In the night they spiked their guns, blew up the fort, and laying trains of powder to many houses, destroyed a great part of the adjacent town, after which they retreated to Port de Paix. After a consultation, it was arranged that Major Jarvis Lillingston, with 300 men of his brother's regiment, and the Spanish troops, should march against that place, which was said to be some fourteen leagues off; but this was not done then, and as the soldiers became unruly, they straggled about the country in search of plunder, and many of them were never seen again. Smollett says that instead of proceeding against Le Petit Goave, " ac- cording to the instructions they had received, Wilmot took possession of Fort Francis, and plun- dered the country for his own private advantage ; notwithstanding the remonstrance of Lillingston, who protested against his conduct. In a word, the sea and land officers lived in a state of perpetual dissension ; and both became exceedingly disagree- able to the Spaniards, who renounced all connec- tion with them or their designs." It would seem from Lediard's history that the commodore had heard nothing of the troops from the time of their landing ; and being anxious for their safety, stood along the coast, and landed 400 seamen five miles eastward of Port de Paix. These, though they encountered opposition, and were briskly fired on, burned and destroyed all the houses and plantations of the French colonists to the gates of the fort itself, into which the enemy retired ; but that still hearing nothing of the troops, they rejoined the squadron in the night. Discover- ing next day that some of LUlingston's soldiers had straggled near to the fort, the commodore landed again the 400 seamen, and put on shore the cannons and mortars, but omitted to send tackle with which to get them mounted; and the colonel accused him of sending the carriage of an eighteen- pounder to mount a twenty-four. He alleged, as reasons for his delay in coming before the place and attacking it, that "we were but 2,500 men in all; fatigued, in want of provisions, without our train of artillery, or any instrument proper for a siege." He adds that the seamen refused to assist him, and were brought by the commodore merely as a body-guard, " being sensible that the land forces owed him a grudge." Monsieur Du Casse, the commander of Port de Paix, having sent a haughty refusal, when sum- moned by beat of drum to surrender, ten pieces of cannon were opened upon that place from an adjacent hill, and in a few days part of the inner fort was beaten down, and many fugitives who had taken shelter there were killed. Between twelve and one o'clock on the 3rd of July, the French made a vigorous sally. Their force was mixed, 300 being whites and 200 blacks, all well armed. By our soldiers and seamen, they were as vigorously met with bayonet and cutlass. Many of them were slain, especially their officers, who fought with high courage ; but they were routed, and many taken prisoners. Thus far one account. ■ " The 3rd of July, the breach being wide enough, and the bastion quite open,'' relates Colonel Lil- hngston, "I continued the firing, and gave direc- tions to have 300 grenades and their fusees filled, and all preparations made for a storm, and this I ordered to be done in sight of some prisoners, one of whom was suffered to escape. This had the designed effect upon the garrison, though in a manner we did not expect. About two the next morning, we heard a great volley of musketry on 454 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA [Poole. the side of the fort next the sea, which was soon followed by another, and then by confused firing for about a quarter of an hour. I detached my brother Jarvis, with 250 men, to find the meaning of it. As soon as he came to the commodore's quarters, he found all in confusion, and many of his men killed. The governor of the fort, it seems, expecting a general storm, and resolving not to surrender on articles, had packed up what he could carry, and resolved to fight his way through. Accordingly, they came very near the camp of the undisciplined seamen without being discovered, poured in a volley of shot upon them, and having put them in confusion, faced them, till his whole body, men, women, and children, marched off." As soon as the major saw the position of affairs, he with his detachment at once took possession of the fort, which was armed with eighty pieces of cannon, and the storehouse of which was full. These, with the governor's house and all articles of value, he placed under guards ; but the commo- dore suddenly broke into the place at the head of 500 seamen, and clapping Jarvis Lillingston on the shoulder, said, mockingly — " Now, major, I am stronger than you." He then ordered off the sentinels, and the place was given up to general plunder by the seamen ; and this had the effect of exasperating our soldiers and disgusting the Spaniards. In this fort and in that at Cape Francis, on battery and in store, were captured 133 brass and iron guns. These and the ammunition were shared with the Spaniards; but the commodore carried off all the negroes he could find, and sold them at Jamaica for ;£^5,ooo. He personally amassed plunder to the value of ;^25,ooo. By the Spanish governor's letter, it was stated that there were taken 10,000 pieces of eight in money, besides an abun- dance of plate. On the 17 th of July all the troops, artillery, plunder, and prisoners were put on board the squadron, which instantly weighed for Jamaica. " The damage we have done the enemy," wrote Colonel Lillingston, "and the booty recovered from them were considerable ; for in sixty days we ruined the plantations for a hundred miles, we demo- lished two forts, and took prisoners nearly a thou- sand negroes, who every one knows are valued at ;^2o a head. The seamen got plunder to the value of ;^4o,ooo at least. If the booty was never deli- vered where it should have been, and if the king was cheated as well as we (the troops), I cannot answer for that; the damage we did the enemy will never be repaired with ;^2oo,ooo sterling. We displanted the whole colony, leaving the enemy scattered about in holes and woods, making the Spaniards masters of the whole." After refitting at Jamaica, the commodore, whose spirit of peculation was most prominent in the conducting of this expedition, sailed for Britain on the 3rd of September, leaving four ships of war behind him — the Reserve, Hampshire, Ruby, and Swan — the first three to protect Jamaica, and the last-named to convoy some merchantmen. In returning he encountered a succession of storms and tempests, and fever decimated his crews and the troops, so that " it was next to a miracle the ships got home." The commodore and many of his officers died; and one of the fourth-rates, the Winchester, for want of men to trim her sails, was totally lost amid the dangerous shoals off Cape Florida. So true it is, as Dr. Johnson observes, that "war has means of destruction more formidable than the cannon or the sword. Of the thousands and tens of thousands that perished in our contest with France and Spain terminated by the con- quest of Gibraltar, a very small part ever felt the stroke of the enemy. The rest languished in tents and ships, amidst damps and putrefactions, pale, torpid, spiritless, and helpless, gasping and groan- ing unpitied, among men made obdurate by a long continuance of helpless misery ; and were at last whelmed in pits or heaved into the ocean, without notice and without remembrance. By incommo- dious encampments and unwholsome stations, where courage is useless and enterprise impractic- able, fleets are silently dispeopled and melted away." In the May of this year, 1695, a spirited little sea-fight took place off the port of Poole, in Dorsetshire. WiUiam Thompson, a fisherman of that place, in a small smack, with only a man and a boy on board, was fired upon by a French sloop pri- vateer, armed with two guns and several small-arms, and manned by sixteen hands. Thompson had on board but two small guns, probably swivels, and three muskets ; yet, notwithstanding this extraordi- nary disparity in force, he actually maintained a two hours' combat with the privateer, killed and wounded several of her men, after which she struck and became Thompson's prize. He took lier into Poole, and Schomberg records that " the Lords of the Admiralty presented him with a gold chain and a medal of the value of ;^So." The same reward was also given to a Mr. Williams, who, in a fishing smack belonging to Whitesand Bay, retook some merchant ships which had fallen into the hands of the enemy's privateers. Namur.] MARSHAL BOUFFLERS. 455 CHAPTER LXXXV. NAMUR, 1695. In the year 1695 King William ordered certain changes to take place in the equipment of the army. It was ordered that the Royal Fusiliers (7th), the Scots Fusiliers (21st), and the grenadiers of each regiment alone were to wear caps ; that there were to be fourteen pikes in each company of sixty men; that each captain of infantry was to carry a pike, each lieutenant a partisan, and each en- sign a half-pike. The May of the same year saw the king again in Holland, having sailed from Gravesend for the Hague. The Allies took the field, and two armies were formed in the Netherlands : one led by the Elector of Bavaria and the Duke of Holstein- Plon; the other was to act in Flanders, under the king and the Prince de Vaudemont. On the 27th the whole of the forces assembled at Arseele, where the allied army was found to muster 124,700 men; and in four columns it moved to- wards Becelare, in the vicinity of the French lines, between Ypres and Lys. On the evening of the 13th of June, the king, attended by an escort of cavalry and grenadiers, under Major-General La Meloniere and Colonel Ingoldsby, of the Welsh Fusiliers, reconnoitred the French army, then com- manded by Marshal Villeroi, who seeing his lines threatened, had passed the Scheldt, and posted his head-quarters at Honthem. During the preceding winter the French had provided for such quick marches, by making "royal ways," as they were termed, from Mons to the sea, in order to facilitate the movements of their armies, by cutting down all they met, without regarding house, church, or village, so that a squadron of horse could march abreast. During 1694 King William had remained satis- fied with simply seeking to resist the progress of the French arms ; but he now determined to recover from Louis XIV. the important fortress of Namur. The latter was well defended by ditches and rave- lins ; and its citadel or castle, situated on a high and craggy rock, had then the reputation of being impregnable ; and its bastions and batteries tower in their strength above the gaunt blue-coloured streets of the city below. Steep on all sides, the rock is still fortified to perfection, and has a deep well with two springs of fine water. Its import- ance in a military point of view was very great, and during the last three years the works around it had been greatly increased. To the batteries of Cohorn, Louis had added all the latest masterpieces of Vauban. The one illustrious engineer outvied the other. Namur was deemed the strongest barrier fortress in Europe ; and over one of its gates was placed a vaunting inscription, which defied the Allies to wrest it from the grasp of France. Finding it menaced. Marshal Boufiilers, at the head of a cavalry force, and a body of sappers, miners, and artillery, under a colonel named Megrigny, threw himself into it, thus augmenting the garrison to 16,000 chosen men ; hence, when the natural and artificial strength of the place are considered, the quality of the troops defending it, and the known valour aiid skill of the marshal commanding, the attack on Namur may be deemed an undeniable proof of William's courage and temerity. The columns commanded by him in- cluded " seventy battalions of infantry, and eighty, two squadrons of horse and dragoons, chiefly English and Scots," exclusive of the other forces under the elector and duke, covering the ground from Brussels to Dendermonde ; but these leaders, the moment that Boufflers was shut up in Namur, proceeded to invest it. William arrived soon after, and fixed his headquarters at Chateau de la Falize, four miles distant firom the place. Fourteen battalions from the Prince of Vaude- mont's army reached Templeux, about the same distance from Namur. Lord Cutts next came in with six battaUons, including two of English Guards, with the regiments of Trelawney, Nassau, Heyden, and the Welsh FusiUers ; the besiegers closed in on every side, and by the ist of July the hues of cir- cumvallation were complete. These tidings caused no alarm at the Court of Versailles. There it was never doubted but that " the Prince of Orange," whose kingly title was never admitted, would be repulsed with loss and shame by Boufflers. The castle and town were known to be of vast strength ; the magazines were stored with provisions and all kinds of munitions of war ; and with a garrison oi 16,000 chosen troops, under one of the best marshals of France, Namur was deemed as safe as the Bastille at Paris. The siege was vigorously pressed by the Allies, the scientific part of whose operations was con- ducted by Cohorn, whom emulation of his rival 456 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAlSrb AND SEA. fiJamuf. Vauban had spurred to exert his utmost skill. " He had sufifered three years before the mortifica- tion of seeing the town, as he had fortified it, taken by his great master Vauban. To retake it, now that the fortifications had received Vauban's last improvements, would be a noble revenge." The following were the British regiments before the town and in the line of circumvallation, as given' by D'Auverquerque, Chaplain of the Scots Guards :— shadows of the castled rock and of the cathedral spires far across the waters of the Maese and Sambre, an assault was ordered, and two masses of troops, one clad in scarlet, the other in blue, ad- vanced with colours flying and bayonets fixed to storm the covered way. The first was British, the second Dutch; and their orders were to drive in the enemy. Two attacks were made, one on the right of the Tower of Cockle, and the other on the left. HISPANIOLA. English cavalry, three squadrons ; ist Regiment of English Guards (two battalions), the Coldstream Guards, the Scots Foot Guards, the Royal Scots Regiment, Selwyn's (2nd Foot), Queen's Royals, Trelawne/s (4th Foot), V. Columbine's (6th Foot), T. Tidcombe's (14th Foot), the Royal Welsh Fusiliers (23rd Foot), the Edinburgh Regiment (25th Foot) ; Seymour's, Stanley's, Lauder's, San- derson's, and Collingwood's, since disbanded. The siege proceeded slowly at first, owing to the want of cannon. The trenches were opened on the 2nd of July, after the Dutch contingent had broken ground near the village of Baugd ; and on the 8th, in the evening, when the setting sun was casting the Major-General George Ramsay, a son of the Earl of Dalhousie, colonel of the Scots Guards, advanced with his own regiment, three battalions of the English Guards, and one of Dutch, at seven in the evening. They encountered a dreadful fire, to which they never returned a shot until they could level their pieces through the enemy's palisades, and poured in a volley which threw the French into confusion. Then the palisades were torn down, and with loud hurrahs the assailants rushed to carry the second covered way with the bayonet and pike. As the Dutch Blues wavered, the Scots Royals came up to support them. Flushed with success, Guards and linesmen now went on together, won Namur. j VALOUR OF CUTTS. 45/ the second covered way, and pursued the enemy among their own batteries on the brow of the ■hill, where many of the French fled for refuge to some stone-pits. The Dutch troops on the left carried all the works before them. In this affair, when the troops came back to camp at mid- night, it was found that 1,700 officers and men had been killed and wounded; of these 543 be- longed to the Brigade of Guards alone. The king in person had directed the attack ; and In a letter to the Duke of Shrewsbury, dated from the camp before Namur, July nth, the king ex- presses his satisfaction with his Guards thus : — " Two days ago I was obliged to attack the lines which the enemy had constructed to cover their works, and we forced them with vigour. All the troops displayed considerable courage, and parti- cularly the five battalions, the English, the Scotch, and one of Dutch, who attacked the right " (Coxe). To the English and Dutch wounded the king DEATH OF GODFREY Isee page 458). :r.ore than once, when the light was hottest, he laid his hand on the shoulder of the Elector of Bavaria, and exclaimed, "Look — look at my brave English !" Conspicuous am.ong them had been Cutts, of the Coldstream Guards. " In that bulldog courage which flinches from no ianger," says Macaulay, " however terrible, he was unrivalled. There was no difficulty in finding hardy volunteers — German, Dutch, and British— to go on, a forlorn hope ; but Cutts was the only man who appeared to consider such an expedition as a party of pleasure. He was so much at his ease in the hottest fire of the French batteries, that his soldiers gave him the honourable nickname of ' The Sala- mander.' " 39 gave handsome gratuities, but not a penny to the Scots. On the 14th of July the troops in the trenches were relieved by the entire Brigade of Guards,, under Lord Cutts — the Coldstreams specially guard- ing the king— and by the night of the 14th the- works were pushed down the hill to a detached' bastion that faced the gate of St. Nicholas ; and' it is to this barrier that Laurence Sterne, who, as: the son of an officer of the 22nd Regiment, must have been familiar with the old traditions of the service, makes special reference in "Tristram. Shandy " more than once. " ' Your honour's roque- laire,' replied the corporal, ' has not once been on since the night your honour received your wound,. 4S8 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Naiflur. when we mounted guard in the trenches before the gate of St. Nicholas.' " On the i6th this gate was surrendered, and on the following day the first counterscarp, or slope of the ditch, was attacked by the British grenadiers rushing to the glacis, and casting their grenades oyer the palisades into the covered way ; then, following up this assault with spirit, the red-coats carried the counterscarp in gallant style. The attacking force was suddenly aided by the regiment of Sanderson and the Welsh Fusiliers, who burst from the trenches to their assistance. But when they came to lodge the woolsacks and gabions upon the glacis, the French, who still defended themselves by means of traverses, winch enfiladed the ditch at a right angle, set them on fire, and sprang mines which caused terrible havoc. Many grenadiers vaulted over the palisades into the covered way, and used their swords with incredible bravery, till a lodgment was fully effected. D'Auvergne, in his History, computes this day's casualties at 800 men killed and wounded ; and states that " Colonel Ingoldsby's (Welsh Fusiliers) and Sanderson's Regiments suffered most among ours in gaining the counterscarp." It was on this occasion that while William was conducting the assault, under a fire of round shot, grape, and musketry, he suddenly saw with surprise, among the officers of his staff, Mr. Michael Godfrey, Deputy-Governor of the Bank of England, who had visited headquarters to make arrangements relative to an advance of money for the payment of the army, which was then in arrears — a pretty common case in those days, and even down to those of the Peninsular War. This gentleman was a near relation to Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, whose murder excited so much interest during the reign of Charles II. " Mr. Godfrey," said the king, "you ought not to run these risks ; you are not a soldier, and can be of no use to us here." " Sire," replied Godfrey, " I run no more risk than your Majesty." " Not so," said William. " I am where it is my duty to be, and I may, without presumption, commit my life to God's keeping ; but you, sir " Ere the king could conclude, a cannon-shot from the castle of Namur laid Godfrey dead at his feet (D'Auvergne). Quoting other authorities, Macaulay states that 1 " it was not found, however, that the fear of being ' Godfreyed ' — such was during some time the cant 1 phrase — sufficed to prevent idle gazers from coming from the trenches. Though William forbade his coachmen, footmen, and cooks to expose themselves, he repeatedly saw them skulking near the most dangerous spot,, and trying to get a peep at the fighting. He was sometimes, it is said, provoked into horsewhipping them out of range of the French guns; and the story, whether true or false, is very characteristic." Next day the guns opened against the half-moon of St. Nicholas, under Cohorn; the Brandenburgers pushed their parallels along the bank of the Maese, through a line of works cut in the soUd rock ; and while the Scots Guards held the king's quarter, the English, under Lord Cutts, mounted the trenches. On the 20th of July, King William received tidings of the fall of Dixmude, for which Major- General EUenburg was afterwards tried by a court- martial, and pubUcly beheaded at Ghent, by the royal command. • A new battery of eighteen guns having come from England on the 22nd, they opened against the bastion of St. Roche, and battered down masses of the stonework, but the enemy being in possession of the covered way on the right towards the Porte de Fer, it was necessary to exteiid the lodgment in that direction. On the 23rd a grand assault was made on the covered way, the traverses, and all the line of works between the Bastion de St Roche and the Porte de Fer. The stormers went on with great fury; the Royal Scots being in the van of the forlorn hope, and pressing on with such speed that, in effecting a lodgment and planting St. Andrew's cross on the ramparts, they had but one officer. Lieutenant Archibald Hamilton, and a few privates killed. The Dutch and Brandenburgers were also successful at their points of attack ; and on the 24th of July, when preparations were being made for another combined assault, the Count de Guiscard appeared in the breach of the demi-bastion, with a white flag in his hand. The batteries were then ordered to cease firing. The count requested permission to confer with Major-General Ramsay on the surrender of the town, to preserve it from further injury. The major- general thereupon went to the Duke of Holstein and the king, who authorised him to make an exchange of hostages. Terms of capitulation were signed, and on the following evening Colonel Lauder's Scottish Musketeers took possession of the Porte de Fer, in presence of the king; while Marshal Boufflers, with 7,000 men, withdrew into the citadel, having lost 5, 000 men in defence of the city, and 4,000 by desertion. The British army was then and for long after totally destitute of scientific corps ; hence on the day after Namur surrendered, when the Royal Scots marched towards the village of Waterloo, Captain Burgh and Lieutenant M^allace of that regiment Namur.j tHE GRAND .ASSAULT. 455' were ordered to- remain " with the forces engaged in the siege of the castle, in the capacity of engineers." ("Records of the ist Foot"). In the hope of being reheved by Marshal Ville- roi, Boufflers resolved to defend the citadel till his last cartridge was expended. Under the Dutch Earl of Athlone, a covering alhed army was assembled.on the plains of Genappe. The confederates were thus divided, one portion pressing the siege of Namur, while the rest were elsewhere. Under Villeroi, an immense force ad- vanced to Brussels, and bombarded that city with great ferocity; while the Earl of Athlone advanced to the then obscure and unknown village of Water- loo. Tiring of bombarding Brussels, Villeroi marched towards Namur, hoping to raise the siege of the castle; while the Prince of Vaudemont, with 182 squadrons of horse and seventy battaUons of infantry, drew nearer to the main army under King William, then encamped within six miles of Namur, at a chateau called Mazy, on a little stream of that name, where the dwelling commanded a stone bridge by which the river was crossed. These united forces were more than Villeroi could hope to break through, yet they hourly expected an attack ; and nightly horse and man remained accoutred, the gunners sleeping by their guns, while preparations on a great scale were .making for a final attempt to storm the castle. During the progress of these, the Earl of Portland, one of William's Dutch followers, son of the Herr Van Dippenham, of Overyssel, was sent to summon Namur for the last time. " It is plain," said he to Marshal Boufflers, " that Villeroi has given up all hope of being able to raise the siege ; it is therefore a useless waste of human Ufe to prolong the contest." Boufflers, however, deemed that resistance to the last was necessary for the honour of the Frencli arras, and Pordand returned unsuccessful to the camp. On the 20th of August the grand assault of Namur ensued. Though much indisposed, the Prince de Vaude- mont descended from his gilded coach at three in the morning, and with cuirass and wig, and long white ruffles flowing over his leather gauntlets, put himself at the head of the English Guards. The king also arrived to see that all was in readiness, and held conference with him. In the morning the Brigade of Guards — English, Scots, and Dutch — under Major-Geiieral Churchill, marched to the right to form a reserve at St. Denis, and support battalions already posted there under Brigadier Fitzpatrick. All these last were fresh troops, that had not yet been engaged. The Guards occupied the enclo- sure from the village, and communicated with the Hessians, who had erected batteries to command the plain. The weather, which had been wet and foggy, began to clear about noon ; the sun came forth, and his rays were reflected'by the bayonets and musket- barrels, which were then polished bright, in the lines of trenches and on the ramparts of Namur. From Puffendorf we learn that green boughs worn in the hat were the distinctive badge of the AUies. In order to reconnoitre, Villeroi advanced to- wards St. Denis, the road to which, through a thick old primeval forest, had been barricaded by felled trees and intertwisted branches; and finding pro- gress impossible, he fell back and retired. On this King William resolved to attack without delay the breaches of the Terra Nova and cohorn. Detachments consisting of thirty-six grenadiers from every company of that force were collected, and of eighteen from those employed. The Grena- diers of the Household Brigade were under Lieu- tenant-Colonel Evans, a captain in the English Guards. Three thousand English and Scotch in- fantry, under Lord Cutts, were to assail the coun- terscarp and breach of Terra Nova; while the Count de Rivera, with 3,000 Bavarians, was to march on the breach of the cohorn, supported by Major-General La Cane, with 2,000 Branden- burgers. Major-General Swerin, with 2,000 Dutch, was to force the casotte, while 600 picked men cut a passage into the Lower Town. "God with us!" was to be the vord of batde ; and .the signal for the assault was to be the explo- sion of a quantity of powder, two barrels full, on a certain battery near the Brussels gate. Four Serjeants, each attended by fifteen privates, were ordered by Lord Cutts to form the foriom hope, a peculiar arrangement, as it usually is the mode to volunteer for that duty. Seven hundred grenadiers, under a colonel, were to support them in attacking the great breach ; two regiments were to follow, and two to remain in reserve. Among these were the corps of Buchan, Hamilton, and Mackay, belonging to the Scoto-Dutch Brigade. A sound like a sullen roar, and a colunm of dust and smoke starting skyward, announced the explo- sion at the Brussels gate— the signal for the as- sault—and with loud cheers the stormers went on, until within 900 paces from the breach, exposed to a terrible fire in front and flank from the guns of the castle. Notwithstanding this. Colonel Cour- thorpe's regiment (afterwards the 17 th, or Leices- tershire Foot), had advanced with colours flying 466 SRlilSH BATTLES 'ON LAND AND SeA. [NamuK and drums beating, but the troops were in mftst instances new and raw; the supports came slowly on, and the stormers began to fall back. The officers fell fast on every hand. The Count de Rivera, Captain Mitchel, of the Guards, and Colonel J. Courthorpe were among the killed; Colonel Evans, Sir Matthew Bridges, Colonels Windsor and Stanhope, and the Count de Mercy, were among the wounded ; while the gallant Cutts re- ceived a shot in the head, which for a time quite disabled him. Unaccountably, the Bavarians, under the Count Rivera, did not attack when the signal was given, consequently the fire of the cohorn next the Terra Nova fell entirely on the British. " The raw recruits, left almost without direction, had rushed forward impetuously, till they found themselves in disorder and out of breath, with a precipice before them, under a terrible fire, and under a shower scarcely less terrible of fragments of rock and wall. They lost heart and rolled back in confusion, till Cutts, whose wound had been by this time dressed, succeeded in rallying them." Prior to this they had been furiously assailed by 1,200 fresh troops, 200 of whom were dragoons of the French household, under Count Nogent and M. I'Abadie, whose charges in flank and rear did dreadful mischief among 'the unformed and broken infantry. Lord Cutts finding that the assault on the Terra Nova could not be resumed, and observing that the Bavarians had now fixed themselves on the extreme point of the cohorn next the Sambre, a post which they continued to defend with obstinate bravery, resolved to make good their position with his whole force. Two hundred Scottish volunteers of the regi- ment of Mackay, led by Lieutenant Cockle, bent at all hazards on retrieving the disgrace of the late repulse, were the first who forced their way at the point of the bayonet through the palisades, and storming a battery which did terrible execution among the Bavarians, they slew the gunners, and wheeled round the cannon against the enemy. These 200 men carried with them the colours of the Royal Scots Fusiliers (21st Foot), which they were ordered " to plant on the paUsades while the Bava- rians renewed their assault. They gained the covered way before the breach of the cohorn ; but nothing further was attempted. The other attacks were completely successful, and a lodgment of a mile in extent was made along the covered way and entrench- ments " (" Records of the Coldstream Guards "). On this day the loss of the British was 1,400 killed and wounded; of the Allies in all, 2,000. The bat- talion which suffered most was the Royal Regiment of Ireland ; General Kane records that it had 297 of all ranks placed hors de combat. Against Namur 130 pieces of cannon and thirty mortars had done the work of destruction; and now Boufflers, thinking that he had done enough for honour, next day asked a forty-eight hours' truce, " in order that the hundreds of corpses which choked the ditches, and which would soon have spread pestilence among both the besiegers and the besieged, might be removed and interred." His request was granted, but ere the last corpse was underground, he offered to capitulate if not relieved in ten days. He was then informed " that the Allies would not treat with him on such terms ; and that he must either consent to an im- mediate surrender, or prepare for an immediate assault." He yielded on condition that he and the garrison should march out with the honours of war, leaving the citadel, with its stores and artillery, to the victors. After various meetings in the great breach between the Count de Guiscard, the major-general of the trenches, and the Elector of Bavaria, the white flag was finally hoisted on the ist of September; and that night saw the tertns of capitulation signed — the first that had ever been signed by a Marshal of France. From first to last in this siege the total loss of the AlUes amounted to 12,000 men. Three great salvoes of cannon from their united artillery announced to Villeroi the fall of the grand old fortress he had so totally failed to succour, and he instantly commenced his retreat towards Mons. King William removed from Ostin to a gentle- man's chateau near the village of Dhuy, where he had remained during the assault ; the Coldstreams an'i his beloved Dutch Blues guarding the royal quarters, while the Royal Welsh Fusiliers took pos- session of the gates of Namur (" Records of the 23rd Foot"). The same day, " the 26th of August, was fixed for such an exhibition as the oldest soldier in Europe had never seen, and such as a few weeks before the youngest had scarcely hoped to see. From the first battle of Condd to the last battle of Luxembourg, the tide of military success had run without any serious interruption in one direction. That tide had turned. For the first time, men said, since France had niarslials, a Marshal of France was about to deliver up a fortress to a victorious enemy 1 " In two long lines facing inwards, and forming 3 kind of avenue glittering with steel and accoutre- ments, from the blood-stained breach to the bank of the Maese, were the allied armies. King William Mamur.]) VIOLATION OF THE TREATY. 461 occupied his coach, accompanied by the Duke of Ormond ("Ormond's Memoirs "); but the Elector of Bavaria, the Landgrave of Hesse, and all other officers of rank were mounted, and in the immediate vicinity of the castle. Reduced now to less than 5,000 men, the garrison, with bayonets fixed, pikes and partisans advanced, colours flying, apd drums beating, came marching forth like gallant men as they were ; and Marshal Boufflers closed the long column, riding at the head of a regiment of dragoons, with the Count de Guiscard by his side (Puffendorf ). " An Elector of Bavaria," says Macaulay, " was hardly entitled to be saluted by the marshal with his sword. A King of England was undoubtedly entitled to such a mark of respect, but France did not recognise William as King of England. At last Boufflers consented to perform the salute, with- out marking for which of the two princes it was intended. He lowered his sword. William alone acknowledged the compliment, and a short con- versation followed." Boufflers rode on, but had not proceeded far when he was arrested by Everard Van Dyckvelt, attended by twelve privates of the English Life Guards. " You must return with me to Namur, sir," said he. " The King of England has ordered me to inform you that you are his prisoner." The marshal grew pale with rage, and his staff" crowded about him sword in hand. " This is an infamous breach of faith ! " he ex- claimed. "Look at the terms of capitulation. What have I done to deserve such an affront ? But beware what you do, messieurs, for I serve a master who can and will avenge me." " I, too, am a soldier, sir," replied the stolid Dutchman, " and my orders are to obey orders without reflecting on their consequences. The King of England has reluctantly followed the example set by your master. The soldiers who garrisoned Dixmude and Deynze have, in defiance of plighted faith, been sent to France ; so His Majesty might with perfect faith have detained all the French who were in Namur." By thiy rime the marshal was separated from his troops, aud completely environed by Dutch cavalry. Seeing the futility of resistance, he gave up his 3wor(l, and was detained a prisoner of war for some time at Maestricht The honour or credit of this proceeding on the part of William was considered extremely doubtful ; but, as the Jacobites averred, a king who could design the cold-blooded massacre of Glencoe, and witness the slaughter of the help- less De Witts from behind a shutter, who fought a battle with a treaty of peace in his pocket, who introduced flogging in the army and keel-hauling in the navy, was not likely to be over nice in any proceeding where the interests of Holland were concerned. With regard to the troops in the two towns mentioned by Dyckvelt, Burnet states that " the garrisons were not indeed able to make a great resistance ; but they were ill commanded — though the places were not tenable, yet they were basely delivered up, and 7,000 made prisoners ; and though all prisoners were to be redeemed at a set price within a limited time, yet they were all taken into France." The Treaty of Ryswick, in 1697, brought this deplorable, useless, and most expensive war to a close. In the following year the king was compelled to send home his obnoxious Dutch Guards; and the House of Commons resolved that all the forces in English pay and south of the Tweed, should be reduced to 7,000 men, those for Ireland to 1 2,000, while the Scots Parliament found about 4,000 all that were requisite for home service in the North. But 15,000 men were voted for the English fleet. Three survivors of the great siege of Namur were alive in the last century. William Eraser, who lost an arm in the trenches by a cannon-shot, lived 118 years, and died in 1768; but there were two more recent deaths of veterans who had served in William's army. These were Matthew Champion, of Great Yarmouth, who lived till 1793, being then in years old; and David Caldwell, born in 1689, who commenced his military career as a drummer in a Scots regiment, "and ended a soldier's life in 1796, at the age of 107. He may be said to have been a soldier ab ovo, born in the army, and in the town of Ayr" (" Notes and Queries"). The recruits who survived the severe tuition of Namur, says Macaulay, speedily became veterans. Steenkirke and Landen had formed the volunteers who followed Cutts through the palisades of Na- mur. The judgment of all the great warriors whom the nations of Western Europe had sent to the confluence of the Sambre and the Meuse was, " that the English subaltern was inferior to no subaltern, and the English private soldier to no soldier in Christendom." The British officers of higher rank were deemed scarcely worthy to command such an army. Lord Cutts had distinguished himself by his intre- pidity ; but those who most admired him acknow- ledged that he had not the science necessary for a general. 462 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Carthagena. CHAPTER LXXXVI. THE PURSUIT OF THE BARON DE POINTIS, 1697. The year 169'/ saw one of those strange half buc- caneering expeditions in which our sailors so much delighted in those days, fitted out for the West Indies, under Admiral John Neville, a very active officer. Early in the year a French squadron had sailed from Brest under, the command of M. de Pointis, cations, he bore away for the Straits of Bahama, on learning that Admiral Neville was in the West Indian seas in quest of him. The admiral when off Cadiz, fifty leagues south- by-west, had pursuant to command opened the sealed orders of the king, and found that he was to VAUBAN LOCK (MATCH AND FLINT COMBINED), A.D. 1692. , u This lock is thus referred to in the Catalogue of the "Muse'e de I'Artillerie : "— " Fusil-mousquet de Vauban, qui, :;u mecanisme ordinaire de la platine a batterie re'unit le serpentin pour la mfeche. A la bataille de Steinkerque (1692) les Fran^ais jetferent spontan^ment leurs mousquels pour se servir des fusils pris aux ennemis. Ce fut alors que Vauban imagina son fusil- mousquet, dans laquelle la mfeche sert au defaut de la batterie." The fact that a book found among the old stores of the Tower, in 1861, bearing the cipher and crown of James II., affirms the place of the manufacture by the English name ol Brooke on the lock-plate, seems to render Vauban's claim to the invention of this lock at least open to question, " The plan is ingenious, and the mechanism very simple. The object was to combine the action of a flint and steel, and a match cord. The cock is at one end, and a serpentine holding the match at the other ; the steel with its pan-cover in the middle. The difficulty to be overcome was how to fire the charge with the match, inasmuch as the steel and pan-cover necessarily intervened. So the pan-cover was perforated, in order to admit of the match, when let down, passing at once through the opening to the powder ; and that the burning match rnight not prematurely ignite the priming, a sliding lid was provided, which, so long as the flint was available, closed the opening of the pan-cover, and so shut off the powder from being accessible to the burning match." — "The British Army," by Sir Sibbald Scott, Vol. II., pp. 282, 283. to attack the Spanish settlements in the West Indian Isles and mainland. On the 3rd of April he appeared before Carthagena, with seven large ships of war, ten frigates, and several small vessels, having on board a body of troops, besides 1,500 buccaneers and volunteers whom he had col- lected at San Domingo for this expedition. On the 24th, all the strong posts being battered by cannon, and the suburbs taken by storm, the Spanish governor was forced to capitulate ; and the plunder taken was very great, some writers com- puting it at forty millions of livre.s, others at only nine millions. After totally destroying the fortifi- make all sail for the island of Madeira, where he would be joined by some ships which were cruising there under the command of Captain George Meese, an officer who had distinguished himself at the battles off Beachy Head and La Hogue, when commander of the Exeter, and who was now to serve with the rank of rear-admiral. Neville sailed about Madeira for fifty-two days before he could discover this officer, who then joined him, but with only two vessels, the Bristol, and Lightning, fire-ship, having lost the rest of his squadron in a fog; but the whole were united off Barbadoes on the 1 7th of April. 464 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Carthagena. On the 3rd of May the admiral was at Antigua, where he held a consultation with the Governor and Captain-General of the Leeward Isles. The officer who then held these appointments was Christopher Codrington, whose father in the time of Charles I. had emigrated to Barbadoes, and whose ancestor, John Codrington, of Codrington, in Gloucester, had been standard-bearer to Henry V. in his French wars. The governor had just received intelligence that the French were about to attack San Domingo, and had been cutting a road through the woods for the purpose of marching from Le Petit Goave ; so it was decided by him, at a council of officers, British and Dutch, that the ships should rendezvous at Puente de la Guada, where the Monmouth frigate brought tidings that M. de Pointis, the adventurer of whom they were in search, had certainly sailed from Le Petit Goave with twenty-six sail, but none knew whither bound. On the 27 th, part of the squadron which was to windward made signals of ships being in sight, standing to the west. On this Admiral Neville bore after them under a press of sail, supposing that they must be either French or Spanish gal- leons ; but when dawn came in next morning, they were found to be ten men-of-war and two fly-boats. As they stood off, chase was given. The Warwick, a fifty-gun ship, overtook one, and opened fire upon her, but she, being a swifter sailer, on setting more canvas escaped. One of the fly-boats was captured, and found to be laden with shot, shell, and powder. Some accounts say that she had on board also a hundred negroes, and plate to the value of ;^2o,ooo. The squadron was now known to be that of M. de Pointis, who, on four of our ships drawing near him, the Bristol, Trident, Gosport, and New- castle, shortened sail, formed in order of battle, and opened a heavy fire, particularly on the Bristol; but as his vice-admiral, M. de I'Abbe, with another ship, filled their canvas and stood off, the whole squadron did so in succession. For two days and nights, our fleet continued in chase, sometimes near enough to fire their bow guns, and sometimes at a considerable distance ; but no battle ensued. The British anrt Dutch rear-admirals sprang their topmasts, and as the breeze freshened, many of our ships had their canvas split to ribbons by pressing the chase so close. So De Pointis escaped, with all the booty he had taken at Carthagena. Bishop Burnet asserts that our squadron was much superior t6 his, yet never engaged it ; and that once when it came up with the French, some advantage was won by the admiral, who pursued it no further. He now bore up for Carthagena, and towards evening came in sight of the hill of Popo which overlooks the long sandy peninsula on which the city is built, and which juts into the Caribbean Sea. There he was rejoined by Rear-Admiral Meese with six other vessels, all of which had their canvas blown away. Sailing thence, on the 6th of June he discovered eight privateers under the lee of the land at Sambay, and sent in the Colchester, two other vessels, and the Lightning, fire-ship, to destroy them, which was accordingly done, while he bore on for Cape Tiburon, an uninhabited island, or for Le Petit Goave; but failing' "to fetch" either of these places, he sailed for Hispaniola, where, after taking, one privateer of twenty-four guns and burning another of twelve, he came to anchor on the 19th, leaving to his Rear-Admiral Meese the task of destroying Le Petit Goave. This was resolved on by the advice of the Governor of Jamaica, Sir William Beeston, who stated that it would be a good service to the crown. Meese proceeded thither; on the 22nd of June, with nine ships of the squadron, he was off that harbour, which is so safe from all vidnds, and was surrounded by fertile and luxuriant plantations of sugar, coffee, indigo, and cotton. Next morning at half-past three, while all was yet dark, he landed with 900 men, under Colonel Kirkby, and Captains Lyteot, Holmes, Julius, Elliot, and Moore, of the Royal Navy, and marched directly on the town. The seamen were armed with cut- lasses, pistols, and boarding-pikes. Steadily and silently the place was entered ; the sentinels were shot, and the grand guard surrounded and disarmed at once. A hundred men then rushed with loud cheers to secure two batteries of foiir guns each, and wheel them round to bear upon the town, which the French quitted with precipitation. The moment the sun was up the seamen spread over all the place, ransacking every house and room, every chest, press, and lockfast place. The little town became a scene of universal pillage ; and as many of the men began to get intoxicated by the wine and rum found in the stores, the vice-admiral fearing that the French would return in force and attack him while they were in this state, set the place on fire in several quarters sooner than he intended. All went to flame and ruin, by which many officers and men were deprived of their prize- money ; for all the spoil was only a few negroes, although four mules laden with gold and silver from the Isle of Ash had entered Le Petit Goave only two days before. Meese was now joined by Admiral Neville, wba Sarien,] DARIEN. 465 having got wood and water on board, sailed for Jamaica, intending to bear on to Havana in search of those galleons he and his crews were longing so much to see. On the nth of July he made the Isle of Pines, then a lonely spot near New Caledonia, and next the dangerous rocks known as the Col- lerados, without seeing anything of the treasure- ships. His men were now getting very sickly, and among others there died here Admiral Meese, and Captains Roger Belwood, of the Sunderland; Nicholas Dyer, of the Lincoln; James Studley, of the Pembroke; John Lyteot, Holmes, and Foster, of three other war-ships, who were all committed to the deep with many of their humbler shipmates. On the 27th the admiral also died, and the com- mand devolved upon the only surviving captain in the fleet, Sir Thomas Dilkes, who brought it to England on the 24th of October, in a shattered and half-manned condition. De Pointis, who had in the meanwhile been steering for the banks of Newfoundland, entered Conception Bay, a large and beautiful inlet in the coast of that island, fifty-three miles in depth, and surrounded by bold and mountainous shores. At that moment a stout British squadron lay near, in the secluded bay of St. John, under Commodore (afterwards Admiral Sir John) Nonis, an officer who fought valiandy under Sir Cloudesley Shovel. Supposing that De Pointis' squadron was that of Admiral Nesmond, he called a Council of War, and proposed battle at once ; but he was overruled by a majority of his officers, who gave it as their opinion that they should run no risk, but remain where they were. " By virtue of this determination," says Smollett, " De Pointis was permitted to proceed on his voyage to Europe. On the 14th of August he fell in with a squadron under Captain Harlow, by whom he was boldly engaged till night parted the combatants. He was pursued next day, but his ships sailing better than those of Harlow, he accomplished his escape, and on the morrow entered the harbour of Brest That his ships, which were foul, should outsail the EngUsh squadron, which had just put to sea, was a mystery which the people of England could not explain, and they complained of having been betrayed in the West Indian Expedition." And now occurred an event with Scotland which, when added to the recent massacre in Glencoe, was on the point of rending Britain once more in twain. CHAPTER LXXXVII. THE DARIEN EXPEDITION, 1698-9. A TRADING company, embodied by an Act of the Pariiament of Scotland, founded a colony in 1698 on the Isthmus of Darien, as a central position for commerce with both India and America. The Act was drawn up under the direction of William Pater- son, a native of Dumfriesshire, who was founder of the Banks of England and Scotland, and the com- pany was estabhshed "with power to plant colonies, and build cities, towns, or forts, in places not in possession of any other European power." The sum was raised in shares at ;^ioo each. The effort, says Macaulay, "was marvellous, when it may be affirmed with confidence that the Scottish people voluntarily contributed for the colonisation of Darien a larger portion of their substance than any other people ever, in the same space of time, voluntarily contributed to any commercial under- taking." Elsewhere he adds that the sum col- lected by the subscribers " bore as great a ratio to the wealth of Scotland then as forty millions would I bear now. It is melancholy to see in the roll the I name of more than one professional man whose ! paternal anxiety led him to lay out probably all his hard-earned savings in purchasing a hundred pound share for each of his children." One-half of the stock was to be held by Scotchmen resident in Scotland ; and no stock which had originally been held by one of these should ever be transferred to any but a Scotchman resident in Scotland. All the sugar and tobacco grown on the com- pany's plantations were to be exempt from taxation. It was doubtless one of the greatest and grandest schemes of the age. The proprietors were em- powered to form their own constitutions, civil and military; for the space of ten years they were empowered to freight their own or foreign vessels, notwithstanding the navigation laws ; they were to defend themselves by sea and land; and to conclude treaties with the sovereigns of any lands in Asia, Africa, or America. If their vessels were detained 466 BRITISH BAttLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Barien. by foreign powers, the king was to interpose his authority. Finally, all members, officials, and ser-' vants of the company were to be declared free from taxation or impressment for twenty years ; end ' all foreigners who became members of the company were lo be considered as denizens of Scotland. The Act was touched by the royal sceptre, ha.d the Great Seal of Scotland affixed, and became law on the 26th of June. In the meantime the English East India Company had taken the alarm — an alarm which soon rose almost to a frenzy, and spread to both Houses of Parliament, who addressed the king on the subject in a narrow-minded and foolish manner, urging that Scotland would thus be made a free port for all East India commodities ; even that from Scotland ■would come all the saltpetre which would furnish the means of war to the fleets and armies of con- tending nations ; that the English commerce in tobacco, sugar, cotton, wool, skins, masts, &c., (Vould be utterly lost, as Scotland would become the magazine of all merchandise. ':■: The Spaniards also took alarm at the promise pf the future greatness of New Edinburgh, as the intended capital of New Caledonia was to be named. Its vicinity to the great marts of Spain in South America, and the possibility which its situation afforded for cutting off all communication between these and the port of Panama on the South Sea, whither the treasures of Peru were annually con- veyed, filled the Court of Madrid with apprehension. Warm remonstrances were made on the subject by the Spanish Ambassador to the English Ministry, although the land of the intended Scottish colony belonged to no European nation, but to a tribe who were the bitterest foes of the Spaniards. Though the fleets and arsenals of the latter were now in a wretched condition, Scotland, unsupported by England, could not have maintained a war with that country; and it was evident that both England and King William, in pursuance of his grudge against Scotland, would either leave her to fight her own battles, or seek to crush her colony. In spite of all their discouragements, the Scots were determined to proceed with their favourite scheme ; and the opposition of the English was viewed but .as the true test of its excellence. Six vessels, armed, and carrying from thirty to sixty guns, freighted with provisions and military stores, and having on board 1,200 men, 300 of whom belonged to the first families in Scotland, sailed from the Firth of Forth on the 26th of July, 1698, and on that day we are told that " the whole city of Edinburgh poured down upon Leith to see the colony depart, amid the tears, the prJLises, and the prayers of relations and friends. Many seamen and soldiers, whose services had been refused because more offered themselves than were needed, were found hid in the ships, and when ordered ashore clung to the ropes and timbers, imploring to go without reward with their companions." The Scottish squadron reached the Gulf of Darien, and on the 3rd of November the armed colonists disembarked at Acta, a secure and capacious harbour, equally distant from Portobello and Carthagena, after a voyage that seemed longer in those days than is one to the Antipodes now, and set up the white cross of St. Andrew. They were well received by one of the greatest princes in the country, who wore " a red coat, a pair of cotton drawers, and an old hat," and who was attended by twelve courtiers who were stark naked. He was imm.ediately propitiated by the gift of a new hat, blazing with gold lace. On a small peninsula, three miles long by a quarter of a mile broad, they fixed the site of that New Edinburgh which they hoped would become the emporium of the Indies. They dug a trench to separate it from the mainland; constructed a fort, named Fort St. Andrew, mounted with fifty pieces of cannon ; and within they built ■ houses thatched with palm-leaves; and succeeded in making friends with the aboriginal race. The internal government of the colony was or- ganised according to a plan devised by the direc- tors in Scotland; and when intelligence reached Edinburgh, on the 25th of March, 1699, that the colony was actually founded, a paroxysm of delight filled the people, and thanks to God were offered up in every church in the city. The winter passed, and the summer of 1699 brought the sickly influences of the climate on the colonists. Diseases unknown to the temperate clime from which they had come began to thin their ranks and paralyse their industry. Among those who perished was Ensign Coult, of the regi- ment afterwards named the Scots Fusilier Guards. Unused to manual labour, many of the gentle- men were among the first to succumb ; hence much of the ground remained uncleared, and provi- sions began to fall short, as they had no aid or resource but such as came from Scotland. A mes- senger was sent home to crave supplies ; but ere he returned they were attacked by a force of Spaniards, whose ambassador had repaired to King William at Kensington, and had there denounced in the bitterest terms the formation of the Scottish colony. The persons composing the latter, led by a Scottish officer of some experience, named Cap- Banen. } THE KING'S BARBARITY. 4(57 tain James Montgomery, opened a fire of cannon and musketry from their fort, and completely re- pulsed the Spaniards, whose unexpected attack rendered them apprehensive that they would be , unable to resist continued hostilities, and hence they became despondent, " though emigrants from . various quarters were coming in," says Mac- f aulay ; " and the population of New Caledonia had already increased from 1,200 to 10,000. The riches of the country — these are the words of a newspaper of that time — were great beyond imagi- nation. The mania in Scotland rose to the highest point. Munitions of war and implements of agriculture were provided in large quantities, and multitudes were impatient to emigrate to the land of promise." Misfortunes thickened at Darien. A Scottish ship, the Dolphin, 14 guns, laden with provisions, was unfortunately cast away at Carthagena. She and her cargo were seized; Pinkerton, her cap- tain, and her crew were put in chains, and after being compelled to sweep the streets, were sent to Spain to be tried as pirates. Naturally resenting such lawless conduct, the Council of New Cale- donia issued letters of marque and reprisal against the Spanish shipping; and, as Macaulay has it, " the Scottish flag had been planted but a few months on the walls of New Edinburgh, and already a war which Scotland, without the help of England, was unable to sustain, had begun." The horrors of starvation began to menace the luckless settlers, who never doubted that by pur- chase they would receive supplies from the English colonies in the west ; but they found to their con- sternation that the king, with a barbarity that was infamous, had issued strict and special orders to the Governors of Jamaica, Barbadoes, New York, and other places, prohibiting in his name all the setders under their respective jurisdictions "from holding any intercourse with the Scottish colony at Darien, or giving them any supplies of provisions, ammunition, or arms ! " This stroke proved decisive. After struggling for a short time, during which they were indebted for food to the charity of the friendly Indians, the colony, notwithstanding the earnest remonstrances of William Paterson, was broken up, after having subsisted eight months. The Scots all left Darien on board of four armed ships belonging to the Company, named the Cale- donia, St. Andrew, Unicorn, and Pink. Severe and perilous was their voyage. Ere the St. Andrew reached Jamaica she had thrown 100 corpses over- board, and many more died after. The other ves- sels lost about 300 men. The Unicorn was left to rot at New York ; but the Caledonia reached Scot- land with the poor survivors of the expedition. In the meantime, a large vessel which had, been dispatched from Leith with 300 recruits, and a cargo of provisions and military stores, reached New Edinburgh, which the crew to their astonish- ment found deserted, the huts in ruins, the fort covered with wild bushes ; " and the site marked out for the proud capital, which was to have been the Tyre, the Venice, the Amsterdam of the eighteenth century, was overgrown with jungle, and inhabited only by the sloth and the baboon." Still resolute to persevere, the Scottish com- pany fitted out another expedition. It consisted of 1,300 armed men, who sailed from Rothesay in the Isle of Bute on board of four vessels, the Rising Sun, Captain Gibson; the Company's Hope, Captain Miller ; the Hamilton, Captain Duncan ; and the Hope, of Borrowstounness, Captain Dalling. The 24th of September, 1699, saw them out oi the Clyde ; the 9th of November brought them to the English settlement of Montserrat. The moment the Scottish flag was seen they were ordered off, and denied either water or provisions by the governor, who for this barbarity pleaded the orders of the king. He told them that it was useless for them to proceed, as the settlement had been abandoned. Discrediting this, they bore en, and on the 30th of the same month reached Darien ; and their hearts certainly sank when they found the place a wilder- ness, for they had come to recruit a colony, not to found it anew. However, on being joined by Captain Thomas Drummond, one of the original Council, with two small sloops laden with provi- sions, they landed and proceeded to settle them- selves. A new fort was constructed on the old ground, and within its ramparts were built ninety huts, each measuring twelve feet by ten. Many reduced Scottish officers were among these colonists ; and on hearing that the Spaniards were marching to attack them. Captain Drummond proposed to these gentlemen that their movements should be anti- cipated. This bold and politic scheme was frustrated by the jealousy of those to whom the conduct of the expedition had been entrusted. At this juncture. Captain Campbell, of Finab, a brave and resolute officer, who had served in the Mar- quis of Argyle's regiment in Flanders, arrived in the colony, and prepared, with only 200 men, to take the field against the invaders of the setrie- ment, which even the French— Scotland's ancient allies— were anxious to crush, on the plea that if English and Dutch merchants took shares in the design, it would have strengthened the confederate 468 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. i.Darien interest by having the mines of the West Indies and the trade between the North and South Seas at their command. In the meanwhile an irregular army, composed of Spaniards, Creoles, negroes, and mulattoes, was on the march across the isthmus of Panama with a body of savage Indians ; these blockaded Fort St; Andrew by land, while a Spanish squadron of eleven vessels of war, under Admiral Don Juan Pimianta, anchored off it to the seaward, and struggle went on, and the communication between the Scots and their watering-place was completely cut off. " Reduced now to despair, and wasted by a con- tagious sickness, they agreed to deliver up the place, and the terms granted were honourable; and this is of itself a sufficient reputation of the calumnies v.'ith which these poor abandoned people were aspersed by their English enemies." By the end of March a treaty was signed by GTJLF OF DARIEN. landed a military force. The little band of Scots now found themselves invested beyond all hope of relief. Yet they did not despair. A drummer came with a message, which proved unintelligible to the besieged, who stoutly refused to capitulate. The musket and the cannon were now resorted to, and on the 29th of February some sallies were made, in which the Scots, notwithstanding the ter- rible disparity of numbers, were victorious. But pestilence, as well as the bullet, thinned their ranks fast; and on the 17th of March, when a last sally was made, they were defeated with slaughter. The Spaniards now gained ground rapidly, and by the 24th obtained fresh ammunition and more cannon from the fleet. For four more days the hopeless which the- Scots bound themselves to evacuate Darien for ever in fourteen days ; but only 300 men were surviving to march out with their colours flying. In four months 1,000 had perished. Captain Campbell, dreading the vengeance of the Spaniards, made his escape to New York. On the nth of April, 1702, the survivors set sail from Darien, but took different courses, some to Jamaica, and others to New York. 250 died on board the vessels at sea. The rest sought shelter in English ports, where a few remained ; others were made prisoners by the Spaniards : and it was not until the lapse of many months that the rem- nant of the expedition, consisting of only thirty men, reached their native shores. Dafletl.] INDIGNATION. OF THE SCOTS. 469 Such was the ruinous end of this splendid scheme, in which Scotland lost more than 2,000 men, and sank money equal in ratio to forty millions of the present day — an end which was unquestionably brought about by the selfish jealousy of the English merchants, and the more unjustifiable but revenge- ful policy of the king. The just indignation and despair of her people were such, and so great was their animosity against William, as the chief author of the whole disaster. demanded the instant release of two men who were in prison for circulating hand-bills on the Darien question. Their request not being so promptly complied with as they wished, they marched to the Tolbooth, broke it open, and, overpowering the city guard, set all the prisoners at liberty; while the musical bells of St. Giles, as a sneer at the king, played " Wilfu' Willie." The Scottish Ministry were either, unable or were afraid to punish these patriotic rioters. Four only MILITARY UNIFORMS, I70O. that the hopes of the exiled Stuarts began once more to revive ; and loud were the outcries which were raised on all sides against the pernicious in- fluence of English councils on the affairs of Scotland. It was clear that proper leaders were only wanting to rouse the whole- kingdom in arms, and effect another revolution. In the most virulent language, William was accused of duplicity, ingratitude, and of inhum3,nity. The Spaniards came in for a large share of this indignation ; and on tidings reaching Edinburgh of the defeat of their forces at Tubacante, the city was illuminated, and the windows of all members of the Government were smashed. The mob pro- ceeded to the house of the Lord- Advocate, and 40 were brought to trial, after long delay. One was condemned to be scourged, and three to be pil- loried ; but their, sentence partook more of the character of a triumph than a punishment, ." the mob," says Carstairs, in his State Papers, "huzzaing them all along, and throwing flowers and roses on the iron, and wine going about like water." The mind of the people was long in a state of just exasperation ; and when the Scottish Parlia- ment assembled on the 29th of October, the table was loaded with angry addresses and petitions, and in these the king, the English Parliament, and the Spaniards were furiously denounced as the enemie^ of tlienatioa 470 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Cremona. CHAPTER LXXXVIII. THE IRISH AT CREMONA, 1702. Though they were not serving under the British flag, the defence of Cremona by the Irish was one of the most brilliant deeds performed at the opening of the eighteenth century. When the Duke of Anjou ascended the Spanish throne, under the title of Philip V., the King of France had the pleasure of beholding the influence of the house of Bourbon extended from Antwerp to Gibraltar, and from Naples to the Baltic. But war ensued. The Emperor of Germany refused to acknowledge his title, and his army was strengthened by the talents of Prince Eugene, who having been injured by Louis XIV., had entered the imperial service. Marshal Villeroihaving succeeded Catinat as head of the French army in August, 1701, and having, with his usual rashness, attacked Eugene's camp at Chiari, he was defeated. Both parties retired into winter quarters ; Eugene encamping so as to blockade Mantua, and while there he conceived tlie idea of possessing Cremona by surprise. Situated on the left bank of the Po, near its junc- tion with the Adda, this city v/as the centre of the French forces, and from its strength was supposed to be beyond storming. The place was large. It was then, and is now, surrounded by walls flanked by bastions and girt by ditches, and is defended by a citadel, the tower of which, according to the "Atlas Geographus, 1711," the inhabitants were wont to boast as being the highest in Europe. In 1702 it had a pontoon bridge across the Po, with a iete du pont, and an armed bastion to defend it. A Spanish officer was governor ; but Lieutenant- General the Count de Revel was at the head of the French garrison, which mustered 8,000 bayonets, and was under the immediate superintendence of the Marshal Due de Villeroi, whose quarters were in the city. Under the Marquis de Crequi, a large portion of the army was posted between the city and Alessandria, so that Cremona appeared beyond all chances of a surprise. " Security and love of pleasure," says the ihe author of "The MiUtary History of the Irish Nation," "induced thegarrison toforego the cautions prescribed by the rules of war. No patrols scoured the neighbourhood ; no rounds on the ramparts, or through the open streets, secured the vigilance of the sentinels and corps de garde; and except the squares; the gates, and She tUe du pont, the rest of the town, bastions and outworks were wholly neglected. Of the whole garrison, sunk in every species of licentiousness and revelry, the two Irish regiments of Burke and Dillon, stationed near the Po gate, alone observed the rigour of military dis- cipUne, and were alone found regularly under arms on parade or at the posts assigned them. They had not been corrupted by example, nor debauched by the luxuries of a country in which they were perfect strangers, of which they spoke not the language, and from the excesses of whidh their humble means and low pay, as well as unrefined manners and uncouth appearance, probably ex- cluded them." Information of this state of matters was conveyed by spies to Prince Eugene, and he resolved to profit by the opportunity for taking Cremona by a coup de main. He knew that if successful he would destroy the main strength of the French army, isolate Mantua, and capture the whole Duchy of Milan ; but Irish bayonets and Irish bravery marred the carrying out of his plan. An aqueduct conveyed the debris of the street gutters of Cremona into the fosse without the walls. It was the work of the Romans, and old perhaps as the days of Vespasian, as it was broad and lofty, and resembled the sewers of ancient Rome. It passed under the house of a priest named Cassoli, near the gate of St. Margaret The spies of Eugene had observed all this, and furnished him with a map of the town, showing the position of the corps de garde and of the quarters of Villeroi and other officers of rank. He first secured the adherence of the ecclesiastic Cassoli, either by tempting his avarice or inflaming his patriotism for the expulsion of the Gallo-Spaniards. Whatever was his desire, the bait took, and Cassoli, secretly in the night, through the unsavoury avenue described, introduced a party of Imperialists, and concealed them in his house till the plan of treachery was matured. Through the assistance of some confederates he introduced more, disguised as peasants ; and so careless was the garrison that the appearance of these strangers never excited the attention of a single officer. On the 30th of January, ,1702, the Austrians at Urliano, and along the river Oglio, which flows from the Rhaetian Alps between Brescia and Cremona, were all in motion, as if bent on some great enterprise ; and Marshal Villeroi supposing tliat Eugene meant to beat up Crequi's q;uarters Cremona.] 'THE GATE OF THE Pd 471 along the right bank of the stream, never thought of Cremona, to which he returned on the evening of the 31st, after having made a tour of the posts along the Oglio. Cassoli's house stood, we have said, near the gate of St. Margaret. Having been built up with stone, the latter had neither guard nor sentinel J hence, at three o'clock in the morning, when all was dark and still, the concealed Imperialists, by pickaxes and levers, quickly but quietly broke down the green masonry, and admitted a body of their cavalry, at the head of whom Prince Eugene speedily possessed himself of the great and lesser squares and the Town House, at all these points putting the guards to the sword. The Prince of Vaudemont, in command of a body of Modenese troops, had orders to attack the tete du pont near the Po at daybreak ; and on the event of this attack depended the ultimate success of the enterprise. On the gate of St. Margaret being entered, the Count de Merci, with some grenadiers and 250 dragoons, passed with all speed by the ramparts to possess himself of the Po gate, where a guard of thirty-five Irishmen was posted. These were luckily, unlike their French comrades, on the alert, and on perceiving the approach of the enemy, retired in rear of a palisade, through which they opened a well-directed fire. The count ordered, his grenadiers to fix their bayonets and push them between the palisades at those who were behind them, but they were anticipated by the Irish, whose bayonets were already through the apertures, whence they maintained a constant and most destructive fire. Disheartened by the fall of their comrades, the Imperialists drew back, though the count strove in vain to bring them on to the attack. They mounted, however, an adjacent battery, and captured seven 24-pounders which protected the pontoon bridge across the Po, and these guns, unfortunately for themselves, they omitted to turn on the defenders of the palisade. The quarters of the regiments of Burke and Dillon, belonging to the Irish brigade in the French service, were near the important gate of the Po. Mahoney, a volunteer officer, who was afterwards commander-in-chief in Sicily, commanded Dillon's battalion, in the absence of Lieutenant-Colonel Lake ; Colonel Burke commanded the other. "Mahoney, a great martinet," says O'Connor, "having ordered his men to parade at daybreak, had thrown himself into bed, ordering his valet and host to waken him a little before the first light. Hearing the trampling of horses in the street, he now started up, complaining of not being | awakened, but was told that the troops whose march he heard were not his own, but the Imperial cuirassiers ! " Watching an opportunity, Mahoney rushed to the barracks, where the Irish drums beat to arms. The men had not time to put on their coats — ^which were scarlet in the Irish Brigade — but in their small-clothes, with cross-belts over their shirts, they got under ahns, and marching at once for the gate of the Po, reached it at the very moment De Merci had taken the battery of 24-pounders. In front, by the streets that led towards the gate, and on flank by the ramparts, the Irish at once attacked him, pouring in a fire so destructive that the Ger- man infantry gave way ; and though the count brought up the cuirassiers to support them, these were unable to act, as their routed infantry, on being charged by the Irish with fixed bayonets, fell back upon them, and the whole fled in disorder, leaving the gallant Merci mortally wounded. The neighbouring houses afforded a shelter for his infantry; but the Irish took possession of a Franciscan convent, from the windows of which they fired upon those at which the enemy appeared. From daybreak till noon this kind of skirmishing conflict was maintained, till the Irish, being in their shirts at such a season, and without food, were becoming exhausted. Prior to this the French had got under arms, and had carried by storm the church of Santa Maria Nicevo, Cassoli's house, and some of the entrenchments, all of which had been occupied by the Germans. Every street, square, alley, and garden became now the scene of a close and murderous conflict ; blood flowed along the gutters, mangled bodies of men, of gored and maddened horses, broken swords, and bloody bayonets strewed them; while "the cries of the wounded, the shouts of the combatants, the thunder and smoke of the artillery and musketry, the crackling of the flames of houses set on fire, and the lamentations of the citizens, presented a theatre of horrors such as no pen could describe — no imagination could reach." The Chevalier d'Entragues, colonel of the Royal Regiment de Vaisseaux, was the first French officer who attended to his duties. By daybreak he was on horseback at the head of his battalion, and on hearing the firing at the Po gate he marched to the principal square, where he was joined by several officers, half dressed. " You are welcome, messieurs," said he, when within musket-shot of the Germans. "You have somewhat deranged our toilets, but we shall do you all the honour in our power." A few minutes after he fell under the shower 472 BRITISH BATTI,ES ON LAND AND SEA. [CremBni, of bullets poured by the Germans from the windows of the Town House, and then his regiment fled. Roused by the firing, Marshal Villeroi sprang from bed, destroyed all his papers, and rushed into the square, where he was on the point of being cut down by the cuirassiers, when he was rescued by Francis Macdonell, an exiled Irish officer of the cavalry regiment of Bagni, in Eugene's army. "I am the Marshal Villeroi," whispered the prisoner; " I can make your fortune — bring me to the citadel, and you shall have a pension of 2,000 crowns annually, and the command of a regi- ment ! " " I have hitherto served with fidelity," replied the Jacobite officer, " and shall never be disgraced by perfidy. I prefer honour to fortune, and hope to attain by service in the Imperial army the rank you offer me in that of France as the reward of treachery.'' He conducted the marshal to the most remote corps de garde, where he was again tempted by the offer of 10,000 pistoles ; but Macdonell, whose honour was incorruptible, gave up his distinguished prisoner to General Staremberg. The next officer in command, Lieutenant-General the Marquis de Crenant, attacked the cuirassiers, but fell mortally wounded; General the Marquis de Mognon was unhorsed, trod under foot, and made prisoner ; and now the whole circuit of Cre- mona, except the gate of the Po, the Irish barracks, and the citadel, was in the hands of the Imperialists. The principal officers were all killed or taken, and the Count de Revel and the Marquis de Praslin, conceiving that all was lost, raised the cry of — " Frenchmen, to the ramparts ! " Led astray by his guides, the column under the Prince of Vaudemont, after wandering for five hours, approached the tUe du po7it at the time when the Count de Merci was most hotly engaged. An Irish officer iu the redoubt abandoned it ; and one of his sergeants volunteered to cut away and set fire to the pontoon bridge, which the brave fellow effected under a heavy fire, and then the whole party rejoined their battalion under Mahoney. Frustrated by the vigour of their resistance, Eugene had no hope now but to tempt the fidelity of the Irish, and for this purpose Captain Mac- donell, having procured a cessation in the firing, was sent towards them with a flag of truce, and thus addressed them : — " Countrymen, — Prince Eugene sends me to say to you that if you will change, you shall have higher pay in the Imperial than in the French ser- .vice. My regard for my countrymen in general, and especially for brave men like you, induces me to exhort you to accept their offers. If ) ou should reject them, I do not see how you can escape certain destruction. We are in possession of the whole town, except your part. His Highness only waits my return to attack you with his whole force, and cut you to pieces, if you do not accept his off"ers !" " Sir," replied an officer, speaking for the rest, " if Prince Eugene only waits your return to cut us to pieces, he is likely to wait long enough, as we will take care that you shall not return. You are my prisoner ! You come here, not as the deputy of a great captain, but as a suborner. We wish to gain the esteem of the prince by doing our duty, not by cowardice or treachery, unworthy of men of honour." Again the fierce conflict was renewed. Facing outward on all sides, the Irish resolutely met the attack. They turned the guns of the recaptured battery on Vaudemonl's column beyond the Po, and having bayoneted or ferreted the enemy out of the adjacent houses, they left 100 men to guard the battery, and fought their way through the streets to the Mantua gate, there to await the further orders of the Count de Revel. Dispersing a corps of grenadiers on the way by one rush with the bayonet, they reached the appointed post, and once more resumed firing. Eugene now had recourse to a ruse. He sent Prince Commerci to Marshal Villeroi to obtain from him an order for the Irish to submit. " You see," said the princCj " that we are masters of the town ; but there is still some firing on the ramparts, which will compel us to put to the sword the few who so madly resist us." "I am a prisoner, monseigneur,'' replied Villeroi; " I have no power to give orders, and those men on the ramparts may do as they please." As another resource, Eugene now detached a large body of cuirassiers to overwhelm the Irish by one desperate effisrt; but on perceiving their approach, Mahoney drew off what remained of both battalions to his former post at the gate of the Po. The ground there was level, and at some dis- tance from the houses, thus enabling cavalry to act. Accordingly, Baron Friburg, lieutenant-colonel of the cuirassiers of Count Taaff"e, by wheeling them round, fell suddenly upon the Irish rear ; but the latter formed square and poured in a deadly fire, that brought men and horses to the ground by dozens. Thrown into utter disorder, the cuirassiers fled, riding down their own infantry in their terror and confusion, nor did they rally till they reached the Square Sabbatine. On being reinforced by infantry, the baron once more attacked the Irish Vigo Bay. ] VALOUR OF THE IRISH. 473 in front, flank, and rear; and putting himself at the head of TaafFe's cuirassiers an;ain, resolved to exter- minate them or perish. The fury of his charge brgke down both ranks and bayonets. The cuirassiers burst into the heart of Dillon's regiment, and for some minutes the strife was close, wild, and fearful ; " but almost naked though they were, the Irish grappled with their foes. The linen shirt and the steel cuirass — the naked footman and the harnessed cavalier — met, and the conflict was desperate and doubtful." Hewing right and left, Friburg dashed amid the ranks of Dillon, till Mahoney seized his bridle, and cried, " Quarter for Friburg !" " This is not a day for quarter," replied the baron (meaning that there was no quarter for the Irish) ; " do your duty, and I shall do mine." At that moment he was shot dead. On seeing him fall, the cuirassiers paused; the Irish yelled, closed in, and dashed at them with their bayonets ; the troopers fled, and once more, and as an Irish writer has it, " there stood these glorious fellows in the wintry streets, bloody, triumphant, and half- naked." After eight hours of incessant fighting, the Irish were much exhausted Their loss exceeded a third of their whole number; but it attested the bitterness of their resistance and their splendid heroism. In this affair, Burke's regiment had 88 of all ranks killed and wounded, that of Dillon 135 of all ranks ; the total loss being 223 out of 600 men. Apprehensive of an attack on the battery, Mahoney did not again proceed to the gate of Mantua; and his apprehensions proved well founded, for a large body of the enemy once more returned to the attack. Retiring into the battery, he turned its seven 24-pounders against them, and by one salvo sent crashing through their masses, he drove them back, broken and utterly discomfited. The brave survivors of the two regiments now sought shelter in the angles of the bastions and other places ; but night was descending, and Eugene was gradually drawing off bis troops by the same way he had entered, leaving more than 2,000 dead in the streets. " Thus ended the surprise of Cremona," says O'Connor, " one of the most remarkable events in modern warfare — a garrison of 7,000 men, in a town strongly fortified, surprised in their beds: obliged to march in their shirts, in the obscurity of night, through streets filled with cavalry, meet- ing death at every step ; scattered in small bodies, without officers to lead them, fighting for ten hours without food or clothes, in the depth of winter; yet recovering gradually every post, and ultimately forcing the enemy to retreat." Mahoney was sent to Paris with the dispatches bearing intelligence of this glorious achievement. All Europe heard of the story ; a^d Forman men- tions what has been considered a very doubtful saying of King William's about it. King Louis sent his formal thanks to the regiments of Burke and Dillon, and raised their pay forthwith. The Irish at home long exulted over the achievement of Mahoney, and in one of their songs it is referred to thus : — "■ ' ' News, news, in Vienna ! — King Leopold is sad ; News, news, in St. James's ! — King William is mad ; News, news, in Versailles ! — 'Let the Irish brigade Be loyally honoured and royally paid.' News, news, in old Ireland !— high rises her pride. And high sounds her wail for the brave who have died ; And deep is her prayer— ' God send I may see, Macdonell and Mahoney fighting for me ! ' " CHAPTER LXXXIX. VIGO BAY, 1702. With the death of William, and the accession of Queen Anne to the throne in 1702, came a new cause of stdfe, entitled the " War of the Spanish Succession." Louis XIV. claimed the crown of Spain for his grandson, afterwards Philip V.; while Britain supported the rival claims of the Archduke Charles, and forming the grand alliance with Hol- land and Germany, Spain and the Low Countries became the chief scene of a glorious but desperate war, which was waged by sea as well as by land. and one of the earliest incidents of which was the destruction of the Spanish galleons at Vigo by Sir George Rooke. The English army was greatly increased in this year, and all the regiments between the 29th and 39th Foot owe their existence to the Spanish war ; and by an order issued on the 20th of June, the pikes, which had been reduced to twelve per com- pany, were totally abolished, and every regiment was completely armed with the musket and bayonet. 474 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Vigo Bay. The sergeants retained the halberd; and in future years that weapon was replaced by a light pike, which remained in use till the days of William IV. On the accession of Queen Anne, the royal navy consisted of 256 sail, carrying 9,300 guns; and to fully man these ships, 52,000 men were required. that eleven regiments and one battalion of Guards embarked on this service on board the ships at Spithead. Of the Guards there were six companies of the Coldstreams, two of the ist Guards, and a company of grenadiers drawn from both, making 760 men CREMONA. War was declared on the 4th of May, 1702, and the Duke of Ormond, General of Horse, was ap- pointed to command Anne's troops destined for Spain, whither they were to be conveyed by the combined British and Dutch squadrons, under Sir George Rooke, Vice-Admiral of England, an officer who in 1692 had distinguished himself by the destruction of the French ships of war in La Hogue ; and in Ormond's own Memoirs, we find in all, under Brigadier William Matthew. There were also 185 troopers of Colonel Lloyd's Dragoons (afterwards 3rd Hussars). First Brigade (Duke of Ormond and Brigadier Hamilton) : the Battalion of Guards, Churchill's Regiment (disbanded). Columbine's (6th Foot), Fox's (32nd Foot). Second Brigade (Major-Gen- eral the Earl of Portmore and Brigadier Lloyd) : Bellasis' Regiment (2nd Foot), Seymour's (4th or 47 f BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Vigo Uay. King's), Fusiliers (7 th Foot), Viscount Shannon's (disbanded). These made a British force of 9,663 men ; to which were added 3,924 Dutch, exclusive of officers, under Baron Sparr and Brigadier Palandt. The combined squadron made 203 sail. They left St. Helen's on the ist of July, and on the 13th of August came to anchor in the Bay of Bulls, two leagues distant from Cadiz. The Duke of Ormond was on board the Ranelagh, and Sir George Rooke on board the Royal Sovereign, with " the Union flag at the mainmast head.'' On the isth the troops began to land between the promontory of Rota and Fort Santa Catalina, just as day began to break, in the following order — the grenadiers of all corps in the first line of boats, followed by the Guards, and three regiments under Lord Portmore, Baron Sparr, and Brigadier Matthews. Two days' rations of bread, cheese, and beer were issued to every man. In rear of each regiment was an officer of artillery, with twenty chevaux de Frise. No drum was to beat, and no colour be uncased, save in the boat of the general commanding. When a drum beat, then the lines of the boats were to row ; when it ceased, to lie upon their oars. " No soldier to fire, under pain of death, while in the boat, or to unshoulder his musket when landed." At four o'clock precisely the landing began ; 1,200 British grenadiers in the van sprang ashore upon the soil of Andalusia, and the rest followed in quick succession, though a high wind was rolling the sea upon the beach with such fury that more than thirty boats were overset, many soldiers were drowned, and many had to swim ashore, or wade out of water that flowed over their cravats. Eighty of the grenadiers had barely got ashore, under Colonel Pierce, of the Coldstream Guards, ere they were charged, sword in hand, by a Spanish general at the head of a troop of horse ; but so warmly were the latter received by fusil, bayonet, and grenade, that they were routed, with the loss of five killed, and a captain, cornet, and many horses taken. FoiTr pieces of cannon which were firing on the disembarking troops were next carried at the point of the bayonet, and spiked, under a fire from Her Majesty's ship Lennox. The coast being now open, in the afternoon the English and Dutch began their march towards Rota, a small town on the north side of Cadiz Bay, near the mouth of the Guadalquivir, making a halt during the night. When the Duke of Ormond was at supper, a grenadier of the Guards, who had killed a Spanish officer of rank, appeared and offered him a valuable ring which he had taken from the deceased. The duke returned it to the soldier, with " some pieces of gold for his encouragement." Next day Rota.. was surrendered by the alcalde, ahd taken posses- sion of by 100 grenadiers ; while Ormond published Queen Anne's manifestoes in favour of the claim' of the House of Austria. Colonel Pierce summoned Fort Catalina, which surrendered on the 22nd of August, though in the " Life of Anne " (published 1721) we are told that the French had recently strengthened it by a new, battery mounted with forty-five pieces of cannon.' In tbe beginning of September an attack was made on Fort Matagorda ; but the batteries of the allied- forces sank so deep in the soft sands and marshy ground as they recoiled in firing, that further at- tempts were relinquished, after a loss of sixty-five: men killed and wounded. Many excesses were committed, the churches were rifled, and a convent, of nuns was- forcibly entered ; but on tidings coming that a vast force of Spaniards, said to be 40,000 strong, under the Marquis de Villadarius, was advancing; the troops marched to Rota for re-embarkation.. The brass guns were removed fioni Fort Catalina, which was blown up; the grenadiers covered the rear, and those of the Guards had a sharp encounter with the Spaniards. Tiius ended another of the many buccaneering, expeditions' to the Continent, so common in those' days with those who ruled British affiiirs ; but it formed a prelude to the brilliant conflict at Vigo. Sir George Rooke, who had been averse to the whole scheme, according to Bishop Burnet, was about to sail for England, when intelligence reached him, by Captain Hardy, of the Pembroke, that the Spanish galleons, laden to the hatches with rich cargoes, had put into Vigo under a French convoy. He instantly called a Council of War, and it was resolved to make all sail for that port ; and the nth of October saw the whole land and sea armament in sight of the terraced streets of Vigo, then a small place surrounded by an old wall, and guarded by a castle and citadel, though liaving only a parish church, a convent, and a monastery, and a few fisher- 1 men as inhabitants. But it is situated on a small gulf, and has one of the largest, deepest, and safest harbours in Spain, sheltered by the hills of Galicia. As the wealth on board their galleons was deemed the chief resource of the Spanish monardiy, and even of the whole house of Bourbon, Louis XIV. expect- ing to share in it, the greatest precautions were taken to protect them. " The French Admiral de Chateaurenard," says a writer, "to give him his due commencratiofi, Vigo Bay. ] LA REDONDELLA STORMED. 477 had taken all human precautions to secure his fleet, for he had not only drawn them up beyond a very narrow strait, defended by a castle on one side, and platforms on both sides planted with his best guns ; but he had likewise laid athwart it a very strong boom, made up of masts, yards, cables, top- chains, and casks, about three yards in circumfer- ence, and kept steady by anchors at bolli ends of it." The French squadron consisted of fifteen sail, carrying 929 guns. The Spanish men-of-war and galleons, under Admiral Don Manuel de Velasco, were also fifteen sail, and carried 178 guns. Each galleon had from twenty to thirty guns. The boom described was three-quarters of a mile long, and at each end of it was moored a seventy- gun ship. Five of the same force lay within the harbour, with their broadsides facing the entrance. . The weather proved so hazy that the enemy in Vigo never perceived the fleet till the latter was within gunshot of the shore ; and it was resolved that, to facilitate the capture of the galleons and de- struction of the French squadron, an attack should be made by land. Hence, in nearly the same order as that detailed for the previous affair, the Duke of Ormond disembarked 2,500 men on a piece of sandy beach six miles distant from Vigo without opposition. The first brigade consisted of the Guards and three regiments, under Brigadier Hamilton ; the second was under Brigadiers Port- more and Lloyd. The Dutch were under Baron Sparr, and the point of attack was to be the fort and platform of Redondella, at the entrance of the har- bour — a bold and rash attempt, when we consider that it had forty pieces of cannon, and that no less than 10,000 men were in and near Vigo, under the Prince de Brabangon, Governor of Galicia ; Mr. Burchett says 20,000, which is barely credible. , The attack by sea was to be contingent to the success of that made by land. The Duke of Ormond marched on foot, at the head of the Guards and grenadiers, and the route lay over rough and rocky mountains. On crossing the crest of the latter, 8,000 Sj^anish infantry ap- peared in the hollow ground between them and the fprt. These instantly began firing, though at a considerable distance ; but the Grenadiers, led by Lord Shannon and Colonel Pierce, of the Cold- streams, made a fierce rush upon them with the 'bayonet, and drove them back e7i masse. General Churchill's regiment now advanced, taking ground to the left, and firing briskly as it came on, till the enemy were driven under the very guns of the Redondella Fort, and finally into it, after which the lower platform with all its guns was captured. The enemy now opened a heavy fire from an ancient stone tower, but closing up, the grenadiers made such skilful use of their grenades as to sweep its walls of them wheaever they ap- peared. On tliis M. de Sorel, captain of a French man-of-war, to whom the defence of the post was entrusted, having encouraged his men to make a bold push for their hves and liberty, called upon them to follow him, and, sword in hand, to cut a passage through the English. On his opening the gate to make a sally, the grenadiers rushed in with bayonets charged, and made themselves mas- ters of the place, taking 300 French seamen and fifty Spanish soldiers. A few who strove to escape by water were taken or shot down by the Dutch, under Captain de Najaer, a French Protestant, who served as a volunteer under the Duke of Ormond. Loud cheers from the fleet greeted the appear- ance of the red-coats on the ramparts of the tower ; and the moment the Union Jack was seen flutter- ing out upon the Redondella, the squadron ad- vanced, before the wind and under a press of canvas, with mighty force against the formidable boom. It was broken by the Torbay, 80 guns, Vice- Ad miral Hopson, with a tremendous crash, and amid a terrible fire from the enemy ; but he ran in and came instantly to anchor between the Bourbon, 68 guns, and L' Esperance, 70. His crew stood to their duty amid a cross cannonade with unparalleled resolution, and from tjieir triple tier of guns spouted death, fire, and destruction on all sides. The rest of his division, with the Dutch under Vice-Admiral Vandergoes, came all sailing abreast towards that portion of the boom which was un- broken, but the wind suddenly became light, and they were compelled to lower their boats and hack their way through. The Dutch admiral alone effected a passage through the breach made by the Torbay, and ranging alongside of the Bowbon, under M. Bolt, captured her at a time most criti- cal for the gallant Hopson, who had been laid on board by a fire-ship, and whose rigging was now in flames, to the consternation of his crew, a hundred of whom threw themselves into the sea. But the fire was extinguished by a very singular incident. It happened that the French ship had originally been a merchantman, fitted up in such haste for the purpose of destruction that she had still on board her cargo. The latter consisted of , snuff, which, when she suddenly blew up, "extinguished the fire, and preserved the English man-of-war from being consumed. However, the vice-admiral received 478 ^RiflSH BATTLES ON LANt) AND SEA. [Vigo Bay, ponsiderable damage in this action, for besides having the foremast shot by the board, 115 men killed or drowned, and nine wounded, most of his sails charred or wrecked, his foreyard burned to a cinder, and his larboard shrouds fore and aft burned to the dead-eyes, he was obliged to leave her and hoist his flag on board the Monmouth" ("Naval History of England "). At the same time Captain Robert Bokenham, in the Association, a ninety-gun ship, laid his broadside against a seventeen-gun battery on the left side of the harbour; while Captain Francis V/yvell (who died at a green old age in 1 73 1), in the Barjleur, also of 90 guns, beat a fort on the other side literally to ruins. The whole bay was now enveloped in smoke, and the incessant boom of the cannon mingled with the roar of musketry by land and water. The Count de Chateaurenard, seeing the fort, tower, and platform in possession of the victorious English, his special fire-ship blown up, the Bourbon taken, the boom dashed to pieces and scattered in fragments over the bay, and the confederate fleet pouring in upon him, set fire to his own ship, Le Fort, 76 guns, and ordered all the captains under his command to follow his example. It was done, and ere long the whole French fleet, the least of which was Le Triton, 42 guns, became a mass of roaring flames, amid which corpses and wounded were being consumed together, guns exploding, and magazines rending hulls asunder as they blew up and filled the air with showers of burning brands. Yet the order of the count was not obeyed so punctually but that several men-of-war and galleons were taken by the English and Dutch. In effecting all this destruction and achieving all this conquest, the English losses were very small. The Kent had her foremast shot away ; the Bar- fleiir and Association lost each their mainmast, and the Mary her bowsprit. Save on board the vice- admiral's ship, the naval losses were but a few men killed and wounded. The troops on this occasion had two lieu- tenants and thirty men slain, four superior oflScers and forty rank and file wounded. Colonels Pierce, Seymour, and Newton were among the wounded, the first-named by a cannon-ball in the thigh {London Gazette). Unfortunately the shot which struck him was fired from an English ship. Eight large vessels were burned, four sunk ; six French ships, three Spanish, and five of the stately galleons were taken. The bullion, vanilla, cochi- neal, &c. on board produced, after deducting all expenses, ;^S,302 t2s. id., which was divided in the following manner — one-ninth to the general ofiicers, and eight-ninths to the eight regiments engaged. The number of men killed on the side of the enemy was much the same as that of the AUies, but they had 400 ofiicers and men taken prisoners. Among these were Commodore d'Aliegre, the Mar- quis de la Gallissonifere, and M. de Sorel. Don Josepho Checon, the Spanish admiral, and Count de Chateaurenard were also taken, but the latter effected his escape. Two days after the victory, the troops, unmo- lested by the Prince de Braban^on, marched from RedondeUa, embarked for England, and arrived at Deal on the 7th of November. A medal was struck in honour of the occasioa One side has a view of Vigo Bay, with the fleets and forts ; the other a list of the vessels taken or destroyed. Vigo proved a serious blow to the naval power of France. Admiral Hopson received from the queen, as a reward for breaking the boom, a pension of ;^soo per annum, and the diploma of knight- , hood, an honour of greater value then than now ; and the Duke of Ormond was publicly thanked for his services in the House of Lords. The galleons had on board twenty million pieces of eight, besides merchandise of equal value. Of the silver fourteen millions were saved, and of the goods about , five. Four millions of plate were destroyed, with ten of merchandise ; and about two millions in silver and five in goods were brought away conjointly by the British and Dutch Schomberg's "Naval Chronicle"). In the " Memoirs de Noailles,'' we find Louis XIV., who combined with his ambition a strange mixture of piety and resignation, writing thus to the Queen of Spain concerning the defeat at Vigo :— " Events are in the hands of God, who often draws good out of what we consider our greatest misfortunes. If it is possible to prevent the bad effects of the disaster which has happened, your Majesty has prevented them." In adaition to this destruction at Vigo on the 24th of June Commodore Leake sailed with a squadron for Newfoundland, to protect our trade and destroy that of the enemy ; and he effected the, i latter thoroughly, for before the end of October, 1702, he had taken twenty-nine sail of French ships, and burned two, at the same time sinking all their fishing-boats, burning all the stages for drying salted cod, and uprooting the fort on the island of St. Pierre. By this the French fishery was ruined, and an extensive nursery for seamen completely broken up. West Indies.l LEOGANE. 470 CHAPTER XC. BENEOW IN THE W-^ST INDIES, 1 7 02. The glory won by Britain in the exploits of Sir George Rooke in Vigo Bay was somewhat marred by an event in the West Indian seas. A squadron sailed for those latitudes, under Vice-Admiral John Benbow, a brave and energetic officer, whose flag was on board the Breda, 70 guns. ! On the 28th of September, 1701, he sighted St. Mary's, one of the Azores. He had only seven sail wjith him, but he was in hopes to form a junction with the squadron of Rear-Admiral (afterwards Sir William) Whetstone, who had been sent from England to reinforce him. I On the 5th of December Benbow was oif Jamaica, and found in Port Royal harbour two men-of-war, and was informed that about twenty days before there had been descried off Cape St. A;nthony, at the western end of Cuba, five French ships; and soon after he was told by the crew of a Spanish sloop "that the flota was at Vera Cruz, the money ready to be put on board, and that twelve French ships of war lay in the Havana ready to convoy them home." i In January, 1702, he found that this squadron was augmented to sixteen sail, that the Marquis de Coetlogon had been made captain-general and commander-in-chief of the Spanish maritime forces, and the flota was daily expected to sail. It was riot until May that Benbow was joined by Rear- Admiral Whetstone; and on the nth of July he left Port Royal, with twelve sail, to follow the laitter, whom he had dispatched with six ships to look out for Du Casse, who was expected to appear off the west end of Hispaniola. i By Her Majestj^'s ships Colchester and Pendeimis, he was next informed that Du Casse was expected in the Gulf of Leogane; and arriving there on the 27th he saw several French ships at anchor, near the village of that name, which was then well for- tified and populous. One was under sail, which he captured by an armed boat's crew. He pursued a fifty-gun ship whose colours were hoisted, and run- ning ashore she blew up. Next morning three other French ships were taken, and one of sixteen- guna was sunk ; one of eighteen-guns was burned imder the very embrasures of the fort, and several others laden with wine and brandy were cut out On reaching Cape Donna Maria, at the west end of Hispaniola, he was informed that the ubiquitous Du Casse had gone to Carlhagena, and was bound thence to Portobello. He made all sail for that coast; and on the loth of August, when stretching over towards the high land of Santa Martha, he dis- covered ten sail, four of which carried from sixty to seventy guns, steering westward along the high and rugged coast under their topsails. About four in the afternoon, to his joy he was within gun-shot of them. They proved to be the squadron of Du Casse, who shortened sail while the British formed their line of battle in the following manner : — The Defiance, 64 ; Pendennis, 48 ; Windsor, 60 ; Breda, 70 (flag-ship, in the centre) ; Greenwich, 54; Ruby, 48; and Falmouth, 48 ; but two of these, the Defiance and Windsor, did not stand above two or three broadsides before they luffed out of gun- shot. The action, however, continued from four o'clock until night, and though they then ceased firing, the indefatigable Benbow kept sight of them ; and being of opinion that it might be better for the service, he gave out a new line-of-battle, and decided to lead himself on both tacks. At daybreak on the 20th, he found himself close to the whole enemy's fleet, with only the Ruby, Captain George Walton, to support him. The latter had joined him in the pursuit and in plying the enemy with his bow-chusers. At two o'clock in the afternoon the latter drew mto a line, though, singularly enough, they made all sail to escape fighting ; but all that evening and all the subsequent night the Breda and the Ruby continued in hot pursuit, with their chase-guns; and thus he continued following and skirmishing on the open sea, without being ever fully seconded by the ships of his squadron, till the noon of the 23rd, when he recaptured from them a British galley, named the Anne, which they had taken. By eight in the evening his whole squadron had come up with him, and the enemy was not above two miles distant. Benbow now conceived that there was a prospect of overhauling them with some success ; but, except the Falmouth, Captain Samuel Vincent, all dropped astern. Yet his heart never failed him. The first broad- side he poured into one was returned with terrible interest, and his right leg was hopelessly smashed to pieces by a chain-shot He was carried below, "but soon' after ordered his cradle on the quarter 4bo, BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. tWest Indies., deck," and in that helpless condition overlooked the manner in which his ship fought, and continued issuing his orders. guess that he could make nothing of it." " As one of the largest ships of the enemy," says Smollett, " was lying like a log upon the water, four saiJ HeadQlwntrsof * <=Q" ^ - Duke of Omond •- ^ ^ *f ilg^'' .^ort S «. -.S^. -* Transports O <= t> tt> •> ■* iS> C '/crinc Si]""'''™ '""''=' Ailiiiii.il K.>o':o a, «s> c!i> o ,1 . I Srale I IMile LANDING IN THE BAY OF C*DTZ BY THE DUKE OF ORMOND, 1702. A. Dutch Grenadiers. B. English Grenadiers. C. Dutch'Battalions. D. English Battalions. E. Spanish Squadron attacking Grenadiers. F. Covering Detachments after Landing. G. Position finally Occupied. "(Jpon this, Captain Richard Kirkley, of the Defiance, boarded the Breda and told him plainly " that he had better desist ; that the French were very strong, and that from -what was past he might of the English squadron poured their broadsides into her, and then ran to leeward, without paying any regard to the signals for battle.'' The captains, moreover, while he lay by to refit, Benbow.3 THE TREACHERY OF THE CAPTAINS. 481 having had his maintopsailyard shot away, per- mitted the French to tow off this disabled ship, when Benbow, who was within half-gunshot of her, might with their assistance have made her a prize. Perceiving now that he was betrayed, "either through the cowardice of his captains, or a design to sacrifice Benbow ; " but I would rather have lost them both than seen this dishonour brought upon the British nation. But if attacked, and another shot should take me off, behave like brave men, and fight it out." When the French admiral arrived at Carthagena, JOHN, DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH (/rom an authentic Portrait). him to the enemy " (according to the life of Queen Anne), and having not only lost a leg, but also received a large wound in his face and another in his arm, gained in an early attempt to board the ship of Du Casse,he reluctantly, and full of bitterness of heart, bore away for Jamaica. When one of his lieutenants expressed his sorrow for the loss of the admiral's leg — " I am sorry for it too," replied the gallant 41 he wrote Benbow a letter to the following effect : — " Sir, — I had little hope on Monday last but to have supped in your cabbin {sic) ; but it pleased God to order it otherwise. I am thankful for it. As for those cowardly captains who deserted you,, hang them up, for, by heaven, they deserve it! " Du Casse." Smollett states that the boisterous manners of Benbow had produced a confederacy against him ; 483 BRITISH BATTLES CM LAND AND SEA. [Klcnhdm. that he was a rough seaman, but remarkably brave, honest, and experienced. So deeply did he take this miscarriage to heart that he became melancholy, and grief co-operating with the fever occasioned by his wounds, put a period to his life on the 4th of November. But, in memory of his bravery, his name is borne to the present day by one of Her Majesty's ships. On the 6th of the preceding month the captains were tried by court-martial, of which Rear-.A-dniiral Whetstone was president ; and many days were spent in examining witnesses, and hearing what they could allege in their own justification for the un- paralleled act of deserting a British admiral in the face of an enemy's fleet. Sentences were pro- nounced against them according to their deserts. Vincent, oi \ht Falmouth, and Fogg, o{ ihe Breda, Benbow's own captain, were convicted of having signed a document to the effect that they would not serve under his command ; but as they had behaved gallantly in tlie action, the court inflicted on them no other punishment than a temporary suspension from rank and pay. Captain Walton had also joined in this strange conspiracy when heated with wine ; but he after- wards renounced the engagement, and fought with admirable courage till the liiiby was completely disabled. Captains Kirkley and Wade, of the Defiance and Greemvich, were sentenced to death, but this was not put into execution till their arrival at Plymouth in the Bristol, on the deck of which, without being allowed to land, they were shot by a squad of marines. Captain Constable, of the Windsor, was cashiered, and sentenced to be imprisoned during the pleasure of Her Majesty Queen Anne; and Captain Hudson, of the Pcndennis, died some days before the trial, otherwise there is little doubt that he too would have been shot to death. The captain of the Ruby survived these officers long ; and after being knighted for his bravery, while captain of the Canterbury, in a battle off Messina, died Admiral Sir George Walton, in 1740. On Benbow's death the command of the fleet in the West Indies devolved upon Rear-Admiral Whetstone, who cruised with considerable success against the eneniy ; while Vice-Admiral Graydon, with three sail of the line, left Plymouth about the middle of March to join him, escorted by the Montague, 60 guns, and the Nonsuch, 50, with orders to see him 150 miles to the westward. On the 1 8th he discovered four French men-of- war to leeward, viz., two of si.xty guns, one of fifty, and one of forty. The Monmoicth bore down and brought the last to close action. Upon this the admiral threw out the signal to form line of battle, and called off the Montague; and though' a few shots were exchanged yet the enemy escaped, and singularly enough they proved to be part of the squadron of Du Casse, which fought Admiral Benbow in the West Indies. CHAPTER XCL ELENHE[M, 1704. IJnder the Duke of Marlborough, a British army, consisting of five regiments of horse, three of dragoons, and fifteen regiments of foot, making a total of 18,252 men, had landed in Holland, in June, 1 701. The siege of 'Venloo, the captures of Stevensweert and Ruremonde, the capture of Libge, and the surrender of Chartreuse occurred in the following year; but it was not until 1704 that he achieved the great victory which is associated with his name. In his animosity to the House of Stuart, and to all who adhered to that House, Macaulay has per- mitted himself to write some bitter things of the great captain of the reign of Anne ; but it must be borne in mind that Marlborough was not one of those who were likely to be very faithful to a new and foreign master, and though he fought for him, was, like many others, intriguing for the restoration of his native king. Moreover, since the restoration, the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland had been separately governed by the un- principled and the time-serving, whom chance or intrigue raised to power and prominence. On finding himself at the head of the allied armies of Britain and Holland, Marlborough, " the handsome Englishman," whose future pre-eminence had been foretold by the gallant Turenne, in the wars of Charles II., soon displayed unequalled ability, though greatly shackled by opposition and hesitation among the allied leaders ; but by the re- solution of his own judgment he marched boldly into the heart of Germany, and formed » junction Blenheim. J MAKSHai. tallard. 483 with the famous Prince Eugene of Savoy, the able commander of the Imperial troops, with whom he prepared to attack the French and Bavarians, though they held a strong position near the village of Blenheim, on the Danube. The army of Tallard and the Elector amounted to 66,000 men, with ninety pieces of cannon. Prince Eugene's; when mustered in the lines of Behel, coming tinged with autumn tints ; on the other by the Danube, with the pretty little villages of Oberclau, Schonbacb, and Litzheim, which afforded admirable points for defence. Camille d'Hostun de Tallard, a proud, haughty, and fiery officer, was not one of France's best marshals. He had received his baton in the year 1703 ; and he took his title of Duke from Tallard, .^jdafi "a" ^T"" „ ■■■-n>. - ■■At ft-... i0^.r .t.ffig 3a a. -*^* :^^*& sm8=4i-sL ms W ii-..-f»!»JMll_ A. Bridges over the Hasselor's Brook. B. Our Batteries. C. The Enemies' Batteries, D. The Enemies' Camp. E. The first attack on the village of Blenheim. F. The English Horse attacking the Gens d'Armes, sword in hand. THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM [from an old plan). ' G. The rest of our Left Wing of Horse. H. The Battalions attacking the village Obirklau. I. The Imperial Horse passing the river. K. Eleven Battalions of Prussians. L. Seven Battalions of Danes. amounted to only 30,000; but when- united with Marlborough the Allies numbered 52,000 men, with fifty pieces of cannon. The latter were supe- rior in cavalry. The plain of Hochstadt presented a fine posi- tion for defence. A considerable stream inter- sected it, forming morasses on its borders, and running into an angle of the rapid Danube. The plain itself was six miles long, but unequal in breadth, the entrance to it being in width " a cannon-shot " of those days. On one side it was bordered by the wood of Schellenberg, then be- a small town and castle two miles south of Gaqper- cais. " It is an ancient viscounty,'' according to the "Atlas Geographus, 1711," " and gives title to the Mareschal de Tailard, descended from the family of Argyle in Scotland, who did the French king considerable service in Germany, but was taken at th e battle of Plochstadt, and continues a prisoner in England, where he served formerly as ambassador." He commanded the right of the French army ; the left was led by the Elector with his Bavarians, and the Marshal Ferdinand Count de Marsin, with the French of his division. 484 BRITISH 6ATTLES ON LAnD AND SEA. [Blenheim. In the twilight at three o'clock on the morn- ing of the 13th of August, the generale was beaten, and the Allies moved forward to attack the French position at Blenheim. Their movements, on the left, commanded by Marlborough, were for a time concealed by the wood; and those on the right, where they were led by Eugene, were at first mis- taken for those of the Prince of Baden's corps, then lying before Ingoldstadt ; for so negligent were the French that they had neither spies, scouts, nor patrols, to inform them of the motions of the enemy. Their foragers were all out, and tlieir camp was in perfect repose, when the right wing of the Allies was first discovered by the beams of the morning sun being reflected steadily on their bright barrels and fixed bayonets. These columns were then ten miles distant. " Ignorance inflated by accidental success is always presumptuous," says the historian of the Irisli Brigades ; " and incapacity elevated to com- mand, is unable to estimate difficulties and risks without calculation. Tallard had gained the battle of Spires by the feebleness of his sight ; his vanity claimed it as an achievement of skill. Marsin had never commanded a division. A stranger to ad- verse and to prosperous fortune, he was devoid of experience, and on the approach of battle con- fused. In reverse, he was devoid of courage, the characteristic of Frenchmen, and intent only on personal safety. When the cloud foreboding the coming tempest appeared, the presumption of the marshals, one the appointee of Court intrigue and the other of Court devotion, lapsed into diffidence and confusion." They had still time to make some arrangements, though taken completely by surprise. The advance of the Allies was delayed and impeded by the marshy nature of the ground they had to traverse. Thus Tallard might easily have drawn up his in- fantry by the margin of the stream that joined the Danube, instead of which he threw twenty bat- talions and squadrons into the village of Blenheim, where they were surrounded by the Nebelbach, and a curvature of the Danube on three sides, and were too far from his order of battle to sustain themselves, or to be sustained by his own division, which had no other infantry than eight battalions of Piedmontese deserters, and was too remote to give any effectual opposition to the passage of the Nebelbach by the British. Tlie Irish regiments of Lee, Clare, and Doring- ton, all clad in red coats, were posted in the village of Oberclau, in advance of the right wing of Mar- sin's corps, which was chiefly composed of cavalry. By these mistaken arrangements, tl'.e plain of Hochstadt became memorable as the place where a fine army was annihilated by the ignorance of its leaders. As they debouched into the open ground from the edge of the wood, the allied generals beheld at once the defects in the French order of battle ; and the genius of Eugene suggested the plan of masking Blenheim and breaking the French centre. The duke approved, and to the prince's energy and resolution was committed its execution, and the right wing of the Allies was reduced, in order to strengthen their left. This alteration took two hours, and the movements were made under cover of the wood, and unseen by Tallard, towards whom the Allies advanced in eight columns — the Imperial- ists on the right, the English and Dutch on the left. All this astonished the Elector and the two mar- shals, who had thought of attacking and not being attacked. They fired two pieces of cannon to call in all foragers and stragglers, and made every pre- paration for defence ( " History of Prince Eugene of Savoy, 1742 "). Tallard soon saw enough to satisfy him that the village of Blenheim would be the main point of attack ; he therefore, as we have said, crowded it with infantry and twelve squadrons of dragoons, most of whom he dismounted, so that they might use their muskets and bayonets. Most of the avenues that led to the village had been palisaded already; the remainder he blocked up with over- turned carts and wagons, casks filled with earth and stones, and with boards, shutters, doors, and other encumbrances. An entire brigade lined some hedges on the left of the village ; its churchyard was strongly occupied, while every facility of com- munication from post to post was afforded by the bridges which his engineers had thrown in haste across the Meulweyer. In addition to all this, he ordered several hamlets and mills, of which the skir- mishers of the Allies might avail themselves, to be set on fire ; and on the extreme right of Blenheim he placed a division of gensdarmes k cheval, with special orders to charge the British so soon as a certain number should have passed the Nebel. By all this he overstrengthened theright of his line, wliile his centre and left were comparatively weak; but until the fire of Eugene's columns was heard in that direction, Marlborough resolved to make no attack, and he gave orders that the chaplains of the several battalions should perform divine service at the heads of their respective regiments. So passed the noon of Blenheim, till an aide-de-camp came galloping from the allied right, with tidings that "the Prince of Savoy was ready to begin the attack." Blenheim. ] ASSAULT OF THE VILLAGE. 48s And even while he spoke the boom of cannon came across the level plain. At that moment the Duke of Marlborough chanced to be sharing a hasty meal with the officers of his staff, but he leaped into his saddle. "Now, gentlemen," said he, "to your posts !" The tone of voice in which he spoke gave all who heard him the assurance of victory; and in less than five minutes after, the roar of battle rang from one end of the plain of Hochstadt to the other. At the head of twenty battalions of infantry, the gallant Lord Cutts rushed to the assault of Blen- heim, where Clerambaule commanded. Plunging into the stream that crossed their front, the British troops, by the aid of fascines, planks, or by grasp- ing each others' hands, while mowed down by the fire of the French artillery, which was splendidly served, closed in to the assault. In the van of those columns were the brigades of Generals Rowe and Ferguson, advancing with such speed that though many officers and men fell, " the gallant Rowe struck his sword into the enemy's palisades before he gave the word 'Fire'" (Cannon's "Records "). Cutts' division assailed the village on three sides ; but secure behind their barricades and entrench- ments, the garrison poured in a fire so murderous that no courage could bear up against it ; and the stormers, after actually laying hands on the palisades, were driven back (Rowe was mortally wounded), and in retiring, leaving their dead and dying covering all the ground, they were assailed by the gensdarmes h. cheval, who came thundering on them sword in hand, and would inevitably have destroyed them, had not General Lumley sent for- ward five squadrons to their support. These charged, broke and dispersed the gens- darmes, but only to be in turn overthrown by a superior force. " The gensdarmes, of which Tal- lard's horse chiefly consisted," says General Kane, " and in whom he placed his greatest confidence, believing there were not any troops in the world able to stand before them, began the batde by giving a most furious charge, and broke through part of our front line (in Cutts' division) ; but the second coming on made them retreat faster than they came, which cooled those gentlemen's courage, for they never made such another charge, upon which our squadrons advanced and charged in their turn." In the attack on the village, a curious incident occurred in Howe's regiment (now the 15th Foot). The major, a tyrannical officer, apprehen- sive of what might occur, " addressed the corps, confessed he had been to blame, and begged to fall by the hands of the French— not theirs." "March on, sir," replied a grenadier, "the enemy is before us, and we have something else to do than think of you now." On the French giving way, the major took oft' his hat and cried, "Huzzah, gendemen — the day is our own !" At that moment a musket-ball passed through his brain and killed him instantly ("Advice to Officers," Perth, 1795). Various charges were made with varying success, and in these no regiment distinguished itself more than Wyndham's horse (afterwards 6th Dragoon Guards), under Colonel Palmes. The arrival of the Earl of Orkney, K.T., with the second line of infantry, sustained the charges of our cavalry, with v/hom he checked them, and ultimately drove the gensdarmes back. A thick shroud of smoke now enveloped Blenheim ; and while squadron after squadron menaced it on the left, Marlborough ordered his brother. General Charles Churchill, with his division of infantry, to pass the Nebel at Unter- glauk, a hamlet which, as it lay in front of their position, the enemy had set in flames. That officer easily possessed himself of a stone bridge which crossed the stream; and marching between two rows of blazing cottages, his division rapidly formed in columns of regiments on the opposite bank. Simultaneous with this movement was the advance of the cavalry, who, by throwing fascines into the stream, with boards over them, crossed with difficulty, however, as they were en- filaded by the enemy's cannon ; thus horse and man fell fast, in many instances to rise no more. " They were as yet unformed, when the enemy's horse rushed down the steep, charged, broke, and drove them to the brink of the stream. Certain destruction must have overtaken them there, had not the infantry, by this time in good order, wheeled to the left and checked the assailants by a fire of musketry as close as it was well directed. By this means the fugitives were enabled to draw together, while a reserve of cavalry, passing the stream, rode furiously upon the French as they retired, and com- pleted their overthrow. Repeated charges now took place, in which sometimes one party, some- times the other, was successful ; while the artillery on both sides kept up a murderous fire, and the carnage was dreadful." The blaze of musketry now covered all the plain ; every inch of ground was disputed with incon- ceivable obstinacy, and a corps of eleven battalions, led by the Prince of Holstein-Beck, in attempting to pass the stream above Oberclau, was very roughly handled by the Irish Brigade. Its certain rout must have ensued had not Marlborough led up a fresh division to its support ; while at the same 486 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Bi-iiheim.. momeot, by a fortunate movement of the Imperial cavalry, he overthrew those of Marsin and assailed- his infantry in flank. Though the French centre was thus broken com- pletely, Oberclau and Blenheim were still to be forced • they were both invested, and the allied array was enabled to form in perfect order upon the communications of the enemy. On seeing their centre pierced, broken, and driven back, the French in Blenheim made an effort to 16,000 men were engaged in this slaughter, and modern warfare had seen nothing equal to it in the fury of the combatants and number, of the slain." At the head of eight battalions, Lieutenant- General the Earl of Orkney attacked the troops iri the churchyard ; while Lieu tenant-General Ingoldsby, with four others, supported by the Royal Irish (or old 5th) Dragoons, under a tempest of round shot, bullets, and grenades, which covered anew all the field with corpses, advanced to assail the French THE BAITLE OF BLENHEIM. escape by the rear, but were repulsed. A second attempt to sally in another direction, was vigorously checked by the Scots Greys. Encompassed now on every side, the French fought with the fury of despair and rage, while the Marquis de Clerara- baule, their commander, plunged his horse into the Danube and was engulfed in the stream. Four Dutch regiments were ordered to storm Oberclau. " Lord Clare maintained the post with incredible bravery," says O'Connor ; " the carnage was horrible. Goor's regiment retired with fifty men only. Prince Eugene attacked the left of the Gallo-Buvarians with his usual intrepidity, and was met with equal valour. Three times repulsed, he rallied and broueht his men Isack to the charge. in the village, still 13,000 strong, and resisting des- perately even after Marsin, "who had no genius for war, and who should have spent his life in courts not camps, and should have joined the devotions of Louis and Madame de Maintenon, instead of leading the veterans of Europe on a field of slaughter," had sounded a retreat, and left them to surrender or die. Eight o'clock had tolled in the spire of that village church, around which so many were learning the great secret of time and eternity, ere the fire began to slacken, and the slaughter to cease, when the French drums beat a parley. Prior to this Tallard, when he saw the fate of the day decided, fighting no longer for victory or for i ^ ^'' 1 A i 488 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. ^Blenheim. vengeance, but for sheer safety, rallied his broken squadrons in rear of the tents, and had sent urgent messages to Marsin and the Elector on the left for aid, but sent in vain. He liad also sent an aide-de- camp to the officer commanding in Blenheim, with peremptory orders to withdraw ; but the aide-de- camp never reached his destination, being swept away with the living torrent which now pressed with irresistible fury upon his chief. Thus it was that Blenheim became so completely isolated, and that all became confusion and dismay in the once proud army of France. Without orders, leaders, or discipline, the regiments dispersed and fled like sheep ; multitudes were cut down, or surrendered to the cavalry, while a vast number, in seeking to cross and escape, were swept away in the dark rolling waters of the Danube. When twilight was stealing over the field, the ruined hamlets, and smouldering mills, the French in Blenheim capitulated ; twenty-six battalions of infantry and twelve squadrons of cavalry surrendered as prisoners of war, and tiie bloody field was won. According to the "Atlas Geogi'aphus," this result was acliieved by the Earl of Orkney, who perceiving a body of French marching towards him from a part of the village which he had ordered to be set on fire, " sent his aide-de-camp, Captain Abercrombie, to ofler them quarter if they would surrender. TiiCy proved to be jmrt of the FrencJi Brigade Royale, commanded by M. de Denonville, their brigadier, who after some difliculty surrendered to the earl. Another French battalion perceiving this, surrendered to Lieutenant-General Ingoldsby. It being near night, and the confederate troops not being in a condition to attack without further rein- forcement, the earl sent his aide-de-camp with M. de Denonville into the village (of Blenheim), where there were still twenty-six battalions of foot and twelve squadrons of dragoons, to inform them that their horse were routed and Tallard taken, and to offer them the same terms that had been given to the rest. M. Balzac, who commanded in chief, demanded leave to march out and join the rest of their troops, which the earl refused." On this the whole surrendered unconditionally ; but many of the ensigns, in their rage, tore their regi- mental colours to pieces ("Life of Prince Eugene "). The rout of the French was total and complete. There were taken xoo pieces of cannon, 24 mortars, 129 infantry colours, 171 cavalry standards, 17 pairs of kettledrums, all the tents, coaches, and baggage animals, 15 pontoons, and 2 bridges of boats, 24 barrels and 8 casks of silver, and a vast host of prisoners, including Marshal Tallard, and many cliScers of the highest civil and military rank. This success cost the Allies, accordingtoBrodrick's "Complete History of the Present War, 1713," 4,435 men killed, 7,525 wounded, and 273 made prisoners. The Prince of Holstein and Brigadier Rowe died of their wounds ; Major-General Corn- wallis, Colonel Dormer of the English Guards, Lieutenant-Colonels Dalzel, Featherstonehaugh, and Lord William P'orbes, Lieutenant-Colonel of the Scots Horse Guards, were among the officers killed. Among those wounded were Lord North, who lost his right hand, and Lord Mordaunt, who had his left arm shattered by a cannon-shot. The duke had a narrow escape from anotlier, which grazed the belly of his horse, and as it struck the earth so covered him witli nmd that he was at first thought to be severely wounded. The French and Bavarians are said to have lost above 40,000 men in killed, wounded, and prisoners. So great was the number of the latter that the 2nd battalion of the Royal Scots, with the regiments of Prince George of Denmark, Lords Nortli and Grey, Rowe (Scots Fusiliers), and Meredith, under Brigadier Ferguson, were sent to Mentz in charge of them, .and thence to Holland. " In one place," says General Kane, " thirteen battalions were cut to pieces, not one of them escaping but such as threw themselves anion.'; the slain. I rode through them next morning as they lay dead in rank and file." The hussars followed the French stragglers with such rigour, tliat we are told in " The Life of Eugene," " there was no moving twenty yards in the Black Forest without finding a dead body." Darkness had fairly settled over Blenheim ere the last sound of firing ceased to be heard, and the Allies were compelled to bivouac in tlie open field not far from Hochstadt. The red blaze of their fires, stretching apparently to the horizon, were visible to the retreating French, and infused such terror into the garrison, that on the first summons they capitulated. Hochstadt opened its gates at early dawn on the following day, and the army marched through to a new position between Wittis- lingen and Steinheim. Despite his great anxiety to follow up his victory, Marlborough found the army so completely disorganised by the effects of the great battle, that some days of repose proved absolutely necessary. Smollett relates that on tlie day after the battle Marlborough visited his prisoner the Marshal Duke de Tallard, to whom he expressed his sorrow that "such a misfortune should happen personally to one for whom he had an esteem so profound." " I congratulate you," replied the marshal, " on having vanquished the best troops in the world." Gibraltar. ] tllK tHlRD COLOUR ABOLISHED. 489 " I think my own mast be the best in the world," was the response of Marlborough, "as they have conquered those on whom you bestow so high an encomium.'' Tallard had been surrounded and taken by the cavalry at a mill near the village of Son- deren ; together with the Marquis de Mont- perauz, general of horse, and other officers of distinction. A monument erected by the gallant Brigadier Rowe to the memory of his wife, who died in the year before Blenheim, is, or was lately, visible in the Greyfriars Churchyard at Edinburgh, and its quaint inscription is preserved in Monteith's " Theatre of Mortality,'' pubhshed in 1704. " When our officers coming from Flanders," says a writer on the actions of Marlborough, " after a cam- paign, appear in the newest fashions, which they bring over with them, with a good air and genteel mien, which is always common to them ; the people who never saw tlie hardships they undergo think them only designed for jjleasure and ease, and their profession to be desired above everything in the world besides. They often hear of fights and sieges, and of a great many men killed in a few hours ; but because they see not the actions, the talk leaves but a small and transient impression. But if they did but see them in a rainy season, when the whole country about them is trod into a chaos, and in such intolerable marches, men and horses dying and dead together, and the best of them glad of a bundle of straw to rest their wet and weary limbs ; if they did but see a siege, be- sides the daily danger and expectation of death, which is common to all, from the general to the sentinel ; the watches, the labours, the cares, the ugly sights, the odour of mortality, the grass all withered and black with the smoke of powder, the horrid noises all. night and all day, and spoil and destruction on every side ; I am sure they woulii be persuaded that a state of war, to those who are engaged in it, must needs be a state of labour and misery ; and that a great general — I mean such as the Duke of Marlborough — weak in his constitution and well-stricken in years, would not undergo those eating cares which must be continually at his heart ; the toils and hardships he must endure, if he ■ has the least spark of human consideration ; I say, he would not engage in sucli a life, if not for the sake of his queen, his country, and his honour.' CHAPTER XCn. CAPTURE OF GIBRALTAR, 1704. On the relinquishment of the pike in the reign of 1 Anne, it was ordered that every infantry soldier ' should in future be armed with a musket, bayonet. \ and sword. The grenadiers ceased about the same i period to carry hand grenades. A corps of Royal Artillery was for the first time added to the army, and regiments were directed to lay aside their third colour ; and no corps in the army are now entitled to have them, save the 74th and 78th Highlanders, as a memorial of their valour at Assaye, in 1803. In the war of the Spanish succession, one of the most important events for Britain, was, undoubtedly, the capture and armed retention of the great fortress of Gibraltar, which occurred about five weeks be- fore the recently described battle of Blenheim. On the 5th of January, 1 704, a fleet under Admiral Sir George Rooke, sailed from Spithead, to convoy the Archduke Charles of Austria to Lisbon. Not long after his departure, the British Court received intelligence that the French were busy in the equip- ment of a powerful armament at Brest. Orders were therefore issued to fit out a strong fleet, under the unfortunate Sir Cloudesley Shovel, Admiral of the White, having under him Sir Stafford Fairborne, Vice Admiral of the Red, and Rear- Admiral Byng, with orders to join Sir George Rooke ; and on the i6th of June, the junction was effected off" Lagos. On the 17th of July, at a Council of War held on board the Royal Catherine, in the roadstead of Tetuan, a port in the province of Fez, it was resolved to make a sudden and vigorous attack upon the Spanish fortress of Gibraltar. In accordance with this resolution, the fleet stood over from the shore of Barbary on the night of the 20th, and on the following morning got into the bay. At three o'clock on the same afternoon, the marines, to the number of 1,800, under the Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt, were landed on the isthmus to the northv/ard of the town of Gibraltar, with orders to cut off' all communication with the adja- cent country. After the Peace of Ryswick, the marine regiments were disbanded ; but those in the service on this occasion had been embodied in 1702, and servfd 49° BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Gibraltar. on board the fleet of Sir George Rooke, at the capture of Gibraltar, its subsequent defence, and the siege of Barcelona in 1705. They were the battalions of Colonels Sanderson, Villars, and Fox, afterwards numbered respectively as the 30th, 31st, and 32nd of the Line. Bishop Burnet states that " some men ventured to go ashore in a place where it was not thought possible to go up the rocks ; yet they succeeded in it. When they got up, they saw all the women of the town come out, according to their superstition, to a chapel there to implore the Virgin's protection. They seized on them, and that contributed not a little to dispose those in the town- to surrender." This ungallant action, so unlike British seamen or soldiers, the seizure of these female pilgrims, is recorded only in the bishop's history, and by Mr. Burchett. Be the story false or true, the Prince of Hesse lost no time in approaching Gibraltar. Though not so strong then as now, this remark- able rock was nevertheless a place of vast strength, and had on its walls one hundred pieces of cannon. On the face of the hill there still stood much of the original castle built by Tarik the Moor, a magnifi- cent pile. From an inscription over the principal gate before it was pulled down, the period of its being finished, was ascertained to have been about the year of our Lord 725. It was in possession of the Mahometans seven hundred and forty-eight years ; and on its conquest by the Christians, Henry IV. of Castile and Leon, added it to his royal titles, and gave it for arms, gules, a castle, with a key pendant at the gate or, alluding to it being the key of the Mediterranean. In the reign of Charles V. the fortifications were modernised, and several additions made to them by Daniel Speckel, the Emperor's engineer, after which the place enjoyed the reputation, like many others, of being impregnable. Even in the stirring time of Queen Anne's wars, it must have been an exciting duty to this small body of marines, the attempt to capture the town and castle of that mighty and remarkable rock, whose rugged outline towered above them "in form resembling a lion couchant, connected tail- ward to the mainland by a narrow strip of sand," the place whereon they landed. Its northern ex- tremity, now almost entirely covered with fortifica- tions, was then bare, or showing only here and there, the olive, the aloe, the caper plant, and various cacti growing amid the crevices of the stone, where the fawn-coloured apes scampered to and fro, and where the cries of the wild hawks as they wheeled in mid-air overhead, mingled with the boom of the breakers on either side of the rock. The Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt, on taking pos- session of the isthmus, immediately sent a message to the governor, the Marquis de Salines, requiring him "to surrender the castle and town of Gibraltar for the service of His Catholic Majesty." The reply of the Spanish officer was, " that the garrison had taken an oath of fidelity to their natu- ral lord. King Philip V., and that as faithful and loyal subjects, they would sacrifice their lives in defence of the city." He had only 150 soldiers with him, in addition to the armed male inhabitants, yet he prepared for a vigorous defence on one hand, while an attack from the sea was resolved on by the Allids: . The admiral gave orders that on the morning of the 22nd, the ships which had been appointed to cannon- ade the town under Rear-Admiral Byng, and Rear- Admiral Vanderdussen, as well as those which were to batter the south wall, under Captain Hicks of the Yarmouth, should take up their positions; and open their ports. These were one ship of sixty-six guns, three of sixty, eight of seventy, and one of eighty, the Ranelagh, and six Dutch ships ; but the wind was blowing a half gale, and so heavy a sea was on, that they could not get into their places till the day was spent. In the meantime, to occupy the attention of the enemy. Captain Whitaker went in with his armed boats' crews, and burned a French ship of twelve guns that was moored beside the ancient wall. On the 23rd, at daybreak. Sir George Rooke hoisted the signal for firing, and a six hours' cannon- ade ensued. With such speed and fury was it maintained, that within that time no less than r 5,000 cannon-balls were sent into Gibraltar, and the Spanish cannoniers were soon beaten from their guns, especially at the south wall head. The admiral conceiving that by gaining that part of the fortifications the whole town might be more easily won, ordered Captain Whitaker, with all the armed boats, to land a sufficient force to carry it by storm, with pistol, pike, and cutlass ; but Captain Hicks and Captain (afterwards Sir WilHam) Jumper, had pushed on shore with the crews of their pinnaces and other armed boats, before the rest could overtake them, in their ardour to capture this place, which was fated to be more famous in the wars of the future, than it had ever been in those of the past. On their approach, the Spaniards sprang a mine with a mighty crash, and when the cloud of dust, lime, and stones cleared away, it was found that two lieutenants and forty men were killed and sixty of our seamen wounded. The stormers, neverthe- less, took possession of the works; and on being Gibcillar. , THE VOLUNTEERS OE DEATH. 491 joined by Captain Whitaker's force, they captured a small bastion — the present eight-gun battery — which lies half-way between the mole and the town, and turned its cannon on the enemy. Sir George Rooke sent a letter to the governor, and also to the Prince of Hesse with instructions to summon the place peremptorily, which was accord- ingly done; and on the 24th of July the terms of capitulation were concluded, and the Marquis de Salines, with his brave little band, marched out with the honours of war, drums beating, a Spanish flag flying, the officers mounted, three pieces of brass cannon with twelve charges of powder and ball for each, and provisions for a six days' march; while the Spaniards who chose to remain " were to be allowed the same privileges they had enjoyed under King Charles II." Descending from the Rock, the soldiers of the little gaixison took their route across the white strip of sand into Andalusia ; and from that hour no flag save the British has ever been unfurled in Gibraltar. The total loss of the fleet in gaining this most important acquisition to the Crown, was two lieutenants, one master, and fifty-seven seamen killed ; one captain, seven lieutenants, one boat- swain, and 207 seamen wounded. The Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt remained as governor, with as many men as could be spared from the fleet, which now stood over to Tetuan for wood and water ; and Sir George Rooke after his engagement with the Count de Toulouse sailed for England, leaving eighteen ships of war, under Sir John Leake (who had been captain of the Eagle at the battle of La Hogue), to succour and support the garrison. With this view Sir John came to anchor off Lisbon. The Courts of Paris and Madrid were greatly mortified by the loss of a fortress so important as Gibraltar, and, considering its immediate recapture of the first consequence, sent orders to the Marquis de Villadarius, a grandee of Spain, to besiege it, and drive out the English. Apprised of this in time, and also that the marquis was to be assisted by a naval force, the prince sent an express to Lisbon requesting rein- forcements ; but ere they came the fleet of France arrived, and landed six battalions, which joined the Spanish army already entrenched before the town. From Lisbon there were sent to the prince's aid, a battalion of English Guards, the regiments of John, Earl of Barrymore, and Arthur, Earl of Donegal, afterwards numbered as the 13th and 35th of the Line. These made a force of 2,198 sergeants, rank and file; and with them came a Dutch battalion, and 500 Portuguese from Lagos. Reinforced thus, the prince made a sortie on the 23rd of December, and destroyed the lines that had been erected within one hundred and sixty paces of the palisade. On one occasion 500 volunteers devoted themselves to death. They took the solemn sacrament, and on their knees vowed never to return until they had taken Gibraltar. Guided by a goatherd, this forlorn band came round by the south side of the rock, near the Cave Guard, at that time called the Pass of the Locust Trees. For a little time fortune favoured them, and mounting the rock undiscovered, they lodged for the first night in the Cave of St. Michael. On the succeeding night they scaled Charles V.'s wall, and surprised and bayoneted the entire guard at Middle Hill ; where afterwards, by means of ropes and ladders, they got up several hundreds of the party that had been detailed t(5 support them. On this being discovered, a strong detachment of grenadiers was dispatched against them, and they were attacked with great spirit. One hundred and sixty of them were killed or hurled at the bayonet's point over the dreadful precipices into the sea ; a colonel and thirty officers, with the remainder, were made prisoners. These brave but unfortunate men were to have been supported by a body of French troops ; but the commanding officers having dis- agreed about the route to pursue, they were left to their fate. The Spanish general, on being reinforced by a considerable infantry force, on the nth of Januaiy, 1705, made an attack with a body of grenadiers on the works at the extremity of the King's Lines ; but was repulsed with loss. Undiscouraged, he made another attack on the following day, at the head of 500 select French and Walloon grenadiers, under Lieutenant-General Thouy. Mounting the hill in perfect silence, in the grey light of dawn, they at- tempted to storm the Round Tower, which was stoutly defended by Colonel Jacob Borr, on whose marines they hurled from above, great stones and hand-grenades with such force, that he was driven into that portion of the works which was occupied by the Guards. Flushed with success, they ad- vanced too far, when they were gallantly charged by Colonel Moncall,of Barrymore's Regiment, at the head of 500 men, and with ringing cheers they were driven from the vicinity of the Round Tower. Colonel Rivett, of the Coldstream Guards, witli twenty grenadiers, having climbed to the summit of the Rock on the right of the covered way, greatly contributed to this success ; but Moncall lost a leg. 492 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. tGlbtaltar. By this time the whole garrison was under arms, and kept up so destructive a fire, that the enemy were obHged to make a precipitate retreat, with the loss of 270 men killed and wounded, and 43 officers and men taken prisoners ; while the casualties of the garrison amounted to only 27 killed and 127 wounded. Marshal de Tesse arrived with additional troops to carry on the siege, while 800 British and Dutch were added to the garrison. After a siege of seven to close the Mediterranean against a hostile squad- ron. Since the establishment of the Overland Route it has acquired a new value, as one of a chain of ports connecting England with her Indian posses- sions. One thing is certain, that having expended minions upon it, and covered it with the prestige of a glorious defence, it is not very likely to be given up, especially as it is understood that, by improved management, it is made to pay its own expenses." There survived till a comparatively recent period THE ROCK OF GIBRALTAR. months, during which the enemy lost by war and sickness 10,000 men, and the garrison 400, in the month of April the French and Spaniards, giving up all hope of being able to make any impression on Gibraltar, withdrew, and their efforts were thence- forth confined to a very feeble blockade. Since the invention of steam, the power of Gib- raltar, as the key of the Mediterranean, is very much lessened. A recent writer has observed "that Gibraltar liveS on her former credit ; and that as it has cost us an enormous sum, it must be of cor- responding value. Yet, destitute as it is of a harbour, like that of Malta, it cannot be a fortified stronghold for our fleet in the Mediterranean ; it can hardly, as will already have appeared, be said three Scotsmen and one Englishman who served at the original capture and defence of Gibraltar in the year 1704. These were John Campbell, a marine, who died at the age of 120, in the year 1791 ; Mathew Tail of Auchinleck, a soldier, who died in the following year, at the age of 1 23 ; and John Ramsay, of Culler- coats, a seaman, "who died so recently as 1807, aged 115. He was of a remarkably cheerful dis- position, and often amused himself and his friends with an old song " ( " Notes and Queries "). There was also William Billings, of Staffordshire, a soldier, who died in 1 791, to whom we shall' have to refer again, at the battle of Ramillies, and of whom a long notice occurs in the obituaries for that year. Malao;a.3 THE CENTURION'S SIGNAL. 493 CHAPTER XCIII. MALAGA, 1704. About the same time that Blenheim was fought and won, there occurred off Malaga a most des- Tetuan Bay, in the province of Fez, in, sight of the recently captured Rock, the Centurion, scout, MALAGA. perate engagement between the naval forces of Queen Anne and those of Louis XIV. After the capture of Gibraltar, the fleet under Sir George Rooke stood over to the Goast of Barbary to get the water-casks filled. Returning displayed the stirring signal, which has never been unwelcome to British sailors, of " An enemy's fleet to windward," as it appeared that their scouting ships did on seeing ours. A Council of War was summoned on board xsarBary 10 gci luc v?a.vci.-<-a.i>n..j «... — o — — 1 ^ v- r c- thence on the 9th of August, and standing out of ! the Royal Catherine, 90 guns, the flag-ship of bir 4S 494 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Malaga. George Rooke, Admiral of the Red, and it was resolved to steer eastward of Gibraltar; but the enemy did not seem disposed to engage. The reasons given by the French for this avoid- ance of action were, that they had but few of their row-galleys with them, and the rendezvous of the rest of their vessels being at Velez Malaga. This delay gave Sir George Rooke time to send for 900 marines from Gibraltar. The loth and nth of August were spent in beating to windward in pur- suit of the enemy, of whom no other account could be had than what might be gathered by the report of their signal guns, which the water conducted to a vast distance. On the nth Rooke drove a French ship on shore near Fuengirola, on the coast of Andalusia, where her crew set her on fire and escaped in their boats. On the 1 2th, about noon, the enemy's fleet was discovered, with all its galleys, to the westward, near Velez Malaga, a town fourteen miles north- east of Malaga, and in sight of the magnificent mountain sierra which separates Granada from Andalusia. "They were going away large," i.e., with the wind abaft the beam ; and all that night Sir George Rooke bore after them in hne of battle. On the morning of the 13th they were within nine miles of each other ; then the French brought to, with their heads to the southward, the wind being easterly, and forming their hne, lay in that position to receive Rooke, in three great divisions, attended by frigates, fire-ships and flutes. To the spectators gathered on Cape Malaga, the appearance of these hostile fleets must have been magnificent. That of France, under the Count de Toulouse, amounted to ninety-two sail, carrying 3,681 pieces of cannon. Eleven of the great galleys were placed in the second line of the White and Blue squadrons, under the command of the Duke de Tursis ; four, under the Marquis de Roye, astern of the Count de Toulouse, who led the centre ; and other eight, commanded by the Mar- quis de Ferville, astern of the Marquis de Lan- geron, leader of the rear, or Blue squadron. There were twelve French and eleven Spanish galleys in all. The British fleet, under Sir George Rooke, amounted to fifty-nihe sail, carrying 2,940 guns. He had also twelve Dutch ships. Smollett states t^at the British fleet laboured under many dis- advantages ; that the weight of our cannon was inferior to that of the enemy; that the bottoms of the ships were foul, having been long at sea; and that many of them were short of ammunition. In the British line, Sir George Rooke, with Rear-Admirals Byng and Dilkes, led the centre ; Sir Cloudesley Shovel and Sir John Leake led the van; and the Dutch Admirals Calembourg and Vanderdussen the rear. There are many accounts of the battle which ensued off Cape Malaga, and though they differ in details, they agree in the general result. Accord- ing to the dispatch sent with Captain Tudor Trevor, of Her Majesty's ship Triton, by Sir George Rooke to Prince George of Denmark, in whose person Queen Anne had revived the office of Lord High Admiral, he says, " On Sunday morning, the 13th of August, we bore down upon the enemy in order of battle till a little after ten o'clock, when, being about half gun-shot from them, they set all their sails at once, and seemed to intend to stretch ahead and weather us." To preclude this. Sir George Rooke threw out the signal for close battle from his flag-ship; and the moment the firing began it was continued with unabated fiiry on both sides. The Marquis de Villette, leader of the French van, observing that Sir Cloudesley Shovel, the leader of our van, as he bore down was at some dis- tance from the centre, tliinking he might get ahead of that squadron with his leading ships, signalled to some of the French line to crowd all the sail they could carry. Shovel, still bearing on with the van, thus insensibly found himself among their lirie, and even ahead of them ; so the French now strove to cut off his division from the rest of the fleet. Hoping with reason, when it grew calm, as firing always puts down the wind, their galleys might tow these off", " so that they might make a double, and, weathering Sir Cloudesley, fire upon him on both sides," the marquis bore steadily on ; till Sir George Rooke, foreseeing what would happen were his van cut off) came on with the rest of the fleet, and Villette had soon to haul out of the line, his ship of eighty-eight guns having been set on fire by the explosion of a bomb under her poop, and being in imminent danger of blowing up if the flames reached her powder-room. Rear-Admiral de Belleisle's ship, the Magnifique, 86 guns, was in the same predicament ; but he was lying dead on her deck. After a four hours' action, about two in the afternoon the French van gave way before ours, as their rear did to the Dutch towards night. Admiral Calembourg's squadron, being fully provided with ammunition, continued firing to the last, and nearly sunk Captain Roverai's ship, the Invincible, 70 guns, which had to quit the line to have her leaks stopped. Long before this several ships of our centre, Malaga.] VISCOUNT DURSLEY, 49S van, and rear divisions had been forced to quit the action, for sheer want of cannon-shot; thus the brunt of the battle fell with peculiar fury on the St. George, 96 guns. Captain Jennings, and the Shrewsbury, 80 guns. Captain John Crow. The scarcity was caused by the recent and great ex- penditure of ammunition of every kind at the cap- ture and defence of Gibraltar, though every ship had been supplied with twenty-five rounds per gun, which were deemed sufficient, two days be- fore the battle; that is, sufficient could some of our ships have got near enough the enemy to attempt much boarding — but as it was, every one in the fleet had nearly expended her last shot ere aight fell. Close quarters, however, were come to more than once in the centre. The Serieux, 58 guns, commanded by M. Champmelin, thrice boarded the Monk, a sixty-gim ship, under Captain Mills, who thrice, sword in hand, swept her boarders from his deck, and hurled them into the sea. "This same French commander,'' says a note to Lediard, "had his ship afterwards so disabled that, he was obliged to quit the line ; as was like- wise the Chevalier de Grancy, whose ship was wholly disabled," with those of the Chevalier d'Osmont, and Captains de la Roche, Alard, and De Poulett. Captain (afterwards Sir William) Jumper, who so recently distinguished himself at Gibraltar, did so here again, by engaging with his single ship, the Lennox, 70 guns, no less than three of the enemy's sail of the line, and beating them off. The St. George lost both her captain and a vast number of her men ; but no man in the British fleet distinguished himself more, we are told, than the gallant young Charles Berkeley, Viscount Dursley, captain of the Boyne, 80 guns, who was then in his twenty-third year, "and gave many memorable instances of his steady resolution, un- daunted courage, and prudent conduct." The battle ceased only with the daylight. The losses were pretty equal on both sides, and not a single ship was taken or destroyed in either fleet ; but subsequent operations proved that with the British unquestionably lay the whole honour of the battle, which the French were vain enough to claim as a victory. By the help of their galleys, which had long and powerful swee-ps, they were towed away to leeward. In the night the wind veered round to the north, and in the morning to the westward, which gave them the weather-gage of Sir George Rooke. All that day the fleets lay by quietly within six miles, attending to their wounded, burying the killed, and repairing damages; but the Count de Toulouse evinced no desire of making use of his advan- tageous position or superiority in guns and am- munition. On the 15th he was seen five leagues to wind- ward. By noon the British had a' breeze of wind from the east, and bare down to try another battle with their few remaining shot, but arrived too late — the darkness came on. Next morning the count and his fleet had disappeared; and ours bore away westward, supposing he had steered for Cadiz. Two captains were killed in this action — Sir Andrew Leake, of the Grafton, and Crow, of the Shrewsbury — four Ueutenants, two warrant officers, and 687 men ; four captains were wounded, with twenty-six lieutenants and warrant officers, and 1,632 men. The Dutch squadron had 400 killed and wounded. Sir Cloudesley Shovel, in his account of the action, says it was very sharp, and that of the whole fleet there was scarcely a ship but was obliged to shift one mast, and many all, insomuch that there were not three spare topmasts left un- used in the whole fleet. Sir Geoi-ge Rooke stated in his letter that he " must do the officers the justice to say that every man in the line did his duty without the least umbrage for censure or re- flection; and that he never observed the true British spirit so apparent and pre^^ilent in our sea- men as on this occasion." Admiral Calembourg,in his dispatch to the States- General, says that they expended such a vast quantity of powder in this battle that they were compelled to have cartridges filled in the midst of it. Our fleet having entirely lost sight of the enemy. Sir George called a Council of War, in which it was determined to steer for Gibraltar and refit. Thence he, after leaving a squadron under Sir John Leake at the mouth of the Straits, sailed for Spit- head ; and on the 29th of September was presented to Queen Anne and Prince George of Denmark, at Windsor. Bishop Burnet states that the Count de Toulouse put into Toulon with his fleet so utterly crippled that it was unfit to go to sea for many months to come. " They left the sea as well as the fieid of battle to us, and the honour remained with us." But Louis XIV., in order to raise the drooping spirits of his people, claimed the victory, "and published an account of the action which, at this distance of time, plainly proves that he was reduced to the mean shift of imposing upon his subjects by false and partial representations. 496 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Barcelona. CHAPTER XCIV. CAPTURE OF BARCELONA, 1705. "The particulars of the siege of Barcelona, as related by Voltaire, are," says Russell, in his " History of Modern Europe," " too much for the honour of this country to be omitted by any English historian." ■ It was, perhaps, one of the most gallant actions performed by the Earl of Peterborough's little army in Spain ; and with that feat of arm's was combined an act of Christian chivalry nearly similar to that recorded in French history, when certain valiant English knights, under the famous Sir Robert Knollys, joined those of the Count de Foix and the Captal de Buclie, though England was then at war with France, to save the Dauphiness, the Duchess of Orleans, and 300 noble ladies from the ferocious Jacquerie, at Meaux, though these boors were fully 9,000 strong, and the good knights but sixty lances in all. By the act of mercy which closed the siege of Barcelona, the British arms were covered with honour ; and to none did it more particularly re- dound than to the grenadiers of our 34th Foot, then known as the regiment of Colonel Hans Hamilton, who had previously commanded the Earl of Derby's regiment (now i6th Foot) with which he had served in the Netherlands in 1701, and he had also shared in the victories of Schellen- burg and Blenheim. Spain was still without a ruler, and Austria and France had' each their claimant for the vacant throne ; and Britain, as already related, had drawn her sword with the Germans, in aid of Charles III., against Philip. Catalonia and Valencia were in favour of the former, but French garrisons occu- pied them both. A descent on Barcelona was there- fore proposed by Major-General Prince George of Hesse-Darmstadt ; and Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough, '' a man," says Voltaire, " in every respect resembling those imaginary heroes repre- sented in romances," was greatly pleased with the daring of the proposed expedition, and at once con- sented to join it; so with the grand fleet under Sir Cloudesley Shovel, he sailed from St Helen's on the 24th of May, 1705. The armament consisted of twenty-nine sail of the line, besides frigates, fire- ships, and bomb-ketches. At Lisbon they took on board Charles III., and were joined by a Dutch fleet of twenty sail of the }ine, under Admiral AllemaHdes. At Gibraltar they embarked Prince George of Hesse, and " the batta- lion of English Guards, and the three old regiments which had so valiantly defended it." Two newly- raised corps were left in their place; and on the nth of August the whole forces came to anchor off the Spanisli coast, in the Bay of Altea, where a body of troops landed to protect, the watering-parties of the fleet, and the Earl of Peterborough caused a manifesto in Spanish to be issued to the people. It stated that Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain had not sent her forces to take possession of any place in a hostile manner for her own use, " but to defend and protect those who should sub- mit in due obedience to their lawful sovereign King Charles III." While the fleet was in the bay tidings came that 1,000 men had assembled in the adjacent mountains, and seizing the walled town of Denia, had declared for Charles ; upon which 400 soldiers were placed in it, and General Ramos was appointed governor. On the same day the fleet came to anchor off Barcelona, when the Spaniards immediately began to fire from the mole and a battery near the sea upon some of the transports as they stood in shore. But on the 12th, under Prince George, the forces began to disembark, and without opposition, between the town and Badalona, which is eight miles north- east of it ; and so great was the joy of the Catalan peasantry on beholding them that many of them rushed to their girdles in the sea that they might carry the officers and soldiers ashore. On the 1 7th King Charles landed, under a salute of cannon from the whole fleet ; and he was not only welcomed by the acclamations of the Catalans, who surrounded him in crowds, but by a triple discharge of firearms from the camp and shore. Yet De Larrey, in his " History of France under Louis XIV.," says that he was joined only by a few deserters and some peasants, who expected to be rewarded for their zeal. Sir Cloudesley Shovel's fleet was to co-operate with the troops under the Earl of Peterborough and the Prince of Hesse in bombarding the town, which Captain Carlton describes in his Memoirs as b^ing "one of the largest and most populous cities in all Spain, and fortified with bastions ; one side thereof is secured by the sea, and the other by a strong fortification called Montjuich. The entyance to the port had then a platform niounte4 Barcelona. ] PRINCE OF HESSE WOUNDED. 49? with cannon, and a lighthouse, being a tower built, in the form of a pyramid, with a lantern on the top. The town had ten bulwarks, some old towers, and a ditch not very deep." In garrison it had 5,000 men, under Don Francisco de Velasco, the Viceroy of Catalonia, who on the first appearance of the alUed fleet gave orders to destroy all the straw and forage in the villages for three miles around the capital. Shut up with him were M. du Barry, who had been en route to com- mand the French troops in Castile, and the young Duke di Popoli with his lady. He was a Neapo- litan noble, who, with forty Italians of high rank, had been proceeding to Madrid to serve in Philip's Life Guard, of which he was a captain. The first who landed there on Spanish soil were 200 British grenadiers; and in five hours after fifteen battalions, making only 6,000 men in all, were drawn up under their several colours. But Lord Peterborough was joined by many loyal Spaniards, with shouts of — "Viva el Rey Don Carlos! Viva Carlos Ter- cero ! " The most of these, however, were unfortunately Miquelets, a species of banditti, armed with arque- buses, pistols, and daggers. That the siege should be proceeded with at once was the wish of the king ; but so great was the strength of Barcelona that no less than six Councils of War were held on the subject Stan- hope, who was present, "told me," says Bishop Burnet, " that both English and Dutch were all of opinion that the siege could not be undertaken with so small a force ; those within being as strong as they were, nor did they see anything else worth the attempting." Some were for re-embarkation. The Prince of Hesse urged the siege, and the king spoke for half an hour on the subject. Though the Dutch declared that the attempt to reduce Bar- celona would be an unjustifiable loss of human life, it was resolved to proceed. " This proved happy in some respects," continues the bishop ; " it came to be known afterwards that the Catalans and Miquelets, who had joined them, hearing that they had resolved to abandon them and go back to their ships, had determined, either out of resentment, or that they might merit pardon, to murder as many of them as they could. When this small army sat down before Barcelona, they found they were too weak to besiege it — they could scarcely mount their cannon — and when they came to examine their stores, they found them very defective, and far short of the quantities that by their lists they expected." Monjuich, a strong fort situated on a hill near the town, was made the first point of attack ; but the first blood shed was among our own people, for in the bustle of landing, two English colonels of Marines, named Rodney and Jacob Borr, quar- relled, and fought a duel with their swords in front of the line. Both fell wounded, and Rodney died next day ; but Borr — the same officer who served in the Round Tower at Gibraltar — recovered ; he became a major-general in 1710, and till 1723 was colonel of the 32nd Regiment. The approach of the British troops was beheld by the people in Barcelona with a joy which they dared not manififst, overawed as they were by the presence of a garrison apparently devoted to Philip. On the night of the 13th of September, the troops ordered to storm Monjuich made a detour through the mountains for that purpose. Prince George of Hesse led 1,000 rank and file ; the reserve, under Brigadier Stanhope (of the present 33rd Foot), consisted of 600 more. Among those detailed for the forlorn hope were the grena- diers of the 34th Regiment, which had been raised in Norfolk and Essex three years before, by Lord Lucas, of Shenfield, Governor of the Tower of London, and which was now commanded by his successor. Colonel Hans Hamilton, who served as quartermaster-general of the expedition. The castle of Monjuich enjoyed, like many other places, the reputation of being a virgin fortress. It occupied the loftiest of that cluster of heights which are a portion of the Montserrat chain ; many ravines and hollows girdled it, and military science had left nothing undone to strengthen the naturally strong situation of the fortress. Its ditches were scarped, and the out- works were models of exactitude. But these were stormed by our troops at the point of the bayonet with small loss comparatively, and daybreak saw the British colours flying over them ; but the governor retired into the keep or " dungeon," as it is named in the London Gazette, " and there made a resolute defence." Shouts of " Viva ! " were now heard from an unexpected quarter, and a body of cavalry dis- patched from Barcelona, under Lieutenant-General the Marquis de Risbourg, were seen approaching. With their short muskets they opened a terrible fire on the German troops, at the head of whom the Prince of Hesse was mortally wounded, while in the act of conferring with the Earl of Peter- borough. A musket-shot passed through his thigh, tearing a great artery, and occasioning a great effusion of blood ; but not to discourage his men, " he marched on as if he had not been wounded, 498 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [B ar celona. till the vital spirit of his great heart being no i At this crisis Lord Peterborough rushed to the longer able to support him, he fell, and was imme- front, drew his sword, and threw away the scab- diately carried to a little house that was near, but before his wound could be looked to he expired " ("Annals of Queen Anne "). By Risbourg's sudden advance, and the capture bard, exclaiming- " I am sure all brave men will follow me ! " By his presence and example, he rallied the troops and retook the lost outworks. THE EARL OF PETERBOROUGH. of a colonel named Allen, with three companies of English, Castilians, and Dutch, who had been lured into the ditch by some of the wily Spaniards in Montjuich throwing up their hats and crying, " Viva Carlos Tercero," the attacking troops be- came disheartened, and the stormers, under William, Viscount Charlemont (colonel of the 36th Foot in 1 701), began to give way, or were ordered by him to fall back. Don Carletti Caraccioli, a Neapolitan, who was governor, remained for three days shut up in the keep, amid an incessant fire of bombs, one of which, shot by Colonel Southwell, entered the magazine, and thus blew the whole fortress to atoms. Don Carletti, several officers, and fifty men, perished in the ruins, while 350 laid down their arms, and were with difficulty saved from the merciless Miquelets, who rushed in to slay Barcelona. 1 ASSAULT ON THE CITY. 499 So6 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Marcelolii. and plunder. These outlaws were now 15,000 strong, and had as their leader the Conde de Cifu- entes, a noble as reckless as themelves." As Monjuich was no more, preparations were at once made to attack the city. Fifty heavy guns taken from the fleet, and worked by seamen, were placed on rising ground, flanked by redoubts armed with field-pieces, which in those days were usually three and six-pouriders. To the westward of the city other batteries were erected ; and large bodies of seamen were brought from the ships, and marshalled by companies imder their own officers, like our Naval Brigade of later times. Carleton tell us, in his Memoirs, that Little- ton, " one of the most advanced captains of the whole fleet, finding it impossible to draw- the cannon and mortars up such vast precipices," caused suits of harness to be made for 200 men, and by these means got the guns into position. This officer died an admiral in 1722. The entire train was commanded by Major Collier, and so heavy was the fire poured against the walls, that on the fifth day a mighty mass fell down amid a cloud of dust ; and when preparations were made to storm this practicable breach, a white flag was hoisted by Don Francisco de Velasco, in token of parley and capitulation. At the head of his staff, the Earl of Peterborough, whom Lord Orford describes as having been a man of elegant manners with a pleasing countenance, a great favourite with ladies, fond of frequenting green-rooms, the correspondent of Pope and Swift, tode to the gate of St. Angelo, where he met Velasco and the Duke di Popoli, whose title was taken from a little town of that name in Calabria. Don Francisco offered to yield up Barcelona, and march out with the honours of war, if not reUeved within four days. Lold Peterborough agreed to this, and the articles of capitulation were thereupon drawn up; but ere they could be concluded or signed, heavy firing was heard in the heart of the city, then shrieks were heard, and women, particularly ladies of rank, were seen flying in terror and disorder be- fore a band of armed marauders. " You have betrayed us ! " exclaimed the Duke di Popoli, with his hand on his sword. " While we, with all honour and sincerity, are here treating with you, your troops have entered the town by the fallen ramparts, and are now murdering, plundering, and committing every species of violence." "You are mistaken," replied the astonished earl ; " these must be the troops of the late Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt. There is but one expedient left to save you." " Name it," said Don Francisco, angrily. " Allow me to enter with a few British troops. I shall soon make aU quiet, and then we may con- clude the capitulation." The marauders proved to be a horde of the Conde de Cifuentes' Catalan Miquelets, who had passed through the breach ; and who, intent on plunder and slaughter, were rifling the mansions of the wealthy and noble, and committing the greatest outrage upon women of all ranks. The Earl of Peterborough, placing himself at the head of two troops of English dragoons and the grenadiers of the 34th Regiment, marched into Barcelona by the gate of St. Angelo, and scour- ing the streets in every direction, did that which the soldiers of Velasco were unable to do alone — he drove out the Miquelets, and restored perfect order. In this duty he was accompanied by Briga- dier Stanhope, who afterwards related to Bishop Burnet that " they ran a greater hazard fi^om the shooting and fire than they had done during the whole siege." Captain Carleton records that they had scarcely marched a hundred paces beyond the gate of St. Angelo, when " they saw a lady of apparent quality and of indisputable beauty flying from the fury of the Miquelets. Her lovely hair was flowing about her shoulders, and the consternation she was in added to, rather than diminished, her excessive beauty." This lady proved to be the young Duchess di Popoli. She rushed at once for protection to the Earl of Peterborough, who gallantly had her and her husband escorted through the gate to the shelter of our lines. When he had completely scoured the streets, and retaken the plunder from the exasperated Miquelets, he marched his grena- diers and dragoons out of Barcelona. Returning once more, attended only by his staff, he quietly completed the articles of capitulation with tlie governor, "to the utter astonishment of the Spaniards, at finding so much honour and generosity in a people whom they had hitherto been accustomed to consider only as merciless heretics." ' On the evening of the fourth day, no rehef having come, the garrison of King Philip marched out with drums beating, bayonets fixed, and colours flying, amid a general salute from the whole British hne. Velasco sailed to Malaga with 3,000 men, the rest having taken service under Charles III., to whom the whole of Catalonia now submitted. In Queen Anne'is time the capture of Barcelona made a great noise, for eight years before the French lost 12,000 in front of it; and in many Marbella Point :| SIR JOHN LEAKE. 5°i respects, equipment especially, the forces of Peter- borough were inferior to those of Velasco. Leaving the battalion of English Guards with CBarles III. in Barcelona, the earl now marched towards Valencia, after a Council of War held on the I St of October had resolved that he was to continue in Spain with the land forces, and all the marines that could be spared from the fleet ; and a winter squadron being appointed, under the command of Sir John Leake and the Dutch Rear- Admiral Wassenaer, the remainder of the armament sailed for home. In the same month 40,000 men were voted for the sea service of England. Of these 3,000 were marines, CHAPTER XCV. MARBELLA POINT, 1705; OSTEND, 1706. Bishop Burnet, in his " History of the Reign of Queen Anne," relates that during the blockade of Gibraltar, the Baron de Pointis was surprised near the bay by Sir John Leake, " who did quickly over- power him, and took three capital ships ; and the other two, that were the greatest of them, were run ashore and burnt near Marbella.'' The details of this old sea-fight, which the bishop dismisses with three lines of his folio, are as follow : — About the time that the Marshal de Tess^, as stated in Chapter XCII., arrived with additional troops to enforce the siege or blockade of Gibraltar, Sir John Leake, who had been left to cruise off the mouth of the Straits and outside thereof, had run to Lisbon to have his squadron refitted. At that place he received a letter from the Prince of Hesse, and another from Captain Charles Fatherley, of the Lark, informing him that a squadron of the enemy's ships had come into Gibraltar Bay, and that a siege there was to be pressed by sea and land j and urging him to return to its relief. It was resolved at a Council of War, " that as the preservation of that place was one of the highest importance to the common cause, to repair forthwith to the relief of it." On Leake's squadron coming off Gibraltar, he landed some troops ; but on being informed that a powerful fleet was preparing to attack him, he re- embarked them all except some marines and artillery : and as his ships in the meantime had lost some of their anchors and hempen cables, and provisions were becoming scarce, he returned to the Tagus. Sailing thence again, he suddenly arrived in Gibraltar Bay on the 29th of October, and sur- prised two thirty-four gun ships of the enemy, one of twelve, a fire-ship, a tartan, and two British prizes, ^11 of which were captured and destroyed by fire, with a ship of thirty guns, which, escaping from the bay, was taken outside. On the 2nd of November, Sir John resolved to land as many men as he could spare to defend the outposts of Gibraltar on the sea side, as well as further to reinforce the beleaguered garrison. Ac- cordingly, 300 British and Dutch soldiers were landed. These operations drew to the shore a strong force of Spanish cavalry, on whom the guns and small arms of the squadron opened, and killed a vast number of them. The Centurion, which came in with some prizes, reported that a French squadron in Cadiz was getting ready for sea, and that fifteen ships had their masts up and canvas bent ; but Leake was now obliged to return to Lisbon to refit. Fortu- nately the blockaded garrison were for the time independent of him, having been reinforced on the 2 7th of December by a battalion of the English Foot Guards and the regiments of John, Earl of Barry- more, and Arthur, Earl of Donegal (13th and 3Sth), with a Dutch corps (London Gazette). On the 14th of January the Baron de Pointis came into the bay, with fourteen French men-of- war and two fire-ships ; and on hearing of this. Sir John Leake again returned from Lisbon, having in the meantime been joined by five third-rates, under Sir Thomas Dilkes, a brave officer, who was after- wards poisoned at Leghorn. He had now under his command twenty-three British, four Dutch, and eight Portuguese men-of-war, having on board three battalions of infantry, one from each of these three nations. On the loth of March, at half-past five in the morning, when within two miles of Cape Cabretta, he discovered five sail standing out of the bay ; and a gun being fired at the same time from Europa Point causing him to conclude that the garrison was safe, he resolved to pursue theip. They were 502 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Ostend. all ships of the line, and proved to be the Magna- nime, 74 guns ; the Flower de Luce, 86 guns ; the Ardent, 66 guns ; the Arrogatit, 60 guns; and the Marquise, 56 guns, being the largest vessels in the squadron of M. de Pointis. By nine o'clock, Sir Thomas Dilkes, in the Revenge, accompanied by the Newcastle, Antelope, and Expedition, got within half gun-shot of the Arrogant, and captured her, after a stern and fierce resistance; and the moment her colours were down, she was boarded by a boat's crew of the New- castle. Before one o'clock the Ardent and the Marquise had been taken. The other two, the Flower de Luce and the Mag- nanime, which last was commanded by Baron de Pointis in person, though trying to escape, con- ducted the running fight bravely. With the small- arms volleying from poop and forecastle, and fire and shot spouting briskly from their port-holes, they ran inshore, to the westward of the old Moorish town and castle of Marbella, some thirty miles distant from Malaga. As there was no harbour there into which he might have escaped, he ran the ships aground. The crews escaped on shore in their boats, having previously set the vessels on fire ; and in a few minutes the stately three-deckers were sheeted with roaring flames. Sir John Leake now supposing that the rest of the squadron of the baron might be in the road- stead of Malaga, "looked in there;" but they, having heard the firing, had slipped their cables and gone under a press of sail to Toulon. Off Malaga three of Her Majesty's ships, the Kent, Orford, and Eagle, joined the admiral, who drove ashore and burned two richly-laden merchant ships on the low sandy shore near Almeria, in Granada. Her Majesty's ships Bedford and As- surance took two satties. Having thus completely relieved Gibraltar, not only by a reinforcement of troops, but by destroying or dispersing the squadron of Baron de Pointis, Sir John Leake once more returned to Lisbon ; and after a siege of seven months, as we have elsewhere narrated, the enemy abandoned any attempt to reduce the fortress, the Marshal de Tess^, in his letter to Louis XIV., detailing the defeat of De Pointis, having urged the impossibility of continuing further operations. Bombardment of Ostend. Sir Stafford Fairborne, Vice- Admiral of the Red, who, both as captain and flag-officer, had always served with distinction, being appointed to command a squadron in the Soundings, repaired to Spithead in the month of April, 1706, and sailed thence on the 24th of the same month. He had with him two vessels of 80 guns and 600 men each, three «f 60 guns and 400 men each, and one of 40 guns and 250 men. At Plymouth he was to be joined by two more third-rates, and the Centurio7i, 50 guns. His first orders were to proceed with the utmost secrecy to the mouth of the river Charente, in the ancient Angoumois, and there to take, sink, or otherwise destroy " all such vessels as the enemy might be fitting out from Rochefort, and which commonly lie before the mouth of that river to take in their guns, stores, and provisions. And when he had done his utmost in this attempt, he was to consider at a Council of War what further service might be performed against the enemy, or on the French coast elsewhere." Foul winds caused such delays that he failed to destroy the ships referred to; but after destroying ten French merchantmen, and capturing several others between the isles of Rhe and Oleron, he returned to Plymouth on the 17 th of May, and on the 30th received orders to repair to Ostend, and take with him, in addition to the squadron, " one fire-ship, two bomb-vessels, two brigantines, and as many sloops. And since part of the army in Flanders was to be detached to Ostend, in order to oblige the garrison there to declare for King Charles III., of Spain, he was to employ the ships in such a manner as might best conduce to the reduction of the said place. And if the Duke of Marlborough should be present, he was to follow his orders^ in case his Grace should think it proper to employ the squadron on any other service besides that of Ostend." In compliance with these orders, Sir Stafford came to anchor off Ostend, then deemed one of the strongest places in the Netherlands, and of which the French had possessed themselves on the death of Charles II., of Spain, It had then a large and safe harbour, well defended by forts, the work of the Spaniards. Getting information there that Nieuport, on the Yser, a town well fortified with walls and ramparts, was first to be reduced, he dispatched thither threi? small frigates to prevent the garrison from getting supplies from the seaward, and kept his smaller vessels cruising to and fro, to prevent all craft of any kind from entering the harbour of Ostend, where there lay a strong French garrison, under the Count de la Mothe, an officer of courage. It was soon after arranged that Nieuport should be blocked up and Ostend besieged. When summoned by the Duke of Marlborough, the Count de la Mothe replied that " he hoped the Ostend.] THE BOMBARDMENT OF OSTEND. 5°3 duke would excuse him if he defended the place till further orders, as became him." There seemed to be little chance of doing any- thing from the seaward on the enemy's ships which lay there, as they were moored in a group at the back of the town, the water entrance to which was long, narrow, and tortuous, and, moreover, was well defended by several platforms armed with cannon. But Marshal d'Auverquerque being of opinion that two or three frigates might be of service at Fumes, eight miles from Nieuport, to prevent the enemy's cavalry and infantry from passing the gut there, Sir Stafford dispatched some accordingly, though he beUeved the vast extent of dreary sands that lie thereabout would prevent them from coming in shore far enough to use their guns with effect. On the land side the trenches were opened under D'Auverquerque on the 17th of June before day- break, but on the same day three small vessels from Dunkirk, notwithstanding the vigilance of our frigates and armed laimches, got into the harbour, owing chiefly to the want of a battery to the east- ward, a work which Sir Stafford had proposed to erect when the troops first came before the place. By the 20th the batteries were manned, and armed with 47 heavy guns and 18 mortars ; and after a conference on shore between the admiral and D'Auverquerque, it was resolved to open fire next day. Early in the dawn, when the light was steaUng slowly in over the flat sandy shore, and the dreary extent of dunes and flat sands, without a tree to be seen, which with numerous sluices and a few windmills comprise the scenery, the bomb- vessels opened fire in conjunction with the land batteries. Sir Stafford ordered all the frigates, as drawing the lightest draught of water, to get under sail, to stand as close in shore as they could, and open their broadsides on the town. This they did effectually, receiving but little damage from the enemy's guns in return. He intended that they should do this daily, but they were afterwards pre- vented by the roughness of the weather. Within a quarter of an hour after the cannonade began, Ostend was seen to be on fire in several places, and by eight o'clock in several more, a result which was hailed by the squadron with hearty cheering. By land and sea the bombardment was continued with unabated fury till nightfall, by which time most of the enemy's guns were dismounted, and the place battered to ruins. The sound of the bombardment was borne over the land and water to a vast distance, but not as in the days of Spinola, when the din of the cannon at Ostend was heard more than once in the streets of London, On the 2Sth the besieged, being unable to hold out any longer against a fire so continued and so great, beat a parley at nine in the morning. Pfere Daniel says that Ostend was well and valiantly defended by the Count de la Mothe; but that more than ten thousand bombs having been thrown into it, and the place having been utterly reduced to scorched ruins, the menaces of the inhabitants that they would revolt, and the bad feeling existing between the mixed garrison of French and Spanish troops, obliged him to capitulate, twelve (he should have said nine) days after the opening of the trenches, though but four after the bombardment began. The capitulation being concluded the same day, the Allies took formal possession in the name of King Charles III. of Spain and the Indies, " but found it a heap of rubbish." It cost Marlborough 500 men. There marched out two Spanish battalions, four French, and four Spanish troops of horse, the most of whom entered the service of the Allies (Brodick). In the harbour were two men-of-war, one of eighty the other of fifty guns, and forty-five small vessels, which were not included in the capitulation. Sir Thomas Hardy, an officer knighted by Queen Anne for his bravery and conduct at Vigo, in 1702, served under Sir Stafford Fairborne here, as well as at Rochefort, and was afterwards appointed to the command of a squadron in the Soundings. The bombardment of Ostend having been com- pletely successful, Admiral Fairborne returned to Spithead with the British and Dutch transport ships, and a body of troops, 10,000 strong, intended for a descent upon the coast of France, under the Earl of Rivers as general, and Lieutenant-Generals Erie and the Marquis de Guiscard, with Major-Gen erals the Earl of Essex and the Lord Mordaunt, to aid the French Protestants, whose oppression by the king was supposed to have prepared them for a general insurrection. But this design was ultimately frustrated by the delays made by the Dutch, and the expedition sailed to Lisbon. Sir Stafford Fairborne, who had been knighted for his bravery in the battle off Malaga, and become one of the council to Prince George of Denmark, retired in 17 14, on a pension of ;^6oo per annum, and died in 1740. In this year, 1706, magistrates — for the better manning of the Navy — were first empowered to make search after concealed seamen ; a penalty was laid on such persons as should presume to conceal them, and a reward was offered for their discovery. Conduct money was allowed, and able-bodied landsmen were raised for the sea-service. 504 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Ramillies. CHAPTER XCVI. RAMILLIES, 1706. The battle of RamilUes, a most signal victory over the French, was to the Duke of Marlborough exactly what Austerlitz was to the Emperor Napo- on the 22nd their right lay at Borchl©en, and their left at Corswaren, and on the same evening they were strengthened by the Danish troops, who came leon, the most complete and successful exemplifi- up from the rear by forced marches. BARCELONA. cation of his great military talents. Both men fought against an advancing foe, and in both success was apparent to the victor from an early hour of the bloody struggle. Every successive victory achieved by the British arms in Flanders and Germany — the siege of Sandvliet, Ingoldstadt, Landen, and so forth — had inspired the troops with additional confidence in their commander ; thus, to besiege a town or fight a battle, and not conquer, when led by the Duke of Marlborough, seemed impossible. Confident that fresh triumphs awaited them, our troops took the field in May, 1706, against Marshal Villeroi. On the zoth the British and Dutch occu- pied a common encampment at Bilsen, in Belgium ; At this time the army of Denmark wore iron grey coats and breeches, with green stockings. Some of their cavalry retained the old buff coat, and in warm weather rode with hats, their iron helmets hanging at their saddle-bows. • The regiment of Jutland wore white lined with red, red breeches, and black cravats ; the Queen's Own Guards wore fine scarlet, as w« find from the "Travels of an EngUsh Envoy in 1702." Hopiilg to come up with the enemy in a country which afforded no very decided advantage to either army, the duke ordered the line of march to be formed early on the morning of the 23rd ; and by dawn his whole force, 60,000 strong, advanced in Ramillies.] MARLBOROUGH RECONNOITRES. SOS eight columns in search of that of Villeroi, under whose baton was a force of 62,000. A heavy and incessant rain had fallen during the past night ; the roads were thus injured, deep, and muddy, and the advance of the columns was slow and irregular. Frequent halts were necessary to enable the rear to close up, and in many places 500 cavalry and all the quartermasters of the army, preceded the column, suddenly perceived from the high ground above Mierdorp several masses of horse and foot on the plain of St. Andr^. He sent back an officer to report this ; and halting the whole army, Marlborough rode forward to recon noitre. THE BAXri-E OF RAMILLIES. A. The Allies' March to draw up in Battalions, B. The Army of the Allies in Battalions. C. The Danish Cavalry. D. The Cavalry of the Right Wing detached to sustain the Left. £. A Brigade of Infantry to attack the Enemies* Posts at Franquienes. F. Twelve Battalions which attacked their posts at Ramillies. 6. The Batteries of the Allies. H. The Allies drawn to flank the Enemies who retu'cd from Ramillies. L The Allies after their Victory-. K The Allies' Cavalry on the right, between Gifuz and Ramillies. The French, Spanish, and Bavarians in Battalions. Fourteen Squadrons of the Enemies' Dragoons on foot to support the Foot posted near Franquienes. . . Battalions to suppvrt the Dragoons. O, The Horse of Fourteen Squadrons which were dismounted. P. The Enemies' Infantry at Ramillies, Offuz, &c. Q. The Enemies' Batteries. R. Their Post to favour their Retreat. S. The Enemies' Retreat in confusion. N, the artillery and ammunition-carts were only brought on by dint of severe personal exertion. A dense fog, exhaled from those level pastures and wheat and flax fields which are peculiar to South Brabant, by rendering objects indistinct, served not a little to perplex the general, whose patrols were thus inca- pacitated from doing their duty ; and hence for some hours of the morning march he received no reports from the front. At last Colonel the Earl of Cadogan, who, with Though now clearing gradually off, the white mist still hung about the landscape so densely that the duke was unable to determine whether the troops in front were covering the rear of a retreating army, or were thrown forward to cover some for- mation, till his march was resumed ; and when he had proceeded a little farther the whole mystery was solved, and the entire army of Marshal Villeroi was seen in order of battle, on the very ground -which Marlborough had been anxious to occupy. - 43 So6 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Ramillies. ' As the allied columns debouched into the plain of Jandreville, they could see the enemy in two lines, the first occupying a sort of table-land, the surface of which was varied by gentle undulations and dotted with green clumps and coppices, and the second supporting it, a little in the rear. The streams known as the Great and Little Gheete have their sources close to the right bank of the river Mehaigne ; and between these the French had formed their lines, having their right leaning on the Mehaigne, in front of which lay the pic- turesque little village of Ramillies, their left leaning on the village of Autre Eglise, and protected from attack, as well as impeded in action, by an impas- sable morass. The centre, composed of infantry, took post from Offuz to Ramillies, while the right, which was composed of loo squadrons of cavalry, occupied the open space in front of the great barrow named the Tomb of Ottomond. Every village embraced by the French position was strongly garrisoned, and in Ramillies could be seen the red coats of the Irish Brigade, for therein were posted the regiments of Dorrington, Lee, and Lord Clare, with seventeen others ; while a brigade was detached to Tavieres in order to secure the extreme right, and clouds of white-coated skirmishers lined all the thick green hedges thence to the village of Franquinay, or Franquienes. The skilful and practised eye of Marlborough scanned all these dispositions, as the fog-bank drew upward like a mighty curtain, and the May sunshine was reflected on the lines of steel ; and on seeing the one great defect which attached to them he hastened to take advantage of it. " The enemy's left," says his biographer, " being planted in rear of a morass, though safe from all direct attacks upon itself, was necessarily immovable, at least for offensive purposes. The right, again, if the brigade posted at Tavieres be so considered, ; was too much detached either to give or receive support ; while the whole line, being formed upon the arc of a semicircle, was liable at all points to be assaulted in superior numbers, by a force manoeuvring along the chord. It was perfectly evident, too, that the heights on which the Tomb of Ottomond stands formed the master-key of the position ; for were these once carried, the assailants would not only uncover the flank of the cavalry, but be able to enfilade all the posts to the left. To this great object, therefore, Marlborough directed his attention, and the measures which he adopted for the purpose of effecting it proved as successful as they were admirably conceived." As his army, which consisted of 74 battalions (22 being English, 9 Scots, and the rest foreign), with 123 squadrons of horse, came up in succession, he formed them into two lines, with the left on Boneffe and the right on Foulz, which was occupied by the Royals. The jets of smoke that marked where the enemy's skirmishers lay began to pass rearward, as they fell back, impeding not the steady advance of the Allies for a moment ; and at one o'clock the artillery on both sides began to open. Amid this can- nonade, the British, Dutch, and German infantry composing the right of the line broke suddenly into column, and rushed rapidly forward as if to carry Autre Eglise by assault. On seeing this, Marshal Villeroi became alarmed for the safety of his left flank, and withdrawing in haste from his centre, sent several brigades to support the point that seemed in peril. This was exactly the lure into which Marlborough wished to lead him, and was the movement he had foreseen. In a moment he dispatched an aide-de-camp at full speed, by which the further advance of the right was arrested. The leading battalions alone kept their formation along the crest of the heights which they had ascended; while those in rear filing quickly to the left, and all unseen by the French, passed under the screen of the same heights to the real point of attack, and now the battle began in terrible earnest. After dislodging the skirmishers about Fran- quinay, a column of infantry invested Tavieres on every side, while a mass of cavalry under Auver- querque, passing by their rear, bore down on the enemy's horse; then twelve battalions advancing in open columns of companies, supported by twice as many in line, aided by twenty-two pieces of cannon, assailed Ramillies with indescribable fury. As the roar of the battle closed around the little red-tiled vi%ge, Villeroi became aware that he had been out-manceuvred in the very beginning of the action';' he saw now that his right, not his left, was in danger, and he exerted himself to the utmost in the hope of yet repairing the error into which he had fallen. " In this action," says the "Atlas Geographicus " of 1711, "the Dutch troops, and more particularly the Scots in their service, distinguished themselves by their extraordinary gallantry." Dismounting twenty squadrons of dragoons, Villeroi sent them to support, with their musketS and bayonets, an isolated brigade in Tavieres. With these the Dutch cavalry of Auverquerque unex- pectedly fell in, and cut them to pieces. The first line of French cavalry now came on and made a furious charge ; but it was charged in turn, broken, and routed. Over heaps of dead and RamilHes, ] THE ROYAL STANDARD TAKEN. 507 dying men, the second advanced, while Auver- querque's (or Overkirk's) column was disordered and in fierce pursuit, and for an instant — but little more — restored the battle and gave confidence to Villeroi. At this most critical juncture, the duke himself appeared, at the head of seventeen squadrons of cavalry. With these he dashed among the enemy's cuirassiers and the splendidly mounted and ac- coutred household troops of France. Hand to hand they met with the sword j steel rang on steel, and saddles were emptied fast. The French fought mth obstinate bravery ; the batteries in Ramillies were mowing down the stormers thickly, and the slaughter on both sides was terrible ; but the Mousquetaires were literally destroyed. Amid it Marlborough nearly perished. After ordering up every available man from the right, he led one furious charge in person. In this being recognised by some French troopers, they fell altogether, and with exulting bitterness, upon him, and cutting down all around him, sought to kill or capture him. Sword in hand he hewed a passage through them, and rushed his horse at a ditch, but was heavily thrown in the leap. Again he was in danger of being killed, and would have inevit- ably been so but for the prompt succour given him by Major-General Murray and the Duke of Argyle. Richard Viscount Molesworth, colonel of the Royal Irish Dragoons, now mounted him on his own horse, and brought him off; but the\ duke's sec- retary, Colonel Brinfield, who held the stirrup while he mounted, was struck dead by a cannon-ball. In this conflict, the Scots Greys, led by Lord John Hay, decimated the Regiment du Roi, and captured the royal standard of France. On the other hand, Murrough O'Brien, lieutenant-colonel of Lord Clare's Irish regiment, leading on his men with fixed bayonets, broke through an English regiment and captured its colours. " These," says O'Connor, "were afterwards suspended in the church of the Irish Benedictine nuns at Ypres. They formed as romantic a memorial as ever was seen, if we recollect the place and the men where and by whom they were won, and the sanctuary of the ' Exiles' in which they were deposited." Once more advancing to the attack, the allied cavalry were now met by the Bavarian cuirassiers, when twenty fresh squadrons from the right sud- denly appeared coming on the spur across the plain, now thickly strewed with corpses. These drew up in line on the right of the aUied force, with a steadiness which furnished proof of their discipline and valour, and which had the efiect of striking a panic into the enemy, who wheeled about and fled to the rear ; and then the ridge sur- mounted by the Tomb of Ottomond — the great object of the struggle — ^was won. The village of Ramillies was meanwhile as bravely assailed as it was defended. The attacking corps, under General Schultz, drove in some battalions of Swiss, and gradually fought their way among the houses. They then rushed with the bayonet upon the troops who occupied the hedges and barricades, and soon made themselves masters of the place. Rallying two regiments of Cologne Guards, the Marquis de Maffie maintained a useless but resolute struggle in a hollow way or road beneath the vil- lage, till, outflanked, and overborne by numbers, his corps gave way, and by the cavalry were almost destroyed to a man. The French were completely defeated on their right and in the centre, but not without causing severe loss and confusion among the victors. Marlborough made a halt to restore order in his brigades, and of this halt Villeroi hastened to take advantage, by forming a second line out of the ruins of his army; but this attempted formation was cumbered by masses of baggage and store- wagons, and bat horses, and hence proved futile. The allied trumpets once more soxmded the advance ; again the cavalry charged, and in five minutes the whole plain was covered with wounded writhing in agony, with dead men and riderless horses, and with fugitives flying for their lives. Perceiving the enemy recoiling, one column effected a passage through the morass, and took the village of Autre EgUse ; another captured that of Offuz, which they found abandoned ; and, in a word, the battle which had lasted without intermission for five hours was won. Broken and utterly demo- ralised, the French and Bavarians were in full flight, some towards the defile of the Abbey de la Ramee, some towards Dongelberge, some towards Judoigne, and others towards Hougarde; while the few who halted and faced about, only did so to surrender. The pursuit was continued by the whole army so far as Meldert, where Marlborough ordered a halt, of which both men and horses were sorely in need. In his remarks on generalship. Marshal Saxe has the following : — "When the French army at the battle of Ramil- lies was retiring in good order over an eminence that was rather confined, and on both sides of which there were deep ravines, the cavalry belonging to the Allies followed its track leisurely, without even appearing to wish to harass or attack its rear. The French continued their march with the same composure, retreating upon more than twenty So8 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Almanza. lines, on account of the narrowness of the ground. " On this occasion a squadron of British cavalry got close to two French battalions, and began to fire upon them. The latter came to the right- about, and fired a volley at the squadron. What was the consequence ? The whole French army took to its heels ; the cavalry went ofif at full gallop, and all the infantry, instead of retiring patiently over the heights, threw itself into the ravines in such ;dreadful disorder that the ground above was almost instantly abandoned, and not a French sol- dier was to be seen upon it." Though the main army halted, the light cavalry continued the pursuit till the morning sun of the next day was brightening the walls and spires of Louvain, when they drew their bridles and returned at leisure. In this great battle of Ramillies, the Allies had i,o66 killed and 2,567 wounded. In the first list were Prince Louis of Hesse-Cassel and 82 officers, and in the latter 283. On the other side the casualties were 13,000 men killed or taken. Among , the former; were many officers of rank, such as the Prince , de Soubise and Rohan, a son of Marshal Tallard, and Lord Clare, of the Irish Brigade; while 120 colours and standards, the kettledrums of the mousquetaires and of all the household cavalry, the whole of the artillery, sixty cannon and eight mortars, their tents and baggage, became the spoil of the victors. Among the few prisoners taken by the enemy was Ensign Gardiner, of one of the Scottish regiments, who afterwards fell as a colonel at Prestonpans. The immediate consequence of this great victory was the surrender of nearly all Brabant, the mag- nates of which, with the magistrates of Brussels, re- nounced their allegiance to the Duke of Anjou, while the city of Paris was overwhelmed with con- sternation. Louis, says Smollett, affected to bear his misfortunes with composure ; but the constraint had such an effect upon ^ his constitution that his physicians thought it necessary to prescribe fre- quent bleeding. At his Court no mention was made of military transactions ; all were silent, solemn, and reserved. In England the exultation was great; and the city of London having requested that the standards taken at RamilUes might be hung up in Guildhall, they were carried thither from Whitehall, with great ceremony, by detachments of the Horse and Foot Guards. On the same day, the 19th of December, 1706, the Dukes of Marlborough, Ormond, and Somerset, with all the great Officers of State, re- ceived a banquet from the Lord Mayor and Alder- men (Ormond's Life). This famous battle introduced what was known as the Ramillies cock of the hat ; and a long plaited tail to the wig, with a great bow at the top, and a smaller one at the bottom, was called a Ramillies tail ; while the peruke itself called the Ramillies wig was worn as late as the days of George III. CHAPTER XCVIL ALMANZA, 1707. The year 1707 brings to us an important epoch in the history of the British Isles, and that of our forces by land and sea — the union of the two king- doms of England and Scotland on terms framed by commissioners, thirty acting for the former and thirty for the latter kingdom, then in the attitude of war against the measure. Such were their mutual relations at the very time their troops were fighting side by side in Spain and Flanders during 1706, that, as Macaulay has it, they could not possibly have continued for another year " on the terms on which they had been during the pre- ceding century, and that there must have been be- tween them either absolute union or deadly enmity; and their enmity would bring frightful calamities, ijot on themselves alone, but on all the civilised world. Their union would be the best security for the prosperity of both, for the internal tran- quiUity of the island, for the just balance of power among European states, and for the immunities of all Protestant countries." Under a Stuart alone could this result have been achieved. • In a book dedicated to Queen Anne, in 1705, published "at the 'Ship,' in St. Paul's Churchyard," and entitled " War between the British Kingdoms Considered," the Lowland Scottish Militia are esti- mated at 22,000 foot and 2,000 horse. "The Highlanders, all trained and ready for war from their childhood, are estimated to be above 40,000 fighting men ; and a bolder or more obstinate people in a national quarrel £ir§ not in the world. Their Aimanza.] THE BRITISH ARMY FORMED. 509 standing forces in regular pay at home are above 4,000, and they never want 100,000 men who will fight out of principle in a Presbyterian cause." , Four years before this the standing forces of England consisted only of three troops of Guards, one troop of horse grenadiers, thirty-six troops of horse, three regiments of dragoons, and seven of infantry — about eighty-two companies in all. The Scots had two troops of Guards, two battalions of Foot Guards, the Greys and two other corps of dragoons, and four of infantry, now numbered as the ist, 21st, 25th, and 26th (or Cameronians); and prior to the Union, all officers of the Scottish army took an oath of fealty, not to the sovereign, but to the Estates of Scotland (see " Lovat's Life "). Such was the nucleus of the future army of Britain. In the ranking and precedence of the forces after the ratification of the Treaty of Union, on the i6th of January, 1707,' to England was assigned the ist corps of dragoons, the Greys ranking next, but taking the motto, "Second to None." This was scarcely a just arrangement, as the English corps was raised on the 19th of Novem- ber, 1683, while the Scots Greys date from the 15th of November, 1681. To Scotland was assigned priority in the ist Regiment of infantry, and her two battalions of Guards were ranked as the 3rd Foot Guards. They were marched to London in 17 11, and in January, 1 7 13, were first joined in duty with the Enghsh Guards ; and in the following year we find " the grenadiers of the three regiments of Guards, during their stay at Greenwich, pursuant to an order of His Majesty, are to beat the English and Scots reveille alternately." Th-e latter, in cadence a sweet low air, is still retained in the service. The Scots Life Guard was disbanded in 1746; but the Scots Horse Grenadier Guards were in- corporated with the present Life Guards in 1787. In January, 1707, the Union being achieved, the red cross of St. George was placed upon the blue colours of the Scottish regiments, in addition to the white saltire of St. Andrew, and hence came our Union Jack of so many glorious memories by sea and land. It is simply the old Scottish ensign, charged with the- cross of England. Prior to this the standard of England was white. The " New Union Colours," as they were named, were first unfurled by the British troops at the luckless battle of Aimanza, in the kingdom of Murcia, on the 25th of April, 1707. The opening of the Spanish campaign in that year had been most unpropitious. Charles III. had marched a portion of his forces into Catalonia, leaving the Earl of Galway with the remainder of the army sent to uphold him against the claims of. France. The British, Austrians, and Portuguese suffered the most dreadful privations. They were constantly harassed by the enemy, and found the greatest diificulty in procuring any supplies, owing to the exhausted state -to which Spain had been reduced by war; while Louis XIV. redoubled his efforts in favour of his prot^gd, Philip V., and sent strong reinforcements to the Marshal Duke of Berwick. In April the Allies took the field, and destroyed the magazines of the enemy at Claudete, Gela, and Montalegra. Their strength was only 16,000 men, under the command of the Marquis das Minas, the Earl of Galway being second, in command. They besieged the ancient castle of Villena, which crowns the summit of the mountain of San Christoval, in the province of Alicante ; and after overcoming every obstacle, they suddenly advanced in four columns towards Aimanza, which lies on the Valen- cian frontier, between two ranges of mountains. The British forces present on this occasion were the following : — Cavalry — Herve/s Horse (now 2nd Dragoon Guards), Carpenter's Dragoons (now 3rd Hussars), Essex's Dragoons (now 4th Hussars), Killigrew's Dragoons (now 8th Irish Hussars), Pearce's and Peterborough's Dragoons (now disbanded), and the French regiment. In all only nine squadrons. Infantry — Foot Guards, Portmore's (now 2nd Foot), Southwell's (now 6th Foot), Stuart's (now 9th Foot), Hill's (now nth Foot), Blood's (now 17th Foot), Mountjoy's, Allnut's (now 36th Foot), George's (now 3Sth Foot), Mordaunt's (now 28th Foot), Wade's (now 33rd Foot), and Bowies', Mac- artney's, Breton's, Mark Kerr's, and Nassau's (now out of the service). The united forces made only forty-four batta- lions and fifty-four squadrons. In his "Age of Louis XIV.," Voltaire, when writing of the hardships undergone by the Allies before the battle of Aimanza, says, " They were beaten piecemeal." In strength they were far inferior to the forces under the Duke of Berwick, with whom the Marquis das Minas resolved to fight, in direct opposition to the wish and advice of the Earl of Galway. When within one mile of the enemy, the troops, who had been marching since daybreak, were halted for a time to recover their energies. On diverging into the plain of Aimanza, th: enemy were seen in front, in order of battle. Essex's dragoons were the first on the ground, and were formed on the left of the first line, with the infantry corps of Southwell and Wade, numbering 510 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Almanza, only 9,63 men. A brigade of Portuguese horse, under the Conde de Atalaya, was afterwards sent forward from the second line to the left of the British, to increase the slender front. The centre was entirely composed of British and Dutch. French and Spaaiish horse and a battery of guns. The leading officer in this movement was Colonel Dormer, of Essex's dragoons. Having passed some low ground at a hand-gallop, with his own and Carpenter's regiments, he began to ascend the eminence on which the gims were posted, and with I'KINCE KUUENE. The French army, consisting of fifty-two battalions and seventy-six squadrons, was formed in two lines of infantry, flanked by cavalry. Mahoney's Irish Dragoons were on the extreme right, where he led thirteen squadrons. The second battalion of Ber- wick's own Irish Regiment formed a portion of the second line. At three o'clock in the afternoon the battle began by the British cavalry advancing to attack the loud cheers and brandished swords his troopers fell upon the enemy. The cannon were instantly withdrawn, and as the dragoons pressed onward to capture them, they were suddenly charged in tmii by a body of cavalry more than thrice their strength. A terrible conflict with sword and pistol ensued. It ended in the total rout of the English troopers, " and a dreadful massacre followed," says the " Records of the 4th Almanza. ] DORMER'S CHARGE. .=;ii ■6, 512 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Almanza, Hussars." Lieutenant-Colonel Dormer, Cornet Owen, and many men of the regiment fell mortally wounded; the' remainder withdrew fighting, and the pursuing French were checked by the fire of Southwell's and Wade's musketeers. The shattered British squadrons renewed the charge, and drove back the enemy. By this time the action had become general along the whole line, and the air was loaded with the roar of musketry. The whole of tlae infantry of the first line, the Enghsh under Lieutenant-General Erie, and the Dutch under Baron Freshem, were hotly engaged. Pressing on, according to the " Life of Queen Anne," they closed up till they fired into the very faces of the enemy, and breaking through their first and second lines, bore all before them, even to the walls of Almanza. But this success was of short duration', though the Spanish cavalry were completely broken, and five of our battaUons had actually taken in flank the infantry of the French right. " Marshal "Berwick," states the " History of the Irish Brigade," "seeing this disorder, directed Mayne's brigade, of which the Berwick battalion formed part, to wheel to the left, in order to con- front the English. Whereupon this brigade, with their muskets nearly touching the breasts of the English, poured in their fire, attacked them with fixed bayonets, and so totally routed them that they were never able to rally." Marshal Berwick having in person rallied his cavalry on the right, led them to the charge, and in turn utterly broke the mixed Hne of the Allies, whose regiments of horse and foot, according to a custom old as the days of the Great Civil War, had been interlaced by the Marquis das Minas; and after that the fate of the battle was no longer doubtful. The allied left wing made an obstinate resistance however; they broke and drove off the field the brigades of the Crown and of Orleans, and with- stood repeated charges from the Gallo-Spanish cavalry, led by Mahoney. In this battle the conduct of the Portuguese was very bad. A panic suddenly seized their cavalry, who wheeled about and quitted the field en masse, leaving to their fate those infantry whom it was their duty to have flanked and covered ; while, to make matters worse, two Portuguese battalions which were posted at a distance, on seeing this mass of horse coming towards them through smoke and dust, in their haste and confusion supposed they were French, and poured in a fire upon them by which many a saddle was emptied. Many of the British cavalry were swept out of the field along with the Portuguese, whose commander, the Conde de Atalaya, was severely wounded. All was confiision now ; but our infantry, though abandoned by their horse, fought with the fury of despair, and for some time no prisoners were taken and no quarter afforded them. Major-General Shrimpton, Brigadier Macartney, Colonels Breton and Hill (of the i ith), and some other ofiicers who had been engagied in the centre, with their united energy, gathered the straggling remains of all the British regiments, together with the Dutch, under Count d'Hona, and some Portuguese, under Don Juan Emanuel, into a solid square, and began to quit the field, from which the Earl of Galway, with 2,500 dragoons', British, Dutch, and Portuguese, was cutting a passage towards Alcira. Of the Allies, 3,000 were killed upon the spot. Among them was Brigadier KiUigrew, of the Royal ilrish Dragoons, who was wounded in the first and killed in the second charge, of whose corps only fifty-one men were present at Almanza ; thirty-one of these were killed and twenty escaped to Alcira ("Records of the 8th Hussars "). Colonels Dormer Henry Erskine, James Lindsay (of Crawford), Roper, Lawrence, Green, and De Loche fell each at the head of their regiments, sword in hand. The Earl of Galway, who had charged in person at the head of Guiscard's dragoons, received two deep cuts on the face ; the Marquis das Minas was run through the arm, and saw his mistress, a beautifulnwoman, who fought by his side in a kind of Amazonian costume, slain. Colonel Alexander Montgomery, of Giffen, in Scotland, died so late as 171 r, of wounds received at Almanza. Lords Mark Kerr, Tyrawley, Colonel Clayton, and many more, were wounded; all the artillery and 620 colours and standards were taken; hence no victory could be more complete. The sorely shattered army effected a species of retreat to the woody hills of Claudete, and when day broke on the morrow, they found themselves environed by two lines of infantry. " By this time," says Smollett, " the men were quite spent with fatigue, and all their ammunition was exhausted ; they were ignorant of the country, destitute of provisions, and cut off from all hope of supply. Moved by these disfnal considerations, they capitulated, and surrendered themselves pri- soners of war, to the number of thirteen bat- talions." In all there were about 10,000 prisoners. They only sought the terms granted to the French at Blenheim, and capitulated to Count d'Asfeld, afterwards a Marshal of France. The courage, firmness, and presence of mind Oudenarde.] THE EARL OF GALWAY. 513 exliibited in this battle by the Marshal Duke of Berwick were admirable, and it decided the fate of the Spanish monarchy. Lord Galway fled with the cavahy into Catalonia, where General Carpenter remained in command of what remained of the British forces (1,466 cavalry and 4,242 infantry) till they were afterwards trans- mitted to Britain. The earl and the Marquis das Minas embarked;at Barcelona and sailed to Lisbon ; and heavy censure awaited the former in England, while blame was also cast upon him by the Dutch and Spaniards, though". tlie battle had been fought in direct opposition to his advice. This officer was Henri de Nassau, Marquis de Ruvign^ in France, who, upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the persecution of the Protestants in that country, came to England, where King William gave him a regiment of horse, a high command in his army, and in 1697 created him Earl of Galway, in Ireland. He was com- mander-in-chief of the British forces in Portugal in 1 704, and had his right hand hewn off by a sword- cut at the siege of Badajoz, in 1705. He died in England tep years after, and his title became extinct. His opponent at Almanza, the Duke of Berwick, was by birth ^n Englishman, and by blood a Stuart, being the illegitimate son of King James by Arabella Chiirchill, sister of the Duke of Marl- borough; and he was rewarded by the grateful Philip V. with the dukedom of Liria and the dignity of a Grandee of Spain. The result of the battle of Almanza raised a storm of indignation against Lord Galway in Eng- land, where, in allusion to the birth of the rival leaders, it became common to propose " the health of the brave British general who defeated the French one." CHAPTER XCVIIL CUDENARDE, 1708. The chief theatres of the wars of Anne were Spain and the Low Countries, which have been well named " The Battle-fields of Modem Europe ;" and in the year after Almanza the great Duke of Marl- borough, on the plains of Eastern Flanders, was happily fated to gild anew the laurels that had been dimmed among the mountains of Catalonia, when at Oudenarde more than 100 general officers drew their swords, and 250 colonels led their respective regiments into action. The discontents in Scotland consequent to the Union had led Louis XIV. to conceive the hope of splitting up Britain once more by the restoration of the Stuarts to the crown of one or both kingdoms, through the means of an invasion, which the Ministry and Parliament took the most vigorous measures to repel, and also for the continuance of the Continental war. And no- sooner had appre- hension of danger in Scotland ceased than the Duke of Marlborough, deemed the great pillar of the Grand Alliance, sailed for Flanders to command the confederate army in conjunction with Prince Eugene of Savoy, who in the beginning of the campaign had led a separate army along the Rhine. The French army, commanded by the Duke de Vendome, though more numerous than that of the confederates, carefully avoided an action or any hostile attempt, until by treachery, under the appearance of a surprise, they captured Bruges and Ghent. The Duke of Marlborough was accused of being privy to this treachery, as secretly favouring the friends of the House of Stuart, but he demonstrated by his conduct the injustice of the assertion. Though he had not yet formed a junction with Prince Eugene, assisted by the presence and advice of that great leader, he passed the Scheldt by a vigorous forced march, and came up with the French army near Oudenarde, a small, open, and almost unfortified town in the Netherlands, and famous then, as now, for its linen and woollen manufactures. The nominal command of the French army had been given to the Duke of Burgundy, and Vendome had orders to act under him. He was accompanied by the Due de Berri and the elder Chevalier, called by the Jacobites James III. of England and VIII. of Scotland. The army on the Rhine was given to the Elector of Bavaria, with the Duke of Berwick to serve under him. The strength of the two armies about to meet at Oudenarde stood thus respectively : — That of the Allies consisted of 1 1 2 battalion? and 180 squadrons. SI4 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Oudenarde, with 113 pieces of cannon; the French mustered 124 battalions and 197 squadrons, with a great train of artillery, the force of which is variously stated. By the term squadron it must be borne in mind that a body of cavalry composed of two troops is meant, that its number of files is not fixed, but may vary from 80 to 120. Oudenarde, being situated on the Scheldt, and at the verge of the frontier, was a connecting link for the alternate defence of Flanders or Brabant, and was thus deemed a point of importance in military strategy. The sudden appearance of Prince Eugene in the British camp, though alone, gave the army great joy and increased confidence. "I am not without hope," said Marlborough, as he welcomed him, "of congratulating your High- ness on a great victory, for my troops must be animated by the presence of so distinguished a commander." From the moment they met, says one of the duke's biographers, the prince and Marlborough appeared to be inspired with an unanimity as if but one soul informed both their bodies. Eugene warmly approved of the resolution which his friend had adopted of bringing the enemy, if possible, to an engagement ; and the proposal being sanctioned by a Council of AVar, pioneers were sent out on every side to clear the roads for the passage of the troops and artillery. / While these arrangements were in progress, Eugene took the opportunity of spending a few hours with his mother, the Countess of Soissons, in Brussels, as he might possibly never see her again. Meanwhile Marlborough, who was then verging on his sixtieth year, became so indisposed that he was compelled to issue his orders through the medium of Auverquerque. Among other arrange- ments was the dispatch of four battalions to rein- force the garrison of Brussels. Oudenarde was invested by the French on the 9th of July, and the Duke of Burgundy and Marshal Vendome intended to occupy the strong camp at Lessines, on the Dender, to cover the siege ; but they were opposed by a commander whose prompt- itude and decision were only equalled by those of the " Great Duke " of the succeeding century, and whose resources were called forth by the magnitude of the stake for which he was contending. By gaining Lessines before them, and passing the Scheldt, as stated, he compelled them to march in the direction of Gavre ; and in order to force on a general engagement, Major-General Cadogan, with sixteen battalions and some cavalry, was detached to throw bridges over the Scheldt, near Oudenarde, for the passage of the army. The Allies marched with such expedition that about two o'clock in the afternoon of the nth of July the advanced guard reached the bridges over which the battalions of Cadogan were passing. The French had thrown seven battalions into the village ofHeynom, orEynem, through which the long level highway runs along the margin of the Scheldt, and about three o'clock this battle, in which scarcely any artillery was used, and which was almost decided by musketry alone, was commenced by General Cadogan driving in some of the French foragers with his cavalry. He was in turn charged by a corps of French dragoons, under the Count de Chimarault, upon which he retired to a position where he became an object of doubt and suspicion to Burgundy and Vendome, who believed that the whole allied army, and not a solitary advanced column, was before them. They accordingly halted, and observing a heavy column of horse crossing the river, drew in their pickets, in order to avoid exposing them to the attack of a superior force. It was fortunate for Cadogan and his corps that a difference of opinion among the French leaders — already confounded by finding themselves out- generalled — kept them from either falling on more boldly towards their front, or hazarding an attack on the bridge. Had either step been taken, this column, with the advanced guard, must have been cut off; for the main body of the army was yet far in the rear, and not all the exertions of Marlborough and Eugene could get it into the line of battle for the space of two hours. At the head of his cavalry, as soon as Cadogan's peril became known, Marlborough came pressing on; but the infantry, worn with past toil, encum- bered with knapsacks, greatcoats, blankets, and the heavy musket of those days (weighing fourteen pounds) proceeded more slowly, and at this time the officers of the Scotch and Welsh Fusiliers were armed with very ponderous partisans. Hence the leading companies did not reach the bridge until past three in the afternoon. The uniform of those days, with its heavy square skirt and huge-cuffed coat, coarse braided hat and .feather, long gaiters, and thick crossbelts, was cumbersome to the soldier ; but each corps as it arrived, whether horse or foot, moved promptly into position, and six guns being planted in battery on an eminence, the whole assumed by degrees an imposing attitude. The scene of this battle, one of the most obsti- nate of modern times — a scene remarkable for Oudenarde.] THE DUKE DE VENDOME. ;is picturesque beauty and high state of cultivation — is thus described by Coxe : — "At the distance of a mile north of Oudenarde is the village of Eynem. Here the ground rises into a species of low but capacious amphitheatre. It sweeps along a moderately-sized plain, southward, to near the glacis of Oudenarde, where it is crowned by the village of Bevere and numerous windmills. Turning westward, in then rises into another broad hill, under the name of Boser Couter, and the highest point is near a lime tree and a windmill overlooking the village of Oycke. Thence the ground curves towards Marolen, and the eye glancing over the narrow valley watered by the Norken is- arrested by another upland plain, which trends ,by Huyshe, gradually sinking till it terminates near Asper." Several rivulets fertilised this undulating land- scape. At the source of one stood the castellated chateau of Bevere, at another, in a deep woody recess, nestled the red-tiled or yellbw-thatched hamlet of Retelhoek ; and the borders of all these rivulets were fringed with rich underwood, copses, and thickets, while dense hedgerows intersected the plain. Such was the peaceful Flemish scenery amid which Marlborough and Venddme were about to measure their skUl, the former taking post as fast as he could get his brigades along the high ground between Bevere and the windmill of Mooreghem ; the latter stretched the white-coated battalions of France across the plain from the hill of Asper, on the left, to the hamlet of Wanneghem, on the right. As an officer, Vendome was greatly beloved by the French troops, yet, according to a French writer, he was slothful and careless. "This cha- racter he retained in the army, and one might have said he minded nothing. When he could live at ease in his tent and enjoy good cheer, he re- mained in it, heedless whether the situation were safe or dangerous. He sent out others to make those oj^ervations which should have been made with his own eyes, and paid very little regard to their reports. But when any unforeseen accident occurred, whenever he was surprised by the enemy, his presence of mind and impetuous courage made up for all, and it was very seldom that he was routed" (Memoirs of the Court of Louis XIV.). The Duke de Berri, King James, and many courtiers, beheld the action of Oudenarde from the steeple of an adjacent church. While his line was forming in the order just described, he kept a corps of infantry and cavalry in Eynem, of which they had taken possession when Cadogan's horse fell back; but Marlborough had no sooner got a sufficient force into position than he gave orders to attack the village, and this service was brilliantly executed by the division of Cadogan. While his infantry, led by Brigadier Sabine, of the Welsh Fusiliers, an old WiUiamite officer, descended the hill and crossed the rivulet near Eyne, the cavalry passed a little higher up, and circling round by the rear, cut off all communica- tion between the troops who were in the village and those that were without. Heavy firing ensued; but the village was stormed, and seven battalions of the Swiss regiments of Phiffer, Villars, and Greder were speedily cap- tured and disarmed, " our men falling upon them with their bayonets on the muzzles of their muskets, without firing a piece " (" Life of Argyle"). Halting for a period in Eynem, the advance began again ; and the Welsh Fusiliers attacked a body of troops posted in some enclosures, and drove them back. " As the regiment was advancing in pursuit, a numerous body of the enemy's cavalry menaced it in the front and flank, and it fell back to the hedges, where it repulsed them " (" Records of the 23rd Foot"). According to the duke's dispatch to the States-General, ten standards were taken here. Other corps came on ; the whole advanced, and eight squadrons of French cavalry were broken and decimated as they strove to escape across the Norken. This decisive stroke convinced the French generals that a great battle was unavoidable ; and they resolved, in opposition to the opinion of Vendfime, to give rather than to receive the charge. Had there been anything like unanimity between Vend&meand Burgundy, the story of Oude- narde might have been different ;. but to the last they continued jealously to thwart each other. At the capture of Eynem, " the Prince Electorate of Hanover,'' as he was named (afterwards George II.), greatly distinguished himself. WhUe leading a squadron of Bulow's dragoons in a charge. Colonel Laschky was killed by his side, his horse was shot under him, and he would have perished had he not been rescued by some of the infantry; and long afterwards, when he was King of Britain, he was in the habit of calling on great occasions for his " Oudenarde sword." Burgundy now commanded a strong corps to pass the Norken, and occupy a rising road that lay between the rivulets of Diepenbeck and Chobon. General Grimaldi, who led this attack, approached the brink of the stream at the head of the cavalry of the Royal Household; but finding 3, mass of BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. 5^6 blue-coated Brandenburg cavalry, supported by a column of British infantry, coming fast to oppose him, he drew back and took post near the wind- mill of Royeghem. Meanwhile Marshal Vendome, seeing the risk [Oudenatde. and suspecting that another more formidable would soon follow, he prepared to meet it by making such dispositions as the nature of the ground permitted. Twelve battalions were ordered up from Eynem to support the light troops which lined the hedges PLAN Ot TliK iiAl'11.11 uF OUUENARDE. of bringing on an action at a point where the enemy courted an attack, desired his left to ad- vance ; but this judicious order being counter- manded by the Duke of Burgundy, no forward movement was made, and then it became Marl- borough's turn to change his ground or alter his alignment. He had seen the threatened attack on his right ; about Groeuvilde ; while another column, consist- ing of twenty battalions, under General the Duke of Argyle, K.T., advanced with great ardour upon Scharken, and these movements were not per- formed a moment too soon. Strengthened by several brigades from the left flank, the French had gradually prolonged their I line to the right till they had completely out- Oud«narde.] THE FRENCH LINE BROKEN. flanked, or overlapped the Allies, on whom they suddenly advanced in quick time, storming and carrying with the bayonet and clubbed musket every field and farm-house, every hedge and wall, with headlong fury. Resolutely were they met, and fierce was the conflict that ensued ; for it was fought literally hand to hand, or by dint of mus- ketry alone, for such was the fiery speed with which both sides engaged, that scarcely a field-piece could be brought into action. The French troops who S^ clear the plain about Royeghem was annihilated by a fire of musketry from the enclosures ; in like manner, his infantry suffered heavily while dislodg- ing the French tirailleurs from the hedges and cop- pices about the castle of Revere and Schaerken ; yet the design was completely successful." Marshal Auverquerque stormed the mill of Oycke, and wheeled his column round, left shoulders forward, till he had completely turned the enemy ; whileArgj'le's column, carrying everything before it. VIEW IN GHENT. came on thus were the flower of the line, the old regiments of Picardy, Du Roi, Roussillon, and the Swiss Guards ; and while this struggle was being maintained, Marlborough was marching brigade after brigade from his right, and throwing each as it arrived on the left of the last in position, till he gradually shifted his ground, so as to render the point assailed not his centre, but the extreme left of his line. " His next measure was to keep the enemy's left in check, by drawing up along the edge of the morass which skirts the Norken a body of Prussian horse ; while with his own left he manoeuvred to overlap the enemy's right, and cut it off". Some desperate fighting attended this masterly evolu- tion : a corps of cavalry which he sent forward to broke off" all communication between the troops at Groeuvilde and those in rear of the mill. Thus the right of the French army was entirely sepa- rated from its centre and left, the only road of com- munication being by the mill of Royeghem and the ravines of Marolen. " Charge succeeded charge," states the " Record of the Royals," "until the shades of evening ga- thered over the scene of conflict, and the com- batants could only be discerned by the red flashes of musketry which blazed in the fields and marshy grounds." The last light of day had faded away from the - level landscape, and the stars were reflected in the rivulets, pools, and marshes, yet the battle was 44 5i8 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Oudenarde. maintained with an almost savage obstinacy rarely equalled. The battalions foijght singly wherever they could oppose each other — in open fields, in barn- yards, and gardens, from behind hedges and ditches — or they volleyed in line, till the whole horizon seemed on fire with the incessant flashes of the musketry. As the darkness deepened, its effects were gradually experienced by the troops in a very serious manner. They frequently poured their fire upon their own people, who as promptly re- sponded ; and it required all the activity of the officers to check such parricidal work after it had begun. To stop useless carnage, it became neces- sary to cease firing, and the French, avaihng them- selves of the pause, began to fall back and quit the field. With happy forethought, Prince Eugene at this crisis desired the drums of his own battalions to beat the French assembled, while several of the Pro- testant refugees who served under him called aloud the names and numbers of those regiments which they knew to be in the field. This ruse was most successful, as hundreds of weary stragglers dropped in by twos and threes, or by whole sections, on the lines of the British and Dutch, till they amounted to thousands, and all were disarmed and made prisoners. By this measure a vast number of lives were saved. Nevertheless, the loss of the enemy was terrible ; and the Dukes of Vendome and Burgundy, finding that all was lost, collected around them some 20,000 men, and begjan to retreat. "Had we been so happy," said Marlborough, " as to have had but two hours more of daylight, I believe we should have put an end to the war." The retreat of the French was a scene of dis- order and great tumult ; for though their right had scarcely been engaged, a wild and unreasonable panic fell upon both officers and men. Scarcely an effort was made to form a rear guard ; while the whole mass joining the fugitives from the centre and left, ' 'fled pell-mell along the highway to Ghent. Meanwhile the allied army passed the night under arms upon the field ; and when day dawned the sights that met the eye, we are told, were most distressing. " Among several thousand corpses lay a prodigious number of wounded of different na- tions enveloped in carnage, and surrounded with the wreck of war. By the duke's orders, the utmost exertion was made instantly to collect the sur- vivors, and to bestow on all, without remission, the care and relief which circumstances would permit. The agonies of suffering nature were thus soothed; and many were snatched from a lingering and pain- ful death, to acknowledge the beneficence and bless the name of their conqueror." Most of the French wounded were borne into Oudenarde, and attended there with the same care as those of the Allies. So long as the' darkness endured the duke could attempt no pursuit ; but with the first light of dawn, forty squadrons, under Lieutenant-Generals Bulow and Lumley, departed on the spur to hang upon the enemy's rear, to cut off stragglers, baggage, or whatever came in their way. So Vend6me con- tinued to retreat, till he fell back behind the canal of Bruges, where he was joined by the Duke of Berwick, at the head of large reinforcements. Such was the battle of Oudenarde, in which our cavaky were scarcely engaged, and only six pieces of our artillery. The total loss of the AUies has been computed at s,ooo men, that of the French at 20,000 ; they had S,ooo slain, 9,000 taken prisoners (of these, says Burnet, 1,000 were officers), and 6,000 de- serted. The spirit of their army was broken, and all its operations for the remainder of the cam- paign were timid and irresolute. Smollett states that we took from them ten pieces of cannon, more than a hundred colours and standards, and 4,000 horses. , ' The Marquis de Ximenes, Colonel of the Royal Regiment of Roussillon, and the Sieur de la Bre- tesche,. Colonel of Horse, were among the French killed. Among the Allies no British officer of rank fell, but the names of several foreigners appear among the slain. The dispatches detailing the victory were first brought to London by Brigadier tlie Earl of Stair, Colonel of the Scots Greys ; and their publication caused the most extravagant enthusiasm, at a time when the Allies, by levelling the French lines be- tween Ypres and Lys, and ravaging Arras, struck terror into the city of Paris. With Berwick's reinforcements, Vendome's forces made up 100,000 men. He made all haste to intrench himself, for though France lay open to insult, almost to her centre, it was scarcely to be feared that the Great Duke, cut off from his sup- plies by the way of Ghent, would venture to leave Lisle in his rear ; and VendSme was not deceived in this supposition. Marlborough certainly did urge the propriety of carrying the war into the enemy s country, but Eugene considered the design as too perilous ; he therefore relinquished it, and set himself to the task of out-manceuvring his antagonists, a task of no small magnitude. Lisle.] THE BATTERING TRAIN. 519 CHAPTER XCIX. LISLE AND VVYNENDALE, 1708. After the battle of Oudenarde, the generals of the Allies undertook an enterprise which, in the opinion of those of the French, was thought to be rash, self-sufficient, and inconsiderate. This was the siege of Lisle, one of the strongest towns in Europe. It was about a mile in length by three- quarters of a mile broad ; and was then, as now, surrounded by walls and bastions, with a penta- gonal citadel on its north-west side, and a strong series of outworks, constituting it a fortress of the first class. Louis XIV. had taken it from the Spaniards in 1667, and under Vauban had com- pleted the fortifications at vast labour and expense, by erecting the citadel, with five royal bastions and several half-moons. He enlarged it also by a suburb, added many new streets, and built a good arsenal. The ditches were filled by the river Deule. He also had a causeway made, nearly twenty miles long, between Lisle and Ypres. In 1708 it was provided with all necessaries, a store of ammunition, and a strong garrison, which was further reinforced by twenty-one battalions of the finest infantry of France, under Louis FranQois, the Marshal Duke de Boufflers. It was deemed the capital of French Flanders, though situated in a somewhat swampy plain j and the marshal com- manding was an officer conspicuous among his comrades for the obstinacy and valour with which he had defended more than one fortified place. His garrison mustered 15,000 bayonets. It was against this city, covered by a field force of 100,000 men, that the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene proposed to commence opera- tions, and that, too, in the face of all the difficulties arising out of remote magazines, and perils likely to attend the transport of stores. When we state that their nearest depot was Brussels, twenty-five leagues distant ; that the stores, tools, &c., neces- sary at the very opening of the siege required fully 15,000 horses to convey them; and that the battering-train when in motion covered fifteen miles of road, some idea may be formed of the risks attending its progress through a country chiefly possessed by the enemy ; and when it is further stated that this prodigious train made good its journey without the loss of a single horse or man, " the genius of him who planned, not less than the vigilance of those who executed, the march will, we presume, receive from every reader the highest commendation. Yet such is the fact. Though the enemy were well aware of the very day when it was intended that the whole should set out, and saw the train more than once during its progress, such was the accuracy of Marlborough's calcula- tions, that they were never able to hazard an attack." The long convoy set out from Brussels on the 6th of August ; and six days after came into the allied camp at Helchin, whither the duke had advanced to meet it on the previous day. The season was advanced, the army of the enemy was superior in force to that which was to cover the siege, and, moreover, it commanded all the water communications with the nearest part of Holland. There came from Brussels 120 pieces of cannon, 60 mortars and howitzers, and 4,000 wagons of powder and ball. The conduct of the siege was entrusted to Prince Eugene, with fifty battalions of infantry, Marlborough taking upon himself the task of covering it. As the enemy had cut off the communications between them and their magazines at Antwerp and Sas-Van-Ghent, Smollett states that they were obliged to bring their convoys of supply from Ostend, along a narrow causeway. On the 13th of August, Lisle was formally in- vested, on one side by Prince Eugene, and on the other by the Prince of Orange-Nassau, Stadtholder of Friesland; while the Duke of Marlborough remained encamped at Helchin to cover the siege, and watch the progress of such fresh supplies as were approaching. On the morning of the 23rd, he crossed the Scheldt at Pottes ; and fixing his headquarters at Amougies, threw himself on the line of communi- cation between the armies of the Dukes of Berwick and Vendome. But these marshals, being deter- mined at all risks to form a junction, marched by circuitous routes towards each other, Vendome passing the Scheldt at Ninove, while Berwick marched from Mpns through Herine. On the 30th they accordingly united in the plain between Grammont and Lessines ; and on the 2nd of September were in position between Blandin and Willemeau, with 140 battalions and 250 squadrons, 110,000 men in all; while a corps of 20,000 had been left under the late Goveiiior of Ostend, the Count de la Mothe, to cover Ghent S20 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Lisle. ,and Bruges. The duke was soon acquainted with this arrangement ; and not doubting that the next movement would lead round the sources of the Marque, into the country between that river and the Dyle, to avert the threatened danger, he re- crossed the Scheldt, and, marching in a direction nearly parallel to that pursued by the enemy, he arrived on the 4th of September in a position which he had previously selected, having his right resting on the village of Noyelles, dnd his left on Peronne. To prove that his anticipations were correct, Vendome had actually doubled round the Marque by the very route expected, and appeared in front of the Allies within the space of two hours after they had halted. There he rested, and there for twelve days the two armies remained stationary — one covering the operations of the siege, the other seeking an opportunity for raising it. While these movements were being made, Eugene had pressed the investment with all the vigour that inadequate resources and an imperfect engineer department would permit. The first pa- rallel was opened on the 22nd of August, at eight o'clock in the evening, and from the 24th to the 27 th batteries were in course of erection. On the 23rd the chapel of St. Magdalen, which the garrison had converted into an outwork, was stormed by a body of grenadiers ; and the parallel being thus ex- tended, two batteries were thrown up, which opened their fire at daylight. On the 26th, soon after dusk, the garrison made a desperate attempt to recover the chapel, and on succeeding they rased it to its ■ foundation ; but the progress of the various parallels was not in- terrupted for a moment. The third was dug to the river on the 27th, and fresh batteries were armed over night. > On the morning of the 28th, the whole began to rain shot and shell against Lisle, and strove to effect a breach. Near the gate of St. Andrew there was a fortified mill, from the occupation of which the besiegers expected great advantages; and on the 29th it was taken at the point of the bayonet ; but so dreadful was the fire upon it from the town batteries, that the assailants were compelled to retire, leaving it full of killed and wounded. The same thing took place next day, on which Prince Eugene ordered it to be burned, an order the exe- cution of which the enemy could not prevent. By this time every battering-gun was mounted and in position; and their fire, besides subduing that of the enemy, effected a wide breach in the salient angle of the counterscarp of a hornwork: It was stormed that night, in spite of the most resolute defence inade by the garrison, and a lodgment was fully effected. Fresh approaches were immediately pushed towards other portions of the work, which a furious sortie made on the night of the loth of Sep- tember seemed scarcely to retard. The storming of the breached hornwork, which took place previously, on the evening of the 7th of September, was a desperate piece of service. Upon the trenches being relieved by Lieutenant-General Wilks, the following dispositions had been made for the attack : — Eight hundred grenadiers, supported by the same number of fusiUers, with 2,000 workmen, and 30 car- penters designed for cutting down the palisades, were ordered for the right attack, between the lower Deule and the gate of St. Andrew, under the direc- tion of Monsieur de Roques ; while 1,600 grena- diers, supported by the same number of fusiliers, were detailed for the left, under an officer named Du Mey. Besides the troops in the trenches, 2,000 men were in addition employed in the attack, being detached for that purpose from the grand army, and placed under the command of Brigadier John Sabine, of the Welsh FusiUers, a skilful officer, who had been wounded at the battle of Schellenberg, in 1704, and had shared in the glories of Blenheim and of Oudenarde. About eight o'clock on the evening of the 7th of September, the artillery opened against the coun- terscarp. Immediately upon this, the grenadiers and fusiliers, wearing their conical sugar-loaf caps, and having their skirts buttoned back for freedom of action, marched out of the trenches in splendid order, and rushed at the palisades, from which they drove back the defenders by sheer dint of sword and fixed bayonet; and every Frenchman there was put to death, save four officers and a few soldiers, who were taken prisoners (" Records of the 23rd Foot"). While effecting this lodgment, the fire of the enemy's artillery upon this point was fearful ; and three mines were sprung, each with a lurid glare, and did terrible execution. The besiegers, however, lodged themselves on the salient angle of the coun- terscarp of the small hornwork, and on the angle of the tenaille._ According to the " Life of Queen Anne," in this attack "of the counterscarp, the Allies lost no less than 2,000 men either killed or wounded, and among these were sixteen of their engineers." The troops on the right attacked the enemy with the same ardour, and successfully maintained their lodgment on that part of the works situated on the lower Deule, between the two attacks. In addition to these lodgments, the communications towards th? breaches were considerably advanced, Lisle.] THE OUTWORKS TAKEN. S" At the storming of the outworks on the 21st, the Allies sustained a Iqss of fully 1,000 more men, and Prince Eugene was wounded in the head by a musket-ball. He was by this event confined to his tent for some days. The besiegers were now in possession not only of a part of the covered way, but of a demi-bastion and several places of arms. The deputies of the States of Holland, perceiv- ing how slowly the engineers carried on their approaches, and the difficulty of supplying the army with provisions and ammunition, proposed to raise the siege. This Prince Eugene absolutely refused to do. " My own honour is concerned in the event," said he. And though the Dutch would much rather have seen Ghent and Bruges reduced, and their own frontiers secured from the incursions of the French, Prince Eugene persisted in continuing the investment; and while he remained on the sick-list, Marlborough commanded the siege in person, as there was no officer present possessed of sufficient rank and talent to whom it could be entrusted ; and hence he found himself compelled to watch Vendome on one hand, and keep the besiegers to their duty on the other. Every morning saw him on horseback at the earliest blush of dawn. When all was quiet in front, he rode back to the lines of the covering army; and he returned again every evening, that he might be at hand to observe such measures as his skilful antagonist might compel him to adopt. By thus appearing, as it were, at all points where danger threatened or labour was to be endured, he in- fused so much of his own zeal and energy into those around him, that on the 23rd the whole of the ten- aUles, or low works in the ditch before the curtains, fell into his hands, together with the covered way. The author of "The Life of Queen Anne " relates that Marshal Boufflers contrived to inform the Duke de Vendome that his ammunition was be- coming scarce. On this the Chevalier de Luxem- bourg was dispatched by Vendome, at the head of 2,000 horse and dragoons, each of whom carried sixty pounds' weight of gunpowder ; these men were to cut a passage through the lines of circumvalla- tion, and throw themselves at all hazards into Lisle. Accordingly, after placing green boughs in their hats,, such being the badge or cognisance which the Allies wore in battle, they advanced along the causeway that leads from Douay to Lisle. Meet- ing there with some of the outposts, they had the hardihood to affect being Germans belonging to the army of Marlborough, who were conveying prisoners to his camp ; but on an officer approach- ing to examine them more closely, they put spur to their horses, pushed along the causeway at full gallop, and broke through the lines of circum- vallation. They were now fired on by the trench-guards, and pursued to the barrier gate of the town, when by some accident several bags of their powder took fire, and sixty men, with their horses, were blown up and miserably scorched. 1,200 suc- ceeded in cutting a passage into Lisle ; the rest, in the confusion, and under cover of the night, all escaped to Douay, save thirty men who were scorched to death by the explosion of their own powder, which was scattered on the causeway, from which the shoes of the galloping horses struck sparks of fire, and thus ignited it. We have stated that the covering army occupied a position between Noyelles and Peronne; the combined forces of Berwick and Vendome, main- taining a corresponding alignment in their front. The French right extended towards Ennevelin, while their left rested upon Gondecourt, and all their proceedings led to a firm belief that a desperate attempt to reUeve the siege was about to be made ; but save the storming of the village of Teclin no- thing was done. Perceiving the hopelessness of attempting to raise the siege, Vendome and Berwick now endeavoured to place the besiegers under a species of blockade, by cutting the sluices of the canals, inundating the lower lands, and closing up the avenues that led to Brussels and Antwerp. The road to Ostend alone remained open ; yet even it was menaced, and it became a matter of the utmost consideration that an ample convoy should be sent up while the means of doing so were yet within reach. Bishop Burnet says they " fell to making lines all along the Scheldt, but chiefly about Oudenarde." This was more completely to isolate the forces of Marlborough, and cut off all supplies from Hol- land. These lines were about seventy miles long, and were more like fortified ramparts than ordinary intrenchments, and were everywhere armed with cannon. From Ostend alone could supplies come now ; and there 6,000 British troops had recently landed under the command of General Erie, who was instructed to secure every horse and wagon he could lay hands upon, and load them with such munition of war as the place contained, while General Webb, at the head of 6,000 men, was detached as an escort for their protection. The first portion of this force which marched was a battalion of the Royal Scots under Lieuteiiant- 522 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. rWyneniJale. Colonel Hamilton, with orders to halt at Ouden- burg, and wait there till the convoy had passed, after which they were to join the escort at Tourout. Rumours of these proceedings no sooner reached the French marshals than they manoeuvred to in- tercept the convoy, the loss of which would have compelled Marlborough and Eugene to raise the siege ; but the Great Duke was not slow in counter- movements. noisily rumbling out of Ostend ; on the same night it crossed the canal of Nieuport at Leffinghen, and directing its course by Slype and Moerdyke, sought to defile through Cochlaer under cover of the woods of Wynendale. Oudenburg had been early secured; and on the morning of the 28th the cavalry were sent to Hogh- lede, under Cadogan, who dispatched parties as far as Ichteghem, when some squadrons of French ' a. Ill "j--^ Vj Position of English Cavalry. French [^D: Ia(Molhc) . AIlicsj;GenlWebb.) ... r±D I S.i'.' .aia."- ^^^^^^,t^~^^i'^ w iiii m/imm i wmimiimm - ji-a.,° Ifd.^ ^ Jfrench .= 24000 men&40suns.. Allies =. 6000, men. SKIRMISH AT WYNKNDALE. The Count de la Mothe was ordered to march from his camp of observation at Brussels, and lead 22,000 men upon the escort. On the other hand, General William Cadogan, with twelve battalions and 1,500 chosen cavalry, marched by a parallel road to support it ; while the post at Oudenburg was further reinforced by the Regiment of Guethiano, 600 grenadiers, and the battalion of Fune, the whole commanded by Brigadier Lansberg. The movement anticipated La Mothe. On the 27th of September the convoy came { horse appeared in sight. Without attacking, Cado- gan now hastened to Tourout, upon which point Webb had commanded the entire escort to concen- trate ; and on the whole forming a junction, they began their march steadily upon Wynendale. There ere long the glitter of steel announced the presence of the enemy. At the head of 150 horse. General Webb and Count Nassau Loudenburg rode forward to recon- noitre, and plainly saw the columns of La Mothe, drawn up in a heathy plain, through an opening Wynendale.] LYING IN WAIt FOR THE CONVOY. 523 I I 524 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Wynendale, between the wood and a low coppice. Through this avenue Webb pushed on his cavalry to occupy their attention, under Count Lottum; whiles "to embarrass them still more, the quartermasters and grenadiers were posted among the bushes which skirted the ground where the enemy were to pass." As fast as our battalions issued from the woody defile, they were ranged in order of battle by Webb, who formed them into lines, and threw two regiments into the woods on either flank, resting his right upon the ancient castle of Wynendale. Thus posted, he awaited the advance of La Mothe, who came on with an aspect of steady resolution, and in strength nearly three to one. He opened a cannonade from nineteen pieces, and under cover of it closed up with musketry. The action was very severe while it lasted. The regiments formed in the woods, as well as a cloud of the grenadiers and skirmishers who were posted among the brushwood, reserved their shot till the enemy's line was past, when they opened a mur- derous fire on their flanks and rear, at the distance of a few' yards. They were thrown into the most complete disorder, and never recovered from it ; but seemed to get more and more bewildered, amid the clouds of fleecy smoke that curled up from the brushwood and rolled away before the wind. They broke and fled, in spite of the exertiofts of their leaders to rally them, and the long convoy passing in the meanwhile by the rear of the wood, came into Menin without the loss of a single wagon. The conflict lasted two hours. The loss of Webb's force was 912 of all ranks, killed or wounded; that of the enemy was alleged by the prisoners taken to be be nearly 4,000; and the survivors fled in such confusion that they left be- hind them in the wood all their guns, for which, however, they returned the following day. The gallantry of this exploit excited great admira- ration, and General Webb was honoured by the thanks of the first British Parliament which had assembled in that year, and by the approbation of the queen. Seven years afterwards, with two other generals, named Ross and Stuart, he " was laid aside " by George I. for no other crime than being a Scotsman. The labours of the siege were immediately re- sumed with fresh energy ; and as Eugene was able to superintend them in person, hopes of a speedy and glorious termination were encouraged. A new expedient was resorted to by Venddme to avert this catastrophe. He marched a column from the Scheldt through Ghent, and joined La Mothe between Moerdyke and the canal that connects Bruges with Plassehdael. He opened the sluices there, as they had done elsewhere, and laid the whole country under water to the very border of the dyke. He then reinforced the garrison of Nieu- port ; established a post with 1,600 horse and foot in rear of Leflinghen, and completely cut off all communication between the lines and Ostend. Marlborough no sooner heard of these plans than he hastened to prevent them ; but he was too late. The whole face of the country now resembled a vast sea, out of which the houses, windmills, and woodlands stood but half submerged ; and it was only by packing ammunition in skins, and convey- ing these in flat-bottomed boats, that further supphes could be sent to the front ; and a curious kind of warfare was maintained amid the watery waste, boat fighting with boat, and wagon with wagon. It was amid this state of matters that Marshal Auverquerque, one of the most able of the aUied commanders, died. On the 22nd of October, after sixty days of open trenches. Marshal Boufflers proposed to capitulate ; and as an act of justice to his gallantry and skill, he was permitted to name his own terms. He yielded up the town, and retired into Vauban's citadel, to sustain there, with the remains of his garrison, a second siege. His cavalry were permitted to march to Douay, taking with them the wives and families of all the officers and soldiers. ' By the 14th of November Prince Eugene had effected a lodgment on the counterscarp of the citadel of Lisle ; on the 1 7th of that month the troops had stationed themselves on the glacis of the second covered way. The siege was pressed with all the vigour which the exhausted state of the magazines would permit. To recruit these, numerous parties were fi'om time to time sent into France, to sweep away corn, cattle, and other supplies from the open country ; while Marlborough, as he had hitherto done, main- tained a commanding position, so as to cover both the besiegers and their foragers ; and to Vendome and Berwick it became palpable now that any attempt to rescue Lisle was impossible. On the 8th of December Marshal Boufflers beat a parley and yielded up the citadel, from which he and his garrison came forth with all the honours of war, and marched to Douay ; and so ended one of the most remarkable sieges of these brilliant cam- paigns. "In this great enterprise," says Smollett, "spirit and perseverance made amends for want of foresight and skill, which were flagrant on the side of the confederates. Yet their success was owing in a great measure to the improvidence and misconduct of the besieged. The French generals never Alicante.] COUNT MAHONEY. S2S dreamed that the Allies would attempt anything of consequence after the reduction of Lisle, consider- ing the advanced season of the year ; and therefore they returned to Paris, after distributing their annjr into winter quarter?." But in this idea they were mistaken, for on the ' 1 8th of December the confederate generals invested Ghent, which surrendered on the 30th, and the town wa§ immediately occupied by their victorious tropps, CHAPTER C. THE CASTLE OF ALICANTE, 1709. While the war was being thus waged in Flanders, the contest for the throne of Spain between Philip, Duke of Anjou, and Charles, son of Leopold I., was continued with varying success ; and in that strife the defence of the castle of Alicante by an old English regiment and one composed of foreign refugees, against more than 12,000 French and Spanish troops, presents a remarkable instance of fortitude and obstinate bravery. Admiral Sir George Byng, by order of Admiral Sir John Leake, had taken Alicante by storm, in August, 1706, compelling the governor, Colonel Count Mahoney, an Irish soldier of fortune, to capitulate, after he had been severely wounded, and had 160 of his guns which faced the sea dismounted by those of the British fleet. But he had defended himself with such bravery that honourable terms were given him; and he marched out at the head of 130 dragoons (thirty of whom wer« Irishmen), the sole survivors of his force, with four pieces of cannon, and lighted matches. This officer was as remarkable for bravery as for his extreme modesty. It is related of him that when he was sent to the Court of France to relate the surprise of Cremona, when the intrepidity of the Irish saved the town, and when he himself, while commanding one of their battalions, had performed the most valiant action of the day, by (as we have elsewhere told) defending a part of the ramparts long after the Imperialists had entered the place, and holding his post so obstinately that the French garrison had time to rally, and drive out Prince Eugene, in the whole of his narrative he took no notice of himself or of the Irish brigade, so when he had finished speaking, Louis XIV. said — "You say nothing to me, monsieur, of your brave countrymen." " Sire," replied the intrepid Irishman, " they followed the example of the subjects of your Majesty." Major-General Richard Gorges was now en- trusted with the defence of Alicante, a post of great importance, its harbour being one of the best in Valencia. It stands nearly in the centre of the bay, on a narrow peninsula, which abuts into the sea, and, like its fortress, the city is of vast antiquity, dating from the Moorish invasion in the eighth century ; and near it lie those fertile plains known as Las Huertas, or " The Gardens." On the 15th of April Gorges succeeded Arthur, Earl of Donegal, in command of the regiment now known as the 3Sth, or Dorsetshire. He erected an additional defence to AUcante, called Gorge's Battery, between the castle and the town ; and the first duty performed by its guns, was a funeral salute in honour of Marcus, Viscount Dungannon, who died in Alicante. He was colonel of an English regiment which is no longer in existence, and was son of Colonel Marcus Trevor, who was said to have wounded Oliver Cromwell at the battle of Marston Moor.' The viscount's regiment was given to the Marquis de Montandre; and, through the mismanagement of Lieutenant-Colonel Bateman, it was soon after surprised and cut to pieces, with the loss of three of its colours, by the Duke of Berwick's dragoons. Major-General Michael Richards was appointed Governor of AUcante on the recall of Gorges to England. He was a Catholic, and consequently was greatly esteemed by the Valencians, " though, to give him his own, he behaved himself extremely well in all other respects," says Carleton, in his " Memoirs." He was a brigadier of the year of the Revolution; and, as Catholics were not tlien allowed to hold such high rank, we must conclude that Richards adhered to the religion of his fore- fathers in secret. Alicante was now invested and besieged by^ a strong force under the Chevaher d'Asfeld, after- wards Marquis and Marshal of France. He had with him 12,000 French and Spanish troops, with 526 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Alicante. a strong train of artillery. The castle was sur- rounded and the city blockaded by sea and land; but the defence of both by the two regiments of Hotham and Sybourg became one of the most brilliant feats of the war. Night and day the breaching batteries played upon Alicante, which at last was deemed no longer defensible, so on the night of the 3rd of December, 1708, the troops retired into the castle, which had been deemed im- pregnable since the days of the Moors. Incredible were the exertions now made by the soldiers of the two regiments to protract the defence until the arrival of a relieving fleet ; and, to procure water, they sank three deep cisterns in the sohd rock on which the fortress stands. On the Sth of April, 1705, six regiments of infantry were raised in England. One of these was commanded by Sir Charles Hotham, Bart., M.P. for Beverley, an officer who had served in the wars of King WilUam, and who died in 1723, a general, and colonel of the Sth, or King's. He embarked with his regiment for Spain, and served with it at Alicante when the battle of Almanza was fought ; but he must have left it soon after, as during the disastrous siege we are about to narrate it was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Thomicroft. The regiment of Colonel Frederick Sybourg was chiefly composed of French Protestant re- fugees, and was one of seven such corps then in our service. These were the French dragoons under Lieutenant-Colonel La Fabrique, and the infantry of Brigadier Vimare, Colonels Fontjulian, La Barthe, Sybourg, Blosset, and Count de Nassau d'Auverquerque, who was killed at the battle of Almenara, in Spain, in r7io. Colonel Sybourg personally commanded his bat- talion in Alicante ; his lieutenant-colonel was Bal- thasar d'Albon, Francis Vignioles was major, and Bernard Richon was chaplain. The Chevalier d'Asfeld, after he had made some progress in blocking up these solitary regiments in the castle of Alicante, saw that it was impossible to attempt with success an assault; the elevation of the old fortress was too great for breaching-guns to affect it. He therefore resolved to undermine the Solid rock, and blow the castle and its garrison into the air together. This scheme was at first deemed quite imprac- ticable by General Richards and his officers, and they confidently awaited the arrival of the naval squadron, under Sir Edward Whitaker, from Bar- celona. In the meanwhile, by shot and shell, mus- ketry and hand-grenades, they did all in their power to disturb or destroy the French sappers, and also endeavoured to countermine their work. The working parties of the chevaher toiled day and night at their task ; and numerous bands of sturdy Valencian peasantry were pressed into his service to aid them. Twelve weeks of perilous and unremitting toil were necessary to complete the mine; and when finished it was charged with 1,500 barrels of gun- powder and other combustible materials. By sound of drum, on the 2nd day of March, 1709, the castle was formally summoned to sur-- render, and a safe and honourable convoy so far as Barcelona was promised to the regiments of Hotham and Sybourg, with all their arms, colours, and baggage, if they capitulated within three days, and thus prevented the total destruction of the fortress and of themselves. And to this offer the chevalier added a solemn threat that if once the mine was sprung, no mercy or quarter would be shown to any officer or man who escaped the explosion. The Chevalier d'Asfeld, to prove that he was in sad earnest, requested General Richards to come in person, or to send certain officers, to see for themselves the formidable nature of the mine beneath the garrison, and the terrible fate that inevitably awaited them. This invitation was accepted by Lieutenant-Colonel Thomicroft, > of Hotham's Regiment, and Captain Page, an English engineer in the service of King Charles. They descended into the mine, accompanied by the chevalier, who requested them to examine it as closely as they pleased. They did so, and on their return reported to General Richards " that, if their judgment did not deceive them, the explosion would carry up the whole castle to the eastern battery, unless it took vent in their own counter- mine ; but at least they were certain that it would carry away the sea-battery, the barracks in the castle close, and some of the chambers cut in the rock for soldiers' quarters ; and they much feared it might affect the great cistern." On hearing all this, many of the officers thought the whole affair a mere farce. Some asserted that the mine was a mockery, and that the bags and barrels seen by the colonel and captain were filled by sand and not gunpowder ; but there were others who had their wives and children with them, and looked forward to the end with the deepest solici- tude. By order of General Richards, a Council of War was held ; and the soldiers reported an increasing scarcity of water, which was not the least of the many hardships they endured : but believing that Whitaker's fleet must soon arrive from Barcelona Alicante.] THE MINE SPRUNG. 52? to their relief, they resolved unanimously ' " to commit the sequel to, the' providence of God, and sent word to the enemy to fire their mine if they chose." Barcelona was two hundred and sixty miles dis- tant, and the sea Was swept in vain by their tele- scopes, as the light of the last day faded, for the expected British fleet. The third fatal night closed in, and the chevalier, who, though a resolute, was not an unmerciful officer, sent once again a flag of truce, with tidings that the train of powder was laid through the gallery, and should be fired at six o'clock precisely on the following morning. "Blow away!" was the brief response of the besieged; and at nightfall the chevalier ordered " all the inhabitants in the quarter near the mine to withdraw from their houses before five o'clock next morning.'' Slowly passed the eventful night. The besieged kept all their guards and sentinels posted as usual, but no man undressed or went to bed. Alarm and dread expectation were too keen to admit of sleep, and many a brave soldier passed the night in medita- tion and prayer. General Richards, and Colonels Thornicroft, Sybourg, and Balthasar d'Albon, sat together in the governor's quarters; apd all their brother officers were grouped elsewhere, to pass this miserable night. Captain Carleton, in his Memoirs, says, " some further particulars I soon had from Colonel Sybourg's gentleman. He told me that the night preceding the imfortunate catastrophe of his master, he was waiting on him in the casemate, when he observed, some time before the rest of the company took notice of it, that General Richards appeared very pensive and thoughtful— that the whole night long he was pestered with and could not get rid of a great fly, which was perpetually buzzing about his ears and head, to the great vexation and disturb- ance of the rest of the company, as well as the general himself" When day dawned again, the sea was searched in vain by the anxious eyes of those who gathered on the battery that stood immediately above the terrible mine. It was then proposed that they should have a couple of bottles of wine, "to drink for the last time the health of Her Majesty the good Queen Anne." Afterwards the general was informed that the people of Alicante were hurrying in multitudes to the western part of the town, on which he went to the battery which overlooked that quarter, attended by the field-officers, and remained there some time. Lieutenant-Colonel Thornicroft was urged by him to retire, saying that his being there was of no service. " There is no danger to be apprehended here, more than in any other place, and we shall wait the event," was the reply of the colonel and of Sybourg. , Such was the force of discipline, that they re- mained there because their superior did so, and other officers imitated their example; while the poor soldiers, now by mere force of habit, got under arms in the castle-yard, and remained in silence and expectation, awaiting death in their ranks ; but hope began to dawn in the hearts of some as the fatal hour was past. " Suddenly a corporal cried aloud, " The train is fired !" Then smoke was seen to issue from a fissure in the rocks beneath them, and the general and field-officers were implored to retire from the sea battery, but all refused. At last, with a dreadful crash and roar, the mine was sprung ! The whole rock of Alicante, to the eyes of those in the city, camp, and fleet below, seemed to open and shut again, while a vast dark cloud rose high in the air, and hid the ancient castle. The whole mountain trembled to its base in the sea; and when the dust cleared away the castle seemed to have changed its shape, and in many parts was a mere mass of ruin, amid which the general, all the field-officers save D'Albon, with many soldiers, ten guns, and two mortars, were buried. From base to battlement the old fortress vibrated and shook ; part of the great cistern was destroyed, anotlier was nearly choked by the fallen masonry, and in the closing rocks a poor soldier was seen shut up to his neck, beyond the power of extrica- tion, and in that terrible predicament he remained alive for many hours. Twenty officers of all ranks, thirty-six soldiers, and several women and children were buried alive, and the groans of some of these miserable creatures were heard for two or thr^e days after. In Alicante many of the houses were beaten to the earth and overwhelmed by masses of falling masonry; and that any portion of the castle re- mained undestroyed was owing to certain fissures in the rock, and countermines formed by the garrison, having weakened the force of the ex- plosion. And now, inspired with fury and vengeance, Lieutenant-Colonel Balthasar d'Albon drew out a mixed detachment of his own regiment and that of Hotham, and made a desperate sally into the city at thp point of the bayonet, to show that the 528 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Alicante. survivors were still undismayed. From the bat- teries that remained uninjured, bombs, carcasses, and grenades were shot into the streets in all directions. D'Albpn was driven in with severe loss ; but the shattered castle and the ruined streets presented a strange spectacle to our fleet, when ultimately it did arrive to succour the few brave fellows who had so sturdily kept tlie Union colours flying on the towers of Alicante. Sit Edward Whitaker had brought with him from Barcelona 3,500 men, under General Stanhope ; and amid the cheers of the British fleet, embarked for Barcelona ; after which they were put for a time " in quarters of refreshment." Hotham's Regiment is no longer in the service. Being sorely reduced in strength by the 'defence of Alicante, it was disbanded in Catalonia; and Sybourg's Regiment, after serving at the siege of Bouchaine, in Hainault, was disbanded in 17 11, by order of Earl Rivers, so well known as the father of Savage the poet. Rivers was then a general of cavalry, and had served under Gorges at Alicante, when he entered the gulf, on the isth of April, the garrison were reduced to their last biscuit and last bullet. Chevalier d'Asfeld's forces had been greatly increased. The weather was rough, and to attempt the relief of the garrison by the strong hand was deemed impracticable. The general sent a flag of truce on shore, capitulating for the garrison, now reduced to 500 of all ranks ; and on the i8th of April, r709, they marched out with the honours of war, with two pieces of cannon in front, with balls in their muzzles and matches lighted, their bayonets fixed and drums beating, and with their colours flying. The French and Spanish troops presented arms to them as they marched to the beach, and, in 1706. Sybourg's brother, Charles Alexander Sybourg, in 1701 was major of the Duke of Schom- berg's Horse (now 7th Dragoon Guards), and died governor of the Leeward Isles, some twenty years after. The rent formed by the terrible mine of the Chevalier d'Asfeld^is still distinctly visible in the castle rock of Alicante ; and when Townsend, the traveller, visited the city in 1787, he found masses of the cliff still threatening it with destruction. The castle has always been described as being one of great strength, and many noble Spanish families were wont to take shelter there, to escape the ravages of the Algerines.' In 1813, when aided by a British fleet, the fortress and town success- fully resisted the French Marshal Suchet. Commodo.e Wa^cr._, A FIGHTING CRUISii. 5^9 MARSHAL DE BOUFFLERS. CHAPTER CI. THE CRUISE OF COMMODORE WAGER, 1709. The operations of Commodore Sir Charles Wager (who was knighted by Queen Anne for his bravery), while in the West Indies, present us with a good example of what a fighting cruise was in those days. In the spring of 1708, the commodore received intelligence that the Spanish galleons, those famous treasure-ships out of which so many of our naval officers made great fortun^§ in those days, had 46 530 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Commodore Wager. sailed from Carthagena for Porto Bello ; and, after holding a Council of War, he sailed in quest of them with such ships as were ready, leaving orders for the rest of the squadron to follow him. On the 25th of January he came to anchor off the lonely Isle of Pines, where the ships took in wood and water. In March he received tidings from Captain Humphrey Pudner, of the Severn, 48 guns, who was stationed near Porto Bello, that the galleons with the King of Spain's treasure could not sail before the month of May. Sir Charles upon this sailed for Jamaica to collect more ships, with the intention of attacking the galleons in harbour if pos- sible, as they thought it probable they might not put to sea while he was known to be in those waters. The 6th of April found him at anchor off the Keys of Port Royal, where the squadron was victualled, and another Council of War held. On this occasion it was resolved that, as only the Ex- pedition, 60 guns, which carried the commodore's broad pennant, the Kingston, 60 guns, Captain Simon Bridges, and the Vulture, fire-ship, were then fit for sea, an attempt on the harbour of Porto Bello was impracticable; but that if the treasure-ships were actually to sail in May, that all vessels that could be ready by that time should put to sea and watch for them. In addition to the three already named, only the Portland, 60 guns. Captain Tudor Trevor, could be fitted out. With these the commodore again put to sea, and gave chase to several ships off Bocca Chica. Some of these escaped into Carthagena, others were lost sight of in hazy weather. The middle of May found him off the Baru, where he learned that the galleons were thirteen in number, with three fire-ships, and where the Expedi- tion had her masts greatly injured by lightning during one of those dreadful thunder-storms pecu- liar to the tropics. There he had intelligence of a gallant combat, fought by a privateer sloop, commanded by a Captain Coleby, with 100 men. This litde vessel, on meeting with fourteen brigantines and sloops, lade^ with valuable goods, going from the galleons at Porto Bello to Panama, under convoy of the Duke of Anjou's guard-ship, bravely fought her and two other vessels for two hours, and took her and six other sail. The Spaniards offered Captain Coleby 180,000 pieces of eight as the ran- som of these seven craft, which he refused, and sailed with them to Jamaica. On the 23rd of May the Anne, sloop, joined the commodore from the line of rocky isles off the Panama coast named the Bastimientos, with notice from Captain Pudner that the galleons had at length put to sea ; but the 27 th passed without the com- modore seeing anything of them, hence he began to fear they had given him the slip, and gone to Havanah. On the following day no less than seventeen sail were descried from the topmast-head of the Expe- dition; and with joyous alacrity all' sail was made in pursuit, as beyond doubt these were the gal- leons at last. They were bearing to the south-south-west, between the Baru and Friend's Island; and the commodore resolved to attack with his small squadron of ■ four vessels, carrying in all only 228 guns, with the Vulture, fire-ship. The weather was calm till three ; then a slight gale sprang up, and before it he bore down upon them, in the hope of commencing the battle before nightfall. But the Spaniards, finding- that they could not weather the Baru, tacked, and stood north under easy sail. They did not attempt to escape, believing that he would not dare to attack them, being so superior in force, but drew, half contemptuously, into a sort of line of battle. According to Burchett, the admiral's ship had a large white Spanish pennant at her main-truck, sailing in the centre. The vice-admiral carried a pennant of the same kind at the fore-truck, sailing in the rear. The rear-admiral had one of the same, but at his mizzen-tmck, sailing in the van. These three vessels were half a mile apart, with the other ships between them. Of the seventeen sail, two were sloops, and one a brigantine, which stood in for the land. The commodore had been previously informed that the ships of the three admirals had all or most of the treasure on board. The first, the San Jose, of 64 guns and 600 men, had on board ;^7,ooo,ooo in gold and silver ; the second, another sixty-four, Avith 550 men, had on board ^6,000,000 ; the third of 44 guns, and 13 in her hold, had on board 13 chests of pieces of eight, and 14 sows of silver. The rest of the galleons were laden with cocoa. Sir Charles Wager desired Captain Bridges, of the Ki7igston, to engage the vice-admiral. Captain Windsor, of the Portland the rear-admiral, reserving to himself the task of assailing the San Jose, while the fire-ship was to lie to windward. " The com- modore perceiving before night," says Lediard, " that neither the Kingston nor the Portland com- plied with his directions as he expected, he made the signal for a line of battle, they keeping too much to windward ; but it was soon hauled down again." The sun was just setting behind the line of coast, Commodore Wager.] DEFEAT OF THE SPANIARDS, 531 when Sir Charles opened fire on the Spanish ad- miral; and in about an hour and a half, it being then quite dark — night having come on with tropical rapidity — a sudden burst of red light shot over the sea, and the Spanish ship blew up with a dreadful concussion, and all on board of her perished save seventeen ; and she with her treasure went to the bottom. At that time the commodore's ship, the Expedi- tioti, was within half pistol-shot of her, "so that the heat of the mighty blast came very hot upon her." Many timbers and other fragments in a blaze fell upon her deck and rigging, but were speedily- thrown into the sea, which was so agitated by the crash that a succession of waves flowed into the lower-deck ports of the Expedition. Another account says that the San Jose was not blown upward; but that by the explosion the whole of that side which was towards the commo- dore was blown out. After this event the darkness seemed to deepen, and the galleons began to separate, so that. Sir Charles could keep sight of but one, which seemed the largest, and proved, as he expected, the rear- admiral. By ten o'clock he was close to her ; but so great was the darkness that he was unable to make out which way her head lay, so he poured a broadside into her at a venture, and as she received this in her stem, it would seem to have disabled her from making sail, and, from being to leeward, the commodore made a tack to get the weather- gage of her. All this time nothing had been seen or heard of the Kingston or the Portlmid ; but now, by the firing of his guns, as he continued to fight the Spaniard, and the lights he hung in his rigging, Sir Charles showed them his whereabouts ; and their guns too were soon heard, as they opened on the rear-admiral, who called for "quarter'' about two in the morning, just when the moon was rising from the Spanish main. By this time the Spaniard lay like a helpless log upon the watei. The commodore sent his captain, Long, on board, and that officer brought off the rear- admiral, the Conde de la Vega Florida, with some of his staff, to the Expedition; the rest to remain on board, as disarmed prisoners, under a sure guard. Till day broke Sir Charles remained on deck, to see if he could discover which way the rest of the galleons had gone. Before sunrise one large vessel was descried on his weather-bow, and three more on his weather quarter. The wind unfortu- nately was too light for the impatience of the com- modore, who instantly signalled to the Kingston and Portland to join with him in making all sail in chase. On the 30th of May, at four in the afternoon, the commodore, to fiis surprise, "found that those two vessels had relinquished the pursuit, and by night- fall were out of sight, leaving him to sail onward, accompanied only by the Vulture fire-ship, which had taken up in the night three of the- San Jos^s men who were floating on a piece of wreck. Eight more were picked up that day, and six elsewhere, " which were all that were saved out of 700 that were on board, including passengers." The loss of the Expedition in these two brief actions was only seventeen killed. and wounded. The commodore was now compelled to lie-to for twenty-four hours, to put his prize in condition for making more sail, as her mizzenmast had been shot away, her topmasts rendered unserviceable and her lower-masts wounded. Next day Sir Charles was rejoined by the Kingston and Portland, whose captains reported that they not had relinquished the chase, and that the ship they had followed was that of the Spanish vice-admiral, as was manifest by the ensigns at her foretopmast-head ; that they had been near enough to pour their broadsides into her, but at the same time were so near the dangerous Salma- dinas, as the shoals are named off Carthagena, that they were forced to tack and leave. This ex- cuse did not avail them afterwards, when brought before a court-martial, which proved that a pilot offered to take them within the shoals. The same day a small Swedish ship, which had been trading at Baru, told Sir Charles that one galleon had taken shelter there, so he immediately dispatched the Kingston and Portland to take or burn her. In a few days after, as the wind was blowing a gale, and water and provisions were falling short for the great number of people he had now on board, Sir Charles stood in shore, and landed at the Great Baru the conde and all the prisoners, save a few whom he required to navigate the prizes to Jamaica. The galleon at Baru was a forty gun-ship, and her crew, on seeing the Kingston and Portland ap- proach, had run her ashore and set her on fire, so that she soon blew up ; and the 8th of July saw the commodore's cruise ended in Port Royal harbour, where a court-martial sat for the trial of Captains Simon Bridges and Edward Windsor, with whose conduct the commodore had been much dissatis- fied. For abandoning the chase when near the Sal- madinas, after being within gun-shot of her, both these officers were sentenced to be dismissed from their ships, but not from the service. Sir Ch'arles Wager died. First Lord of the Admiralty, in 1743. 532 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Malplaquct. CHAPTER CIL MALPLAQUET, 1709. With unvarying success on the part of the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene, the war was still waged in Flanders. Tournay, the chief place in the province of Hainault, and one of the finest citadels in Europe, surrendered to them at discretion on the 3rd of September. They next resolved on the conquest of Mons, the condition of which at that time was such as to render it quite incapable, unless powerfully reinforced from without, of making any effectual resistance to a besieging force. In numbers the French garrison was weak and sickly; hence it had been regarded by Marshal Villars as a species of hospital, rather than a post, notwithstanding the vast strength of its fortifications, and that its position in reference to the lines at Douay rendered it in the highest degree important, and that there was a stern necessity for preventing its capture. Villars made strenuous efforts to protect it. Leaving a few brigades to watch the entrench- ments, he drew the whole of his disposable force to the right, till he mustered in position between Montrsel and Attiche 130 battalions of infantry, 260 squadrons of cavalry, with eighty pieces of cannon. There he was joined by Louis Frangois, the Marshal Duke de Boufflers, who, though his superior in rank, volunteered on the present occasion to serve under him, and, not less than Villars himself, was a prodigious favourite with the French army, the enthusaism of which became excited to the highest degree. It was announced to the troops that " even a general action would not be shunned, should other means of relieving Mons fail ; " and satisfaction at the prospect of bringing matters to a speedy issue was signified by difeu de joie along the whole line of the French camp. Meanwhile the Duke of Marlborough was ignorant neither of the designs of Villars nor of the high spirit that prevailed among his troops. In his own army he reposed the most perfect confidence ; and he lost no time in moving all his corps within reach of each other, and disposing them along a plateau where they could all act with strength and in concert. The hostile armies amounted to about 90,000 men each; Voltaire states them at 10,000 less; Smollett at 120,000 each on the day of Malplaquet. Coxe makes the Allies amount to 129 battalions, 252 squadrons, with loi pieces of cannon and four mortars, with a numerical force of 93,000 men ; but from every rational estimate, the strength on both sides appears to have been nearly equal, though the Allies had the superiority in artillery. The 9th of September found them encamped within six miles of each other, on a plateau which may be described as forming an irregular parallelo- gram, with the great barrier towns of Mons and Bavay, and the pretty villages of Quevrain and Givray, as its angular points. The country presented somewhat the appearance of a hilly surface, through the greener hollows and pastures of which flowed four rivers, the Haine, the Trouille, the Hon, and the Honeau, while many lesser streams forced their way through the rushy marshes and rocky ravines. Extensive woods, already brown with the tints of autumn, clothed the face of the country, with here and there those extensive fields where crops of hemp, lint, and colza were raised by the industrious Hainaulters. Brick- built hamlets, with roofs of yellow thatch, and quaint farm-houses, half buried amid greenery, were scattered over it ; and in the immediate vicinity of Malplaquet lay then a heath of great extent to- wards the French frontier. To the eye of the traveller, the ground then as now was beautiful ; but to that of the soldier it presented peculiar features. There were only four defiles by which troops could attempt to make their way from the base between Bavay and Quevrain towards Mons ; but there were two through which an army, after closing up the line of woodlands between Laniere and Bousou, could be assailed ; " and hence, either for attack or de- fence, it were difficult to imagine a tract more fertile in strong military positions." Suspecting that Villars meant to reinforce Mons by the road _ that passes Jemappe, Marlborough detached a division of infantry, supported by guns and cavalry, to Quaregnon and the heights above St. Ghislain, while he personally occupied a line with his left at Quevy and his right at Ciply ; and after- wards " columns of march " were detailed to cover the four grand defiles of Aulnoit and Blaregnies to the east, and those of Warmes and Bousou to the west; but as the whole army moved in magnifi- cent array, with miles upon miles of bright Malplaquet.3 "CORPORAL JOHN." 533 bayonets and clear musket-barrels flashing in the sun over the green and undulating country, the ad- vance guard fell in with a body of French hussars, advancing over the plain of Mons. These were driven in after a skirmish j and halting his whole force, Marlborough took up the position we have described. Villars was soon informed of the measures taken by Marlborough for blocking up the defiles. He was also informed that the passes on his left were covered, while those on the right were still open, and he determined to seize the latter, as a means of commanding the road to Trouville, a stream which adds so greatly to the strength of Mons, as when the sluices are opened it lays the whole country around it under water for miles. With this view he detatched a force about dusk in the evening, but nothing was achieved. After a trifling cavalry skirmish, and a cannonade productive of no decisive result, both armies pitched their tents, Marlborough establishing his headquarters at Blaregnies, while Villars took possession of Malplaquet, ten miles dis- tant from Mons. His right extended to the village, which lay near the extensive and impenetrable wood of Saart; his left was covered by another thick wood ; and his centre was defended by three lines of trenches, formed along a narrow plain ; the whole being secured by an abatis de bois, or forti- fication of felled trees, with their branches outwards, until their camp resembled a veritable citadel, and thus they awaited that conflict which, in slaughter, was to surpass the battles of Blenheim, Ramillies, and Oudenarde put together. From the 9th to the nth of September all remained quiet, and no two such armies as those which faced each other in fertile Hainault- had yet been brought into the field. All the chivalry of modem Europe were serving under the banners on either side. In the ranks of the Allies we find, besides Marl- borough and Prince Eugene of Savoy, the Princes of Orange and Hesse-Cassel, with Count Tilly, the commander of the Dutch contingent; Generals Schulemberg, Lottum, Bulou, Albemarle, Fagel, and Vichleu ; John, Duke of Argyle and Green- wich, K.T. ; William, first Baron Cadogan ; John, Marquis of Tullibardine ; Lumley, the Prince d'Auvergne, Dohna, Oxenstiem, Baron Spar, Rantzau, Withers ; John, Earl of Stair ; Graves- tein, and Lieutenant-General the Earl of Orkney, K.T. Each of these held the highest rank, and commanded divisions or brigades ; while among the junior officers were the. Prince Royal of Prussia, and Counts Saxe, Munich, and Scheverin. Among the French were to be found Marshal Boufflers, the valiant Pierre d'Artagnan, better known in future wars as the Marshal de Montes- quieu; Antoine, Duke de Grammont; De Guiche, the Marquis de Puysegur; Montmorenci, De Coigny, the Count de Broglie, Nangis, Chaulnes, the Duke d'Isenghein, Duras, Albergotti, Pallavicini, and La Motte Houdancourt. There, too, were St. Hiliare, and the renowned Chevalier Folard; and, though last not least in rank, the hapless representative of the House of Stuart, James IIL and VIII., the nephew of Queen Anne, serving as a simple volunteer ! Before an engagement it was the usual custom of Marlborough to ride along the front of his line, and, with an air of more than usual cheerfulness, to tell the troops " to be steady — to go on, and keep up their fire, and the enemy would soon be disposed of." So entirely did this great leader possess the confidence of his men, that even when it seemed impossible to extricate them from a difficulty, they would make themselves easy and say — " Well, it is no matter to us; old Corporal John" (for so they named him) "will find some way to bring us off." He had carefully reconnoitred the lines of the enemy, and saw that neither the right nor the centre of that most formidable position could be assailed with eftect, so he resolved to attempt to turn it; and with this view a division under General Withers, en route from Toumay, received orders "not to join the camp, but to pass through the wood of Blangies by a by-path, and so gain the enemy's rear, or at all events their extreme left, and take them in reverse at the farm of La Folie." At the same time forty battalions from the army of Eugene,' under the command of Baron Schulem- berg, were to attack the left flank of the wood of Taisnieres,' and force it at all hazards. To support them, forty pieces of cannon were to open fire upon the wood, while strong working parties were to cover them from the effect of an enfilade by epaule- ments, or flanking breastworks. Simultaneously with these operations, a double attack was to be made upon the field-works which Villars had constructed in the wood of Taisnieres : one brigade was to pass by the Saart road, round a morass on the left ; while a division, under Count Lottum, assaulted the opposite flank. Finally, the centre and right of the French were to be menaced, the former by cavalry, the latter by three infantry corps, under the Prince of Orange and Generals Welderen and Dohna, who were not to engage seriously without special orders ; and amid these preparations the night of the loth passed away. At three o'clock next morning divine service was performed with great solemnity in the allied camp, 534 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA, [Malplaquet in open squares of divisions, and the moment it was over the rumble of artillery-wheels announced that the cannon were in motion. Save this all was silence there ; but in the French camp all were excited, and in the still air of the morning cries' were heard of " Vive le Roi ! " " Vive le Marshal Villars ! " and though scantily supplied with rations, the French, in their eagerness to engage, began to throw their bread away. Meanwhile the Allies broke into order of march I towards them the measured tramping of the dense I masses of infantry, the clang of hoofs, the rattle I of. cavalry accoutrements, scabbards, and chain- j bridles, with the heavy lumbering sound of artillery- wheels, till the fog-bank, as it ascended into mid-air like a vast curtain, suddenly revealed the- dispositions Marlborough had made ; and then a cannon-shot, fired from the grand battery of Villars on the ridge that commanded the ravine of Aulnoit, announced the commencement of the great battle of Malpla- PLAN OF THE BATTLE OF MALPLAQUET. for the various points of attack. "All was done in profound silence and perfect order. Scarcely a word was spoken by officers or men, beyond the few sentences necessary for the purpose of directing the movements; for even the rude jokes which usually accompany similar openings were, as if by common consent, suspended." As day stole over the undulating landscape, a dense white mist continued for a time to mask the movements of one army from the other. Hence Marlborough was enabled, without molestation, to complete all his matured plans for a 'combined attack ; but the enemy were left in no doubt that one was about to be made. For some hours the light morning wind wafted quet, the bloodiest action in the whole war, and the best fought in which the French were ever defeated. A Dutch division of nine battalions, led by the Prince of Orange, pushed doggedly on in silence against the angle of the enemy's works at the wood of Laniere, about half-past seven, just as the sun came forth ; while twenty-two battalions, among which were two battalions of the Foot Guards, the Scots Royals, and the regiment of Argyle, under Count Lottum, made a similar movement upon the centre. As soon as he had come within the extreme range of grape shot, the Prince of Orange halted ; while the count, wheeling forward his left flank, suddenly forced the right of the wood of Taisniere in three Malpkquet.l MARLBOROUGH'S ATTACK. 535 I a M Q u o 2 a o S36 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. tMalplaquet. lines. Schulemberg also, in three lines, menaced its right, while the Earl of Orkney prepared to occupy the space left vacant with fifteen battalions more ; and thus in ten minutes the columns of attack were all in motion, and pressing on with bayonets fixed and colours flying, under showers of round shot and grape. While Lottura's division marched steadily round the left of the grand battery, that of Schulemberg skirted the wood of Saart, and pushed upon the enemy's left wing. As yet not a musket had been fired on either side. The Austrians were mowed down fast by the fire of grape ; but it was not until they were within pistol-shot that the French infantry began to act, and then their first volley produced the most dreadful results. Feehng themselves perfectly secure within their trenches, the enemy levelled their muskets over the breast- works, taking cool and deliberate aim. The Austrians recoiled before the storm of lead, and, with hoarse wild cries of rage and defiance, retreated 200 yards, and their order was never perfectly restored during the remainder of the battle. Their confidence, however, returned ; and extending their files through the wood so as to outflank the en- trenchments, and carry their right round a morass which Villars had believed to be impassable, they fell in with a brigade which had already penetrated far unseen, and the whole line then advanced again under a ceaseless fire of musketry, which was promptly and steadily responded to; so the slaughter on both sides was terrible. At a quick pace the division of Count Lottum fell furiously upon the point he was ordered to assail. A veritable tempest of musket-balls rained on the advancing corps, yet they pressed steadily forward over their dead and dying ; and clearing a ravine, as well as a shallow, rushed with loud cheers and fixed bayonets to storm the earthen parapets. "Two battalions of the Foot Guards led the attack," says the "Records of the Scots Royals," "and having overcome several local difficulties, they commenced ascending the enemy's breastworks, but were re- pulsed and driven back. The Royals seconded the Foot Guards ; Argyle's regiment and several other corps prolonged the attack to the left ; and these troops, rushing forward with the native resolution and energy of Britons, forced the entrenchments in gallant style; and the French fell back fighting, and retreating into the woods. The Royals and other corps pressed forward ; the trees and foliage being thick the ranks were broken ; every tree was disputed, and the wood echoed with the roar of battle on every side." The troops opposed to Count Lottum were the Brigade du Roi, and the regiments of Picardy and La Marine ; and these evinced the most heroic cour- age, but in vain. Marshal Boufflers charged at the head of the Gensdarmes ; he also led on the Garde du Corps, the Mousquetaires, and the Grenadiers k Cheval. These troops broke through the two first lines of the Allies, and threw the third into disorder, when his small force found, itself between a cross-fire from the infantry, and, according to the London Gazette, it was charged at the same moment by a great body of cavalry, led by Prince Eugene, who was struck by a musket-ball behind the ear. His attendants advised him to retire, that the wound might be dressed. " No," said he ; " if I am fated to die here, to what purpose can it be to dress the wound ? If I survive, it will be time enough in the evening" ("Life of Eugene"). On the extreme left of the French were posted the Irish brigades of Lee and O'Brien. In addition to their own regiments of exiles, these officers had those of Dorrington, O'Donnell, and Galway. Next them, on their right, were the French and Swiss Guards ; those of Bavaria and Cologne form- ing the second line, or supports. These were the Hite of the French infantry, and upon their firmness Marshal Villars placed his chief dependence. But the Duke of Argyle, one of the bravest men of the age, led on twenty battalions against them, and driving them all in, together with the regiments of Champagne, Charost, Brittany, Tourville, and of the King and Queen, cleared the wood, and took post in rear of it. In this conflict, the Royal Regiment of Ireland, in the pay of Louis, is said to have encountered the Royal Irish in the British service, our present i8th Foot. Then Villars, at the head of the King's, Queen's, and Perche's regiments, with some dismounted dragoons, charged with fixed bayonets, seeking to drive Argyle back to the wood; but in this desperate attempt he received. a wound in the knee, and fainting with agony and loss of blood, was borne senseless from the field (" Feuquer's Memoirs "). The officer commanding the regiment of Navarre gave orders that his men were to shout, as a mot de ralliement — "■^ Notre Dame defrqppe-fortJ" St. Mary was the regimental patroness ; and the cry had " such an effect upon the soldiers," says Colonel James, "that they fought with tmusual intrepidity." " It is impossible," says Milner, in his Journal, Malplaquet.1 ATTACK ON LA FOLIE. 537 " to describe the violence of the fire on both sides. Besides the enemy's advantageous situation, they defended themselves like brave men, and made all the resistance that could be expected from the best of troops. But nothing could be a finer sight than to see our foot surmount so many obstacles, resist so great a fire, force the enemy's entrench- ments, beat them from thence, and drive them quite out of the wood ; and after all draw up in good order of battle on the plain, in sight of our enemies, and before their third entrenchments.'' On the arrival of Marlborough, with a body of cavalry, to cover the flank of Lottum's division, which was still fighting its way through the wood, the enemy before it gave way. Their flank menaced at two points, and their rear already gained at La Folie, they could no longer maintain the more advanced angle of their lines, and accordingly abandoning it, they took post behind an abattis of felled trees. While this was occurring elsewhere, the divisions of the Earl of Orkney and the Prince of Orange were still resting on their arms, within half cannon- shot of the wood of Taisnieres. They did, indeed, all that had been required of them, while they kept the right and centre of the French from moving ; for it was to his success on the left, and the conse- quences likely to accrue from it, that Marlborough mainly depended ; but the Prince of Orange began to weary of being under fire without acting. Thus, without waiting for orders, and in defiance of the advice of Marshal Count Tilly, he led on his division to storm the trenches by which the centre was covered, and nothing could exceed the gal- lantry of his soldiers. In the van was the old Scottish Brigade, under the youthful Marquis of Tullibardine. Supported by the Swiss and Dutch, " they rushed forward in defiance of a murderous fire of all arms, and, with- out so much as halting to draw breath, forced their way to the top of the breastwork ; but before they could deploy, they were in turn charged, beaten back, and very roughly handled " (Gleig). For two hours, however, the Scots and Swiss held the works ere they were driven out ; then, through an opening made by Boufiflers, the French Grenadiers h Cheval sallied forth upon them, sword in hand, to be swept away by a withering fire, as Swiss and Scots faced about, and stood shoulder to shoulder, and then fell back, leaving 2,000 of their number piled in heaps before the French lines, and among them the corpse of the gallant Tullibardine. By this impetuosity or mistake of the Prince of Orange, the wreck of his magnificent corps was compelled to retreat, nor could all his efforts avail to lead them agaiij to destru,Gtipn. Nor was the fate of Baron Fagel's Dutch division different. Like the Scots and Swiss, this fine body of men had stormed a fortified enclosure at Bleron, only to be driven out by superior numbers ; while the in- defatigable Boufflers, at the head of some squadrons, rode them down like grass, as they fell back in ntter confusion. While the fortune of the Allies stjll hovered between defeat and victory, and while matters were in this state, many urgent messages had been sent to recall Marlborough from his own right, when he came galloping up, attended by a numerous and brilliant staff, and was immediately joined by Prince Eugene, to whom intelligence of the repulse of the Prince of Orange had been communicated, and both exerted themselves to resfore order. While thus occupied, a staff officer, with his horse covered with foam, came up in hot haste to report that " the enemy were assuming the initia- tive both at La Folie and the wood of Taisnieres." On this Marlborough ordered the Earl of Orkney to advance with his battalions, supported by a force of cavalry, to occupy the level ground beyond, so soon as an opening could be made ; while the troops on the right, now animated by the presence of Eugene, not only repelled the attack but gained ground on the enemy. La Fohe was attacked with irresistible fury ; again the thick wood was the scene of a close and desperate struggle with the bayonet and clubbed musket, and the corpses, gashed, stabbed, or brained, lay over each other in piles. Overcoming all opposition, the regiments of Lord Orkney carried the chain of redoubts which covered the French centre. The cavalry, led by the Prince of Hesse-Cassel, afterwards King of Sweden, swept through the intervals, formed squadron beyond, and charged furiously over the open plain ; while forty pieces of cannon, breaking off in two divisions to the right and left, opened a terrible cross-fire upon the reserves of the enemy, which were entirely composed of horse, and had ere long to retire, when the hope of supporting passed away, and they found themselves exposed to useless anni- hilation. Their centre pierced, their left flank turned, their general borne bleeding from the field, and in- capable of leading or directing them, the French saw that the fortune of the day was Jost ; yet they did not yield to despair. Boufflers flew from his own post on the right, and placing himself, sword in hand, at thS head of 2,000 cavalry, the ilife of France, the Mousquetaires, Gensdarmes, and Garde 538 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Malplaquet, du Corps, endeavoured to drive the Allies before him ; but "after a struggle of two hours, in which the Imperial Cuirassiers, the English, Prussian, Dutch, French, and Irish (Nugent's), fought with obstinate resolution, though exposed to the fire of 200 pieces of cannon, Boufflers, who headed and claimed success in six several charges, thought it advisable to retreat." " The Chevalier de St. George,'' states Marshal de Boufflers in his dispatch, "behaved himself during the whole action with all possible bravery and vivacity." Smollett records that he charged twelve times at the head of the Household Troops, and in the last was wounded by a sword-thrust in the arm. "If bravery deserved a crown" (to quote the "Military Memoirs of the Irish Nation"), "he showed himself not unworthy of it. Cowardice was never a failing of the Stuarts. Scottish heroism, sensible at all times of dangers and menaces, and headlong to encounter them, animated nine succes- sive generations of that illustrious family ; and in reading their sad history, sympathy for their mis- fortunes is relieved by admiration of their bravery." But these charges were all made too late. Marlborough was at hand with a body of British cavalry, which swept the Garde du Corps firom the field ; while, checked by the dreadful cannonade from the right and left, the infantry staggered and stood still among their own killed and wounded, who lay thick as the leaves in the autumn woods around them. At the same moment the Prince of Orange and the Prince of Hesse bore down together on them, and in ten minutes the whole line of entrench- ments, breastworks, and abattis were won at Bleron, in the wood of Laniere ; the entire alignment ceased to be defensible, and the whole French army gave way. Their right wing covered their retreat to Bavay, La Quesnoy, and Valenciennes; and thus ended the battle of Malplaquet — called of Mons by the Italians, of Blaregnies by the French, and some- times of Taisnieres — after a struggle which lasted, according to General Kane, from eight o'clock in the morning until three in the afternoon. It is difficult to ascertain the exact casualties on both sides. Villars states that there fell of the Allies 35,000 men ; but a published list of the total "des morts et blessds" in the armies of Eugene and Marlborough, in "La Bataille de Taisnieres, rOnzieme Septembre, 1709," shows 5,258 killed, and 11,944 wounded. Irrespective of the Scottish Brigade, the names of which appear in the Dutch lists, the following number of British officers were killed in regiments which are still in existence : — In the Foot Guards, five; Scots Royals (ist Foot), one; 3rd Buffs, six; 8th, or King's, one; 15th Foot, one; 21st Scots Fusiliers, six; 23rd Welsh FusiUers, three; 26th Cameronians, four; Lumley's Horse (ist Dragoon Guards), one {London Gazette). The losses of the French were 15,000 men, with sixteen pieces of cannon, twenty infantry colours, twenty-six standards, and other trophies of victory, including many prisoners. On the side of the Allies, Counts Lottum and Oxenstiern, General Tettau, and Lord TuUibardine were killed, with many other officers of distinction. Lieutenant-General Webb was wounded . in the groin ; and the Duke of Argyle had several musket- balls through his clothes, hat, and flowing periwig. The valiant Count d'Artagnan, who held a high command among the infantry of the French right, had three horses killed under him, received four bullets in his cuirass, and procured for himself most honourable mention to the king in the dispatch of Marshal Boufflers ; while Villars confidently asserted that if he had not been disabled, he would have been in the end victorious. Four hundred of his officers, eighty of whom belonged to the Household Troops, were taken on the field, or in the retreat, which was pursued no farther than the open heath of Malplaquet and the level ground about Taisnieres, where, weary with toil and the long excitement of that desperate day, the troops bivouacked and lay down to sleep. Malplaquet was the greatest battle that had as yet been fought in modern Europe, and after it the French never dared again to meet Marlborough in the field. " Had this engagement,'' says one of the authors of the Tatler, " happened in the time of the old Romans, and such things have been acted in their service, there would not be a foot of the wood which was pierced but had been consecrated to some deity." Among the Great Duke's first cares were the relief of the French wounded, 3,000 of whom were left bleeding on the field, and the arrangements with the French marshals to have them conveyed away. Next morning, we are told that, " on riding over the fieldj he surveyed with a heavy heart the numerous bodies of the dead and dying strewed over the plain or heaped on each other. Nor did he feel only for the sufferings of his companions in arms ; the groans of wounded enemies, and the sight of their mangled limbs, equally awakened his compassion. Learning also that many French officers and soldiers had crept into the neighbour- ing houses and woods, wounded, and in a miserable condition for want of assistance, he ordered them Sheriffmuir.l THE LAST RELIC OF MARLBOROUGH'S WARS. 539 every possible relief, and dispatched a messenger to the French marshal, humanely proposing a confer- ence at Bavay, between General Cadogan and any officer whom he might choose to appoint, to arrange the means of conveying away these wretched sufferers." Mr. Coxe estimates the total number of the latter at 30,000 men. The third day after the battle was observed by the whole army as a day of thanksgiving, and prayers were followed in the evening by a triple discharge of cannon and musketry. In France the defeat, in which so many of the old nobility fell, occasioned the Court to put on mourning, or rather prevented their laying aside that which had been assumed in the beginning of the year for the death of the Princes of Conti and Cond^. In Anquetil's Memoirs it is related that a French officer of great bravery was seized by a sudden panic at Malplaquet, and unaccountably fled from the field. He wrote to Marshal Villars, confessed his fault, and craved pardon and to be brought before a court-martial. Villars replied that he pitied him, advised him to forget the past, and bade him adieu. The unhappy officer returned to the marshal his sword and the cross, of St. Louis; con- demning himself never more to resume them. " I saw him," he adds, " in his old age, dressed in his uniform, with an impression of deep melancholy on his countenance, attract the notice of the garrison, and expose himself to their obser\'ation, as a victim devoted to ignomy. This was a remarkable in- stance of the tenor of a whole life embittered by a momentary error." Queen Anne had a medal struck in honour of this victory, depicting a battle in a wood. It was inscribed " Concordia et Virtute," and " Gallis ad Taisniere devictis, Aug. xxxi., mdccix." On the fall of the Whig- Ministry, Marl- borough was marked for disgrace, and retired to Blenheim Park, leaving on the pages of our history a character marked with the highest military genius, but strangely sullied by avarice and duplicity. The Treaty of Utrecht, in 1715, restored Europe to tranquillity ; and in that year all the infantry of the British army were disbanded to the present 39th Regiment, then known as Nicholas Sankey's Foot, and all cavalry corps junior to the present 8th or Royal Irish Hussars. A writer in " Notes and Queries " states that a considerable list of Marlborough's veterans might be given who surpassed the age of a hundred. Among the more recently deceased, he mentions Colonel Alexander Kilpatrick, who died in 1783; Macleod, of Inverness, who died in 1790, and who, in 1782, walked to London in nineteen days, to solicit an increase to his pension ; William Billings, of Staffordshire, who died in 1791 ; John Jackson, gunner, of Bumew Castle, who served in nineteen actions, and died eight years later; Ambrose Tennant, of Tetbury, who was sixty years a soldier, and died in 1800; and lastly, Henry Francis, of New York, who died aged 134, in 1820. He was the last relic of Marlborough's army, and had first beaten a drum at the coronation of Queen Anne! CHAPTER CIIL SHERIFFMUIR, 171S. John, Duke of Argyle and Greenwich, whom the preceding chapter has recorded as a commander of infantry at Malplaquet, was, six years after, to appear at the head of an army in the field, as commander-in-chief of the forces in Scotland. In 1 7 14 the Elector of Hanover succeeded to the throne of Britain, without opposition, though the preparations made in Edinburgh during the month of August show that dangerous tumults were expected ; as, towards the close of Anne's reign, the discpntent of the Scots had been seriously increased by open violations of the Treaty of Union — ^by the restoration of patronage in the Church ; a resolution to extend the malt-tax over Scotland, in defiance of her right of exemption — and a dissolution of the Act of Federation was loudly demanded. The Ministry acted with great imprudence. They persuaded the new king to adopt the most severe measures against the Jacobites, and all^vho were suspected of being such. Edinburgh Castle was crammed with prisoners, many of whom were of the highest rank. Riots ensued in London, and the oak-leaf was openly worn at Oxford. William III. was consigned to the flames, amid roar- ing mobs, in Smithfield ; and the Staffordshire men assembled in tumultuous crowds to applaud the harangiies of Jacobite orators. The Riot Act 54° BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Sheriffmuir. was passed, enacting that any crowd of more than twelve persons might be dispersed by the bayonet. ;^ioo,ooo was set upon the head of King James's son, and the army and navy prepared for war. The Guards were encamped, with other troops, in Hyde Park. Generals Ross, Webb, and Stuart, because they were Scotsmen, and suspected, were summarily dismissed from the service ; a levy of thirteen regiments of cavalry and eight of infantry was made. The Trained Bands were kept in arms to restore Scotland " to its ancient freedom and independent constitution, under him whose ancestors had reigned over her for so many gene- rations." Among these were the Marquises of Huntly and TuUibardine; the Earls of Marischal and Southesk, Glengarry, Glendarule, Lyon of Auchter- house, the Laird of Auldbar, General Hamilton, and others. On a bold and romantic height, amid the beau- readiness to act if required. The alarm of the foreign king, and the minions who acted as his ministers, was not without foundation ; for on the 6th of September, 17 14, John, Earl of Mar, whose rank and talents made him one of the most power- ful peers in Scotland, unfurled the standard of revolt at Castleton, in Aberdeenshire, while the Earl of Derwentwater and Mr. Forster, M.P., mus- tered forces against " the Elector-king " in North- umberland. In the Earl of Mar's manifesto, issued in the name of " our rightfull and naturall king, James ye VIII., who is now coming to relieve us from all our oppressions," he furnishes a list of the nobles and chiefs who had pledged themselves to take up tiful scenery of Braemar, the banner of the House of Stuart was displayed with impressive ceremonies, and was hailed by enthusiastic acclamations and cries of " Righ Hamish gu Bragh ! " Broadswords were brandished, and bonnets tossed high in the air ; while loud cheers were mingled with the rolling of drums and the sound of the bagpipes. Though the falling of the gilded ball from the top of the flagstaff was regarded by the superstitious Highlanders as ominous of coming evil, yet 10,000 of them drew their swords for King James. Far and near through the Scottish Highlands went the fiery cross, as in the days of old, sum- moning to the camp of Mar every man capable of bearing arms ; while James VIII. was pro- Sheriffinuir.] SPREAD OF THE INSURRECTION. 541 claimed by the Earl Marischal in the city of Aber- deen ; by Graham of Duntroon at Dundee ; by the Earl of Southesk at Montrose ; by Colonel Balfour at Perth ; by Huntly at Castle Gordon in Badenoch; and by Lord Panmure at Brechin. At Inverness he was proclaimed by Brigadier Macintosh, of Borlum, who, in addition to this idle ceremony, seized the castle, which commanded both the town and river, and garrisoned it with SCO resolute men, thus cutting off all communica- rising in the south. There the Forth was only crossed by its ancient bridge, which he could easily barricade and defend by cannon; while the old fortress on its lofty rock was deemed impregnable to the military science of that day, and especially such as was possessed by the Highlanders. Though by General Wightman this wise disposition was made of this small body of troops, and though the chief anxiety of the Ministry was unwisely directed to England, where the people had forgotten the DUNBLANE. tion between the counties of Ross and Suther- land. Meanwhile, the Government in London were not idle, and the new regiments, as fast as they were embodied, were distributed over the eastern coast of England, where a descent from France was ap- prehended ; but no change was made in the mili- tary strength of Scotland, where the chief if not the only danger. lay. The various skeleton regiments composing the royal forces there amounted to only 2,000 men, and with these General Wightman posted himself at Stirling, where he could watch the gathering insurgents in the north, and might prevent them from uniting with the few enthusiasts who were use of arms, instead of Scotland, where the Celtic population were still trained to the use of the sword and pistol from boyhood, it was judged necessary to reinforce him, and a contingent of 6,000 men, which Holland had engaged to furnish, should Britain be invaded, was now ordered over for the purpose of operating in the north ; while the Duke of Argyle, one of the most able generals of the time, a great statesman also, and, unquestionably, from the fighting strength of his clan, the most powerful of all the Highland chiefs, was entrusted with the supreme command of the army mustered and yet mustering to crush the insurrection. On the 8th of September he received his final instructions, and left London, accompanied by 46 542 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [^Sheriffmuir, many Scottish members of both Houses. On the 14th he was at Edinburgh, where he inspected the fortress, and sent thence to Glasgow and Stiriing all the arms and ammunition that could be spared ; and on the 17th he joined General Wightman, and reviewed the forces. Two days after he was joined by 700 Glasgow volunteers, formed into ten companies, under skilful officers ; and these men served during the short campaign at their own expense. Paisley furnished a band of " fen- cible men;" Kilmarnock sent 220, while the earl brought 130. Greenock and the Renfrewshire vil- lages were all in arms in expectation of marauding visits from Rob Roy ; and among the regular troops under the duke's orders were the Scots Greys (called Portmore's Dragoons), Evans's Dragoons (now 4th Hussars), George Lord Carpenter's (now 3rd Hussars), Stair's (now 6th, or Inniskilling), and Kerr's (now 7th Hussars), with Morrison's Foot (now 8th, or King's), Clayton's (14th), and Orrery's (21st Scots Fusiliers). Though the Earl of Mar had some military experience, and had com- manded a regiment of Scottish infantry in 1696, he was quite unfitted for the task of leading a Highland army. He depended too much upon the unfulfilled hope of supplies and co-operation from France, and too little upon the fiery vigour of the clans. He ought at once to have broken down into the Lowlands, sword in hand, and swept away the mustering troops of King George. In this he would have acted like Montrose and Dundee, or like Prince Charles ; but, instead, he loitered inactively at Perth, spending weeks in simplyreceiving recruits, and levying taxes and loans, and issuing against the Duke of Argyle manifestoes in this fashion : — ■ "Whereas, by the laws of God, the right of blood, and the ancient constitution of these kingdoms, our sovereign lord James VIII., by the Grace of God, of Scotland, England, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, has the undoubted right to the crown of these realms." He concludes by severe comments upon the proclamations of the " commander-in-chief of the pretended king's forces," and warned all of " the sin and danger of obeying his rebelKous orders." By the middle of October he found himself at the head of 12,000 men, led by many of the first peers and chiefs in Scotland ; yet the only exploit performed was the seizure of 420 stand of arms by a small party of horse, led by the Master of Sinclair, who had formerly been captain-lieutenant of the Cameronian Regiment, with which he served at the battle of Wynendale, in 1708. Anxious to put all to the issue of a battle, the fiery Highland officers chafed under the delay in meeting the enemy, and loathed the novel task to which Mar had set them, of fortifying a camp. They began to murmur against a timidity which they failed to understand, and a caution which they felt would be ruinous to the cause; and one openly said that ere long the Highlanders would desert their colours in three cases — first, if they were long without being brought into action, they would tire and go home; secondly, if they fought and were victorious, they would secure their plunder and go home ; and, thirdly, if they fought and were beaten, they would retreat and go home ("Browne's Highlands," Vol. II.). Impressed at last by the defection of the Erasers, and the growing discontent, the Earl of Mar, on the loth of November, broke up from his camp at Perth, and marched to Auchterarder, once a royal burgh, now a ruined village in Perthshire. On the 12 th he directed the main body of the northern and western clans, with their squadrons of horse, one of which was furnished by Fifeshire, to march on Dunblane ; while he himself brought up another column more Isisurely, intending to halt with it near Ardoch, where the ramparts of a Roman camp may still be plainly traced, and in fine preservation. The wife of the Laird of Kippendavie — the Scottish ladies of those days being generally in the cavalier interest — sent intelligence to the first division, as it drew near Dunblane, that the Duke of Argyle had already appeared* there, and was at the head of the Government forces. On this the Jacobite army was concentrated, and the whole occupied the eminence north of Sherififmuir, where they spent the night of the 12th of November under arms. Argyle, who had accurate information of the movements of the insurgents, quitted Stirling on the morning of the same day, and marched to Dun- blane ; but, dreading a surprise, bivouacked his troops two miles to the north-east of the old cathedral city, near the manor-house of Kippenross. The night proved one of bitter cold, yet he issued the most peremptory orders that no tent was to be pitched, even for officers ; and he passed the dark hours in a sheep-cot at the foot of a hill, seated on a bundle of straw. After midnight he ordered six rounds of am- munition per man to be issued, in addition to the twenty-four which each would appear to have had in his pouch ; and when day dawned the hostile armies were found to be only separated by the elevated and uneven waste called Sherififmuir, from its having formerly been the rendezvous for the militia of the ancient sherififdom of Monteith. Sheriffinuir.] ORDER OF BATTLE. 54^ It is a boggy and uncultivated tract, in the lower part of the parish of Dunblane, and lies in the broad valley which separates the Grampian Moun- tains from the green and beautiful chain of the Ochils, and close by a pleasant, sequestered, and peaceful village, whilom an episcopal city, on the border of the Allan Water, and overlooked by the high square tower of the half-ruined cathedral. Owing to its elevation and extent, the moor affords a full view of the adjacent country, while its own surface comes as completely within the . range of vision ; yet, though neither of the armies Oould take up a position without the movements of each being visible to the other, such was the peculiarity of the ground, that when it was occupied at the same time by both armies, they might at certain places be veiled from each other's obser- vation. The morning of Sunday, the 13th of November, found both armies under arms, and in order of battle. The troops of the Earl of Mar were formed in two lines. The first consisted of ten battalions of infantry, all clansmen in tartan, armed with clay- more and dirk, pistols and target, under General Gordon, Clanronald, Glengarry, Sir John Maclean, and other Highland chiefs. The second line consisted of the Mackenzies of Seaforth, the Macraes from Kintail, the Gordons, and the battalions of Lord Pp.nmure, the Marquis of TuUibardine, Viscount Strathallan, Drummond of Logic Almond, and the Robertsons, under Struan, the eminent Jacobite chief and poet. He had 500 of his surname in the field, and brought with them the Clach na Brattich, or Stone of the Banner, an old amulet of Druid times, which was fixed to their standard pole, and was believed to ensure victory, and is still preserved. The flanks of both lines were protected by cavalry. The Perthshire Horse were on the left of the first line ; the Angus squadron covered the left of the second; while the right was protected by two squadrons mounted by the Marquis of Huntly, and by one called the Stirling squadron, composed entirely of gentlemen, who had with them the royal standard, called "The Restoration." Two squadrons, under the Earl Marischal, were also on the right of the second line. A corps de reserve of 800 chosen men was formed in rear of the whole, to act when required. Mar's standard was a blue silk. It bore a golden thistle, and the words " No Union." The Mackzenies and Macraes were drawn up side by side, as, according to Highland tradition, they are supposed to be descended from two brothers. On this day the latter tribe were le('' by Duncan Mhor, of Torluish, who seems to have had the presentiment sometimes experienced by brave men, that he would never return, for when the clan commenced its march, he took up a large stone, and tossing it to an immense distance, exclaimed — " May the day never come when the Macraes will not find among them a man who will throw the stone farther than that 1 " And the stone lies to this day where he tossed it, in Gin Chinntaile. With Lord Mar were a few of the Breadalbane Campbells, under Duncan, Lord Ormalie, known as " The Disenherited." Argyle's forces were small in number. His first line consisted of six battalions, all old troops, under General Wightman, but each numbered only 300 men. Their right flank was covered by Evans's Dragoons, Stair's Dragoons, and the Scots Greys, under Argyle in person. On the left flank, under General Witham, were the dragoon regiments of Carpenter and Kerr, and one squadron of Stair's. His second line consisted of only two battalions of infantry, flanked by two squadrons of horse ; while a troop of Whig nobles and gentlemen, sixty in number, were formed apart on the right, cover- ing the rear of Evans's Dragoons. After much parading and bluster, the Glasgow volunteers, under Colonel Blackadder, contrived on this day " to be left behind," and were not in the field. But a company from Edinburgh was present, under George Drummond, of Newton (after- wards Lord Provost of that city), who dispatched to t"he magistrates the earliest notice of the battle, written on horseback in the field. Deeming it necessary to make a personal recon- naisance, the Duke of Argyle with his staff rode forward to a little eminence above Dunblane, whence he could see the dark and cloud-like masses of the clans, some in red tartan and others in green, as they deployed and wheeled into posi- tion. About the same time the Earl of Mar called a Council of War in front of his cavalry, and, address- ing the assembled chiefs and officers in an animated speech, " depicted the wrongs of their king and country, and congratulated them that they had now an opportunity of avenging these in open battle ! Are you ready to engage ? " he concluded, drawing his sword. The personal appearance of Mar was graceful and commanding ; and in intellect and talents Sir Robert Douglas hesitates not to say that he was not surpassed by any of the age in which he lived. 544 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Sheriffmuir. 1 he Marquis of Huntly alone had some doubts about the battle ; but his voice was drowned amid loud shouts of " Fight ! fight ! " and every officer then repaired to his post, and each commander was welcomed along the line by loud cheers, by the brandishing of swords, and the throwing up of hats and bonnets. The great numerical inferiority of Argyle's troops was well compensated by their fine discipline, their bravery, and hardihood, though opposed to some of the most martial of the Highland clans. The duke had perfect confidence in himself and in his little army. Still, he knew that the usual headlong charge of the clansman might in a moment, with whirlwind fury, sweep down and rout it ; for fre- quently had a disciplined force, deploying strictly according to rule, and handled by a general who was carrying out an elaborate plan of battle, been broken, cut up, and dispersed by the sudden as>- sault of an irregular body of Highlanders, sweeping with resistless onset on the opposing ranks. At eleven o'clock Argyle ordered his drums to beat the " general," an old cadence that was long used to announce a march, and the royal forces began to move forward ; but owing to the inequali- ties of the ground, the hostile armies did not fully see each other till they were almost within pistol- shot. When the lines drew nearer, on the summit of the moorland, it was found that each had diverged considerably to the right, so that the left wings of both were outflanked. Argyle's right wing was fully formed ; but a por- tion of the centre and left had not yet deployed into line; and, on perceiving this, Mar instantly resolved to begin the attack. He put himself at the head of the first line of clans, and, waving his hat, led them on. " Gentlemen," cried the chief of the Macleans with a loud voice, as he rushed to the front, " this is the day we have long wished to see. Yonder stands Maccallumore for King George, and here is Maclean for King James ! God bless King James and Maclean! Charge, gentlemen, charge!" In a moment the Highlanders had tossed aside their plaids, fired a volley, and flung down their muskets ; then charging sword in hand amid the smoke, they fell with loud yells and tumultuous shouts upon the troops, who returned their fire, by which, among many others, the young heir of Clanronald fell mortally wounded. This was Allan Muidartich, famed in the Highlands to this day for maintaining the character of a chief with almost princely state, and for an Ossianic degree of heroism. His clansnien gathered round him, causing a temporary pause in the advance, and, despite his dying encouragements to fight courageously, they lingered near him absorbed in grief, till Macdonell of Glengarry, throwing his plumed bonnet in the air, cried aloud in his native language— " Revenge — revenge ! Revenge to-day, and mourning for to-morrow ! " Roused by this appeal, the Highlanders resumed their headlong charge, and breaking completely through the first line of Argyle, drove it from the field with great slaughter, and by sheer dint of clay- more and dirk. General Witham, with some of the ' cavalry, fled as far as Stirling, where he gave out that all was lost. The first volley of the clans had been delivered with an accuracy of aim unsurpassed by any regular troops, and it was observed that they were not " in the least discomposed by the musketry which the British regiments opened upon them in turn." The Earl of Mar pursued the fugitives for half an hour, and took a great number of prisoners ; but intelligence having reached him that a disaster had befallen his left wing, he retraced his steps, and took up a position on the stony hill of Kippen- davie. The left wing of the insurgents had kept its ground for some time, pouring in a steady fire upon the duke's right, till he perceived that he could make no impression upon them ; and fearing that they might outflank him, he ordered Colonel Cathcart to lead a body of cavalry across a morass which the frost had rendered passable, and charge the Highlanders in flank. The movement was executed by that officer with great spirit and promptitude. Borne down by the superior weight of the regular cavalry, the insurgent horse gave way. The clans- men were at the same time attacked and driven back by Argyle's infantry. The first line of Mar's left wing was thus mingled indiscriminately with the second, and a general rout ensued. Though broken, the insurgents made desperate efforts to retrieve the fortunes of the day ; and, while retreat- ing, the cavalier horse, being chiefly composed of Perthshire and Angus gentry, ralUed no less than ten times, and charged their pursuers. Their light horses were unable to withstand the heavy chargers of the regulars, who, after, three hours' hard fighting, drove Mar's left wing com- pletely across the Allan, fully three miles from the field of battle. The Lo7idon Gazette states, " that Portmore's (the Greys) and Evans's Dragoons, drove the rebels before them with great slaughter for two miles.'' In the melde the Duke of Argj^le was frequently SKenflrmiiir.l DUNCAN MHOR. S4S heard to call upon them " to spare the poor blue bon- nets." The young Earl of Strathmore, who showed great gallantry in rallying his regiment of men from the Braes of Angus, was killed by a dragoon in cold blood, after quarter had been given him ; and the Earl of Panmure was wounded and taken, but was afterwards rescued by his brother, Harry Maule, of Kellie. Struan was also taken prisoner, but was afterwards rescued in the con- fusion. Under Duncan Mhor the Macraes made a des- perate resistance, and are said to have died almost to a man. During the struggle, while his people were falling around him, and ere he fell himself, he was frequently seen to wave his reeking sword on high, and heard to shout — " Cobhair I cobhair I an aitcm Dhia 'son Righ Ha/nishI" ("Relief! relief! in the name of God and King James ! "). A recent writer in the Inverness Courier states that before Duncan fell he slew fifteen mcH with > his own hand, which was so much swollen in the hilt of his claymore that it could with difficulty be extricated. It was at this period the duke received informa- tion of the defeat of his left wing, on which he relinquished the pursuit of the enemy, and re- turned to the field. As he rode back, an officer remarked that he feared the victory was not com- plete, to which the duke replied, in the words of an old song called " Bob o' Dunblane " — " If it was na weel bobbit, We'll bob it again." He had now with him scarcely a thousand men, and these were much exhausted ; while the vic- torious right wing of the insurgents, which still crowned the hill of Kippendavie, mustered fully four times that number. In this melancholy strife, " many of the officers on the various sides were acquainted with each other," says Robert Chambers ; " many had sat together in the senate of their country ; many had caroused together at good men's feasts ; and some even were related. It may, therefore, be supposed that the feeling of the hour was not as it might have been under other instances, one of uncom- promising hostility. On the contrary, the hand which raised the sword or pistol against the bodies of the foe would in many cases have been more wilHngly extended to give the grasp of friendship. The duke himself offered quarter to all he recog- nised, and was seen on one occasion to parry three strokes which one of his dragoons had aim/ed at a wounded gentleman." He now deemed it prudent to act on the defen- sive, and with General Wightman, having posted his men behind some enclosures, hedgerows, and turf-walls, at the foot of the hill, with two pieces of cannon on his right flank, and two on his left, he quietly awaited an attack from the Jacobite forces ; but, inspired by some incomprehensible doubt, the Earl of Mar evinced no inclination to renew the conflict. Then it was that an aged Highlander, enraged by his incapacity and inactivity, raised his eyes to heaven, and, in the bitterness of his heart, exclaimed — " Oh, for one hour of Dundee ! " On this day the famous Rob Roy, who led a body of Macgregors and Macphersons, is accused by his enemies of standing aloof from the action. Lack of interest in King James's cause or lack of courage could not be laid to Rob's charge; yet his conduct was incomprehensible. Scott relates in his history that when ordered by one of Mar's aides-de-camp to charge, he replied — " If the earl cannot win the field without me now, he cannot win it with me.'' When night fell, the Highlanders began to retire from the hill towards their rear ; and Argyle, on hearing the receding sound of the bagpipes, and seeing that their front was fast diminishing, drew off his troops to the right and towards Dunblane. A wing of each army had been defeated, so the battle of Sheriffmuir thus remained a drawn one ; but Argyle, on visiting the field early next morning, took possession of six pieces of abandoned cannon, brass and iron, seven wagons of stores, one silver trumpet, and a vast quantity of swords, muskets, and plaids, which the Highlanders had thrown away when charging. Thirteen pairs of colours, includ- ing the Royal Standard, those of Huntly, Tullibar- dine, Panmure, Logie-Drumraond, and Mar, also fell into his hands. Many of the broadswords found had silver hilts. The insurgents are supposed to have lost about 800 men of all ranks, including James, Earl 'of Strathmore ; while, according to official returns, the Government troops had only 290 killed, 187 wounded, and 133 taken prisoners, making a total loss of 610 (Patten). Archibald Douglas, second and last Earl of Forfar, a lieutenant-colonel, received (according to "Analecta Scotica ") no less than sixteen sword- wounds, besides a pistol-shot in the knee, at the head of the 8th Regiment. He was taken prisoner, and died of his suffi^rings three weeks after at Stirling. There were also taken the Laird of Glenkindy and Lieutenant-Colonel Lawrence. Argyle took many prisoners ; but in the confusion 54^ BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. rSheriffmuir. the greater part effected an escape. The remainder, including Viscount Strathallan, his brother Murray of Ochtertyre, Drummond of Logie-Drummond, Walkinshaw of Barrowfield, and eighty other gentlemen, were taken to Stirling. Both leaders claimed the victory ; but all the advantage of the contest remained with the Govern- ment. Mar, abandoning his project of crossing the Forth, retreated by Auchterarder to Perth; and the chiefs, enraged by the mode in which he night at the house of a Captain Macdougal, who had commanded a squadron of the royal cavalry at the field of Slia Thirra, as it is named by the clans. The captain questioned his guest as to hi;, news from the north, and asked him if he knew a place in Kintail called Corry-choing, and the name of its owner; and the Highlander listened unmoved while the captain related the following anecdote, which is given in the Inverness Courier for 1847 : — fc"^!*^v7i! ATTACK ON BURNTISLAND {seepage S49). seemed disposed to conduct the war, began to leave him fast. The Camerons, Mackenzies, and Gordons retired eu masse, while the other clans melted away, and retired to their mountain fortresses. " If we have not gained a victory," said Major- General George Hamilton, at a Council of War held immediately after the battle, "we ought to fight Argyle once a week till we make it one." The Earl of Mar was attainted, and died in exile at Aix-la-Chapelle, in May, 1732. Some years after the battle of Sheriffmuir, it is related that a handsome Highlander, fully armed, as was then the custom, while following his herd of cattle in the south of Scotland, sought quarters one " In the pursuit of that day," saiclhe, "with three well-mounted troopers, I followed a stout High- lander, who, on perceiving our approach, faced about, took oflf his plaid, which he coolly folded and placed on the ground, that by standing on it he might have firmer footing. Desirous not to kill but to take him prisoner, we brandished our swords about him ; but one of my troopers coming within reach of his claymore, had his skull cleft in two. The others kept a more respectful distance, but one was unhorsed and slain. I questioned the Highlander as to who he was, but he would only tell me that he was from Corry-choing." " I know the man," replied the drover ; " his name is Duncan Macrae." Shtriffmuirl ENTRY INTO PRESTON. 54? 548 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Preston. " I wish him no harm now," replied the cap- tain, " but I have ever been curious to know the name of so resolute a fellow." " I shall duly tell him so," replied the wary- drover, who was no other than the identical Duncan Macrae from Corry-choing. Sheriffmuir was alive at Kincardine, named Alex- ander Campbell. He had served under William Lord Ross, and attained the extraordinary age of 117 years. "In his dress he steadily adhered to the kilt, and he always walked very erect, with his neck and breast bare, in the old Highland So lately as 1816, a survivor of the battle of ' fashion. CHAPTER CIV. THE AFFAIR OF PRESTON, 1715. On the same day that this' battle was fought at Sheriffmuir, in Scotland, the last blood spilt in civil war, and in the same cause, was shed at Preston, in Lancashire — the last, at least, save one. The Earl of Mar, prior to his futile conflict with the forces of Argyle, had conceived a wish to succour the Jacobites who were rising in the south of Scotland, under the Lords Kenmure, Camwath, and Winton ; ai>d with this view he proposed to send 2,500 men across the Forth, to march against Argyle from the east, while Generals Gordon and Kenmure were to do so from the west and north ; and ultimately the whole were to march into England, and join the petty band of insurgents who had gathered there under Mr. Forster and the Earl of Derwentwater : and this movement was by far the finest and most spirited feature in the whole history of the ill-managed Insurrection of 1715. Mar was fortunate in his selection of an officer to command this expedition. He chose Brigadier Macintosh, of Borlum, a high-spirited old High* lander, whose clan was the first to rise in arms for the exiled king. He was an officer of great expe- rience, who had seen much service in foreign wars; and his 500 Macintoshes were deemed the most completely armed and best disciplined of all the Highland corps. The force under Macintosh included the greater part of the regiments of the Earls of Mar and Strath- more, of Lord Nairn, Lord Charles Murray, and Logie-Drummond. These marched from Perth on the 7 th of October, and passed through Fife, covered by a body of cavalry, under the Master of Sinclair and Sir John Erskine, of Alva. All these leaders, \ike Borlum, were most anxious to succour the English Jacobites, who were few in number, and already reduced to severe straits under General Forster, who, after proclaiming King James in many border towns, now despaired of raising the country. He and his companions found themselves alike destitute of men, money, and arms ; and die fatal die had been cast by which they were separated from their homes and families, while troops under Generals WilUs and Carpenter were menacing them from all points. Their number as yet was only 300, chiefly gentlemen and men of title ; and if not speedily succoured, it was apparent that the execu- tioner would make quick work with them. The king's troops as yet held the passage of the Forth at Stirling; while the whole river, where navi- gable, was watched and protected by a fleet of men- of-war and launches, commanded by Admiral Sir George Byng, afterwards Viscount Torrington, K.B. To achieve the passage of a Scottish firth — a broad, rough arm of the sea — in the face alike of a British army and a British fleet, was no ordinary undertaking for this body of Highland swordsanen, chiefly shepherds and ploughmen hastily summoned from their mountains by the fieiy cross of war. At the narrower portions of the river, where it is only three or four miles broad, the bustle of collecting boats could not fail to attract the attention of those infantry pickets and cavalry patrols which watched and guarded the coast of the Lothians ; while at the broader parts, where the water was twelve miles wide, were the ships of war," with their armed launches and pinnaces full of seamen and marines, and mounted with heavy swivel guns and pateraroes. At every petty seaport along both shores the custom- house officers were on the watch, to transmit by signals or dispatches instant intelligence to the admiral and generals of any movement made by the Highlanders. But after reconnoitring in person the northern shore of the Forth, and weighing all the chances of war and the wind — for the latter, if it set in strong from the westward, might blow his forces into the German Sea — Brigadier Macintosh resolved to make the essay, and commit the event to God and the Highland claymore. Preston.] BRIGADIER MACINTOSH. 549 While the Earl of Mar, by a feint and false dis- play of warlike operations, lured the fleet of Sir George Byng towards Burntisland, and engaged his ships in cannonading a battery he had formed upon a height there, and in shelling an old castle of the Duries of that ilk, the brigadia: was secretly marching with speed along the northern shore of the estuary, till he reached Grail, where it is twelve miles in breadth ; and there, after seizing a sufficient number of fisher-boats, he embarked his soldiers, and at once set sail for Haddingtonshire. The day was clear and beautiful ; and boat after boat, laden with armed clansmen, with tartans waving and weapons glittering, shot out from the rocky coast of Fife, till eighty of them, a mimic fleet, dotted the water; and they were mid-channel over before they wete descried by the look-out men in the cross-trees of Byng's line-of-battle ships. The admiral was exasperated on discovering that he had been outwitted. The cannonade of Burnt- island was instantly abandoned; the signal for sailing was displayed at the foretop of the flagship, and the whole fleet came quickly down with the ebb- tide, the river's flow, and almost before the wind, to intercept or sink the soldiers of Macintosh. But long ere the fleet, with all the frigates, launches, and bomb-ketches, came near him, the latter had landed all his men on the shore of Aberlady Bay and at the Green Links of Gulane, save forty men, under the Laird of Kynachan, who were taken by an armed launch, and the regiment of Strathmore, which was cast upon the Isle of May, and after rriaking a splendid defence against the fleet, escaped back into Fife, and fought at the battle of SherifF- muir. Macintosh found himself in Lothian at the head of 1, 600 men, and with these he was ordered at once to march and reinforce General Forster, who was believed to be hovering in the neighbourhood of Wooler. Prior to doing so he attacked Leith, plundered the custom-house, released Kynachan ■ and his forty men from the Tolbooth, captured the citadel, spiked the guns, forded the Leith, where the water rose above the kilts of his men, and, after being assailed in vain at Seaton House by a column of troops of every arm, led by the Duke of Argyle, General Joseph Wightman, the Earl of Rothes, and Lord Torphichen, he marched towards England over the waste known as the Lammermuir ; and on the morning of Saturday, the 22nd of October, joined the Enghsh insurgents, whom he overtook at Kelso, where the Earl of Dunfermline proclaimed the exiled prince by his Scottish title as King James VIIL, amid the cheers of the people, and vociferous cries of-' "No' union! no malt tax! no salt tax! Down with the Elector ! " Forster and Lord Derwentwater were greatly encouraged by this accession of force, vihich was divided into little battalions of 320 men each. The first regiment, or Earl of Mar's Own, was commanded by Farquharson, of Invercauld; the second was led by Colonel David Hunt ; the third by' Lord Nairn, formerly an officer of the Royal Navy; the fourth by Lord Charles Murray, a cavalry officer on half-pay ; the fifth was led by Macintosh of that ilk, who had joined at the instigation of his kinsman, the brigadier. There was an independent company of Scots, led by Captain Skene ; and five troops of horse, all Scots, joined Forster about the same time. These were Viscount Kenmure's (General of the Scots), led by Captain Hamilton, of Baldour ; the Merse troop, led by the Honourable James Home ; the Earl of Winton's,led by Captain James Dalzell, an officer who, to serve King James, had formally resigned his commission under King George ; and the Laird of Dryden's, led by his son, Captain Philip Lockhart, a handsome young cavalier; who, unluckily for himself, when taken prisoner, proved to be a lieutenant on half-pay. These united but slender forces entered England on the ist of November, and advanced next day to Penrith, where they learned that the Fosse Comi- tattis, to the number of 14,000 men, had mustered in arms to oppose them on the open moor, under the Sheriff of Cumberland, the Bishop of Carlisle, and Viscount Lonsdale. But these rustic troops threw away their arms and dispersed at the approach of the invaders, whom their imagination had in- vested with all manner of dreadful attributes, in- cluding the practice of cannibalism. On the 9th, General Forster, as he was now named, advanced to Preston, with the intention of taking possession of Warrington Bridge, and afterwards falling upon Liverpool! In anticipation of this. General WilUs had re- ceived orders to march against him, while the men of Liverpool took active measures for their own defence. All the troops that were quartered in the towns of Manchester, Chester, Birmingham, Staff'ord, and Wolverhampton, were ready to be massed into an army destined for the destruction of the luckless Jacobites; and on General Willis learning that General Carpenter was at Durham, he ordered him to hasten his march and join him. On Friday, the nth, just as the insurgents took possession of Preston, Willis left Manchester for Wigan. They had now that officer in their front, while Carpenter menaced their rear. Doubt and danger thickene-d fast. Forster execrated in no sso BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Preston. measured terms the apathy of his countrymen ; and the Scots began to regret the distance that lay be- tween them and their own borders, for the English peasantry regarded the Highlanders especially as little better than Mohawks or Delaware Indians. As they entered Preston, Stanhope's Dragoons and a battalion of Militia fled thence without firing a shot, and several High Church gentlemen came in to Forster with 1,200 men whom they had collected. These new auxiliaries were a mere rabble of rustics in canvas frocks, who scarcely knew the purpose for which their masters had collected them. Some had old muskets, others rusty halberds and swords of all kinds ; but on seeing Farquharson of Invercauld, with a Highland guard, at the bridge of Ribble, they fairly turned and fled en masse for a time, in a ludicrous manner. " Forster, are these the fellows you mean to fight WiUis with?" asked Brigadier Macintosh, grimly, as he surveyed them. "By my faith, an' ye had iO;000 such, I would undertake to thrash them all with one squadron of Willis's dragoons ! " ("Annals of King George ''). The town they were to defend is situated on a gentle elevation, at the base of which the Ribble flows through what was then only a pastoral country, full of richly-wooded scenery. It was then a small and secluded country town, the resort of many old and respectable families. It has been described as having then broad and well-paved streets, its prin- cipal features being the tower of an old church, a great windmill, and the remains of a Greyfriary, which had been degraded into the common prison of the district. At Preston the Ribble was crossed by a long and narrow bridge, the defence of which was assigned to Lieutenant-Colonel John Farquharson, of Inver- cauld, with a hundred chosen Highlanders, their orders being "to maintain their post at all hazards, until ordered to withdraw." Beyond this bridge were a number of green lanes and hedgerows, most useful for operations against dragoons, and there four barricades were erected, and in the construction of these were seen all the cavalier Scottish lords, with Derwentwater and others, working in their shirt-sleeves, with their lace ruffles and periwigs. One of these bulvparks was in the green bank on which the old church stands, and the defence of it was assigned to Brigadier Macintosh, whose High- landers occupied the burying-ground. The second, named the Windmill Barricade, was commanded by his nephew, Macintosh of that ilk, whose clan also held the Lancaster Road. The third, formed at the end of a long lane of thick hedges, was assigned to Lord Charles Murray and his Athole Highlanders; while the fourth, which crossed -the street that led to Liverpool, was manned by volunteers from the Merse and Teviotdale, under Captain John Hunter. At each of these barricades were placed two pieces of cannon ; while the houses that flanked them were filled with Lancashire men, who fortified the lower stories, and loopholed the upper for musketry. While these preparations were in progress, Lieutenant-General Willis, K.B. (afterwards a field marshal), was advancing from Manchester at the head of one regiment of infantry (Sir George Preston's Cameronians, or 26th Foot), and the four dragoon corps of Wynne, Honey wood, Munden, and Dormer (now respectively known as the 9th Lancers, and I rth, 13th, and i4thHussars). In passing through Wigan he was joined by the dragoons of Pitt and Stanhope, with the militia regiment which had fled from Preston. Lieutenant-General George Carpen- ter was advancing from the north with three more corps of dragoons, viz.. Viscount Cobham's (now ist Dragoon Guards), and those of Churchill and Molesworth, which are now out of the service. He had also with him the 8th, or Hotham's Foot. To the insurgents these forces seemed simply over- whelming ; but the weapons are sharp that arm the hands of despair, and the men in Preston fought with halters about their necks. Moreover, 3,000 Dutch, who were landed at Deptford on the night of the nth, began their march northward to assist in crushing the Jacobites. Early on the morning of the 12th of November, clouds of dust upon the highway announced the approach of King George's troops; and General Forster very unwisely withdrew Farquharson from his post at the bridge, and, leaving it open and undefended, added his Highlanders to those in the churchyard. Finding the bridge open. General Willis and Brigadiers Dormer and Honeywood rode forward to reconnoitre, and', suspecting some snare, would not permit their main body to pass until a party of light horse, in blue coats with white cross-belts, had ascertained that the hedgerows beyond were not lined ; on which the whole defiled across the Ribble, and deployed to the right and left, in columns of attack, encircling the town, which the generals now closely reconnoitred at half-musket range. Selecting two points of attack. General Willis took six troops— one from each of his corps of dragoons— and ordered them to dismount, "and prepare to storm the place by dint of sword and pistol." Led by Brigadier Dormer, three of these troops Preston.] REPULSE OF THE TROOPS. 551 were to attack the post of Brigadier Macintosh, near the church ; led by Brigadier Honeywood, the other three were to storm Captain Hunter's barricade, on the Liverpool Road. The cannon were discharged and the musketry from the houses opened^ as the dismounted troopers, in their square-skirted coats, and huge hats and wigs, dashed gallantly up the street, and strove, but in vain, to storm the barricade of old Borlum, w'ho drove them back with the loss of half their number. The assault made by Honeywood on the High- landers at the Lancaster Road had nearly the same result. The windmill in that quarter was full of Celtic marksmen, whose long-barrelled guns picked off the leaders with such precision that the dragoons lost all heart, and fled out of range with precipitation. General Willis now did what he should have done at first. He sent forward the whole Came- ronian Regiment to attack the post of Brigadier Macintosh. This battalion, which was entirely composed of strict and stem Presbyterians, was led by the Lieutenant- Colonel Lord Forrester, of Corstorphine, an officer of great experience, but also of reckless bravery, who, to encourage them, galloped his horse close to the barricade and back again, escaping, as if by a charm, the shower of balls that rained around him. Then, in a quarter- distance column, with bayonets fixed and colours flying, the regiment rushed in grim silence at the barricade, firing their muskets over each others' heads, and stabbing wildly with the bayonet. With musket, claymore, and Lochaber axe, the High- landers met them, and after a rough and terrible conflict they were repulsed from the barricade and churchyard wall, and had to retire, while Highland yells, mingling with the cheers of the Lancashire men, announced that the second attack on Preston had failed. For that night n© more was done, save some platoon firing. Willis, according to "Salmon's Chro- nicle," " lost at least 300 of his men ; nor could the common soldiers — who were most of them newly raised — ^be brought without difficulty to renew the attack." But it should be borne in mind that those to whom they were opposed were "newly raised" forces too. Next morning, November the 13th, the same day on which Sherifimuir was fought. General Carpenter arrived with his troops, to which were now added the Welsh Fusiliers (" Records of 23rd Foot"), and Willis proposed to resign the command to him, as a senior officer ; but Carpenter was so well pleased with the dispositions of Willis that he declined. " Since you have had the merit of commencing the task," said he,i " you shall have the glory oi finishing it." The increase of forces now enabled Willis more completely to invest the town ; preparations for a more formidable assault were made, and Forster completely lost heart. At two o'clock on Sunday he sent Colonel Oxburgh to ask terms of surrender. This step Forster took without consulting the other leaders ; and the Highlanders, so far from having the least idea of capitulating, were at that very time proposing to break out, sword in hand, and by cutting a passage through the troops, attempting to reach their own country. They were so averse to the thought of surrender that, according to one who was present with them that day, they would unquestionably have shot Oxburgh had they been in the least aware of his humiUating errand. He was haughtily received by Willis. " I cannot treat with rebels," said that officer. "You have killed a great number of His Majesty's subjects, and must expect to undergo the same fate." Colonel Oxburgh used many entreaties that Willis, as a gentleman and man of honour, would show mercy to such as were inclined to submit. " If you will lay down your arms, and surrender as prisoners at discretion," replied Willis, " I shall prevent my soldiers from cutting you to pieces, till further orders." For the consideration of this proposal he allowed but a single hour. Before it was expired, the Honoiurable Mr. Dalzell, brother of the Earl of Carnwath, caihe forth to inquire what terms were offered to the Scots. " No other terms than such as were offered to the English," was the stern reply. Dalzell, however, obtained some hours' delay; and the Earl of Derwentwater and Brigadier Macintosh gave them- selves up as hostages that no more intrenchments should be made, and that none would attempt to escape. During all that afternoon the most furious dis- putes prevailed among the luckless insurgents. Enraged at the dishonour put upon them, the fiery Highlanders were in open mutiny, and killed and wounded a great many in the course of their quarrels. Forster dared not appear in the streets, and in his own chamber a pistol was fired at him by one of the Murrays. At seven next morning he sent a message to General Willis, informing him " that the gentlemen assembled in Preston were disposed to submit to the terms proposed." 55- BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. fPrestoa Brigadier Macintosh, one of the two hostages who was in the tent at this juncture, said — " I do not believe that the Scots will yield on such terms. They are men of desperate fortunes. I have been long a soldier myself, and know what it is to be a prisoner at discretion,'' points, and met in the market-place, where the whole of the Jacobites laid down their arms. In the attack of Preston, Brigadier Honeywood was wounded in the shoulder, and Major Bland in the arm, and his horse was shot under him. Brigadier Dormer and Lord Forrester were wounded, and EXECUTION OF LORD DERWENTWATER ON TOWER HILL (FROM AN OLD PRINT); "Then go back to your people again," exclaimed Willis ; " and I shall attack the town, not sparing a man of you ! " According to the general's evidence, as given at the trial of the Earl of Winton, the brigadier went to Preston, and came back with Viscount Kenmure, to say that the Scots would surrender en the same terms as the English." The British forces marched intg Preston on two thirteen other officers were killed or wounded. (" Universal Magazine.") There surrendered with General Forster only seventy-two Englishmen, among whom were the heads of the houses of Derwentwater, Widrington, Errington, Beaumont, Thornton, Swinbum, Clavering, Gascoigne, and Standish. With Brigadier Macintosh were 138 Scottish officers and nobles; with 1,500 men, who surrendered on the simple promise of quarter, Preston.] PRISONERS TREATED BARBAROUSLY. 553 The Scottish lords, Camwath, Nithsdale, Winton, Kenmure, and Nairn, with Brigadier Macintosh and others, were treated with all the severity of their private soldiers; while Major Nairn, with Captains Erskine, Shaftoe, and Philip Lockhart of Dryden, were tried at the drum-head by order of Willis, and barbarously shot as deserters, for having served in the wars of the late Queen Anne, and being officers on half-pay. Goaded by cavaliers, and opened such ample subscriptions for their benefit, that it soon became a jocular saying in town, when change was wanted for a guinea, " Try among the Scots in Newgate." The Earl of Denventwater and Lord Kenmure sealed their faith on the scaffold ; Lord Nithsdale escaped through the courage and tact of his countess. Old Brigadier Macintosh and eight others broke out of Newgate by the strong hand, THE HARBOUR OF MESSINA. bayonet and halberd, the mass of their men were driven like a herd of cattle into the old church of Preston; where, on a cold and bitter day, they were stripped of their tartans and other clothing by the soldiers of the cavalry, so that many of them were glad to tear the green-baize linings from the pews to cover their nakedness. When marched to Bamet, all those peers, gentlemen, and privates were pinioned with cords like malefactors, and exposed to every indignity that a London mob could inflict ; and that journey of humiliation terminated only at the gates of the Tower, )f Newgate, and the Marshalsea. The ladies of London took pity upon those fallen and all reached France in safety, save one, who was retaken and summarily executed. And thus ended in bloodshed and humihation the English portion of the Insurrection of 1715. It was only the better order of the prisoners taken at Preston that were marched to London in the degrading way we have described. The common men were mostly confined in the various gaols nearest to the place where they were taken ; and it was in the January of the follow- ing year that Mr. Lechmere, a leading speaker in the House of Commons, moved the criminal impeachment of the captive peers and gentle- men. 47 554 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. CHAPTER CV. CAPE PASSORA, 1718. The year 17 18 was to see more important work cut out for the fleet of Admiral Byng than bom- barding the little town of Burntisland and guarding the Firth of Forth. For the sake of his native Hanover, George I. had ernbroiled Britain in a useless, destructive, and expensive war. The quadruple alliance was formed, by which Britain, Germany, France, and Holland leagued themselves against Philip of Spain, who had interfered with the Italian interests of the Emperor. Lord Stanhope had been sent to Madrid with a plan of pacification, which being rejected by Philip as partial and iniquitous, George determined to support his mediation by force of arms. In the middle of March, Sir George Byng was appointed Admiral and Commander-in-Chief of the squadron destined for service in the Mediterranean ; Sir Charles Wager was Vice-Admiral of the Red, and Captains Delaval and Mighells were made Rear-Admirals of the Fleet. Sir George hoisted his flag on board the Barfleur, 90 guns, and sailed from Spithead on the 4th of June, with twenty ships of the line, two fire-ships, and two bomb-ketches, having in all 1,440 guns and 9,070 men. He had ample instructions to act in all emergencies. Arriving off" Cape St. Vincent on the 30th of the month, he sent his secretary ashore, with dispatches for Lord Stanhope, the king's envoy at Madrid. This noble he found at the Escurial, where he delivered to the King of Spain a letter from Sir George Byng, to the effect, " that as the King of Great Britain was a gua- rantee for the peace of Italy, he could not but maintain the same; and therefore his admiral had orders to act against those who might seek to violate it." Colonel Lord Stanhope made the same de- claration verbally ; and the King of Spain replied, curtly — ■ " Then the admiral may follow his orders." At midnight on the 21st of July, the fleet came to anchor in the Bay of Naples. Next morning Sir George, with the flag-officers, went ashore, and was received by the viceroy. Count Daun, with every honqvir ; and was informed thaf fhe Spanish army. and were blockading the citadel of the latter ; and that its gai-rison of Piedmontese, if not soon re- lieved, would be obliged to capitulate. Also, that an alliance was on the tapis between the Emperor and the King of Sicily, who had desired the as- sistance of the Imperial troops, and agreed to receive them into the citadel of Messina. Sir George Byng immediately resolved to sail thither, and took under his convoy 2,000 Germans, under General Wetzel, to reinforce the citadel. The 9th of August saw him off the Faro of Messina. There he dispatched Captain Saunders, of the Barfleur, with a polite message to the Marquis de . Ixde, proposing " a cessation of arms in Sicily for two months, that, the powers of Europe might have time to concert measures for restoring a lasting peace ; " and adding, " that should this proposal be rejected, he would, in pursuance of his instructions, use all his force to prevent further attempts to disturb the dominions his master had engaged to defend." " I have no powers to treat," was the reply of the Spanish general, " and, consequently, cannot agree to an armistice ; but I must obey my orders, which are to reduce Sicily for my master the King of Spain." The Spanish fleet had sailed from the harbour of Messina on the day before the British armament appeared, and supposing it had gone to Malta, Admiral Byng directed his course towards the city of Messina, with the intention of assisting the Piedmontese in the citadel; but in doubling the point of Faro, he descried two Spanish scouts, and learned from the people of a felucca from the coast of Calabria that they had seen from the hills the whole Spanish fleet lying-to in order of battle. The admiral immediately detached the German troops to Reggio, under convoy of two ships of war, and then stood through the Faro after the Spanish scouts, who led him direct to their main fleet, which, before noon, he saw in order for action, amounting to twenty-seven sail, besides two fire-ships, four bomb-ketches and seven galleys, having on board in all 1,221 guns and 8,390 men ; thus the strength of the two fleets was nearly equal. TThe Spapi^rds were commajided in chief by Don 4Rf8fif9 "^s (Casf^fjita, uqdpr wjaonn were four FfF^a^fflirals, gl^^pqti, jyi^p, Gueyaj-^, ^nd George Passora.] A RUNNING FIGHT. 555 Cammock. The latter was an Irishman, who had been a captain, in 1702, in the British Navy, from which he was dismissed, in 17 14, for his attachment to the House of Stuart. He had on this day his flag on board the San Ferdinand, 60 guns ; and in the Spanish list, "Wacup (Wauchope?), a Scotch- man," appears as captain of the St. Francis Arves, 22 guns and 100 men (" Schomberg, Appendix"). They were lying in wait off Cape Passora, anciently Pachinus, the most remote and southerly point of Sicily. It is not a peninsula, as represented in many maps, but an island, and was then bare and barren, with a small fort and garrison, to pro- tect the shore from the then frequent incursions of the Barbary corsairs. It was also used as a place of exile for military delinquents, as Brydone tells us, in his " Tour through Sicily and Malta." The British line-of-battle ship, Canterbury, 60 guns, Captain Walton, was ordered to lead, twith her starboard tacks on board ; and \ht Rochester, 50 guns. Captain AVyndham, with the larboard. On the appearance of the British fleet, the Spaniards, though in order of battle, " stood away large " {i.e., with the wind abaft the beam), steering straight for the Sicilian shore. On this Sir George Byng instructed Captain Walton, with the Kent, Superb, Grafton, and Orford, being his swiftest sailers, to steer in pur- suit and bring them to action ; ordering also " that the ship which could get ahead most, and nearest to them, should carry the lights usually borne by the admiral, that he might not lose sight of them in the night" Meanwhile he made all sail, to keep up with the swift squadron under Walton. The wind became very light, and the great row-galleys of the Spanish fleet, with their well-manned benches of oars, towed their heaviest sailers all night. On the morning of the 31st they were closer to Cape Passora ; and Rear-Admiral the Marquis de Mari, with six ships of war, and the galleys, fire- ships, and bomb-ketches, separated from the main fleet, and stood with all sail in-shore. Captain Walton, with the Canterbury, the Argyk, 50 guns, and six other vessels, was dispatched in pursuit ; and on coming within range, one of the Spaniards shortened sail, and poured a tremendous broadside into the Argyle. The Spaniards thus, though fugitives, had the honour of beginning the action. " My ship," says the marquis, in his letter to the Cardinal Acquiviva, " being separated from the line, six English sail followed me, and gave me a signal to surrender, but I answered it with the fire of all my artillery." Smollett says that the Spaniards were distracted in their councils, and acted in confusion ; that they made a running fight; and yet that their admirals behaved with courage and activity. Sir George' Byng, on seeing the leading ships engaged with those Spaniards which were creeping in-shore, sent orders to Captain Walton to rendezvous after the action at Syracuse, which the viceroy of the King of Sicily occupied with a garrison. The same orders he dispatched to the flags, and to as many ships as were within his reach; for Syracuse, being defended against the Spaniards, was the most proper port on the Sicilian coast for the fleet to assemble together in again. The chase continued alongshore after Don Antonio de Castanita, with three of his rear- admirals and the largest of his ships ; the captains of the Kent, Superb, Grafton, and Orford having still orders to get ahead of the fugitives if they could, but not to fire unless the Spaniards re- peated their fire ; and on the guns of the Santa Rosa, under Don Antonio Gonzales, opening, she was at once engaged by the Orford, a seventy- gun ship, whose crew soon took her. The San Carlos, of 60 guns, under Prince Chalay, next struck, almost without opposition, to the Kent. The Grafton lay alongside the Prince of the Asturias, the rear-admiral's ship, and after a sharp engagement, on the Breda and Captain coming up, she left her for them to take (which they soon did), and then stretched ahead after another sixty-gun ship, which had lain to starboard of her while she was engaged with the rear- admiral. The fighting was now becoming general among both fleets, and was visible to the people along the whole coast, from Passora to the little town and fort of Vindicari. The Prince of the Asturias was repeatedly boarded. Admiral Chacun defended her bravely, driving the assailants, from his deck again and again; but being severely wounded, having most of his men killed, and his ship shot fairly through and through, he was compelled, after disabling one man-of-war, to haul down his flag. By one o'clock the Kent and Superb engaged the ship of Don Antonio Castanita, and two others, main- taining a running fight until three in the afternoon, when the first-named ship, "bearing down upon and under her stem," says Lediard, in his "Naval History," " ^ve her a broadside, and went away to leeward of her. Then the Superb put in for it, and ' laid the Spanish admiral on board, falling on her weather quarter. But the Spanish admiral shifting helm and avoiding her, the Superb ranged up 556 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. ^GlenshieL under her lee-quarter, on which she struck to her. At the same time the Barflettr, being within shot of the Spanish admiral astern, inclining on her weather quarter, one of their rear-admirals and a sixty-gun ship, which were to windward, bore down and gave her their broadsides, and then clapped upon a wind, and stood in for the shore." The British admiral followed them until night fell, when the wind almost died away. According to the Spanish accounts, their admiral, Don Antonio de Castanita, defended himself so well and vigorously that he gave all the vessels that attacked him an infinite deal of trouble ; and the English admiral, resolving to board him, brought up a fire-ship to reduce him by flames, but in vain. However, Don Antonio, having fully 200 of his officers and men shot down, his left leg wounded, and being stunned by the fragments of a human body dashed about him, as a man was cut m two by a cannon-ball at his side, hauled down his colours and surrendered about nightfall. The Essex took the yimo, 36 guns, after her commander, Don Pedro Magna, fought her for three hours; and the Vglatite, 44 guns, fought till all her sails were shot away. Her captain, Don Antonio Cardero, a Knight of Malta, ordered a new suit to be bent; but the ship "being pierced through and through by cannon-balls in six several places, and in danger of sinking, his crew obliged him to surrender." This he did to Streynsham Master, captain of the Superb. Rear-Admiral Cammock, Captain Wauchope, and eighteen other commanders, effected their escape, with their vessels and galleys, but all the rest were burnt or taken. " Had the Spaniards followed the advice of Admiral Cammock," according to Smollett, " Sir George B5mg would not have obtained so easy a victory. That officer had proposed that they should remain at anchor in the road of Paradise, with their broadsides to the sea, in which case the Enghsh admiral would have found it a very diffi- cult task to attack them : for the toast is so safe that the largest ships could ride with a cable ashore ; whereas, farther out, the currents are so various and rapid that the English squadron could not have come to anchor, or lain near them in order of battle." This unfortunate Jacobite officer afterwards fell into disgrace with the Spanish Government, and was banished to Ceuta, where he died in obscurity and penury. In this most signal victory the British fleet suf- fered littie damage. The admiral lay by for some days to refit and overhaul the prizes he had taken ; and, during this, on the i8th of August, he received from Captain Walton a dispatch, which is justly deemed a curious specimen of the laconic style : — " SiR,^ — We have taken and destroyed all the Spanish ships which were upon the coast; the number as per margin. I am, &c., "G. Walton." The " margin " showed that among the vessels referred to were one of 60 guns, commanded by Rear-Admiral Mari ; one of 54, one of 40, one of 24, and a bomb-vessel and store-ship taken ; one of 54 guns, two of 40, one of 30 guns, and a fire-ship and bomb-ketch burned. Captain Walton was knighted for these services, and died an admiral in 1740; and the king, who was totally ignorant of English, wrote in French a letter of thanks and congratulation to Admiral Byng, whose victory, however, did not prevent the Spanish troops under the Marquis de Lede from making themselves masters of the citadel of Messina, where the Piedmontese troops surrendered before his arrival. But his activity in transporting German troops into Sicily caused the recovery of the city and fortress. The Spaniards then made overtures for quitting the island, and the recovery of Sicily was followed by the surrender of Sardinia. CHAPTER CVL GLENSHIEL, 1719. The severities practised by the Government of George I., and the hideous barbarity of the execu- tions at Tyburn and elsewhere, excited sentiments of revenge in the Highlanders of Scotland, that no doubt had much to do in causing the great Insurrec- tion of 1745 ; but prior to that there was an attempted rising or revolt in 17 19, that is nearly forgotten now, or merely remembered as the affair of Glenshiel. Charles XH, of Sweden had long projected an Glenshiel.] THE SPANIARDS LAND. 557 invasion of Britain ; but his wild career being cut short by a cannon-ball, his schemes were taken in hand by Cardinal Alberoni, who had conspired to overthrow in France the Regency of the Duke of Orleans, with a view to promote the union of France and Spain. To the latter country he began to turn for friendship and alliance. The exiled Duke of Ormond had been sum- moned from France by the cardinal to attend a conference at Madrid ; and he went, accompanied by two young Scotsmen, the Earl Marischal and his brother, subsequently so well known in military history as Marshal Keith. France and Spain being then at war, the three travellers were compelled to resort to the utmost secrecy m disguising their movements and motives. They took, however, no part in arranging the project, to the accomplish- ment of which they were to devote themselves with life and limb. It was committed to them in a matured form by its author. Cardinal Alberoni. At Madrid the chevaUer was treated as King of Great Britain; ten ships of war, transports with 6,000 troops, and arms for 12,000 were given him. Troops were ordered to assemble in the north and west of England ; 2,000 men, were sent over by the Dutch, and twenty battaUons of French were offered by the Regent Orleans to assist in keeping King George upon his throne (Smollett). In addi- tion to these were 3,000 Austrians. The Duke of Ormond was to land in England with such military forces and supplies as the then exhausted Spanish treasury could furnish. The two Keiths were anxious to procure from Spain 4,000 stand of muskets and bayonets, with 10,000 pistols, but had to content them with half the number. Six companies of infantry — a pitiful force — were to form part of this rash expedition, and cover the landing of all exiles who might join in it. To the younger Keith the cardinal assigned the perilous duty of conveying secret intelligence of the enterprise to all the Jacobites scattered through- out the French empi^, and obtaining their energetic co-operation. He consulted with the Earl of Seaforth, the Marquis of Tullibardine, Campbell of Glendarule, and other leading men among the Scottish refugees ; and they set sail from Havre on the 19th of March, 17 19, in a vessel of only twenty- five' tons, which, after narrowly escaping capture by the English men-of-war that were watching for the appearance of the larger forces under the Duke of Ormond, safely reached Stomoway, on the western coast of Lewes, in Ross-shire, where the Earl Maris- chal, with his friends and Spanish forces, had already arrived. No sooner had they all met than unpleasant dif- ferences began to prevail. Cardinal Alberoni had always intended to trust the earl with the command of the expedition ; but TuUibardine suddenly pro- duced a commission bearing the signature of "James VIIL," and dated at a time when an inva- sion of the British Isles had been projected by King Charles XII. of Sweden ; so the marquis took chief command of the men, while Marischal refused to relinquish that charge over the ships and stores whiclj he had received from Alberoni. It had been settled that the invading forces were to effect a landing on the west coast of Scotland, and march direct on Inverness, which, being occu- pied by a small garrison, could offer but little resist- ance, and which, moreover, as being the capital of the Highlands, would form a natural centre or rally- ing point for the various clans which had lately been in insurrection under the Earl of Mar. The usual curses of Scottish affairs, their mutual dissensions and animosities, caused a ruinous delay, till the Ministry were fully apprised of their design in all its details, and were prepared to crush it summarily. In the middle of May, a period long after it had been fixed upon, the landing took place on the lonely and almost desolate shore of Loch Alsh. When all had disembarked with their stores, the ships, two Spanish frigates, sailed at once and re- turned to Spain. The exiles and invaders imme- diately began operations, by fortifying a position near one of the inner windings of the loch, and taking possession of the castle of Island Donald, an old fortress of the Mackenzies, a stronghold which they hoped would be as impregnable as it had been for centuries of Highland warfare. It had been erected by Alexander III., of Scotland, to protect Loch Duich from the Danes, and consisted of a square keep, the walls of which were four feet thick. It was girt by an outer rampart, and by water all full tide. The keep was lofty, and an old man who was alive in 1793 remembered to have seen the Kintail men under arms on its roof, and dancing merrily ere they marched to the battle of Sheriffmuir. It was not proof against the fire of three frigates, which entered the loch and speedily demolished it. The invading force, including Spaniards and Scotsmen, amounted to only 1,5°° men, who en- camped beyond the fire of the frigates, in Glenshiel, or Sheilig— the Vale of Hunting. On hearing that the main expedition, which was to sail from Cadiz, under Ormond, had been hopelessly scattered by a storm off Cape Finisterre, near where the Great Armada encountered its first tempest, and seeing SS8 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. EGlensliiel. that there was no probabiHty at that time of the Jacobite clans rising in arms, they appear to have lost alike spirit and energy, especially as the Rosses, Munroes, and other Whig tribes, who had declared for the Government, were actually marching against them. They were joined, however, by the Mackenzies, the Macraes, and by 400 Macgregors, chiefly of the sept of Dugald Ciar Mhor, under the famous Rob Roy, who was simply a farmer, or what was called innovation. Local wars began, and all who resisted the king were stigmatised as broken clans , and by their sturdy adherence to the system of their ances- tors none were more obnoxious to Government than the Macgregors. The first years of the eighteenth century saw a body of them perpetually in arms, under Rob Roy, against whom a strong expedition of regulars, and volunteers from Paisley, Renfrew, and Kilmarnock, with a body of seamen from the ships of war in the THE CHEVALIER ST. GEORGE. in the Highlands a gentleman-drover ; but who, as the champion of his clan, obtained a greater influ- ence over it than that possessed by his chief, John Macgregor of that ilk. One king of Scotland and six successive kings of Great Britain had failed to crush the Mac- gregors, or to suppress their name. When the Scottish kings sought to introduce into the High- lands, the same feudal system which existed in England and the Lowlands, and endeavoured to sutstitute crown charters for patrimonial rights, and to make barons of patriarchal chiefs — -giving them thus the land which belonged of old to a whole clan by joint right — a bloody strife ensued between those who adopted and those who resisted the Clyde, was organised in vain by Lieutenant-General Cadogan. Rob was stigmatised as a robber ; y^t among the very troops employed against him, in what was termed " The Loch Lomond Expedition,'' we find the South British Fusiliers (or 7 th Regi- ment), which at that time " had four years' pay owing to officers and men, who, in spite of repeated memorials, could not obtain any portion of it. After the napse of some time, it transpired that Lord Tyrawley, the colonel, had appropriated the arrears to his own use ; an act which he attempted to justify by pleading 'the custom of the army,' and by the fact of the king being cognizant of his proceeding " (Fonblanque). While the little force of Jacobites was lingering ClensJilul.j ROB ROY. SS9 560 i3RITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Glenshiel. irresolutely in Glenshiel, General Joseph Wightman, a brigadier of 1707, and an active and resolute officer, was pushing on through the mountains, with a mixed force, consisting of some of the auxiliary- Dutch, and several companies of the nth, 14th and isth Regiments (then known respectively as Montague's, Clayton's, and Harrison's Foot). He had also with him the Rosses and the Munroes. The strength of the Dutch is stated by some at 2,000 men; that of the regulars at 1,600. It was a peculiarity of the rulers of England in those days, says Creasy, that they " looked far too exclu- sively to regular troops, and more especially to foreign regular troops, as their support. They had no confidence in the patriotic spirit of the great mass of the nation ; and the heart that is distrusted soon ceases to be warm." Marching with all speed by ways that were wild and rugged— the old war-paths of the Fingalians — the drove-roads of the present times, General Wightman halted within ten miles of the insur- gents on the evening of the 9th of June. By sunrise next morning, the pipes playing "TuUoch Ard," the gathering and war-cry of the Mackenzies, rang in Glenshiel, where the sidier-roy, or red-coats, and the Dutch in their yellow uniforms, were seen defiling along that beautiful yalley, which is fifteen miles in length. They formed line by corps as they advanced into the open space. The Marquises of Seaforth and Tullibardine, as the loyalists termed both, with Rob Roy, took up a position at the narrow pass of Strachells, the highest part of Glenshiel, and with them was an ex- patriated chieftain of the Campbell clan, the Laird of Glendarule. The first troops that came in sight were a wing of the isth Regiment, which had philemot yellow facings, and coats elaborately braided with white tape. On their left were formed some of the clans which were adverse to the House of Stuart — the Munroes, in gay scarlet tartans, the Rosses, and the Sutherlands. The Jacobites, including the Macraes, were about 1,000 strong, and all armed in the usual Highland fashion. On their left were cix companies of Spanish infantry, under Colonel Don Alonzo de Santarem, and his brother, Don Josd, a Knight of Malta. A quarter of a mile eastward,- on their flank, were posted the Macgregors, under Rob Roy, whose orders were to attack the enemy in flank. General Wightman, in his dispatches, confesses that on coming in sight of the Jacobite position he " found it of such a formidable character, that he hesitated about giving the invaders battle on ground so very advantageous to them." On perceiving how the insurgents were prepared, and that they had thrown up a breastwork (which still remains) the further to secure the pass, General Wightman threw forward a line of skirmishers, who were exposed to the deadly aim of the Highland marksmen. Many were slain by the long muskets of the latter, while only one Mackenzie fell. The Munroes, becoming impatient, made a rush forward, sword in hand, but were repulsed by the Mackenzies and the fire of the Spaniards. Their leader, George Munro, of Culcaira, fell severely wounded. As the Spaniards continued to fire at and over him, he ordered his co-dhalta, or foster- brother, who lingered affectionately beside him, to retire and save himself. " Retire and leave me," said he ; " but say to my father that I died with honour." " Never ! " rephed the other, bursting into tears. " No, George Munro, I shall save you if I can, or remain and die with you.'' He then spread his plaid over the body of Culcairn to intercept the balls of the Spaniards, and received several severe wounds before they were both rescued and dragged from under fire by a sergeant of the Munroes, who had sworn to save his chief. The Macgregors now rushed in a kind of half circle upon the rear of the Dutch and the 15 th Regiment, firing their muskets and pistols, and then falling on in the usual Highland fashion, .but were repulsed, though the colonel commanding the Dutch auxiliaries was slain. Driven up the hill in confusion and rage, the Macgregors joined the Mackenzies and Macraes in defence of the pass; but prior to this, a young clansman, named Eoin Macphadrig (John the son of Patrick Macgregor), rushed among the Dutch like a tiger, and slew five of them before he was borne down and bayoneted. General Wightman now recalled his skirmishers, and threw forward the grenadiers. By the ex- plosion of their hand-grenades many Highlanders were wounded behind the breastwork, and Lord Seaforth was severely injured by a splinter ; while, to add still more to the confusion and the sufferings of the maimed, the heather, which was as dry as tinder, and deeply rooted, caught fire; and sheets of flame and clouds of smoke rolled up the mountain side together. Under cover of these, the Dutch and British infantry made no less than three attacks upon the insurgents ; and after a three hours' con- flict, these combined forces had to retire, leaving the Highlanders in complete possession of the pass, where, according to General Wightman's dispatch, there lay 142 of his soldiers killed and wounded. Glenshiel.^ DEATH OF ROB ROY.. S6i Captain Downes and two ' lieutenants of the isth Regiment were killed ; Captains Moore and Heighington, of the 14th, were wounded ; Munro of Culcairn had his thigh broken. Next day, seeing the futihty of further resistance, the Spaniards, 274 in number, surrendered as pri- . soners of war ; and with them General Wightman began his march of more than 150 miles for Edin- burgh, while the Highlanders dispersed to places where the troops as yet could never follow them. The Marquis of TuUibardine, and the Earls of Seaforth and Marischal, after long concealment, and though ;^2,ooo were offered for each of their heads, escaped to the Continent in safety ; and thus ended, says Salmon (in his " Chronological Histo- rian"), "this mighty Spanish invasion, which had so much alarmed the three kingdoms." James soon after left Madrid, where his presence was no longer useful to the Spanish monarch ; and Cardinal Alberoni shortly afterwards fell from the high station he had so long occupied, and passed the rest of his days in retirement, principally in ^ Italy ; and to the end of his life one of his most ■■ favourite topics of conversation was his plan, in 1 7 1 9, for restoring the House of Stuart to the throne , of Great Britain. Traces of the conflict in Glenshiel are still to be seen. Gun-barrels and bullets are frequently found in the valley, especially behind the manse, where the Spaniards, before surrendering, blew up their magazine; and near a small cascade which flows ii-ito the glen there is still to be seen the green grave of the Dutch colonel, whom one tradition affirms to have fallen by the hand of Rob Roy. Several of the cannon-balls fired by the ships at the castle of Island Donald were long used by the country peddle as weights for butter and cheese ; and it is related that, not content with demolishing the fortress, the commanders of the frigates landed their crews, and after wantonly burning the church of Kilduich, pillaged the poor villagers, as if Scot- land had been a foreign and hostile country. CHAPTER CVII. THE EXPEDITION OF GENERAL WADE, 1 7 24. In the Caledonian Mercury, a newspaper old as the days of the Restoration, but now extinct, or represented by the well-known Scotsman, under date December 28th, 1734, will be found the following obituary : — " On Saturday was se'night, died at Balquhidder, in Perthshire, the famous Highland partisan, Rob Roy." Such is the simple notice of the death of that famous Highland cateran and outlaw, with whom history, romance, and the drama have made us so familiar. Yet it was only some ten years before the Red Macgregor departed this life in peace, dying in bed, with his claymore in his hand, and a piper playing beside him, and was buried at the end of the pretty little church of Balquhidder, that the danger arising to good government from having a rude and warlike race mustering some 50,000 fighting men, more especially in the north- western parts of Scotland, impressed upon the Ministry of George I. the necessity of forming roads to open up the country of the clans, of erecting a chain of forts, of launching an armed galley on Lochness, and of raising those paid companies yirhich (though numbered first as the 43rd, and subsequently as the 42nd Foot) are still named " The Black Watch,'' from the hue of their tartan, and of disarming the Highlanders, or certain tribes of them ; and these arduous tasks were assigned to George "Wade, a brigadier of Anne's wars, and a field-marshal of 1743. There were ordered, for the primary measure of disarming the clans in the neighbourhood of Brahan Castle, four regiments of infantry — Colonel Henry i Graves' (now loth Foot), Major-GeneralWhetham's (now 1 2th Foot), George Grove's (now 19th Foot), and the Scots Fusiliers (now 21st Foot) — with six companies of the Black Watch. Save the last-named, these troops were reviewed by George I., on Salisbury Plain, on the 30th of August, 1722. He harangued them in his broken English, in the same terms as if they had to penetrate into the passes of Khoord Cabul, or the Hindoo Coosh, instead of the northern portion of the United Kingdom, for which they began their march, a long, and certainly arduous journey, by the rough roads of those pre-railway times ("Records of the lotb, 12 th, 19th, and 2 1 St Regiments"). To rest and refresh them, they were quartered in various Lowland towns' during the summer of 1724, 563 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Wade's Expedition. after which they began their march for that district which was more a terra incognita to Enghshmen than Khiva or Bokhara are now — the country of the clans, while His Majesty's ship Rose, a sixth-rate, of 20 guns and 377 men, took General Wade from Leith for Inverness ; but as the weather proved rough, he landed on the coast of Angus, and took h©rse for the army by the long bleak moors of Nairn and the future field of Culloden ; while his soldiers, in their quaint uniforms, with cross-belts and Kevenhuller hats, or conical Prussian caps, their long queues, and pipe-clayed inexpressibles, all veterans of the Flanders wars, doubtful of the reception awaiting them, toiled on by the dark wastes of Rannoch, and the Black Mount, where other roads and ways there were none save the old Fingalian war-paths — by stupendous mountains, whose heads are veiled in mists; by deep and solemn valleys, where the whistle of the curlew or the rush of a torrent alone woke the echoes— amid the same scenery from which the infantry of Hesse had shrunk some thirty-seven years before, when they declared that beyond the gorge of Killycrankie must lie the end of the world ; and where the picturesque dress of the people seemed as strange to the eye as the language was uncouth and guttural to the southen ear. They could not forget, too — this " handful " of Englishmen — that they were in a hostile land, where, had the tribes been united in purpose, they rftight have been cut off to a man ; but they were allowed to njarch without molestation past even the mouth of Glencoe, where the bones of some who had perished in the massacre there, but thirty years before, lay whitening amid the purple heather. " How could the humble dweller in those lonely regions become an object of kingly vengeance, or his bleak hills a thing for kingly ambition ? " it has been asked. But it should be borne in mind that the High- landers, a source then of detestation to their Lowland countrymen, were viewed by the English as veritable savages, even as cannibals; and in those days English officers deemed service along their frontier as a perilous and profitless exile, as the legionaries of Rome did their campaigns in Britain, or as our linesmen of the present day do their outpost duty amid the kraals of the Kaffirs; and even the letters of the gentle Wolfe, at a period subsequent to Wade's Expedition, teem with remarks to this purpose. There had been already formed a camp at Inver- ness, and there the newly-arrived regiments found the battalion of Lieutenant-General Piercy Kirke (now the 2nd, or Queen's), into which, on the ensuing Christmas-day there came, by exchange from Tyrrell's Dragoons, a certain Captain Peter Garrftk, who was afterwards the father of our great actor. The Scots Fusiliers — the regiment of General Macartney, who acted as Lord Mohun's second, and was accused of basely murdering the Duke of Hamilton in the famous duel in 17 12 — went no farther north than Aberdeenshire, where they were quartered in the small towns, to enforce the payment of the obnoxious malt tax, which was the source ot such dangerous riots in other parts of Scotland. General Wade, having issued summonses in writing to the clans of eighteen parishes, followers of the attainted Earl of Seafo;th, marched, on the 25 th of August, with all his available forces, to Brahan Castle, the chief fortress and rendezvous of the Mackenzies, a noble old Highland strong- hold situated on the northern side of the Conan river, amid the most beautiful scenery; and the worthy general, in his reports, does not conceal that he had serious and anxious misgivings as to how his request would be obeyed. He then halted his troops to receive " the submission of a high- spirited people, who had resisted as long as resist- ance was possible." The Edinburgh mails had, prior to this, brought him many letters of fierce and bitter menace, to in- timidate him from putting the " Disarming Act" into execution ; and by the Jacobites papers were dis- persed through th^ Highlands, denying the authority of the British Parliament, and urging the men of the clans to retain their arms as men of honour, and as means of defence, lest they should be massacred in cold blood, as the Macdonalds had been in Glencoe, by the warrant of Wilham III. " The Mackenzies had stipulated," continues the general in his report to the king, " that they should deliver up their arms at the fortress of Brahan, as it was the seat of their chief, William, Earl of Seaforth, then exiled in France for his share in the rising ol 17 15. They had no objection to perform this un- palatable task in presence of the infantry of the line, but begged that none of Reicudan Dhu (the Black Watch), who were specially recruited from and officered by Campbells, Grants, and Munroes — noted Whig clans — should be present to see their humiliation ; for they (the Mackenzies) had always been reputed the bravest, as well as the most numerous of the northern clans, and thought it more consistent with their honour to resign their arms to your Majesty's veteran troops, to which I readily assented," adds this fine old English officer. He thus kept the six companies of the Black Watch out of view, by detaching them to secure the western passes, and endeavoured, as far as was Wade*s Expedition.] AT BRAHAN CASTLE 563 consistent with his duty, to meet the wishes of the men of the Mackenzie clan. Fifty gentlemen of that name first gave up their swords, pistols, dirks, and other weapons; and then came their followers. Under the stately trees or the grand old avenue which had seen their fore- fathers so often depart to battle, they came by parishes, marching four abreast, but slowly and reluctantly, in their picturesque native dress, bring- ing a quantity of arms in bales and bundles slung on the backs of horses. These men were all Mackenzies, save those who were among the two tribes in alliance with them, the Macraes and the Macclellans, to whom was always assigned the guardianship of the Caber Faih, or banner of Sea- forth. In all, 784 weapons only, of different kinds, most of which were litde better than old iron, were given over to the troops ; for the wary Mackenzies, and Donald Murchison, the faithful factor and ad- herent of the exiled Seaforth (great grandfather of the famous late Sir Roderick Impey Murchison) took especial good care that all the really service- able weapons — the good muskets, well-tempered claymores, steel pistols, dirks, and Lochaber axes — well oiled and carefully rolled in thick bull-hides, were buried in secret places, awaiting the time when King James's son should come to claim his own again. In perfect good faith, the worthy General Wade took the useless weapons as being those of Sea- forth's country, a district sixty miles in length by forty in breadth. Wade was simply enforcing the " Disarming Act." That a Highlander considered it a disgrace to be seen without arms, and that arms were deemed a portion of his national dress, mattered nothing to him. The Mackenzies, with mental reservations, no doubt, now drank to the health of the king. The fifty gentlemen of the tribe dined with the officers of the staff, and they all separated with great politeness, and assurances of good faith on both sides ; though at that very crisis the Jacobite chiefs were projecting another rising for King James, and the restless Bishop Atterbury had obtained, from some source unknown, 80,000 livres, to be expended in ammunition among the disappointed clans who writhed under " the Hanoverian yoke." The unsuspecting general, pleased with his apparent success in disarming the men of Seaforth, now sent missives to the Macdonells of Glengarry, the Chisholms of Strathglass, the Grants of Glen- moriston, and the Macleods of Glenelg, who gave him all their useless arms, just as the Mackenzies had done, and \?ere duly paid for th?m thejr sup- posed value at the barrack of Kilcumin, now known as Fort Augustus. The Macintoshes, the shattered tribe of Glencoe, the Macdonells of Keppoch, of Moidart and of Arisaig, brought theirs to Inverness; while the Macphersons and Gordons marched to the barrack of Ruthven, in Badenoch, for the same purpose. The men of the Isles, taken next in detail, were ordered to disarm at the long-since disused bar- rack of Bemera, on the Sound of Skye ; and the men of Mull before the officer commanding a detachment of infantry in Duairt Castle, the strong- hold of the clan Gillian ; but in every instance no means we're left untried to delay or evade or defeat the end the Government had in view, by there, as elsewhere, selling to the general only rubbish, the good weapons in every clan being secreted for the time that was coming. The powers of General Wade would seem to have been discretionary, as it is recorded that Macpherson of Inveresshie and his sons were permitted to retain their arms, as the younger meant to assume the then Whiggish name of Grant. All this time the troops remained in tents near the Highland capital, and the important service of disarming was performed by detach- ments, sent thence into different parts of the country, a perilous and arduous service, as they had to traverse old drove-roads and forest paths in Indian file ; but no straggler was ever cut off, and there is not one instance recorded of the Seidaran Dearg, or Red English soldiers, being waylaid or assassinated. In the camp bread was regularly served out, and biscuits for the haversacks of those parties who marched into the glens on disarming duty ; and, to the surprise of the EngHsh, who had been taught to expect starvation in a land of savages, the camp, according to Wade's report, was plenti- fully supplied with provisions, while the town 01. Inverness provided a hospital for the sick. The soldiers were so healthy that only ten men died; but when the Highland winter set in with its usual severity, the troops went into warmer quarters in the forts and towns, while the loth Foot began its long march, of some 200 miles, for England. But for the powerful influence of the Campbells, the Munroes, the Grants of Strathspey, and other Whig clans, and by the system of putting one-half of the country in oppo- sition to the other, this mock disarming could never have been ^.chieved by a force so slender. Self-interest made ^ome of the pl^ns Whigs, whije Jac^^bjtes at he^ft, and this was particularly the case with the Frasers and Grapts. 564 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Wade's Expedition. In the spring of the new year, 1725, the com- panies of the Black Watchy having completed their drill and exercise, were dispatched by General Wade to various stations, with orders " to prevent the Highlanders from returning to the use of arms, as wsU as to hinder their committing de- To the clans in Braemar, Athole, Perthshire, Breadalbane, and Menteith, to the Macgregors on the shores of Loch Lomond, and the fierce Macnabs in StrathfiUan, summonses were sent, and parties of Wade's troops had orders to march from the nearest garrisons to the places appointed for the MUSKETRY EXERCISE, EARLY PART OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. predations in the Low Country." The company of the famous Lord Lovat held the mountain passes between the wild shores of Lochalsh and Inverness ; that of Grant of Ballindalloch, those between the Ness and Dunkeld ; and that of Sir Duncan Campbell, of Lochnell, from Dunkeld to the mountains of Lorn; while the other three com- panies, under lieutenants, held Fort William, Kilcumin, and Ruthven, in Badenoch. collection of arms. The wildest tribes were those who dwelt upon the Lowland frontier ; and Wade was compelled to report that they altogether with- held their weapons, or did not yield them in such numbers as the more northern clans. The whole that were collected, after so much trouble, diplomacy, and expense, amounted to only 2,685 weapons of every kind, and these were stored up in the castle of Edinburgh and the barrack of Bernera. G'lliraltar. I THE SPANIARDS ENCAMP. 565 CHAPTER CVIII. GIBRALTAR, 1 727. An unimportant war with Spain occurred during the close of the reign of George I., but the chief feature of it was a vigorous attempt by that country to recapture Gibraltar. In 1720, under pretence had not received any intelligence of hostilities having as yet commenced between the Courts of St. James's and Madrid, he was unable to act, or to prevent the transport of provisions, artillery, and UNIFORMS, 1743. of an expedition into Africa, the Spaniards assem- bled a powerful armament in the Bay of Gibraltar ; but perceiving that their intentions were discovered, they relinquished their projected attack, and the fortress remained unmolested till the latter end of 1726. Under the Conde de las Torres, 20,000 men were assembled in the neighbourhood of Algeziras, ten miles distant from Gibraltar. On the 20th of January these forces openly encamped on the plain below the sunny white town of San Roque, and began the erection of a battery on the beach, to protect their camp. Admiral Edward Hopson was then at anchor in the bay with a formidable British fleet ; but as he ammunition from Algeziras, where the Spaniards hs'' formed their depot, to this blockading camp. Brigadier-General Kane, who had been ordered to Gibraltar from Minorca, was under the same embarrassment as the admiral. The operations of the Spaniards, however, tending fast towards a direct attack upon the garrison, he ordered all the Spanish inhabitants to quit the town, and for- bade their galleys to anchor under his guns, on pain of being summarily sunk. Gibraltar was much stronger now than when assailed by the Spaniards twenty-one years before. Several works, says Major Drinkwater, had been erected on the heights above the lines. These iveie knbWnas Willis's Batteries; the Prince's Lines S66 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. tGibraltar. were also extended to the extremity of the Rock, and an inundation was formed out of the morass that lay in front of the grand battery. The Conde de las Torres having defiantly pushed his outposts within reach of the garrison, Brigadier Kane sent a flag of truce to desire "that he should withdraw from the range of his guns, otherwise he would be compelled to use th§m and force him." To which the Conde replied, " the garrison can command no more than it has the power to main- tain ; and I shail obey the orders of my master. His Most Catholic Majesty, by encroaching as much as I am able.'' Though this answer was insulting, the brigadier was loth to commence hostilities until absolutely forced to do so in defence of his command. Brigadier Jasper Clayton, the lieutenant-governor, arrived in the beginning of February, with reinforce- ments, on board the fleet of Sir Charles Wager. A Council of War was then held, and it was still re- solved not to fire upon the Spaniards. On the loth of February, the latter, having brought materials for additional batteries to the old windmill on the neutral ground, Clayton again took the opinion of the admirals of the fleet, and the field-officers of the regiments in garrison, which was to the effect "that the Spanish general had made open war by encroach- ing so far on the liberties of the garrison." Brigadier Clayton now sent an officer to the Conde to know "the reason of his breaking ground" in erecting batteries. " I am on my master's ground," replied the Conde, "and am answerable to no other person for my conduct." As this plainly indicated an undisguised intention to attempt the recapture of Gibraltar, the Heutenant- governor that evening drew in the outer guard ; and on the following day opened the guns of the old wall and Willis's Batteries on the working parties of the Spaniards. The latter persisted, however, in their operations, and at night a dark mass of their infantry were seen to march down to the Devil's Tower, where they immediately broke ground, and began a communication with their other work. The cannon- shot bowled through them on their march, but they were soon under cover of the Rock, where the guns could not be depressed at an angle sufficiently acute to bear upon them. Deserters informed the lieutenant-governor that they were constructing an enormous mine in the cave under Willis's Battery, with the intention of blowing it up, as the Chevalier d'Asfeld had blown up the castle of Alicante, in 1709. The engineers with some difficulty discovered this work, and a detachment was posted to cut off the communica- tion with musketry. On the morning of the 22nd, the Conde opened fire with seventeen pieces of cannon, besides many mortars, and then Brigadier Kane left for Minorca to bring more troops. Meanwhile, Admirals Wager and Hopson were constantly harassing the Spaniards by intercepting their home-bound ships, and the provisions found on board proved of great benefit to the garrison. On the 3rd of March the Conde opened a new battery of twenty-two guns on the old mole and town; and on the 8th another of fifteen guns ; so now fifty- four pieces of cannon, besides mortars, maintained a constant and destructive fire upon the garrison. Brigadier Clayton replied by a well-directed can- nonade from every battery that could be brought to bear upon the enemy's works ; but the ordnance in general being old, honeycombed, and otherwise defective, they were so incessantly bursting, that the garrison suffered more by their explosion than by the fire of the Spaniards. On the 27th the Edinburgh Regiment and six companies and a half of the 35th arrived, with two engineer officers, and several bombardiers, gunners, and matrosses, as certain artillery soldiers were then named. They assisted in loading, sponging, and firing great guns ; and, being armed with firelocks, could act as a guard. On the 2nd of April the admirals formed a plan for bombarding the pretty town of Algeziras, whence the enemy were constantly supplied ; but after getting under weigh their ships were be- calmed, and the design was abandoned. Captain Roderick Mackenzie, of the house of Cromarty, then serving with the fleet, joined the garrison as a volunteer, and, after serving during the siege, be- came a lieutenant in the Royal Dragoons. On the 16th the lieutenant-governor ordered two sergeants, with ten men each, to advance from the spur-guard under the Rock, and rouse the enemy in their trenches; giving them directions "to retire when they found their guards sufficiently alarmed, when he meant to salute them with grape from Willis's Battery and the lines." These orders were executed. The twenty-two brave fellows gave the Spaniards an alerte, and they beat to arms; but the bombardier gave fire from the batteries too soon, and the Conde de las Torres, seeing through the scheme, retired without much loss. ( The governor arrived on the 21st, with a bat- talion of the Line and one of the Guards. This officer -was the old Earl of Portmore, K.T., who had served in Flanders under the Duke of Ormond Portobello,] STRENGTH OF THE ARMY. 567 and had received the government of Gibraltar in the last year of Queen Anne's reign. Though bearing the name of Collier, he was in reality a Robertson, and a eadet of the house of Struan. With him came a number of nobles and gentlemen to serve as volunteers. On the 26th the Conde opened a new battery ; and in the beginning of May the garrisoi) had intel- ligence that it was intended to attempt the reduc- tion of Gibraltar by storm. Precautions were accordingly taken, and all the cannon on the lower works were loaded with grape and canister shot. By the 20th of May the incessant fire of the Spanish batteries began to abate; but their en- gineers still proceeded to advance the trenches. On the 31st there came from Lisbon 375 barrels of powder ; the Solebay soon after brought 980 more, with 500 thirteen-inch shells from Mahon ; and the firing was continued with terrible fury till ten o'clock on the night of the 12 th of June. Then, the Spanish drums were heard to beat a parley, and an officer came forward from their lines. He was admitted into the garrison, and proved to be Colonel Fitzgerald, of the Irish Brigade in the Spanish service, and then forming a portion of the blockading force under the Conde de las Torres. To the Earl of Portmore he delivered letters from the Dutch Minister then at the Court of Madrid, with a copy of the preliminaries of a general peace, whereupon a suspension of hostili- ties took place on both sides ; and Gibraltar still remained a portion of the British dominions, and a trophy of British prowess. The garrison lost about 300 officers and men in killed and wounded ; while the casualties of the enemy were estimated at nearly 3,000. Such was the wretched state of the cannon furnished for our batteries, that one hundred pieces burst during the siege ! It was somewhat strange that the Spaniards never attempted to cut off the communication by sea; so the garrison was regularly supplied with provisions and fascines from the coast of Barbary, and had a regular correspondence with England. At this time the British army consisted of six troops of Horse Guards, exclusive of the Blues; seven regiments of horse ; fourteen regiments of dragoons ; and forty of infantry. The daily pay of a colonel was £i 4s. ; of a lieutenant-celonel and captain, 17s. ; major, 15s. ; captain, los. ; lieu- tenant, 4s. 8d. ; and a private, 8d. No Highlanders were as yet in the service ; and of the corps above enumerated, the 4th troop of Horse Guards, the 2nd of Horse Grenadier Guards, the 3rd Foot Guards, the 2nd and 7 th Dragoons, and four battalions of infantry alone were Scots. CHAPTER CIX. PORTOBELLO, 1739- When an expedition was planned against the Spanish settlements in the West Indies, the com- mand was assigned to Rear-Admiral Vernon, who on this occasion was promoted to the rank of Rear- Admiral of the Blue. On the 24th of July he sailed from Spithead, but was driven into Plymouth by contrary winds. While there he received intelli- gence that a Spanish squadron was cruising off Cape Finisterre, for the protection of the fleet from Azogues, a town of Ecuador ; so he steered for the coast of Portugal. On the 9th of August he learned that the Spanish squadron had put into Cadiz, so, leaving three vessels to watch the coast of Spain, he departed for the West Indies. The 3rd of October found him off Jamaica, where he was soon after joined by Commodore Charles Brown, whose broad pennant was flying on board the Hampton Court, a seventy-gun ship ; and, as the object of this expedition was principally the reduction of Portobello, a body of 200 troops was taken on board the fleet, which sailed from Port Royal on the Sth of November, and on the following day these instructions were issued to the six captains of the squadron : — " Upon making the land of Portobello, and having, a fair wind to favour them, and daylight for the attempt, to have the ships clear for immediate service, and on the proper signal to form line of battle as directed, and being formed, to follow in the same order of battle to the attack. As the north shore of the harbour of Portobello is repre- sented to the admiral to be a bold steep, on which stands the Castel de Ferro, or Iron Castle, Com- modore Brown and the ships that follow him are directed to pass the said fort within less than a cable's length distance, giving the enemy as warm a fire as possible, both from great guns and mus- 568 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Porlobello. ketry. Then Commodore Brown is to steer for the Gloria Castle, and anchor as near as he can to the easternmost part of it, for battering down all the defences ; but so as to leave room for Captain Mayne, in the Worcester, to anchor astern of him against the western bastion, and to do the same there. Captain Herbert, in the Norwich, after giving his fire at the Iron Castle, is to push on for the castle of San Jeronimo, lying to the eastward of the town, and to anchor as near it as possible, and batter it down. Captain Trevor, in the Strafford, following the admiral, is to anchor abreast of the eastern part of the Iron Castle, so as to leave room for Captain Waterhouse, in the Princess Louisa, to anchor astern of him, for battering the western part of the castle ; to continue there until the service is completed, and make themselves masters of it. If the weather is favourable for it on their going in, each ship, besides having a long- boat towing astern, is to have its barge alongside to tow the long-boats, with such part of the soldiers as go in them, and to come under the admiral's stern for his directing a descent, when he finds it most proper to order it. " From the men's inexperience in service, it will be necessary to prevent hurry and confusion, and a fruitless waste of powder and shot : the captains to give the strictest orders to their respective officers that no gun is to be fired but what they see properly levelled and direct the firing of; and that they strictly prohibit all their men from hallooing and making irregular noise that will only serve to throw them into confusion, till such time as the service is- performed, and when they have nothing to do but glory in the victory. " Such of the ships as have mortars and cohorns on board are ordered to use them in the attack." With his squadron, which consisted of six large vessels, carrying 2,495 seamen, and 200 soldiers, and was armed with 370 guns, on the 20th of November he arrived off Portobello ; and, to pre- vent being driven to the leeward, he came to an- chor about six leagues from the shore. Tlie town of Portobello, consisting then of one street extending along the shore, but crossed by others ascending the side of the mountain by the sea-washed side of which it is built, had two churches, two convents, and other pubUc buildings, but all chiefly built of wood. The entrance to its harbour is defended by the castle named Todo Ferro, or All Iron, on the north point, where the channel is about three-quarters of a mile broad. Opposite to the anchoring ground on the other side is another fort, called the Castello de la Gloria, between which and the town there juts a tongue of land, on which, in the days of Admiral Vernon, there stood the castle of San Jeronimo. The whole town and harbour being surrounded by high land, renders the latter a safe place for shipping, par- ticularly in that part of the Spanish main, which is subject to dreadful tempests. The mountains in the neighbourhood are of such a height that one of them, -called Monte Capiro, has its summit cpri- stantly veiled by thick dark clouds. In each of the forts there were usually some 300 Spanish soldiers. On the morning of the 21st, Admiral Vernon weighed anchor, and the squadron stood in-shore in order of battle. At two in the afternoon Com- modore Brown, in the Hampton Court, Captain David Dent, got close to the boasted Iron Castle, and opened upon it a furious cannonade, in which he was vigorously seconded by the flag-ship Burford, 70 guns ; then by the Norwich, 50, Captain Richard Heirbert; and the Worcester, 60, Captain Perry Mayne. These ships did great executioti, when the soldiers and other small-arm men, from the tops, poured a galling fire of musketry at the Spanish gunners and others who were in the batteries. They fell so fast that the survivors began to abandon their guns ; and then Admiral Vernon or- dered the boats to put off, the landing to begin, and the forts to be carried by assault, though no practi- cable breaches had as yet been made. As there were no scaling-ladders (which the ship carpenters could easily have provided), one soldier placed himself close to the rampart under an embrasure ; another climbed upon his shoulders and got in. They proceeded then to draw each other up in succession from the boats, and soon became masters of the Iron Castle, the guns of which they proceeded to turn on the other forts, from which the Spaniards, with unparalleled pusillanimity, fled into the town, where, breaking loose from all discipline, they plun- dered the houses, defied their officers, and com- mitted the greatest outrages upon the helpless people. On finding matters thus, the Spanish governor hoisted a white flag and surrendered at discretion, on which firing ceased from the ships. Next day, the casdes of San Jeronimo and Gloria capitulated. Two ships, each armed with 20 guns, were taken in the harbour, and 10,000 dollars, which had been sent to Portobello for payment of the Spanish garrison, were, by order of Admiral Vernon, distributed among the seamen of his fleet. His total loss did not exceed twenty men. There were captured 40 iron battery guns, 10 field- pieces, /I mortars, 18 pateraroes, and a vast quantity tkrthagena.j LORD CATHCART. 569 of powder and shot, all bf which were placed on board the ships. He knocked the trunnions off 200 pieces of cannon. As Vernon was resolved that the place should no longer be an asylum for the guarda castas of the Spaniards, he gave instructions for the demolition of the fortifications. ' This somewhat arduous service he entrusted to Captains Charles Knowles, of the Diamond, and [the Honourable Edward Boscawen, son of Viscount Falmouth, who served " as a volunteer with the expedition, his own ship, the Shoreham, having been left at Jamaica to refit. By the 1 3th of December the mines, in which 122 barrels of powder were placed, were sprung with the greatest effect, and the ramparts of Portobello were hurled into the sea, or scattered over the land in shapeless ruin (" Beatson's Memoirs," &c.) On the same day the admiral sailed for Jamaica, and on his way dispatched Captain Rentone, in the Triumph, snow, with news of his success to London, where the people " were wonderfully elated," says Smollett, "by an exploit which was magnified beyond its merit. The Commons granted everything the Crown thought proper to demand. They provided for 28,000 land forces, besides 6,000 Marines." Captain Rentone was presented with 200 guineas, and received the rank of post-captain ; and to Admiral Vernon was sent the freedom of the City of London in a gold box. Rentone was afterwards killed, when captain of the Stafford, at the attack on Port Louis, in March, 1748. From the unhealthy nature of its climate, Porto- bello was usually named in those days the " Grave of the Spaniards ; '' and the memory of Vernon's exploit is still preserved at a watering-place and summer resort three miles westward of Edinburgh. There, when the land was a waste and open moor, an old seaman who had served under him built a small cottage by the side of the Roman way, and named it Portobello; and in the process of time there sprung around it a thriving burgh, still so called, and in the High Street thereof his humble dwelling is still preserved with care. CHAPTER ex. CARTHAGENA, 1741. The reduction of Portobello by Admiral Vernon encouraged the British to further enterprises in the war with Spain, and they aimed at nothing less than the total destruction of all her settlements in the New World. With this view a fleet was dispatched to the South Sea, under Commodore Anson, with orders to ravage the shores of ChiH and Peru; while another, consisting of twenty-seven sail of the line, besides frigates, fire-ships, bomb-ketches, victuallers, and transports, under Sir Chaloner Ogle, with 10,000 troops on board, departed for the West Indies, to reinforce Admiral Vernon, and to co-operate with Anson by means of intelligence which was to be conveyed across the Isthmus of Darien. Charles, Lord Cathcart, a noble of approved honour and high experience, commanded the forces. He had been an ofiGicer of the Scottish cavalry in 1706, and had served in the wars of Queen Anne. He was greatly beloved in the service by the sea- men and soldiers alike, and a knowledge of this made him use' the following words to Admiral Vernon : — " In the troops I bring you there is spirit — there is good-will ! These, when properly conducted, will produce, I hope, what the nation expects from us ; will make us the glorious instruments of finishing the war, with all the advantages to the public that its happy beginning promises, and with this dis- tinguishing circumstance, that those happy effects have been owing to a perfect harmony between the sea and land forces." So wrote the gallant Cathcart; but in the sequel want of harmony proved the ruin of the arma- ment. The troops consisted of the 15th, or Har- rison's, and the 24th, or Wentworth's, Regiments, and seven others, making, with the artillery, 12,000 men. The fleet touched at the island of Dominica, and there the general died of dysentery, on the 20th of December, 1740. The command of the troops then devolved on Brigadier-General Wentworth, an officer unfortunately without either experience, authority, or resolution. He had nothing in common with Vernon, save obstinacy, and as great a contempt for the sea service as the admiral had for the land ; but these two ill-assorted leaders, on being reinforced by some troops from the North American Co'onies, determined to attack Car- thagena. As the fleet sailed along the coast of Hispaniola, 57° BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Cartiiageria. four large ships of war were discovered, and Sir Chaloner dispatched an equal number of his squadron to give them chase, while he proceeded on his voyage. As those strange ships refused to bring to, Lord Augustus Fitzroy, the commodore, saluted them with a broadside in the dark, and a smart engagement began. Tlic-y fought during the greater part x)f the night, and when day dawned the enemy hoisted their colours. It was then found that Lord Fitzroy had were the American Regiment, of four battalions, and a body of negroes voted by the Assembly of Jamaica, and stated at 5,000. Had these forces been ready to act in the proper season of the year, under the orders of officers of wisdom and experience, and united in council, Havanah and the whole of Cuba might have been conquered for Britain, and the entire treasures of the Spanish West Indies been hers; but the Ministry had detained Sir Chaloner Ogle uselessly 7/Iaiiau PLAN OF THE KATTLE OF DETTINOEN. been fighting with four vessels of France, with which country we were, as yet, at peace ! "The English and French commanders com- plimented each other," says Smollett, who served as a surgeon on this expedition, " excused themselves mutually for the mistake which had happened, and parted as friends, with a considerable loss of men on both sides." Sir Chaloner Ogle, in the meantime, reached Jamaica, where he joined Admiral Vernon, who then found himself at the head of the most formid- able armament that had ever been in tlT^se seas. The conjoined squadrons consisted of the num- ber stated, with 15,000 seamen 0.1 board; and the land forces were in all 12,000. Among these at Spithead, until the periodical rains began, causing in the climate where the forces were to act epi- demical distempers of the most disastrous kind. After being supplied with wood and water at Hispaniola, the fleet sailed for New Spain, and on the 4th of March,. 1741, came to anchor in Playa Grande to the windward of Carthagena. This city is situated on a peninsula or sandy island, which is joined to the continent by two narrow necks of land, the broadest of which is not more than seventy yards wide. Then, as now, the houses were mostly built of stone, with only ore story abpve the ground floor ; and to the eye of a stranger the streets, though straight, wide, and uniform, present the melancholy aspect of cloisters Caithagcna.] MUTUAL COMPLIMENTS. S7I S7i BRITISH BATTLfiS ON LAND ANt) StiA. f Carthageld: as they have long galleries, clumsy columns, dark arcades, and projecting terraced roofs. Its inhabit- ants might then have numbered 20,000. On a neigh- bouring hill stood the citadel of San Lazare, which commanded the town, and in some measure the harbour. The latter, two leagues in extent, is one of the best and safest of South America. At the time when the trade of the Spanish settlements was carried on by their stately galleons, those ships always sailed to Carthagena before they went to Portobello, and since those days its trade has declined. Around it are mountains and forests that swarm with leopards and tigers ; but there are also those fruitful valleys which the natives call savannahs. Carthagena was strongly fortified, and its garri- son had been reinforced by the crews of a small squadron commanded by Don Bias de Leon, an officer of known valour and reputation. Admiral Vernon remained inactive till the 9th of March, when the troops — chiefly the grenadiers — were landed- on the island of Tierra Bomba, near the mouth of the harbour, known as La Boca Chica (or the little entrance), which, says Smollett, "was surprisingly fortified with castles, batteries, bombs, chains, cables, and ships of war." Tierra Bomba is six miles in breadth by nine in length, and- at its southern extremity are two forts for the defence of the Boca Chica. The British forces erected a battery on shore. With the guns from this they effected a breach in the principal fort; while the admiral sent in a number of ships to divide the fire of the enemy, and co-operate with the army. Lord Aubrey Beauclerk, a gallant officer, who commanded one of those ships, was slain on this occasion. Smollett describes the cannonading as indeed terrible, for the fire of the Spaniards proceeded from eighty, four great guns, besides a mortar and small arms, in Boca Chica, thirty-six in Fort San Jos^, twenty-two in fascine batteries, a,nd from four men-of-war, sixty-four guns each. These were answered by one land battery, mounted with twenty-one cannon, two mortars, and twenty-four cohorns, and by five great ships of seventy and eighty guns, that fired without intermission. The breach being deemed practi- cable, the land and sea forces advanced to the attack ; but the fascine batteries and the Castillo Grande were, contrary to all expectation, aban- doned by the Spaniards, as were the Boradera Bat- tery and Fort San Jos6, and they were all quietly taken possession of by our troops. Of this occasion, an old officer of the 15 th Foot relates the following anecdote : — His regiment had landed towards the close of the day nearly within musket-shot of the fort of San Louis de Boca Chica. "An officer with a proper party was posted as near as safety would permit to this fortress, with orders to acquaint the commanding officer of the forts we had taken pos- session of if the Spaniards attempted anything. If they remained quiet, he was to retire at daybreak. Between ten and eleven at night he sent word by a sergeant 'that ,400 Spaniards were coming to attack us.' This caused no small bustle ; but by . the time we had made the necessary dispositions for their reception he sent in word again that ' they had retired.' These alarms and contradictions continued for four hours, to the great fatigue of our garrison. At length, the commanding officer, quite tired with this proceediiig, sent out an officer from the fort upon the next alarm, to reconnoitre where and what this body was. When he came to the officer of the advanced guard, he was shown some- thing that had very much the appearance of a body of men in white clothes, the general uniform of th5 Spaniards, with black hats on. " While looking at them they suddenly disap- peared again, which the officer of the guard or picket said ' was owing to their being marched down into some hollow ground. The other officer was puzzled, and knew not what to think. On advancing a little they suddenly appeared in line again, and as suddenly vanished. A near recon- naisance proved that what had caused so many alarms was only a grove of manchineel trees, whose bark is white, which the Spaniards had cut down to within five feet from the ground, and had burned the tops of these stumps, thus giving thetn black hats to their white clothes. Added to this, the sky was full of flying clouds, which very frequently darkened the moon" ("Advice to Officers," Perth). On the destruction of the Spanish ships which lay across the mouth of the harbour, the passage was opened, and the fleet entered without molest- ation. The troops were then embarked with the artillery, and re-landed within a mile of Carthagena, into which they drove a body of Spanish infantry. " The admiral and general," Smollett states, " had contracted a hearty contempt for each other, and took every ppportunity of expressing their mutual dislike. Far from acting vigorously in concert for the advantage of the community, they maintained a mutual reserve and separate cabals, and each proved more eager for the disgrace of his rival than zealous for the honour of the nation." General Wentworth complained that the fleet lay idle while the troops were harassed by hard duty and sickness. The admiral asserted that his. ships could not lie near enough to batter the town of Carthagena; and upbraided the brigadier with Carthagena.] COLONEL GRANT SLAIN. 573 inactivity and lack of resolution in attacking Fort San Lazare, which commanded the town, and ought, he urged, to be taken by escalade. So, fired by these reproaches, the general resolved to make the attempt, and to the grenadiers, under Colonel Grant, was assigned the perilous honour of leading the way, though the fort had not been breached. Instead of the assault taking place at night, it was made in the morning ; the guides were killed, and the stormers were thus led, in mistake, to the strongest face of the citadel, where their scaling- ladders proved too short, and they were exposed helplessly to a dreadful fire, while all the wool-packs and hand-grenades had been left in the rear. During this crisis the admiral, in pursuance of his feud with the general, neglected to divert the attention of the enemy by firing on the town from the seaward, or even using his bomb-ketches. In consequence of all these blunders and omissions, the unfortunate troops found themselves uselessly exposed to the whole fire of the fort, great guns and small-arms, and partly to that of the city. A mere carnage ensued, and ere the drums beat a retreat. Colonel Grant and 600 grenadiers were killed, and a vast number were wounded. Discouraged by this ill-concerted effort, the be- siegers gave up all hope of being able to reduce the place. Of 3,000 able men who had landed at La Quinta, some 1,500 alone remained fit for service. The rainy season set in with such violence that the embarkation of all the survivors became necessary. The heat is excessive and continual at Carthagena, and the incessant torrents from May to November have the peculiarity that they never cool the air. The night, says Ulloa, is as hot as the day, hence the inhabitants, wasted by profuse perspiration, have the pale and livid appearance of sick persons. The troops were no sooner on board than the admiral made a feeble attempt to bombard the town, in order to convince Wentworth of its im- practicability. That officer asserted, however, that such a mode of attack, if properly conducted, must eventually reduce the place to ruin ; that a floating battery, which had been prepared and manned by volunteers from different ships, under Captain Hore, did not lie in the proper place for annoying the enemy; that the water was there too shallow to admit large ships near enough to batter the town with any prospect of success ; but that a little to the left four or five ships of the line might have been moored within pistol-shot of the walls. The distempers peculiar to the climate and season began to rage with greater fury after the re- embarkation of the troops on board the small and ill-ventilated ships of those days, and a uni- universal dejection seemed to settle over all. No- thing was heard from ship to ship but complaints and execrations, mingled with the groans of the dying and the funeral service for the dead. In many instances the latter rites were entirely dis- pensed with. "Such was the economy in some ships, that rather than be at the trouble of interring the dead, their commanders ordered their men to throw the bodies overboard, many without ballast or winding-sheet; so that numbers of human carcases floated in the harbour till they were de- voured by sharks and carrion crows, which afforded no agreeable spectacle to those who survived." During these horrors, from the 14th of April to the 8th of May, amid the torrents of rain was heard the roar of many an explosion ashore, where a body of seamen, under Captain Knowles, blew up the forts. When this was accomplished, the whole armament — or what remained of it — sailed for Jamaica, to the astonishment and confusion of all Britain. Though Vernon was reinforced by several ships of the line, and Wentworth by 3,000 infantry from England, and though they successively me- naced Panama and San Jago de Cuba, they effected nothing of consequence, notwithstanding the loss of 20,000 men by pestilence and the bullet. At Cuba His Majesty's ship Squirrel alone captured some prizes. It is related that some of her crew, when pursuing some Spaniards into a wood, found one lying dead on a British regimental colour. He rolled the body off", says Captain Schomberg, swearing "that no Spaniard should lie on so honour- able a bed." In a corner of this standard were found a packet of letters, which were alleged to be of great consequence. No uniform had yet been adopted by the officers of the Royal Navy, and a recent writer has described the " tar " of those days as being very peculiarly dressed. " A little low cocked hat, a ' pea jacket ' (a sort of cumbrous Dutch cut coat), a pair of petticoat trousers, not unlike a Scottish kilt, tight stockings, with pinchbeck buckles on his shoes, constituted his amphibious fit-out He had as yet no pigtail, but excepting this useful deprivation, no costume could be less adapted for a seaman's work. Fancy a man in this attire at the masthead, sending down a top- gallant yard, or hauling out a weather-earing, in a close-reef-topsail breeze ! The " tar " of Trafalgar, was another queer sort of fellow ; his jacket was short, and though his tail, half-mast down his back, brought him up now and then with a round turn, he had no useless coat skirts to be caught in the sheave of a block, an accident by which his pre- decessor in the days of Benbow not unfrequently lost what he called his ' precious limbs.' " 574 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Oettingen. CHAPTER CXL DETTINGEN, 1 743. This eventful battle, the last in which a crowned King of England and Scotland drew his sword, was fought during the war of the Austrian Succession. The Elector of Bavaria was chosen Emperor of Germany at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, and was crowned as Charles VII., on the nth of February, 1742. He was, however, a most unhappy prince; his electoral dominions were overrun by the Austrians, the French were driven out of Bohemia, and the King of Prussia, under the mediation of King George II., concluded a peace at Breslau with the Queen of Hungary. The King of Britain resolving to take a more active part in the war, an army, under Field-Marshal John Earl of Stair, was ordered to embark for the Netherlands in the summer of 1742, for the support of Maria Theresa. Early in the year 1743 the Earl of Stair marched this army towards the Rhine, and in May encamped near Hochst, on the Maine. At this time the loose coats and breeches of the line were tightened, and the hats looped up on three sides; while the 7th, or South British Fusiliers, and the 2ist and 23rd, or Scots and Welsh Fusiliers, figured for the first time in those peculiar conical caps which came into vogue with the Prussian tactics. Their coats had collars, their skirts were buttoned back and faced with blue, but numbers were not put upon the buttons until 1767. About the middle of February the roads through which the troops had to march were almost im- passable on account of the snow. When at Kellen- buch and Aschaffenberg, in that beautiful district of Bavaria, where the slopes are covered with vines, and the timber is floated down the Maine and Rhine from the dense forests of Spessart and Oldenwald, the army found itself hemmed in and all supplies cut off by the able dispositions of the French commander. Marshal Noailles, who, in the beginning of June, had crossed the Rhine with an army of 60,000 men. In this condition His Majesty George II. found matters when 'he landed at Helvoetsluys, and as- sumed the nominal command of the army, on the 9th of June. Lord Stair had determined not to decline a battle, and had marched up the Rhine to Aschaf- fenberg with that view, while the enemy kept pace with him on the opposite bank. As the Allies pur- sued the course of the river, and the French took the direct line, the latter gained the wood near the bridge about the same time that the Allies reached the town. When the king, accompanied by the Duke of Cumberland arrived, he found the contending armies encamped on those fertile and beautiful plains which border on the Maine, opposite each other, under a ridge of hills covered with wood in all the full foliage of summer. The Allies lay on the north, and the enemy on the south, side. Four miles east of Aschaffenberg is Dettingen, in the circle of the Unter Maine, where that river is about sixty yards broad. For about a league the land through which it flows is low and level, after which it becomes mountainous and beautifully wooded. A mile below Aschaffenberg the small river Aschaff, brawling and foaming among vine- covered rocks, runs from the hills to mingle with the Maine. Another rivulet, called the Beck, falls into the same river just above Dettingen, between which and the Aschaff is the picturesque little Bavarian hamlet of Klein Osten. On the south of the Maine rises the spire of Hochstadt, and facing Dettingen is the village of Mainpling. The southern bank of the river is generally much higher than the other, and the lower portion of the ground, to within a mile and a half of the edge, consisted of wild and tengled woods, with wet morasses. The position of the Allies extended about two miles from Aschaffenberg, one of the strongest forts in the Elector's dominions, to Klein Ostein, and inclined towards the wooded mountains a few hundred paces from the river. The right wing, composed of the white-coated Austrian battalions, was at Klein Ostein ; the blue masses of the Hanoverians, posted in two lines, formed the centre ; and the British on the left — all posts of honour being in those days assigned to foreigners — occupied the town and vicinity of Aschaffenberg. From the bridge of the latter the enemy readied to the river at Selingenstadt. The Allies were suffering so greatly from the want of provisions, that Voltaire asserts it was found necessary to hamstring the horses, as they were with- out forage; and in fact they were nearly surrounded, when tidings came of a sudden success of Prince Charles of Lorraine, in Bavaria, and of the speedy Dettingen.]. THE KING'S RED COAT. 575 coming of 12,000 fresh Hanoverians and Hessians, who were within two days' march of Hanau. It was justly apprehended, as the enemy com- manded the lower part of the river, that any troops attempting to advance beyond Hanau would be intercepted. The king, however, was determined that the junction should be accompHshed ; and re- solved to march for that town and join his country- man, the Prince of Hesse-Cassel, who was expected there, and who was acquiring great wealth by trafficking in the lives of his subjects, whom he lent to Britain to fight her battles in America and else- where. On the night of the 13th of June, Marshal Noailles moved his camp farther into the woods, to frustrate the king's purpose : and on the same evening his troops set fire to great quantities of wood and straw, which at first led the AlHes to suppose they were in retreat ; but in reality, under cover of the confusion and obscurity caused by the smoke rolling among the woodlands, they were hard at work with pick and shovel, intrenching them- selves. So wisely had Noailles taken all his measures, that it was thought that the Allies, then about 40,000 strong, would be forced to capitulate as prisoners of war, or be cut to pieces. The king, detecting certain movements on the French left, ordered all tents to be struck at gun- fire, and the troops to remain under arms till break of day, when they were to move from the right in two great columns. As he felt confident that any attempt of the French would be on his rear, he ordered the three battations of the British Guards, and four of those of Lunenburg, with twenty-six squadrons of Hanoverian cavalry and a brigade of guns, to cover this operation. Noailles, shrewdly suspecting the Allies would commence their march under cloud of night, gave orders that Antoine, the Marshal Duke de Gram- mont, should cross the Maine at Selingenstadt, to prevent this intended junction with the Prince of Hesse. He also dispatched 12,006 men towards Aschaffenberg to get possession of the bridge on its being quitted by the Allies, calculating that he would leave them no retreat on that side; and to conceal these movements, they marched in pro- found silence from the banks of the Maine circuit- ously through the woods. So the morning of Dettingen dawned. On this .day the king appeared in the same red coat which he had worn thirty-five years before, under the Duke ot Marlborough. Thackeray says, " On public occasions he always displayed the hat and coat he wore on the famous day of Oudenarde ; and the people laughed, but kindly, at the odd old garment, for bravery never goes out of fashion." The route begun at daybreak by the troops was a dangerous one, as it lay between a mountain and the Maine, over which the French had been per- mitted most unaccountably to erect many bridges. Thus it- was soon discovered, states the London Gazette, that they had passed over bodies of troops in the night. The king rode at the head of the seven bat- talions of Guards. Sunrise saw the French army drawn up in order of battle, in two long glittering lines, on a green plain behind a wood where the right wing of the Allies was posted. Their right was covered by the Maine, and protected by a battery on the other side of the river. The splendidly-accoiftred troops of the Royal Household were in the centre, sup- ported by infantry of the line. The left wing extended towards mountains covered by vineyards and copsewood. In the morning the French infantry, says one relation, crossed two bridges at Selingenstadt, while their cavalry forded the river at the same place, taking possession of the village of Dettingen. Having made all those dispositions, by which he flattered himself he would compel the Allies to attack the French under the greatest disadvan- tages, Marshal Noailles, with his staff, recrossed the Maine, in order the better to watch the various movements of the hostile armies. Meanwhile, the Duke de Grammont, his nephew and lieutenant-general, who held Dettingen with 30,000 men — all select troops, among whom were the princes of the blood and a host of noblesse, all eager for battle — passed the defile behind which they were posted, and advanced into a small plain, called the Cock-field, where the Allies were in order of battle. Noailles, when he beheld this unexpected move- ment, was filled with astonishment, and even with grief, at the rashness or madness of Grammont, in foregoing all the advantages of his position. " Grammont," he exclaimed, " has ruined all my plans!" He made all the haste he could to form a new disposition ; but he arrived too late to repair the fatal mistake. This was about twelve o'clock in the day ; and on the approach of the French, who were now the attacking, and not as their general intended, the attacked force, the king ordered his first line of infantry to advance, under his second son, the Duke of Cumberland, and Lieutenant-Generals Clayton and Sommerfeldt, 576 BRITISH BATTLES ON LAND AND SEA. [Dettingen. Lord Carteret relates that as His Majesty rode down the line, he brandished his sword, crying — " Now, my brave boys ! Now, for the glory of old England, advance boldly ! " Half way on the line of infantry halted, and gave a hearty cheer, after which they continued a rapid advance towards the enemy. During some of these movements the king was nearly taken by the enemy, and would have been so but for the valour of the 22nd Regiment, who in remembrance of this wear a sprig of oak in their caps on gala days. From their right, the troops of the French Household advanced on the left of the Allies, or Confederates "as they were called, and commenced an irregular fire, which rapidly became general along the whole line of both arniies, and then the entire field of Dettingen presented a scene of smoke, slaughter, and dreadful uproar The Allies still continued to advance, notwith- standing a tremendous front and flank fire from the enemy, which galled them severely, and laid the dead and wounded in piles over each other. On the left, the French cavalry, with horses spurred at full speed, fell sword in hand upon the Austrian cavalry; and many a hussar and cuirassier went down to rise no more. The Austrians were at once disordered ; " but the British and Hanoverian infantry, animated by the presence of their sove- reign, who rode between the lines with his sword drawn, stood firm as rocks, and poured forth an incessant fire, which nothing could resist. These impenetrable battalions, however, by a masterly manoeuvre, on the approach of the French cavalry, led by the nobility and princes of the blood, who rushed on in desperation, opened their lines, and afterwards closing again, made great havoc in that gallant body." Before this took place, however, the French, in their headlong charge, drove in the King's and Ligonier's regiments of horse, which had been sent to the front by Lord Stair. They next drove in the Horse Guards, under General Honeywood ; and then it was that the infantry opened their ranks, and executed the manoeuvre by which the House- hold Cavalry of France were totally destroyed. Accompanied by his aide-de-camp, the Earl of Dumfries, the Earl of Stair then rode up to the infantry, and told them that they might yet have the entire glory of beating the French, whose third line was now seen drawn up in beautiful order. Three hearty cheers were the response to this, and once more the grand old British line resumed its steady advance ; and their attack was conducted with such impetuous gallantry that the whole French army gave way, their confusion being in- creased by the Hanoverian artillery, which came galloping through a wood, and suddenly opened fire upon them. Absolute terror is said to have seized the French, " Save himself who can ! " was the cry on all sides. In Voltaire's "Age of Louis XIV.," he states that the Marquis de Puysegur, son of the marshal of that name, called to the soldiers pf his regi- ment, and tried m vain to rally them ; and that he even killed some that were rushing from their ranks with the cry of " Sauve qui pent /" Marshal Noailles found himself compelled to retreat across the Maine, with the loss of 5,000 men ; and had he been hotly pursued, the broken masses of his army must have been totally destroyed. He had many drowned in the passage of the Maine, and lost three pairs of colours. The loss of the Allies was about 3,000 men, including Generals Murray and Clayton. The Duke of Cumberland, the Earl of Albemarle, General Huske, and many other officers of rank wtxt wounded. Voltaire observes that the French suffered greatly, and the excellent dispositions of their generals were rendered abortive by the same precipitation, ardour, and want of steadiness which lost France the battles of Poictiers, Cressy, and Agincourt. After the junction was formed at Hanau, the Earl of Stair proposed that as the numbers were now equal on both sides, the French should be attacked at once : but, to the astonishmwit of all Europe, the king declined. On this the earl, who was one of the first sol- diers of the age, and had ever resented the king's marked preference for Hanoverian over British officers, resigned his command, and returned to Scotland. The pine woods which adorn his house of Newliston, near Edinburgh, are said to have been planted by him in the position in which he had arranged the allied troops at the battle of Dettingen. Though honourable to those who won it, the victory was productive of no decisive results ; and both armies, after some unimportant movements, retired into winter-quarters in October. An aged soldier, named Robert Fergusson, who died at Paisley in 18 11, in his ninety-seventh year, preserved to the last^ as a precious relic, the old red coat of Handyside's Foot, the 22nd Regiment, in which he had been wounded at the battles of Dettingen and Fontenoy, just as future years may see some veteran preserving the faded, and, perhaps, blood-stained tunic which he wore when with Raglan at Alma, or with Havelock at Lucknow. V