CHAPTER XX.
THE SACK OF CHERBOURG.
During the reign of Louis XIV. plans had been proposed by the celebrated Marshal Vauban, for the fortification of Cherbourg; these were then only partially carried into effect, but a noble and spacious harbour had subsequently been formed. Two piers, one a thousand, the other five hundred, feet in length, had been built, and outer and inner basins were made large enough to contain ships of the line; these basins were closed by gates each forty-two feet wide.
To destroy these, General Bligh had fifteen hundred soldiers at work making blasts, and so well did they prosecute the art of destruction, that the labour of thirty years, and the expense of one million two hundred thousand pounds (English) perished in a few days. In short, the noble harbour of Cherbourg was utterly ruined, and the shipping it contained was given to the flames.
We took twenty-four tons of gunpowder out of the French magazines, and blew up or threw down all the bastions and batteries along the shore, from Fort Querqueville to the Isle Pelee, and dismounted, or flung into the sea, one hundred and sixty-three pieces of cannon and three mortars, with a vast quantity of shot and shell. Two mortars and twenty-two beautiful guns, all of polished brass, together with several colours (among them, of course, the standard taken by poor Jack Charters), were put on board the commodore's ship.
On the side of one of the great sluice-gates I saw an inscription in French to the following effect:—
"Louis and Fleury trust to Asfield's care,
Amid the waves to raise this mighty pier,
Propitious to our prayers the fabric stood,
Curbed the fierce tide, and tamed the threatening flood,
Hence wealth and safety flow—hence just renown,
The king, the statesman, and the hero crown!
This work, by command of Louis XV.
The advice of Cardinal Fleury, and direction of Count Asfield,
Shall endure for ever!"
Scarcely had I finished reading this, than an officer of our regiment called to me—
"Hallo! look out! stand back there!"
He had a match in his hand, which he applied to a train, and in one minute the whole fabric, with a tremendous concussion, rent, split, rose into the air amid a cloud of smoke, and vanished as it sank into the surf that boiled over it.
Two armed ships which lay in the inner basin we despatched to England, and eighteen others we burned or sunk filled with stones. On the people of Cherbourg a contribution of forty-four thousand livres was levied by beat of drum; and so rapidly did our miners and devastators do their work, that the whole place was a scene of melancholy ruin and desolation before the Count de Raymond could muster forces of the line sufficient to dislodge us, for France had then two armies in Germany.
Thus, all our troops were on board, and the whole armament ready for sea by the 17th of August; our total loss, after having destroyed, what was styled in the prints of the day, "that most galling thorn in the side of British commerce," being only Captain Lindsay of the Scots Greys, and twenty-four others killed, some thirty wounded, and ten horses.
The whole army re-embarked without molestation at Fort Galette, about three o'clock in the morning.
The commodore, who had now, by the death of his brother, who fell at the head of the 55th Regiment in the disastrous affair of Ticonderoga, succeeded to the title of Viscount Howe, gave the signal for sea, and we sailed on the evening of the 17th for England. I was again on board his ship with the light troop of my regiment.
The destruction I had witnessed, and the distress and alarm of the poor unoffending people, sickened me of war for a time, and I felt happy when we bore up the Channel, though still haunted by memories of the land of Brittany, on which I should never look again—a land of stern and dreary mountains, of dark primæval forests, of rocky bluffs, of ruined castles and giant monoliths—the land where I loved so tenderly and endured so terribly.
On the 19th I saw Old England again, and the whole fleet came to anchor in Portland Roads.
The colours and brass guns taken at Cherbourg, after being exhibited to gaping multitudes in Hyde Park, were drawn in triumph through all the principal streets of London, as the spoil of conquered France, amid a noisy pomp that brought ridicule on the ministry. After this they were lodged in the Tower.
Instead of being sent home to Scotland, as we had fondly speculated, the light troop of the Scots Greys now marched through Dorsetshire and Hampshire into Sussex, where we reached the head-quarters of the regiment, then under orders to join the army in Germany.
Our fine old colonel—"auld Geordie Buffcoat," as the corps named him—complimented the troop for its uniform good conduct during the two expeditions to the coast of France, and hoped that when on the Rhine we should still prove ourselves "to be his own brave lads, who were second to none!”