Page images
PDF
EPUB

sails; by the 28th all had disappeared, with the exception of two large vessels left to cruise before the island and intercept its water communication.

The long stay of the Spanish fleet excited apprehensions among the French that it was waiting to be joined by the squaddron from Vera Cruz. When, therefore, on the first of September, sails were again sighted in the Gulf, as no ships were expected from France, the general anxiety became keen. It changed to wildest joy as three war-ships of the royal navy neared, escorting two loaded vessels belonging to the Company. They were the "Hercules," of sixty cannon, under the Comte de Champmeslin, the "Mars," of fifty-eight, and the "Triton," of fifty-six cannon. The Company's ship, the " Union," armed with forty-eight cannon, brought one hundred and ninety-nine passengers, and the fleet "Marie " a freight of provisions and merchandise. The Spanish cruisers took flight for Pensacola.

As soon as the good news reach him, Bienville hastened from Mobile, and with Serigny went aboard Champmeslin's ship, where a council of all the officers, military and marine, was held. The recapture of Pensacola and capture of the Spanish fleet was the unanimous determination; but it was decided not to proceed without a fortnight's preparation. The Company's ships, which were to be joined to the men-of-war, had to be unloaded, the "Philippe" to be got out to sea again and put in trim, and Bienville needed time to get his Indians together again and prepare their provisions. It was agreed that Champmeslin should take command of the fleet, and that Bienville, at the head of a company of soldiers and volunteers, should go in sloops as far as the Perdido River, where one of his officers was. to meet him with five hundred Indians, all of which was carried into effect. On the 15th of September the start was made. By the evening of the 16th Bienville had invested the fort by land, so that no escape on that side was possible. The next morning Champmeslin led his fleet into the bay. The large fort made very little defence. The small one on Ste. Rosa Island and the ships fought gallantly for two hours, at the end of which all surrendered. The plundering of the large fort was given to the Indians, who acquitted themselves, says the "Journal Historique," as men who knew their trade; but there was no scalping, Bienville having given orders against it. The same authority also states that Bienville restrained the ardor of his troops and held them back until Champmeslin had terminated his action, that the latter

might have the honors of the day, but that when the pillaging of the fort was completed, Champmeslin took possession of forts and ships, assigned the commands, decided upon the prisoners, and received the swords of the Spanish officers, trenching upon the rights of Bienville as commander of the province of Louisiana, and therefore as the sole appointer of landed commands which Bienville bore without protestation, for fear of prejudicing the service of the king.

Thirty-five of the French deserters were found among the Spanish prisoners. They were tried before a council of war; twelve were condemned to be hanged (and were hanged from the mast of the recaptured "Comte de Toulouse"), and the rest sent to the galleys.

It had been hoped that large quantities of munitions of war and provisions would be found in the fort. To the disappointment of the conquerors, the stores contained only a fifteen days' supply. Champmeslin was obliged, to get rid of feeding his prisoners, to send them to Havana on one of the captured ships. He retained the superior officers as sureties, and demanded a return of French prisoners, whose fate, according to a letter received from Chateauguay, was hardly in accordance with the articles of war. The Governor of Havana had not wished to give food either to officers or sailors, and the latter were forced to carry stone and do other work to gain a subsistence.

Stores were replenished by several Spanish vessels of provisions, decoyed into the old port by the exhibition of their national flags, one, a "pink," carried eighty soldiers, of whom it is chronicled with evident satisfaction that although well clothed in good uniforms, they were not despoiled of them.

One of the Company's vessels, loaded with merchandise for Dauphin Island, and with a present of wine and delicacies from the Company to the officers, was signalled into the new French port. The officers, not needing the wine and delicacies, disposed of them at very great profit.

The supineness of the Spaniard under dispossession was not to be counted on in the future. Before sailing away with his squadron, in October, Champmeslin burned the fort and all the buildings behind him, and left only an officer, with a file of men. and some savages, in charge, and to give notice of a new Spanish. attempt.

Bienville writes bitterly of the character and insufficiency of his forces, the cause of this unsatisfactory proceeding: -

"The Council will permit me to represent to it that it is very disagreeable for an officer in charge of a colony to have to defend it, only a band of deserters, convicts, and rascals who are always ready, not only to abandon you, but even to turn against you. What attachment to the country can these people have, who are sent here by force, and who have no hope of returning to their mother-country? Can one believe that they will not use all their efforts to deliver themselves from such a situation, particularly in a country as open as this is, by going either to the side of the English or the Spaniards? It seems to me that it is absolutely necessary, if it is desired to preserve this colony to the king, to send as much as possible only willing men, and to endeavor to procure for life here more comforts than have been enjoyed up to the present. . . . At any rate, what population we have in the colony is so scattered among the different establishments that our only forces are the savages, of whom we cannot make use at present, owing to the scarcity of provisions. If we had sufficient force we should be able to maintain ourselves against any efforts of the Spaniards, although they are, with the neighboring Havana and Vera Cruz, very powerful, unless they should send large vessels to cruise on our coasts and capture the supplies sent from France, which is their idea, from what we have heard from the French deserters. In this manner it would be very easy for them to throw us in the last extremity, and put it out of our power to preserve the colony, if the Company does not send us means strong enough to make our coasts secure."

ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE.

ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE, an English historian, born at Wilton House, near Taunton, Aug. 5, 1809; died Jan. 2, 1891. He was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his degree in 1832, and was called to the bar in 1837. Soon after he made a tour in European Turkey, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. Letters which he wrote to his friends were, several years later, in 1844, published under the title of " Eöthen" (from the East), a delightful record of personal experiences and a brilliant book of travel, with a light touch yet often penetrating to the springs of Oriental feeling. On his return from the East he entered upon practice in London as a chancery lawyer. In 1857 he was returned to Parliament. Besides "Eöthen" his only notable work is the "History of the Invasion of the Crimea" (1863-1888). He was a prominent anti-Napoleonite.

Kinglake was a man of independent means and remarkable talents, and a brilliant and powerful writer, but intensely partisan.

THE CHARGE OF THE Light Brigade.

(From "The Invasion of the Crimea. ")

AT first, as was natural, the enemy's gunners and riflemen were so far taken by surprise as to be hardly in readiness to seize the opportunity which Lord Cardigan was presenting to them; and indeed for some time the very extravagance of the operation masked its character from the intelligence of the enemy, preventing him from seeing at once that it must result from some stupendous mistake. But the Russians at length perceived that the distance between our Heavy Brigade and Lord Cardigan's squadrons was every moment increasing, and that, whatever might be the true meaning of the enterprise in which our Light Cavalry had engaged, the red squadrons were not under orders to give it that kind of support which the Englishman calls "thorough-going." This once understood, the enemy had fair means of inferring that the phenomenon of

ten beautiful squadrons moving down the North Valley in well-ordered lines, was not the commencement of anything like a general advance on the part of the Allies, and might prove after all to be hardly the result of design. Accordingly, with more or less readiness, the forces on the Causeway Heights, the forces on the Fedioukine Hills, and the twelve-gun battery which crossed the lower end of the valley, became all prepared to inflict upon our Light Cavalry the consequences of the fault which propelled it. It is true that the main body of the Russian cavalry, drawn up in rear of the confronting battery, had been cowed by the result of its encounter with Scarlett's dragoons; but when that has been acknowledged as a qualification of what is coming, it may be said that the three sides of the quadrangle in which our cavalry moved were not only lined with Russians, but with Russians standing firm to their duty.

Soon the fated advance of the Light Brigade had proceeded so far as to begin to disclose its strange purpose: the purpose of making straight for the far distant battery which crossed the foot of the valley, by passing for a mile between two Russian forces; and this at such ugly distance from each as to allow of our squadrons going down under a doubly flanking fire of round shot, grape, and rifle-balls, without the opportunity of yet doing any manner of harm to their assailants. Then from the slopes of the Causeway Heights on the one side and the Fedioukine Hills on the other, the Russian artillery brought its power to bear right and left; with an efficiency every moment increasing; and large numbers of riflemen on the slopes of the Causeway Heights, who had been placed where they were in order to cover the retreat of the Russian battalions, found means to take their part in the work of destroying our horsemen. Whilst Lord Cardigan and his squadrons rode thus under heavy cross-fire, the visible object they had straight before them was the white bank of smoke, from time to time pierced by issues of flame, which marks the site of a battery in action: for in truth the very goal that had been chosen for our devoted squadrons a goal rarely before assigned to cavalry— was the front of a battery; the front of that twelve-gun battery, with the main body of the Russian cavalry in rear of it, which crossed the lower end of the valley: and so faithful, so resolute, was Lord Cardigan in executing this part of what he understood to be his appointed task, that he chose out one of the guns which he judged to be about the center of the battery, rode straight

[ocr errors]
« PreviousContinue »