Chapter XLVIII: La Fleur D'epée

In the Grenadier brigade of Major-General H.R.H. Edward Duke of Kent (the father of her present Majesty), the Scots Fusiliers accompanied General Dundas, of Fingask, with the 6th, 9th, and 43rd regiments, to the reduction of the fertile and beautiful isle of St. Lucia, which we reached after two days' sail in hazy and rainy, but calm weather; and the conquest of which we completed in three days without the loss of a man, as General Ricard, with all the soldiers of the republic, capitulated and laid down their arms. When Ricard came forth, he had more lorettes under his colours than rank and file--hence perhaps the brevity of his defence.

I consider it very remarkable that there was not a single British soldier or seaman even wounded at the conquest of St. Lucia, although, as Sir Charles Grey mentions in his despatch, there had been heavy cannonading from the enemy's batteries; and in storming one near Morne Fortunée, Colonel Coote, at the head of four light companies, killed two French officers, with thirty of their soldiers, and spiked six pieces of great ordnance. In Morne Fortunée we found a vast quantity of plunder and military stores; and every man got as much rum and sangaree, with yams and plaintains, as he could carry off.

There is an old story of an English ship bound for Guinea, in the days of Charles I., having marooned sixty mutineers on this island, when the Caribs--its former inhabitants, fierce cannibals, who painted their naked bodies with yellow ochre, and drew a stripe of vermillion from ear to ear--tortured, roasted, and devoured the whole of them.

After the capture we left a garrison and re-embarked; the left wing was on board the _Adder_, the right on board the frigate of Lord Garlies, eldest son of the Earl of Galloway, a gallant Scottish naval officer, who bore a distinguished part in the reduction of the French Antilles.

The rocky islets named Los Santos by the adventurous Spaniards, who discovered them on the festival of All Saints, were our next scene of service, and a bloody one it proved.

On this expedition, we were despatched with the 1st and 2nd Grenadier battalions, a company of the 43rd Light Infantry, and 500 picked seamen and marines from the _Quebec_, the _Rose_, and the _Adder_. The naval brigade were led by Sir George Grey, of the _Boyne_, and the whole of the forces were under the command of old General Dundas.

We sailed from St. Lucia early in the morning; and as "The Saints" lie only a few miles distant from Martinique, we found ourselves within gun-shot of them about noon, when the forests of Marigalante, then about fifteen miles distant, were drooping in the hot sunshine.

These solitary isles are fifteen in number, and were chiefly frequented by the crews of British and French ships of war, pirates, slavers, and buccaneers, for the purposes of careening and refitting.

Terre de Bas, the most westerly, has a neat little wooden church, a few thickets and fields of sugar-cane, with excellent creeks for landing.

Terre de Haut is the most easterly, and the centre is a large barren rock, the haunt of myriads of sea birds.

The atmosphere, as we approached, was delightfully cool, as these isles have ever a fresh breeze, let the wind blow from whatever quarter it may. As we drew near, they rose under a dazzling sky, with clouds of that conical form, so frequently seen in the Antilles, floating over them. Birds of gaudy plumage flew about us; around us rippled a sea of the deepest green, and in its wondrous depth waved giant plants that sprung from the coral beds a hundred feet below; and little silvery fishes were sporting among this saline foliage which was brushed aside by the keels of the squadron, as we crept in shore.

The old palisadoed fort, on which Francis Lord Willoughby of Parham, unfurled the red cross of St. George in the olden time, still commanded the chief harbour; but the French had added many modern works thereto, and all these we stormed at the point of the bayonet and demolished.

On these isles, the buccaneers and filibustiers of former days--the compatriots of Kidd, of Morgan, and the terrible Lolonois--were said to store their treasure, and to slay a negro or a prisoner and bury him with it, that his unquiet spirit might haunt the spot and guard the gold till their return. Thus a human skeleton above a hoard of Spanish dollars and doubloons has more than once been found in the creeks of Los Santos, as elsewhere in the Indian isles, and on the shores of the Gulf of Florida.

After their capture, the expedition sailed at once to reduce the isle of Guadaloupe.

At one in the morning we crowded into the boats of the squadron, and in silence put off from our ships in Gosier Bay. The atmosphere was still and calm, and the vast depth of the sea could be seen by the clear light of the reflected stars; thus we could almost distinguish the _base_ of the rocks in the bay, among the sand and shells, or weeds and coral beds, below.

Eight boats abreast, we dashed into the bay.

The earl selected a landing-place where the evergreen mangroves dipped their branches in the dancing ripples that ran in silver foam upon the black volcanic rocks, and where the beach of the creek was covered by layers of those beautiful shells of silver, blue, and rose colour, the conch used of old by the savage Carib as a trump for war, and those marked by musical notes and used--as the buccaneer traditions tell--by the mermaids (and spirits of women drowned at sea) when singing. There, too, lay the mother-of-pearl oysters, which, says an old writer, usually lie at the foot of the great rocks, appearing at sunrise above the water "to gape for the clew, and when they have received a drop, closing their shells, and sinking down again."

At the moment our leading line of boats grounded, the clear sky on both sides of the little bay became filled with curved lines of vertical light, as a storm of rockets, ascending from Fort Gosier on one side, and La Fleur d'Epée on the other, rushed like meteors of fire far aloft, and exploding, fell in showers of twinkling stars, the descent of which, enabled the French gunners on the batteries to direct their shot against us.

A large shell from La Fleur d'Epée (the strongest fortress in Guadaloupe) came revolving and humming through the air; we could trace its course by the lighted fuse.

"Stoop!" cried the earl; "down, lads, down!"

It fell harmlessly into the water alongside of the Duke of Kent's boat; a second that came, exploded near our company. We saw the brilliant flash among the dark mangrove leaves, while a blaze of red sparks was thrown upward; at the same instant a wild cry of agony announced that at least one poor fellow had fallen by a splinter, and Harry Smith, the aide-de-camp, lost an epaulette by a cannon-ball, which wounded his shoulder.

These little hints to be speedy were not lost upon us. We formed with the utmost rapidity by companies and by regiments, and moved beyond some ridges which saved us from the fire of the two forts. I remember stumbling in the dark over the prostrate body of a naval officer, who was severely wounded by the splinter of a shell. This was the eldest son of the Earl of Galloway, "Captain Lord Viscount Garlies, of the _Winchelsea_ frigate, who," as Admiral Jervis states in his despatch, "acquitted himself with spirit (in the landing) although he received a bad contusion from the fire of a battery, against which he had placed his ship _in the good old way, within half-musket shot_."

In the clear tropical night we could perceive that Fort Fleur d'Epée was strongly situated on the summit of a hill; and we advanced towards it through a gorge, Sir George Grey, of the _Boyne_, leading the naval brigade, and General Dundas the troops. His orders were that in carrying the place by storm _we_ we were to trust entirely to the bayonet--the seamen and marines to pike and cutlass--and that no time was to be lost in firing.

The morning gun from the _Boyne_, which lay at anchor in Gosier Bay, was to be the signal for attack, and while the general was indicating the various points from which it would be made, and getting our forces into position, Captain Glendonwyn and I were sent forward with a flag of truce to summon the fort to surrender.

Through a thicket, amid the foliage of which the fireflies were flitting in and out of sight, we made our way to the base of the hill, and when within musket-shot desired our drummer to beat a parley. The sound was immediately answered by a drum within the fort, and we proceeded over a bridge, beneath which a waterfall was pouring like a torrent of liquid silver. From thence we passed through an alley in an orange-grove, the old trees of which were interwoven by an all but impenetrable mass of green tracery--the fibres and foliage of the creepers that clung from branch to branch. There, too, crawled and croaked the crapaud, or huge brown toad, the aspect of which was enough to fill with qualms even those, who in less than half an hour, would be rushing on with the desperate stormers.

On approaching the outer palisades, we were received by a guard under arms, and a number of officers, whose grimly bronzed faces and faded uniforms, were visible by the light of a large lantern. Around them hovered a crowd of blacks and mulattoes, armed with muskets, and wearing crossbelts over their sable chests or cotton shirts. Many had also hatchets and sabres.

"Qui vive?" challenged a sentry of the French line.

"A flag of truce," replied Glendonwyn.

"Addressed to whom?"

"Monsieur le Colonel Du Plessis, commandant of La Fleur d'Epée."

"Advance, monsieur l'officier--the colonel is here," replied the sentinel, presenting arms.

"Speak, sir," said a tall, stern officer, whose long grey hair fell in the wavy fashion of the republic over the rolling collar of his plain grey great-coat, which was buttoned up to the throat, where his gilt gorget was suspended by a tricoloured ribbon. "I am he you seek," he added, saluting us.

M. Du Plessis was a solemn and gloomy man; and his story, which we knew well, was a singular one.

In the year of the revolution and fall of the Bastille, he had been a private in one of the battalions of the Régiment de Turenne, but revolted. In a night attack made by the Chevalier Adrien de Losme, with a "handful" of the French guards, on a barricade in the Rue de Clichy, Du Plessis was involved in a deadly _mêlée_ with the royalist troops, whose standard-bearer he encountered hand to hand in the dark, and on the summit of the hastily-constructed barrier, Du Plessis was victor. Thrice he ran the royalist through the body, and as he placed a foot upon the fallen corpse, its face was turned towards him; a ray of light fell on it, and the miserable man discovered that he had slain his--own father!

From that hour he was changed and gloomy. He made a vow that he would die in action. Even as he uttered this vow a shot struck his breast, and he fell. On examining the supposed wound, it was found "that the ball had been stopped," as Dutriel (who told me the anecdote) related, "by a scapular of the Virgin which he wore. The mark of the ball remained on the piece of cloth, but Du Plessis was untouched; and though he ever did his duty as became a soldier, since that night of horror in the Rue de Clichy he had lived with the severity of a monk of La Trappe."

As these strange episodes recurred to me, I surveyed the general with some interest.

"If you come, messieurs, to demand a capitulation, your errand is fruitless," said he.

"Such _is_ my errand," replied Glendonwyn; "you are invested on every side."

"Ah--we thought as much," was the careless answer.

"How long, then, monsieur le général, do you propose to hold out?"

"_Ma foi!_ till death," was the stern reply.

"Life is better."

"Life is worthless to Frenchmen, if honour be lost," was the somewhat vain reply. "Adieu, messieurs;" and the wicket was shut in our faces.

With this reply we returned to the general, who said coolly, while he glanced at his watch,--

"Well--we shall beat up his quarters in half an hour. What sound is that?" he asked, as a strain of music stole upon the calm morning air.

"The French band playing _Ca ira_," said I.

"Oh, very well; we'll change their tune when we give them gunpowder for breakfast."

All eyes were now turned to the _Boyne_, which lay in the bay, with her black hull, squared yards, and lofty rigging distinctly defined upon the clear whitening bosom of the water, which seemed, in the peculiar state of the atmosphere, like a sheet of milk, far down below the black groves and rocks of the island.

The ships' bells struck _five_ in varying cadence.

With breathless impatience we awaited the signal!

Gradually a faint streak of light began to brighten the edge of the distant sea; a quivering ray from the sun, yet far below the horizon, played on the gauze-like clouds above it, and then a heavy boom, with a red flash from the frigate's starboard bow, made every heart in the brigade to leap in response.

"The morning gun!" said one.

"The warning--the signal!" exclaimed others, in loud whispers.

"Stormers to the front--forward, double quick!" cried the Earl of Kildonan, in a loud and firm voice.

Then, with that ringing hurrah which comes from British lungs alone, we dashed in masses towards La Fleur d'Epée.