gate of the fortress a train of negro bearers carrying biers, to collect and take in the wounded, who, moaning piteously and crying for help, were strewed among heaps of the dead.

This havoc had daunted the enemy, and turned their thoughts from further fighting; and the mournful procession and melancholy occupation of the bearers was a conclusive proof of discomfiture.

Entrenching tools only were then wielded to erect a powerful battery in the Flêche, which had been won at such expense of blood.

These conflicts had been clearly seen, both by the besieged from Morne Fortuné, and by the besiegers from Morne de Chasseau, as from an amphitheatre. Sir Ralph stood in the centre battery, and viewed the whole with deep interest. When all was over, Moore went up to him to make his report, and attributed the success to the valour of the 27th regiment. The General ardently clasped his hand, and said, he could never

requite the obligations he felt for his efforts ' on that day.'

VOL. I.

K

The spirits of the besieged were so completely sunk by their defeat, that before night they sent out a flag of truce to solicit a suspension of hostilities; and next day their commander capitulated. The survivors of the garrison, amounting to two thousand men, most of whom were negroes and mulattoes, marched out of the works, and laid down their arms when Moore took possession of the citadel with his division, at the head of which was the 27th regiment, whose colours were planted on the ramparts.

Sir Ralph immediately appointed him Commandant and Governor of St. Lucia, an office he accepted with extreme reluctance, as he would have greatly preferred continuing to serve with the principal army. But the General pressed it, on the grounds that his talents were necessary for the complete subjugation of the island. He also promoted Captain Anderson to the 31st regiment, who continued, notwithstanding, to act in Moore's staff as before.

CHAPTER VII.

BRIGADIER GENERAL MOORE, GOVERNOR OF ST. LUCIA-CONQUEST OF THE ISLAND-THE YELLOW FEVER.

ON June 4th Sir Ralph Abercrombie sailed with the army, escorted by a fleet commanded by Sir Hugh Christian, to reduce the revolted islands of Grenada and St. Vincent, and left Moore invested with the military power and civil administration of St. Lucia. Although the Morne Fortuné, and the posts adjoining the harbour, had been captured, the rest of the island remained unsubdued; the woods and fastnesses were filled with armed negroes and mulattoes; and multitudes of the prisoners, after the capitulation, being ill guarded, escaped and joined them.

The French agents, who had been sent forth to the West Indies during the frenzy of the revolution, were sanguinary men from

Paris, a city then resembling Rome in the

6

reign of Nero, quo cuncta undique atrocia, ' aut pudenda confluunt, celebranturque *.’

The negroes and mulattoes, who acquired the name of Brigands, were armed, and declared free by those political fanatics, whose frantic decrees and atrocious exhortations kindled their fury to the height. Indeed, the ferocity of these emancipated slaves became direful. They threw off all compunctions of humanity to put on the savage nature of the wildest animals. A resolution to defend their liberties would neither have been unnatural, nor reprehensible, but this was sullied by deeds too horrible to be related..

The corporal frame and mental qualities of the negroes fit them peculiarly for desultory warfare. They are stout, agile, expert in the use of arms, and can endure patiently the scorching sun, and the torrents of rain of the tropical climate. They can live on the roots which grow spontaneously, or with little cul

*Where all atrocities and pollutions are assembled and perpetrated.-Tacit. lib. xv.

ture, in the fields; and being bold and cunning are ready to oppose their enemies by force, or to deceive them by stratagem. With brutal fury they had murdered many of the white inhabitants, sparing neither women nor children; and those who remained alive had fled for safety into the towns. But none of the survivors, nor of the slaves who had continued faithful to their masters, durst give any intelligence to, or have any communication with the British and Victor Hughes, the French Commandant of Guadaloupe, contrived, in spite of the British fleet, to send by small vessels frequent supplies of arms, ammunition, and provisions, to these ferocious Brigands.

The British troops, who had been left with Moore to contend with all these difficulties, were chiefly recruits, with inexperienced officers; for the jealousy of parliament against a standing army hinders such a military force being kept up in peace as would form the basis of a good army at the commencement of war: therefore, when this