t of guards and the grenadier companies of the army, faced
about on the beach to await the enemy, whilst the remaining troops were
carried off in the boats. As the French descended from the heights round
the bay, these guards and grenadiers marched out to attack them, leaving
an excellent position which they had occupied--a great dyke raised on
the shore, and behind which they might have resisted to advantage. And
now, eleven hundred men were engaged with six--nay, ten times their
number; and, after a while, broke and made for the boats with a sauve
qui peut! Seven hundred out of the eleven were killed, drowned, or
taken prisoners--the General himself was killed--and, ah! where were the
volunteers?

A man of peace myself, and little intelligent of the practice or the
details of war, I own I think less of the engaged troops than of the
people they leave behind. Jack the Guardsman and La Tulipe of the Royal
Bretagne are face to face, and striving to knock each other's brains
out. Bon! It is their nature to--like the bears and lions--and we will
not say Heaven, but some power or other has made them so to do. But the
girl of Tower Hill, who hung on Jack's neck before he departed; and the
lass at Quimper, who gave the Frenchman his brule-gueule and tobacco-box
before he departed on the noir trajet? What have you done, poor little
tender hearts, that you should grieve so? My business is not with the
army, but with the people left behind. What a fine state Miss Hetty
Lambert must be in, when she hears of the disaster to the troops and the
slaughter of the grenadier companies! What grief and doubt are in George
Warrington's breast; what commiseration in Martin Lambert's, as he looks
into his little girl's face and reads her piteous story there! Howe, the
brave Commodore, rowing in his barge under the enemy's fire, has rescued
with his boats scores and scores of our flying people. More are drowned;
hundreds are prisoners, or shot on the beach. Among these, where is our
Virginian?

CHAPTER LXV. Soldier's Return

Great Powers! will the vainglory of men, especially of Frenchmen, never
cease? Will it be believed, that after the action of St. Cas--a mere
affair of cutting off a rearguard, as you are aware--they were so
unfeeling as to fire away I don't know how much powder at the Invalides
at Paris, and brag and bluster over our misfortune? Is there any
magnanimity in hallooing and huzzaying because five or six hundred brav