want of shot with
stones and rubbish. At length the colonel and his troops were obliged
to surrender, on condition that they should not be sent prisoners to
France, but be ransomed, by sending thither an equal number of French
prisoners from Great Britain or Ireland: that the castle should not
be demolished, nor the town of Carrickfergus plundered or burned, on
condition that the mayor and corporation should furnish the French
troops with necessary provisions. The enemy, after this exploit, did not
presume to advance farther into the country; a step which indeed they
could not have taken with any regard to their own safety; for by this
time a considerable body of regular troops was assembled; and the people
of the country manifested a laudable spirit of loyalty and resolution,
crowding in great numbers to Belfast, to offer their service against the
invaders. These circumstances, to which the enemy were no strangers,
and the defeat of Conflans, which they had also learned, obliged them to
quit their conquest, and re-embark with some precipitation, after having
laid Carrickfergus under moderate contributions.

The fate they escaped on shore they soon met with at sea. Captain John
Elliot, who commanded three frigates at Kinsale, and had in the course
of this war more than once already distinguished himself even in his
early youth, by extraordinary acts of valour, was informed by a despatch
from the duke of Bedford, lord-lieutenant of Ireland, that three of the
enemy's ships lay at anchor in the bay of Carrickfergus; and thither
he immediately shaped his course in the ship AEolus, accompanied by the
Pallas and Brilliant, under the command of the captains Clements and
Logic. On the twenty-eighth day of February they descried the enemy, and
gave chase in sight of the Isle of Man; and about nine in the morning,
captain Elliot, in his own ship, engaged the Belleisle, commanded by
Thurot, although considerably his superior in strength of men, number
of guns, and weight of metal. In a few minutes his consorts were also
engaged with the other two ships of the enemy. After a warm action,
maintained with great spirit on all sides for an hour and a half,
captain Elliot's lieutenant boarded the Belleisle; and, striking her
colours with his own hand, the commander submitted: his example was
immediately followed by the other French captains; and the English
commodore, taking possession of his prizes, conveyed them into the bay
of Ramsay