XVIII. BOOK of capitulation, and this conquest was considered as much more than an equivalent for the loss of 1778. Dominique. On the continent of America the war still raged with dreadful and unremitted malignity, In consequence of the horrid mode of warfare adopted by the court of Great Britain, which in the midst of pleasure and festivity issued its orders to desolate and destroy*, an expedition was undertaken by a colonel Butler, in conjunction with one Brandt, an half Indian by birth, and a man beyond example cruel and ferocious, against the beautiful and flourishing settlement of Wyoming, This was an infant rising colony, situated on the eastern branch of the Susquehanna, consisting of eight townships, in a country and climate luxuriantly fertile. In the month of July, 1778, the enemy appeared in force to the number of about sixteen hundred men, of whom about one-fourth were *When we consider the round of amusement and dissi pation in which the English court was engaged at a crisis so full of horror-the St. James's balls, the Windsor galas, the Buckingham-house concerts, suppers, and card-parties, it brings to recollection the retort of a brave French officer, who, being asked by his sovereign Charles VII. then in danger of dethronement by the English, what he thought of his arrangements for an approaching fête, replied, "I think, sire, that it is impossible for any one to lose his kingdom more pleasantly than your majesty." XVIII. 1778. Indians, and immediately invested the fort. The BOOK commandant knowing its inability to make any effectual defence, dispatched a flag to colonel Butler, to know what terms he would grant on a surrender; to which he replied in two words, THE HATCHET; sending in at the same time the bloody scalps of the victims who had already fallen into his hands. The garrison, though resolute to sell their lives as dear as possible, were soon overpowered; and the savage conquerors, after gratifying their infernal rage by a most bloody military execution, shut up the greater part of the survivors in the barracks, to which they set fire, and consumed the whole in one general blaze. The entire settlement was now delivered up to all the horrors of Indian barbarity, of which the detail is not to be endured. A terrestrial paradise was in a short time converted into a frightful waste; and men, women, and children, underwent one common butchery, in all the possible varieties of torture. A provincial officer, of the name of Bedlock, being stripped naked, had his body stuck full of sharp pine splinters; and a heap of knots of the same wood being then piled around him, the whole was set on fire-two other officers also, captains Ransey and Durgie, being thrown alive into the flames. Such are the accursed consequences of that princely ambition which is exalted so high 1 BOOK above the level of common life as to admit XVIIL of no sympathy with human misery. Feeling 1778. deeply for the honor of Britain, a veil has been perhaps too partially cast over the enormities committed by the Indians employed in the northern expedition, and in other parts of the continent. There are indeed degrees of human depravity and wickedness creative of sensations. which no tongue can express, and no language impart*. To descend to what must be regarded as an authorized and civilized mode of warfare, it is necessary to mention that major-general Grey, an officer who had repeatedly distinguished himself by his military skill and courage, was detached in the month of September from New York on an expedition to a place called FairHaven, on the coast of New England, where he destroyed about seventy sail of shipping, together with the magazines, wharfs, stores, &c.; and proceeding to Martha's Vineyard, a beautiful island in the vicinity, he carried off They ERR who count it glorious to subdue By conquest far and wide, to over-run XVIIL an immense booty in oxen and sheep, which BOOK afforded a welcome supply to the army at New York. In a short time after this, the same officer, acting under the direction of lord Cornwallis, surprised in the night, asleep and naked, a regiment of American light-horse, stationed near the right bank of the North River. Quarter being refused, and the men wholly incapable of resistance, a terrible execution took place, which the congress in a subsequent remonstrance scrupled not to stigmatize as "a massacre in cold blood." A similar enterprise was undertaken with similar success by captain Ferguson, against a detached corps of Pulawski's legion of lightinfantry; and the Americans were not a little embarrassed to conjecture what those worse extremes of war could be, which the manifesto of the commissioners menaced, them with in the future conduct of it. An undertaking of greater importance was now determined upon by sir Henry Clinton, who detached a considerable body of troops under the command of colonel Campbell, convoyed by a squadron under sir Hyde Parker, to attempt the recovery of the province of Georgia-general Prevost, governor of East Florida, having at the same time orders to co-operate with them. On the 23d of December, 1778, the whole arma 1778 BOOK ment arrived at the mouth of the Savannah. XVIII. 1778. The force which that weak and infant colony was able to oppose to the invaders was soon dispersed, and the town of Savannah fell of course into the hands of the victors. General Prevost soon after arriving with a large reinforcement, took upon him the command of the whole. From this sketch of the campaign of 1778 in America, it is now expedient to advert to the situation of affairs in Europe. When a war with France appeared inevitable, admiral Keppel, an officer of distinguished merit and reputation, but wholly unconnected with the present ministers, was, on the personal and urgent solicitation of the king, prevailed on to accept the command of the Channel fleet, though, as he himself observed, his forty years' services were not marked by any favor from the crown, except that of it's confidence in the time of danger. The admiral, at parting, might with propriety have said to his sovereign, as marechal Villars to Louis XIV. "I go to fight your majesty's enemies, and leave mine in your closet." On the 13th of June the admiral sailed from St. Helen's with twenty ships of the line, and at the entrance of the Bay of Biscay he fell in with the Licorne and the Belle Poule, two French frigates. Through that feebleness and indecision. |