INVADED BRITAIN
Sut,—The legend of the doings of the red-mantled women at Fishguard seems immortal. (Mr. Clark's pump adds a detail new to me.) Like most legends, it has a grain of truth. It is true that the women were present when the invaders laid down their arms, and it is true that the invaders took them to be soldiers.
The French squadron anchored off the north coast of Pencaer, about five miles from Fishguard, at 4 o'clock in the afternoon of Wednesday, February 22nd, 1797. The landing began at 5 and went on till 2 next morning. As the invaders were instructed to live on the country, they could not leave the peninsula till they had collected provisions enough. On Thursday therefore the men were sent foraging. Visiting the abandoned farms and thinking more of their own needs than the regiment's, they began by killing and hastily cooking geese and fowls. The wine from a recent wreck with which every house was well stocked added to the pleasure of the feast.
Gorged with half-raw food and potations pottle deep hundreds of the men were by afternoon helpless beasts: a week after the surrender seventy were still too sick to move. What little discipline there had been was then dissipated. Further- more, the fact that the natives had attacked instead of joining the invaders convinced Tate that the primary purpose of the invasion—the raising of a rebellion—could not be accom- plished. Hence " upon night's setting in " he sent an offer to capitulate.
On Friday morning the officers gave up their swords and were sent under escort to Haverfordwest. In the afternoon the rank and file laid down their arms on the sands at Good- wick, the bay between Pencaer and Fishguard. The people from all the country round (among them my grandmother from a village four miles off) flocked to the steep hill bounding the bay on the Fishguard side. The French coming down the opposite hill half a mile away took the red mantles of the women to be the red coats of soldiers. But the mistake had nothing to do with the capitulation. The mistake was made by the privates on Friday afternoon ; the offer to sur-
render had been made by their commander on Thursday nigrt before he had seen either a red coat or a red mantle.—YoL:s
faithfully, DAVID SALMON. Brynhyfryd, Narberth, Pem.
[We cannot continue this correspondence.—ED. T -e Spectator.]
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