1799 - Captain Troubridge at Capua and Gaeta, British seamen at Rome


 
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Naval History of Great Britain - Vol II
1799 British and French Fleets 282

26th, fresh trenches were opened, and new batteries begun, within a few yards of the glacis. This induced the besieged to propose terms of capitulation. These were rejected, and others sent back by Captain Troubridge ; to which, at length, the French commandant agreed.

On the morning of the 29th the French garrison, numbering 2817 officers and men, under Brigadier-general Girardon, marched out as prisoners with the honours of war, and were afterwards conveyed to Toulon. The subjects of the Sicilian monarch, according to an article of the treaty, were delivered up to the allies. The fort was mounted with 108 pieces of ordnance, exclusively of 10 that were unserviceable ; and contained 12,000 muskets, 414,000 filled musket-cartridges, and 67,848 lbs. of powder. The allied forces do not appear to have sustained any loss. It certainly would have been more creditable to the French general, if, with such a force at his disposal, he had insisted a little more strenuously, that the lives of the Neapolitan insurgents in the fort should not be sacrificed.

The surrender of Capua was followed, on the 31st, by that of the neighbouring fort of Gaeta, although the latter had not been regularly besieged, but only blockaded. On this account, chiefly, the French garrison, numbering 1498 officers and men, obtained leave to march out with their arms and personal effects, and, on being sent to a French port, were not to be considered as prisoners of war. Here, again, the poor Neapolitan insurgents were handed over, without an effort on their behalf, to those who, it was well known, would soon be their executioners. The same general, Girardon, who had signed the capitulation of Capua, negotiated and signed that of Gaeta ; on the walls of which were mounted 72 pieces of cannon, including 58 brass 24 and 18 pounders, and 13 heavy mortars ; the magazines contained an immense quantity of powder and other garrison stores.

About the 11th of August Captain Troubridge, by Lord Nelson's directions, sent the Minotaur, and one or two smaller vessels, with a summons to the republican commandant at Civita-Vecchia. Some delay occurring in the transmission of the reply, the Culloden herself went off the port ; and on the 29th and 30th of September Captain Troubridge, with 200 seamen and marines from his two ships, landed at Civita-Vecchia, and, aided by a detachment of Neapolitan royalist troops under General Bouchard, took possession of that town, Corneto, and Tolfa. The same treaty by which these places were surrendered, gave up Rome ; which was taken possession of by General Bouchard, aided by a detachment of seamen under Captain Louis, of the Minotaur. The last-named officer rowed up the Tiber in his barge, and hoisted the English colours on the capitol. Thus were Naples, Rome, and Tuscany (Leghorn had been evacuated since the 17th of July), freed from the dominion

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