1809	Colonial Expeditions - South America	212

directed fire ; the field-piece also continuing to play upon them. Finding it impracticable to advance with his field-piece on account of fossés in the road, Captain Yeo proceeded without it ; and his men, with the pike and bayonet, cheering as they rushed on, soon carried the general's gun and the general's house, Victor Hugues and his gallant troops flying through the back premises into the wood, as the British and Portuguese entered at the front.

Information now arriving, that about 400 of the enemy were about to take possession of Beauregard plain, an eminence which commands the several roads to and from Cayenne, the British and Portuguese commanders instantly marched thither with their whole force. On the 9th the allied troops reached the spot, and on the 10th Lieutenant Mulcaster and a Portuguese officer were sent into the town of Cayenne with a summons to the general. An armistice followed ; and finally, on the 14th, the Portuguese troops, and the British seamen and marines, marched into Cayenne, and took possession of the town. The enemy's troops, amounting to 400, laid down their arms upon the parade, and were embarked on board the several vessels belonging to the expedition : at the same time the militia, amounting to 600, together with 200 blacks, both of whom had been incorporated with the regular troops, delivered in their arms.

Thus was acquired, by a force, the most effective if not the most numerous part of which was a British 20-gun ship's complement, the whole of the French settlement of Cayenne, extending along the coast to the eastward as far as the river Oyapok, where the Portuguese possessions begin, and along the western coast to the river Maroni, that separates the colony from the possessions of the Dutch. All this was effected at a comparatively trifling loss of men : the British had one killed (Lieutenant Read) and 23 wounded ; the Portuguese, one killed and eight wounded; and the French 16 killed and 20 wounded.

The previous achievements of Captain Yeo * had prepared us for a display of extraordinary zeal and courage, but we did not expect to find a naval officer so well, qualified to fill the station of a general. From the 15th of December, the seamen and marines of the Confiance on shore had not slept in their beds ; and, from the time they landed, on the 7th of January, until the surrender of the colony, they were without any cessation from fatigue. To add to their difficulties, the weather was constantly both boisterous and rainy, and the roads nearly impassable.

Even the Confiance, in the absence of her commander and full three fourths of her crew, had the good fortune to accomplish, by her very appearance, what a ship of double her size and treble her force, (her guns were only 18-pounder carronades), would have been proud of effecting by the fire of her

* See vol. iv., p. 135.

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