upon, in order to procure a little rest, that I have been obliged to pull off the few rags I had on, as it was impossible to get a moment's sleep with them on for the vermin that swarmed about them." After fearful sufferings they reached Chiloe, where they were very kindly treated, sent on to Valparaiso, thence to Santiago, and in December, 1744, they embarked in a French ship from St. Malo, bound for Spain. They went, the three who were left, from Brest to England in October, 1745-when they reached England they had no money to pay for food from Dover to London, and bolted through the turnpikes at full speed for want of money to pay the toll. Meanwhile the other ships were separated in the storms. When they were rid of the rougher weather they had to fight scurvy. By the time the Centurion reached Crusoe's island, Juan Fernandez (where Alexander Selkirk had lived many years previously), they had lost over 200 men; very many were ill, and they were short of water. A few days later came the Trial, and then the Gloucester, but their weakness was such that they could not bring the Gloucester to anchor, or bring off the survivors from her, for more than a month. Their sufferings had been greater than those of the Centurion; they had lost two-thirds of their crews, and had suffered fearfully from want of water. Anson with the three ships then goes on cruises and makes valuable captures of Spanish merchant ships. Hearing from one of the men taken that the Governor of Payta was removing the treasure inland, Anson attacked the town and sacked it in the buccaneer style, taking upwards of £80,000 in specie, burning the town, and destroying all the private property which they could not carry off. Then he steered north, and kept a look out for the Manilla galleons, one of which had been captured in 1586 by Cavendish. A very rich trade was carried on between Manilla and the cities of Peru, the galleons sailing on account of the trade winds to Acapulco in Mexico. These galleons were enormous ships, carrying a very numerous crew and a cargo of some three million dollars in value. The Trial had taken a prize of great size, and had transferred their crew to her. This ship was now sunk, and the Gloucester, which had sprung dangerous leaks, set on fire, the crews, with such stores as could be saved, being taken on board the Centurion. Then the one ship set off across the Pacific. When, decimated by scurvy, they reached the Ladrones Islands, they numbered 71 out of the 1,000 who had sailed from England. Here, while the greater part of the crew were resting and refreshing themselves on shore, a violent gale blew the ship out to sea. Even then Anson did not despair. They had captured a small Spanish ship of some 15 tons. He had it sawn in half, and lengthened by 12 feet, which would make it 40 tons, for a voyage to China. They had a compass and quadrant, and were ready to start when, in October, 1742, the Centurion again appeared. They sailed in her to Macao, obtained food and materials for repairs, and set out in April, 1748, towards the Philippine Islands. Here, on June 20th, 1743, they met with one of the galleons, fought and captured her, losing in the fight 19 men to 151 Spaniards. Anson took the ship into Canton, freed the prisoners, and, sailing by the Cape, reached England in June, 1744. vi. The Attack on Carthagena.-Meanwhile Vernon, after his little success at Porto Bello, had been furnished with a large force, both naval and military, for the main attack on the Spanish colonies on the coast east of the Isthmus of Panama. The criminal neglect, the want of all proper attention to provision of stores or precaution against sickness, the callous disregard of human needs, by which the politicians at home wasted the lives of the fighting men, when this offensive was launched, is worthy of note as an example of the treatment of land and sea forces in the eighteenth century, when on service in the colonies or in remote continents. It is also connected with the relations between the colonies and the foreign garrisons and the mother country. After the peace of Utrecht and the accession of the first George the army had been steadily reduced, although after the peace its police duties increased with the increase of crime and disorder. The dread of reaction to the Stuarts, and of loss of liberty from the German King through a standing army, was so great that there was a perpetual outcry for further reduction. The army was treated by the civilian with a contemptuous dislike. The lack of barracks made the quartering of men in the inns of the towns necessary, leading to constant quarrels and scuffles between the soldiers and townspeople and to all kinds of disorder. (For a Scottish example of a struggle between guards and drunken lairds in 1734 see Marchmont Papers, Vol. II, p. 47, and Vol. III, p. 210, edit. 1831.) As the authority centred in the civilian Secretary of War instead of in the officers, discipline grew more and more lax, presenting fresh grounds for violence by the army and the corresponding dislike of the soldier. All preferment under the first two Georges depended on political influence and not on merit. In 1733, for instance, the Duke of Bolton, Lord Cobham and Cornet William Pitt were deprived of their commissions for opposition to Walpole in Parliament. It is hardly likely under such conditions that the officers would make effort to control the men. Desertion, though liable to terrible penalties, was so common that it led to sending deserters to serve in the garrisons of Gibraltar or Minorca, or in the American colonies. The food for places such as Gibraltar or Minorca was most insufficient; in Minorca, for instance, no meat was provided; there were no free passages home for the sick; a regiment sent to one of these places might stay any length of time from 10 to 40 years. The colonies were expected to provide forces for their own defence, and for the most part they did so. After the treaty of Utrecht the home ministry began to provide small garrisons for certain unusual points of danger, Gibraltar, Minorca, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, and regular forces were by degrees sent to Carolina, Georgia, Jamaica and the Leeward Islands. But the Whig governments who sent these unfortunates were quite incapable of organizing stores or provisions—no attempt was made to give any of these garrisons proper quarters, bedding or stores. James II. had formed an independent company of troops under his Governor Andros in New York. But after James' abdication Massachusetts imprisoned his governor, and made no effort to check the French and Indians who massacred on the North-Western borders of the British settlements. "Jealous, self centred and undisciplined" Fortescue calls the colonies. "In New York," he says, writing of 1723," the tale of misery and hardship almost passes belief. There men on the frontier guards marched to their posts knee deep in snow, and lay down in their clothes for want of bedding, when relieved; the sergeant having orders to wake them from time to time lest they should be frozen to death in the guard room. . . forty-nine men out of two weak companies perished in a single winter for lack of a blanket to cover them." Vernon's force consisted of 110 ships, of which 30 were of the line, conveying, besides his 15,000 sailors, a great force of soldiers under Lord Cathcart. Lord Cathcart had asked for Wentworth as his second in command, to whom the command of the expedition fell on the death of Cathcart on his way to the East Indies. But the incompetence of the ministry to arrange the smallest details was tragical. Every error that could be made in handling the different regiments, in arranging for transports and supplies, was made. The delays in getting the transports away resulted in 60 deaths before they could sail. Infectious fever, probably gaol fever, raged on board the transports. The season went by, and the French and Spanish fleets put to sea. The fleet sailed on the 4th of November, 1740, arriving at Dominica January 3rd, 1741, with immense losses both of soldiers and sailors. At Jamaica they joined with the Americans, who, they say, were mutinous and undisciplined. It was small wonder. No arrangements had been made for their food or pay, and their losses were very great. Returns sent to England showed that of the 9,000 men who had gone from England and America in November, 17 officers and 600 men had died by the end of the year, and 1,500 more were on the sick list. The French fleet had been at Hispaniola, but had been driven by sickness back to Brest. They attack Carthagena, a city which lies on a sandbank nearly surrounded by the sea, the very narrow opening of the harbour being defended by a boom and by forts. At this time British engineers were said to be by far the worst in Europe. Wentworth had only one engineer "who was in the least competent to carry on a siege"; he was unwilling to work, and there were very few efficient artillerymen. Still in March, 1741, one fort at the entrance was taken after 15 days' assault, and the inner fort was surrendered without fighting. Wentworth lost 130 men killed and wounded, 250 dead from sickness, and 600 in hospital. The British in London in hurried anticipation struck a medal to celebrate the taking of the city. The navy then re-embarked the army for an attack on the forts covering Carthagena. But as the operations left the sea for the land, the usual impotence which attended the disagreement between the two services showed itself. When Wentworth, whose conceptions of war were the formal operations of Flanders, was persuaded to attack the outworks covering the city, his only engineer was dead, and neither tents nor tools were ready. He attempted by night to storm the fort with 1,200 men. But there was no dash about his attack; his officers were inexperienced in real warfare; he met with a desperate resistance; his operations encountered every error and misfortune. The night attack did not take place until dawn; the guides led the attackers to the strongest point of the defence (do they not always do so?); the ladders were too short or had been left behind, as would appear to have invariably happened in eighteenth-century warfare. The men themselves behaved with the utmost heroism. But when the order was given to retire, he had lost more than half his men, with 43 officers. Meanwhile "within the camp men were lying in scores under the scourge of yellow fever, some tossing and raving in delirium, some gasping in the agonies of the last fatal symptom, some prostrate in helpless and ghastly collapse, waiting only for the dead hour before the dawn when they should die." Between the morning of the 18th and the night of the 21st of April, 3,400 men succumbed to the fever. Then the attack was abandoned. Hospital ships had been provided, but there were neither nurses, surgeons, cooks nor provisions. "The men," wrote Smollett, himself a surgeon on board a man-of-war, quoted by Fortescue, "were pent up between decks in small vessels where they had not room to sit upright; they wallowed in filth; myriads of maggots were hatched in the putrefaction of their sores, which had no other dressing than that of being washed by themselves in their own allowance of brandy." "Day after day the sailors rowed ashore to bury their boat loads of corpses, for there was always order and discipline in the ships of war; but the raw soldiers simply dragged their dead comrades up on |