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In the third, the Hoche, under the command of Commodore Bompart, was captured, as were several frigates of his squadron; while the fourth, finding the warm reception the troops would meet with should they attempt to land, put back into port.
After buffeting it for three days, Hawke bore up and ran into Torbay, where he waited for the wind to shift, keeping his fleet in readiness to sail at once. The same gale, while keeping back the French already in Brest, gave the chance to a small squadron under M. Bompart, which was expected from the West Indies, to slip in during Hawke's absence.
On November 10th Hawke anchored with the fleet in Torbay, after three days of struggle against a very heavy westerly storm. "Bompart, if near, may get in," he wrote the Admiralty, "but no ship can get out from any port in the Bay."
The bitterness, the despondency, and desperation which seized on the Irish leaders in France, and on the rank and file of the United Irishmen at home, on receiving this intelligence are sufficiently illustrated in the subsequent attempts under Humbert and Bompart, and the partial, ineffectual risings in Leinster, Ulster, and Connaught, during the summer and autumn of 1798.
Gault was furious at this procedure, but my father, who at first could not get over his astonishment, burst into laughter, and told the inn-keeper to go and collect the money at Bompart, to where we returned straight away, without saying a word of this to the chatelaine; whose servants we tipped handsomely, and then, taking advantage of the fall in the water level, we at last crossed the Durance and made our way to Aix.
Before this period, commodore Moore having received intelligence that M. de Bompart had sailed from Martinique, with a design to land a reinforcement on Guadaloupe, and that his squadron was seen seven leagues to windward of Marigalante, he sailed from Prince Rupert's Bay, and turned to windward.
In the meantime, commodore Moore having received certain intelligence that monsieur de Bompart had arrived at Martinique, with a squadron consisting of eight sail of the line and three frigates, having on board a whole battalion of Swiss, and some other troops, to reinforce the garrisons of the island, he called in his cruisers, and sailed immediately to the bay of Dominique, an island to windward, at the distance of nine leagues from Guadaloupe, whence he could always sail to oppose any design which the French commander might form against the operations of the British armaments.
It was a break in our travels which I enjoyed. The next day, seeing that the flood-water was running even more rapidly than the evening before, our host, who was a devout Republican, and who knew the river well enough to judge that we would not be able to cross for twenty-four hours, hurried off, unknown to us, to the little town of Cavaillon, which is about two leagues from Bompart, on the same bank of the river.
But their fleet was at the time greatly reduced, and their resources were in a state of disorganization. They mustered for the expedition only one sail of the line and eight small frigates, commanded by Commodore Bompart, conveying 5,000 men under the leadership of General Hardy. On board the Admiral's vessel, which was named the Hoche, was the heroic Theobald Wolfe Tone.
He says he tried every stratagem he could contrive for bringing M. de Bompart to action.
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