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Leaving this digression, I come to the embarkation of these four thousand three hundred men. As the coasts of Normandy and Brittany have been much harassed, I should propose sailing from the Island of Aix; troops and provisions might be obtained in the vicinity. The ports between Lorient and the channel would furnish transport vessels.~ Lorient has some merchant ships of a pretty large burthen.
When the fort fell, this young girl, crazed by the death of her husband, sought the Count of Soisic and told how the priest had forced her to confess to him all she knew about the fort. The priest was arrested at St. Gildas as he was about to cross the river to Lorient. When arrested he cursed the girl, Marie Trevec " "What!" I exclaimed, "Marie Trevec!"
The means at the First Consul's disposal might have been considered sufficient to dispense with these paltry devices; for when the squadrons of Brest, Lorient, Rochefort, and Toulon had joined their forces, they mustered thirty-two ships of the line and thirty-one frigates, with more than 20,000 troops on board.
But one gets perhaps the real clue to Helene's long immunity from the remark made in court by M. Breger, son-in-law of that Lorient couple, M. and Mme Dupuyde-Lome. He had thought for a moment of suspecting Helene of causing the child's death and the illness of the rest of the family, but ``there seemed small grounds. What interest had the girl in cutting off their lives?
The presence of an English squadron of about fifteen ships, cruising endlessly in the Channel, made it impossible to transport a French army to England in boats and barges which would have sunk on the least contact with a larger vessel; but the Emperor could dispose of sixty ships of the line, either French or foreign, dispersed in the harbours of Brest, Lorient, Rochefort, Le Ferrol, and Cadiz; it was a matter of concentrating them, unexpectedly, in the Channel, and crushing, by a greatly superior force, the little English squadron, to become masters of the passage, if only for three days.
Then came the turn of the fabric of the ships themselves, and we had a series of experiments made on the practising ground at Gavres, near Lorient, to test the penetration of projectiles on every sort of substance wood, coal, gutta-percha, iron plates, and finally on iron plates superimposed one on the other in other words armour-plating.
"My wife and I dare not appear in the streets of Lorient," wrote Dupleix, "because of the crowd of people wanting to see us and bless us;" the comptroller-general, Herault de Sechelles, as well as the king and Madame de Pompadour, then and for a long while the reigning favorite, gave so favorable a reception to the hero of India that Dupleix, always an optimist, conceived fresh hopes.
"Iron-built ships will be the ships of the future," he used to say, and he was quite right. But the experiments we had been making at Lorient upon iron plates had been disastrous. The damage done by oblique firing on them was terrible. Experiments were indeed being made at the same time, with a view to armour-plating the hulls of ships, but all that was still in the dimmest and mistiest future.
Ronald with a few words of thanks bowed and took his leave, after receiving instructions from the duke to start shortly and to ride down the river towards Lorient. "You can halt for a few hours on the road, and then ride on again; we shall overtake you before you reach the port. We shall all leave singly or in pairs, to avoid attracting any attention."
There are three methods of concealing the real aim of the expedition: 1st, to set out together for Lorient, under pretence of taking an island, and operating in Carolina in the autumn; 2nd, to pretend to send troops to M. de Bouille; there need be no commander, and I should have the title of marechal-des-logis; 3d, for me to set out immediately with the grenadiers and dragoons for America, and that the four battalions, commanded by the two ancient officers, should join me at Rhode Island.
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