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Updated: May 15, 2025
At the same time there raged a tropical storm of great violence, accompanied by thunders that drowned the roar of the guns, the frightful combination throwing the people into such a state that they all fled in blind terror, the troops in the town with them. In the morning, when Trouin was ready to launch his storming parties, word was brought him that the city was deserted and lay at his mercy.
A poor affair of a governor De Castro proved, and the French were permitted to go on with their works almost unmolested, the Portuguese occupying hill forts, the fire from which did little harm to the enemy. Trouin had already begun the bombardment of the city, and on receiving the governor’s answer he kept his guns at work all night.
He even ventured to land in Northumberland, and burned many houses before the trainbands could be collected to oppose him. The prizes which he carried back into his native port were estimated at about a hundred thousand pounds sterling. About the same time a younger adventurer, destined to equal or surpass Bart, Du Guay Trouin, was entrusted with the command of a small armed vessel.
De Castro, eager to get rid of his foes at any price, offered six hundred thousand cruzadoes. This was refused by Trouin, and to stir up the governor to a better offer, the admiral took his messenger through the city and showed him that he was spoiling everything that fire would not burn.
Trouin, knowing well that he had no time to waste, accepted the terms, and none too soon, for shortly afterwards a strong body of reinforcements, led by an able general, entered the Portuguese camp. They came too late, the treaty had been made, and the new general felt bound in honor to make it good.
The suspicion reached England, also, and that country, then on the side of Portugal, sent out a fleet to blockade Brest, where the vessels of the expedition then lay, and prevent its sailing. But Admiral Trouin was not the man to be caught in a trap, and he hurried his ships out of port before they were quite ready, leaving the British an empty harbor to seal up.
Some of these men of war were lent to great privateersmen like Jean Bart and Du Guay Trouin, who took out powerful squadrons of from five to ten ships of the line, strong enough to overcome the naval escorts of a British convoy, and ravaged English commerce. In this matter of protecting shipping the naval strategy was as vacillating and blind as in everything else.
Fort Villegagnon, one of the chief defences, was blown up by the mismanagement of its garrison, and during the state of panic of the Portuguese Trouin landed about four thousand men, erecting a battery on an island within easy cannon-shot of the city, and occupying a range of hills to the left which gave him command of that section of the place.
Among the great men of modern times he gave the first place to Gustavus Adolphus, and the next to Turenne and the great Conde, to Turenne in honour of his military talent, and to Conde to prove that there was nothing fearful in the recollection of a Bourbon. The remembrance of the glorious days of the French navy was revived by the statue of Duguai Trouin.
He erected batteries on the surrounding hill-slopes till the town was commanded on three sides, while the governor kept the bulk of his forces at a distance, waiting for no one knew what. Trouin had been permitted, with scarcely a blow in defence, to make himself master of the situation, and he needed only to get his guns in place to be able to batter the town to the dust.
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