Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, vol 1 | Page 9

famous Mountain. I was ushered into the
Commodore's cabin, who at least received me civilly. His name was
Citizen Allemand. He did not appear to have the right of excluding any
of his fellow-citizens even from this place. Whatever might be their
rank, they crowded into it, and conversed familiarly with him." Such
was the discipline of the fleet that had been beaten by Lord Hove on the
first of June; and such the raw material of the armies which, under firm
hands, and on an element more suited to the military genius of their
nation, were destined to triumph at Rivoli and Hohenlinden.
Mr. Macaulay, who spoke French with ease and precision, in his
anxiety to save the town used every argument which might prevail on
the Commodore, whose Christian name, (if one may use such a phrase
with reference to a patriot of the year two of the Republic,) happened
oddly enough to be the same as his own. He appealed first to the
traditional generosity of Frenchmen towards a fallen enemy, but soon
discerned that the quality in question had gone out with the old order of
things, if indeed it ever existed. He then represented that a people, who
professed to be waging war with the express object of striking off the
fetters of mankind, would be guilty of flagrant inconsistency if they
destroyed an asylum for liberated slaves; but the Commodore gave him
to understand that sentiments, which sounded very well in the Hall of
the Jacobins, were out of place on the West Coast of Africa. The
Governor returned on shore to find the town already completely gutted.
It was evident at every turn that, although the Republican battalions
might carry liberty and fraternity through Europe on the points of their
bayonets, the Republican sailors had found a very different use for the
edge of their cutlasses. "The sight of my own and of the Accountant's
offices almost sickened me. Every desk, and every drawer, and every
shelf, together with the printing and copying presses, had been
completely demolished in the search for money. The floors were
strewed with types, and papers, and leaves of books; and I had the
mortification to see a great part of my own labour, and of the labour of

others, for several years totally destroyed. At the other end of the house
I found telescopes, hygrometers, barometers, thermometers, and
electrical machines, lying about in fragments. The view of the town
library filled me with lively concern. The volumes were tossed about
and defaced with the utmost wantonness; and, if they happened to bear
any resemblance to Bibles, they were torn in pieces and trampled on.
The collection of natural curiosities next caught my eye. Plants, seeds,
dried birds, insects, and drawings were scattered about in great
confusion, and some of the sailors were in the act of killing a beautiful
musk-cat, which they afterwards ate. Every house was full of
Frenchmen, who were hacking, and destroying, and tearing up
everything which they could not convert to their own use. The
destruction of live stock on this and the following day was immense. In
my yard alone they killed fourteen dozen of fowls, and there were not
less than twelve hundred hogs shot in the town." It was unsafe to walk
in the streets of Freetown during the forty-eight hours that followed its
capture, because the French crews, with too much of the Company's
port wine in their heads to aim straight, were firing at the pigs of the
poor freedmen over whom they had achieved such a questionable
victory.
To readers of Erckmann-Chatrian it is unpleasant to be taken thus
behind the curtain on which those skilful artists have painted the wars
of the early Revolution. It is one thing to be told how the crusaders of
'93 and '94 were received with blessings and banquets by the
populations to whom they brought freedom and enlightenment, and
quite another to read the journal in which a quiet accurate-minded
Scotchman tells us how a pack of tipsy ruffians sat abusing Pitt and
George to him, over a fricassee of his own fowls, and among the wreck
of his lamps and mirrors which they had smashed as a protest against
aristocratic luxury.
"There is not a boy among them who has not learnt to accompany the
name of Pitt with an execration. When I went to bed, there was no sleep
to be had on account of the sentinels thinking fit to amuse me the whole
night through with the revenge they meant to take on him when they
got him to Paris. Next morning I went on board the 'Experiment.' The

Commodore and all his officers messed together, and I was admitted
among them. They are truly the poorest-looking people I