SIR RICHARD STRACHAN 157 



Downs tliey were joined by the remainder of the ex- 

 pedition, under the Earl of Chatham, General Com- 

 mander-in-Chief, and sailed away towards the point of 

 their destination. 



The result of that unfortunate expedition is too well 

 known for me to dilate upon : that fine army, a great 

 portion of which I had but a short time before almost 

 daily ^'isited in camp, was suifered, either from the 

 incapacity of their general or some egregious blunder, to 

 become, from inactivity, the victims of the pestilential 

 swamps of the Scheldt, When the veteran commander 

 of the naval part of the expedition. Sir Richard J. 

 Strachan, was asked, after tlie bombardment of Flushing, 

 what he thought of their operations, he replied, in 

 one of his coarse, oflf-hand speeches, in which he used 

 to indulge (for he was one of the old school), and which 

 I must not repeat — that we had covered ourselves, not 

 with laurels, but disgrace. The expedition returned, 

 and those of the army that were left returned but the 

 shadows of the men who had departed only six months 

 before in the full glow of health and plenitude of vigour. 



I have divero:ed thus far from the straio'ht course of 

 my narrative, to point out that — while the people 

 generally were discontented at these repeated failures — 

 while trade and commerce languished and manufacturers 

 stood still — while the newspapers teemed with doleful 

 prognostics of the issue of the war — and the Opposition 

 in Parliament were loud in their denunciation of the 

 continuance of our army in the Peninsula — the 

 maritime towns were reaping a rich harvest, and the one 

 in which I resided proiited most of all. Here prosperity 



