labourers wore, what the wives of all classes
of the community are wearing now—red
petticoats. It was Lord Cawdor's happy
idea to call on these patriot-matrons to
sink the question of skirts, to forego the
luxurious consideration of warmth, and to
turn the colliers into military men (so far as
external appearances, viewed at a distance,
were concerned), by taking off the wives'
red petticoats and putting them over the
husbands' shoulders. Where patriot-matrons
are concerned, no national appeal is made in
vain, and no personal sacrifice is refused. All
the women seized their strings, and stepped
out of their petticoats on the spot. What
man in that make-shift military but must
think of "home and beauty" now that he
had the tenderest memento of both to grace
his shoulders and jog his memory? In an
inconceivably short space of time every
woman was shivering, and every collier was
turned into a soldier.

VI. OF HOW IT ALL ENDED.

THUS recruited, Lord Cawdor marched off
to the scene of action; and the patriot
women deprived of their husbands and their
petticoats, retired, it is to be hoped and
presumed, to the friendly shelter of bed. It was
then close on nightfall, if not actually night;
and the disorderly marching of the
transformed colliers could not be perceived.
But, when the British army took up its position,
then was the time when the excellent
stratagem of Lord Cawdor was told at its true
worth. By the uncertain light of fires and
torches, the French scouts, let them venture
as near as they might, could see nothing in
detail. A man in a scarlet petticoat looked
as soldier-like as a man in a scarlet coat,
under those dusky circumstances. All that
the enemy could now see were lines on lines
of men in red, the famous uniform of the
English army.

The council of the French braves must
have been a perturbed assembly on that
memorable night. Behind them was the empty
bay—for the four ships, after landing the
invaders, had set sail again for France,
sublimely indifferent to the fate of the fourteen
hundred. Before them there waited in battle
array an apparently formidable force of
British soldiers. Under them was the hostile
English ground on which they were
trespassers caught in the fact. Girt about by
these serious perils, the discreet commander
of the Invasion fell back on those safe-guards
of caution and deliberation of which he had
already given proofs on approaching the
English shore. He had doubted at
Ilfracombe; he had doubted again in Cardigan
Bay; and now, on the eve of the first battle,
he doubted for the third time—doubted,
and gave in. If History declines to receive
the French commander as a hero, Philosophy
opens her peaceful doors to him, and
welcomes him in the character of a wise man.

At ten o'clock at night, a flag of truce
appeared in the English camp, and a letter
was delivered to Lord Cawdor from the
prudent chief of the invaders. The letter set
forth, with amazing gravity and dignity,
that the circumstances under which the
French troops had landed, having rendered it
"unnecessary" to attempt any military
operations, the commanding officer did not object
to come forward generously and propose
terms of capitulation. Such a message as
this was little calculated to impose on any
man—far less on the artful nobleman who had
invented the stratagem of the red petticoats.
Taking a slightly different view of the
circumstances, and declining altogether to
believe that the French Directory had sent
fourteen hundred men over to England to
divert the inhabitants by the spectacle of a
capitulation, Lord Cawdor returned for
answer that he did not feel himself at liberty
to treat with the French commander, except
on the condition of his men surrendering as
prisoners of war. On receiving this reply,
the Frenchman gave an additional proof of
that philosophical turn of mind, which has
been already claimed for him as one of his
merits, by politely adopting the course
which Lord Cawdor suggested. By noon
the next day, the French troops had peaceably
laid down their weapons, and were all
marched off, prisoners of war—the patriot-
matrons had resumed their petticoats—and
the short terror of the invasion had happily
passed away.

The first question that occurred to everybody,
as soon as the alarm had been
dissipated was, what this extraordinary burlesque
of an invasion could possibly mean. It was
asserted, in some quarters, that the
fourteen hundred Frenchmen had been recruited
from those insurgents of La Vendée who had
enlisted in the service of the Republic, who
could not be trusted at home, and who
were therefore despatched on the first desperate
service that might offer itself abroad.
Others represented the invading army as a
mere gang of galley-slaves and criminals in
general, who had been landed on our shores
with the double purpose of annoying
England and ridding France of a pack of rascals.
The commander of the expedition, however,
disposed of this latter theory by declaring
that six hundred of his men were picked
veterans from the French army, and by referring,
for corroboration of this statement, to
his large supplies of powder, ball, and hand-
grenades, which would certainly not have
been wasted, at a time when military stores
were especially precious, on a gang of galley-
slaves.

The truth seems to be, that the French
(who were even more densely ignorant of
England and English institutions at that
time than they are at this) had been so
entirely deceived by false reports of the
temper and sentiments of our people, as to