Page:Final French Struggles in India and on the Indian Seas.djvu/173

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AND HER PRIVATEERS.
145

troops which had been sent from Bombay. The division from Madras convoyed by the Psyche and Cornwallis arrived on the 6th, and that from Bourbon on the 12th November.

The troops from Bengal and those from the Cape were so long in coming, that the admiral, in concert with the general, determined not to wait for them beyond the 21st. All preparations accordingly were made for the expedition to leave Rodriguez on the morning of the 22nd, when, on the evening of the previous day, the happy intelligence was received that the Bengal division was in the offing. The transports conveying it were at once ordered not to drop anchor, but to join the main fleet and accompany it to the selected point of debarkation, Grande Baye, about fifteen miles to the windward of Port Louis.

The armament, independently of the division from the Cape of Good Hope, which did not arrive in time to take any part in the operations, consisted of forty-six transports and a fleet of twenty-one sail.[1] They carried 11,300 fighting men, composed as follows: — Of regiments of the line there were the 12th, 14th, 22nd, 33rd, 56th, 59th, 65th, 69th, 84th, and 89th regiments; the artillery consisted of four batteries from Bengal and Madras; the European cavalry of one troop of the

  1. These were the Illustrious, 47; the Cornwallis, 44; the Africaine, the Boadicea, the Nisus, the Clorinde, the Menelaus, the Néréide, each of 38; the Phœbe and Doris, of 36; the Cornelia, Psyche, and Ceylon, of 32; the sloops Hesper, Eclipse, Hecate, and Actæon; the gun-brig Staunch, and four smaller vessels.