1798] MOOBE SEES COENWALLIS 323

two days, and had so harassed them as to be the immediate cause of their surrender; but at any rate they could not have escaped Lord Cornwallis's column, which had already reached St. Johnston at the time of the surrender.

On the gth General Hewitt wrote to me from the camp at Johnston that Lord Cornwallis was going to Lord Longford's, near Castle Pollard, and desired to see me as soon as possible. Here my brother Jaines left me and returned to London. I rode that night to Mohill. I was tired and not well from sleeping on wet ground the night before, and I required a good bed, which I got at Mohill. Next morning early I rode through General Lake's camp over the ground where the action had taken place; it was covered ;with dead rebels. I reached Packenham Hall by breakfast time. Lord Cornwallis had at first intended to have sent me to Castlebar and Killala to settle and disarm that part of the country; but he received from the Duke of Portland information, which he showed me, of an armament being ready in Brest to sail for this country. This determined him to send General Trench on that service and to keep my corps in a central situation near Kilbeggan or Moate. The destination of the different corps of the army was decided in the course of that day.

On the morning of the nth Lord Cornwallis set out with his suite for Dublin. I returned to Carrick-on-Shannon, where, in order not to interfere with the other troops on their march from the camps of St. Johnston and Balyna-rnuck, I remained till the I3th. The French prisoners passed through. Their commander, a chef de "bataillon, was a mulatto; the officers in general a blackguard-looking set; only the regimental officers passed through Carrick-on-Shannon. The fitat Major went by another road. On the 13 th I marched to Longford, the I4th to Ballymakon, the I5th to this place (Moate), and encamped a mile from it on the Athlone road. The men were in want of clothing and necessaries. The officers are employed in getting them. I have been looking out for quarters in the neighbourhood to canton the brigade, as Lord Cornwallis had some thought