Tout, Thomas Frederick

Historical Essays by Members of the Owens College, Manchester

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: a coup de main. For this purpose he carefully discusses the whole of the bay in order to ascertain what are the possibilities of attack from the sea.19 The anchorage proper is on the left-hand side, between Mortella and Fornali. No serious landing is here possible, the coast being too rocky, but three batteries must be built to command the anchorage and deny it to the enemy. There is a landing-place at the south end of the gulf, but the water is too shallow to admit of the approach of large vessels; even rowing-boats cannot reach the actual shore, the men would have to wade up to the waist; a landing here may be regarded as impracticable. On the right-hand side of the bay there are two possible landing-places between Nonza and San Fiorenzo. One of these is north of La Vecchiaja, but it must be dismissed because a party landing there could not reach San Fiorenzo except through one of the gorges through the hills to the east of the town. From the point of La Vecchiaja to San Fiorenzo the distance is more than 4,000 yards, but part of this space is filled with rocks, and the shore is not good except for an extent of 1,400 yards; that is the true place for a landing by force. Frigates can come near to cover the landing, the boats can go right to the shore, and the troops can form in order of battle upon a clear beach. It is for this beach that a well-informed enemy would make. Thus by a sifting process, with no other guide than his common sense applied to a close examination of the ground, Bonaparte puts his finger on the decisive point. He then describes in detail the provisional works by which he proposes that this exposed spot should be commanded, and discusses the means of defence of the gorges to the east of the town and of the town itself, in case, in spite of his provisiona...