Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 2.djvu/188

 

 

John, the fifth child, and (at the date of his entering the army) the third surviving son of the Rev. James Fontaine, was born at Taunton in 1693. He was a dutiful son and pupil of his father; but a prospect appearing of his being enrolled in the British army, he was allowed to desist from more profound study, and gave proof of talent in the art of military drawing, and in kindred pursuits. All the family had made the acquaintance of General Ingoldsby about two months before the destruction of their home at Bear Haven. The General was commander of the Forces in Ireland, and frequently acted as a Lord Justice. When on an official tour he was met by Fontaine, who asked him to visit his snug house and fort.

“He accepted my invitation (says Fontaine), and he and his whole retinue remained with me three days, during which time I treated them as hospitably as I possibly could, making them welcome to the best the country afforded. Having had a little notice beforehand we had time to make preparations, and I was able to have as many as fourteen or fifteen different dishes on the table every day, and a great variety of wine. He has been one of my best friends from that day to this.”

On hearing of the disaster inflicted by the French and Irish pirates, the General immediately obtained for him a grant of ,£100; and being pleased with the appearance and gallantry of his sons Peter and John, he put them down on his list to be provided for. He entered them among half-pay military officers, and in 1709 they received orders to embark for Spain; but Mr. Secretary Dawson removed their names from the list. This disappointment proved to be a merciful providential appointment, as the small transport in which the officers sailed had to surrender to a large French man-of-war, after a desperate resistance, in which one-half of their number were killed, and almost all the remainder were wounded. Next year, however, the Lord-Lieutenant having removed from the regiments under orders for Spain the names of all subalterns under sixteen years of age, John Fontaine applied for one of the vacancies. But his Lordship had resolved to sell all the commissions, and so John’s prospects of success were more than doubtful. “At last (says his father) on the very eve of departure, finding that some of the commissions were unsold, General Ingoldsby went himself to the Lord-Lieutenant and obtained an Ensign’s commission for John, without our having to pay anything more than the office fees.”

Ensign John Fontaine, of Colonel Shaw’s regiment of foot, sailed from Cork in February 1711, and from Plymouth on March 26th; the troops arrived at Lisbon on April 22d, and at Barcelona on May 31st. They evacuated Barcelona in November 1712; and were afterwards quartered in Majorca and Minorca. But in 1713 they were back again in England, and with the war John Fontaine’s military life ended.

Our Generals, employed under the Harley-Bolingbroke regime, were expected to do nothing; and if the Allies wished to fight the enemy, their duty was to draw off the British troops. So that young Fontaine was never in action. What is most interesting in this part of his Journal is his paragraph about the poor Catalans whom our un-English rulers abandoned to Philip the Bourbon’s revenge:—

“The latter end of November 1712 we had orders to embark; and as we were leaving Barcelona, the poor Spaniards seeing they were left in the lurch, they called us traitors and all the most vile names they could invent; and the common people threw stones at us, saying we had betrayed them into the hands of King Philip. It was with a great deal of difficulty we embarked.”

[The true English party at home had implored our Queen to throw her shield round the Catalans, but in vain. All the glory of Lord Peterborough was tarnished by our sacrificing that people, for it evidently would have been better if Catalonia had never been taken. Lord Peterborough, at the time when he ought to have joined Lord Galway at Madrid, had been made our ambassador for the express purpose of residing in that capital and consolidating