34     COLONIAL EXPEDITIONS - EAST INDIES     1811

of Sir Samuel's army, already considerably reduced by sickness.

On the 22d, early in the morning, the Dutch made a sortie, attacked the works of the British, and gained a momentary possession of one of the batteries ; but the former were at length repulsed and driven within their lines. Being thus foiled, the Dutch began to open from their redoubts a tremendous fire. Thirty-four heavy guns, 18, 24, and 32 pounders, bore upon the British front, and kept up an incessant and very destructive cannonade. On the 23d neither party fired ; but on the 24th a severe cannonade began on both sides, and continued throughout that and the following day, with much mutual slaughter, and to the evident disadvantage of the Dutch, many of their guns being dismounted and their front line of defence much damaged. In this state of things, an assault was resolved upon, and that truly gallant officer Colonel Gillespie was entrusted with the command of the principal attack. At midnight on the 25th the troops moved off, and, after a most desperate struggle, in which the British seamen and marines bore a distinguished part, carried all before them. Nearly 5000 troops, including three general officers, 34 field-officers, 70 captains, and 150 subaltern officers, were taken prisoners, more than 1000 were found dead about the works, and many others must have fallen in the pursuit.

General Jansens made his escape with difficulty during the action, and reached Buitenzorg, a distance of 30 miles accompanied by a few cavalry, the sole remains of his army. The Dutch commander-in-chief quitted Buitenzorg, a little while before the British cavalry entered the town, and fled to the eastward. The loss to the British army including the natives attached to it, from the 4th to the 27th of August inclusive, amounted, according to the official returns, to 141 killed, 733 wounded, and 13 missing ; and the loss to the British navy, between the same dates, amounted to 11 seamen and four marines killed, Captain Stopford (right arm carried off by a cannon-shot) one lieutenant (Francis Noble), two lieutenants of marines, (Henry Elliot and John Stepney Haswell), two master's mates (John Dewdney Worthy and Robert Graham Dunlop), 29 seamen and 20 marines wounded, and three seamen missing ; making the total loss of the two services, up to the 27th of August, 156 killed, 788 wounded, and 16 missing.

The two new French 40-gun frigates Nymphe and Méduse, which, under the orders of Commodore Joseph-François Raoul, of the former, had escaped from Nantes in the spring of the year, were at this time lying in the harbour of Sourabaya. Rear-admiral Stopford, on the day after his arrival in Batavia road, despatched four frigates, the Akbar, Phaëton, Bucephalus, and Sir-Francis-Drake, to look after these French frigates, and watch the different entrances by which they might effect their

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