'Let impure blood water our furrows': The Battle of Frenchman's Field, 1797.

In the corner of an unremarkable Welsh field in Pembrokeshire are buried the bodies of two French soldiers. The reasons why they came to rest in foreign soil, their graves weathered by farming and the passage of time, may be found in one of the most curious footnotes of Welsh history. This is the little known story of Britain's last invasion and the skirmish that was Britain's only land engagement of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

By February 1797, Great Britain and Austria alone remained defiant in the face of Revolutionary France. King Louis XVI had gone to the guillotine five years previously and much of Europe had compromised with or allied to the Republican regime. Whilst farm-carts on the continent were piled high with decaying corpses, inhabitants of the small coastal town of Fishguard in West Wales were about to have Liberté, égalité, fraternité forced upon them at the point of the bayonet. They weren't about to submit willingly.

The French invasion had been the brainchild of General Lazare Hoche. His plan was simple, a force of 1,400 troops under Irish-American Colonel William Tate was to land in Wales and march on Bristol, fermenting insurrection as they went. The ultimate goal was to topple King George III and his government amidst a popular British uprising. Rebellion in Ireland had been planned and Hoche had banked on anti-English sentiment and a deep rooted Celtic nationalism to aid Tate in his venture. He was to be thoroughly disappointed. Pembrokeshire was, and remains, a largely conservative area with a certain degree of deference to the monarchy. Whatever nationalist feeling may have been prevalent in Wales was to remain largely academic as the people of Fishguard and the surrounding area were not prepared to be manhandled by the French. Tate's forces landed near Fishguard at Carregwastad Head on 22^nd February, 1797. His force was a mixed bag. Six-hundred of his men were later described by an eyewitness as 'men of the finest military bearing', grenadiers and volunteers under Irish officers Captain Morris and Lieutenant St. Leger. The remainder of the troops, some eight-hundred, were little more than a rabble. Royalist prisoners of war and criminals pressed into service. Some were still wearing their leg irons when subsequently captured by the British! Once ashore, most of these jailbirds ignored the orders of their officers and set about indulging in rapine and looting. A Portuguese merchant ship had recently been wrecked off the coast and wine collected by the local populace was seized by the mob of ill-disciplined troops and many became blind drunk. Only St. Leger and the grenadiers maintained any sort of order (Captain Morris had injured himself disembarking and handed command over to his subordinate). On the 23^rd St. Leger and his men were ordered to take the strategic outcrops of Garnwnda and Garngowil. They did so and it was to be in view of this position later that same day a heated skirmish would take place, the only such encounter of the whole shambolic affair.  

A reconnaissance party of three British sailors and a local volunteer stumbled upon four half-drunk French soldiers in a field behind Bwlch Y Rhos Farm. The inexperienced French fired a ragged volley of musketry. The British returned the compliment. Both sides missed. A second French volley was also ineffective. The sailors and the volunteer pushed on and fired at the reloading rabble, shooting one Frenchman dead and mortally wounding another. As the remaining invaders attempted to drag the casualties away, Lieutenant St. Leger and his grenadiers advanced to provide covering fire for their comrades from behind the hedges lining the field. The British, however, held their ground and gave fire. One of St. Leger's men fell dead. After a short while, both sides withdrew. It had been a resounding victory for the British patrol. They had killed two invaders and mortally wounded another.

Frenchman's Field. The hedges at left are allegedly from where St. Leger's men provided
covering fire. At centre are the stones where the two dead soldiers are believed to have
been buried. 

In the meantime, the locals had fought back with venom against the French who had set about pillaging their homes. The six-foot tall cobbler, Jemima Nicholas, took a pitchfork and rounded up twelve Frenchmen before marching them into custody. She remained a local legend and died at the age of 77. There were further casualties as farmers clashed with republican troops in the farms around Fishguard. Eventually, local volunteers and yeomanry cavalry under Lord Cawdor occupied the town itself and bluffed the vulnerable Tate into an unconditional surrender. At 2pm on February 24^th, the French could be seen marching down the road from Pencaer to Goodwick beach, flags flying but no drums. The French surrendered and after piling arms they were held prisoner on Fishguard Square inside the Church and Town Hall. The officers all signed the surrender document in the Royal Oak Inn in the presence of the British. Local legend has it that several hundred Welsh women on their way to observe the invasion, wearing their red shawls and black round hats were mistaken for regular British infantry, striking terror into many of the drunken, disorganised French.

The bodies of the two dead invaders were left out on the field for days after Tate's surrender, stripped for souvenirs by locals. They were eventually buried in the corner of the land on which they had died. All that marked their grave was one large stone. The field behind Bwlch Y Rhos Farm is known as Parc Yr Ffrancwr (Frenchman’s Field) to this day. With Tate's surrender ended the last invasion of Britain. The skirmish at Parc Yr Ffrancwr was a tiny engagement, but it is one of great significance as the only occasion on which French troops fought on the British mainland during the entire Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Perhaps it is pertinent to end with a line from Stanley Kubrick's 'Barry Lyndon' (1975). During Barry's first taste of battle the narrator comments thoughtfully: 'though this encounter is not recorded in any history books, it was memorable enough for those who took part'. Undoubtedly, the men who fought and died in Frenchman's Field would concur. 

(I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my old comrade Chris John for his help in preparing this piece. He knows these events and the fields in which they transpired like the back of his hand. The photograph is (c) Chris John.)