I pretended a great deal of zeal for this service, and that if I might be permitted to sell my company in the Irish regiment I was in, and have the chevalier’s brevet for a colonel, in case of raising troops for him in Great Britain after his arrival, I would embark volunteer and serve at my own expense. The latter gave me a great advantage with the chevalier; for now I was esteemed as a man of consideration, and one that must have a considerable interest in my own country. So I obtained leave to sell my company, and having had a good round sum of money remitted me from London, by the way of Holland, I prepared a very handsome equipage, and away I went to Dunkirk to embark. I was very well received by the chevalier; and as he had an account that I was an officer in the Irish brigade, and had served in Italy, and consequently was an old soldier, all this added to the character which I had before, and made me have a great deal of honour paid me, though at the same time I had no particular attachment to his person or to his cause. Nor indeed did I much consider the cause of one side or other. If I had, I should hardly have risked, not my life only, but effects too, which were all, as I might say, from that moment forfeited to the English government, and were too evidently in their power to confiscate at their pleasure. However, having just received a remittance from London of £300 sterling, and sold my company in the Irish regiment for very near as much, I was not only insensibly drawn in, but was perfectly volunteer in that dull cause, and away I went with them at all hazards. It belongs very little to my history to give an account of that fruitless expedition, only to tell you that, being so closely and effectually chased by the English fleet, which was superior in force to the French, I may say that, in escaping them, I escaped being hanged. It was the good fortune of the French that they overshot the port they aimed at, and intending for the Frith of Forth, or, as it is called, the Frith of Edinburgh, the first land they made was as far north as a place called Montrose, where it was not their business to land, and so they were obliged to come back to the frith, and were gotten to the entrance of it, and came to an anchor for the tide. But this delay or hindrance gave time to the English, under Sir George Byng, to come to the frith, and they came to an anchor, just as we did, only waiting to go up the frith with the flood. Had we not overshot the port, as above, all our squadron had been destroyed in two days, and all we could have done had been to have gotten into the pier or haven at Leith with the smaller frigates, and have landed the troops and ammunition; but we must have set fire to the men-of-war, for the English squadron was not above twenty-four hours behind us, or thereabout.