This important work having fallen, immediate preparations were made for re-embarking the troops, and attacking Mobile. But on the 14th news arrived of the preliminaries of peace between England and the United States having been settled at Ghent on December 24. All warlike operations of course terminated; and the troops only awaited on Île Dauphine the ratification of the treaty by President Madison. Intelligence of this reached them on the 5th March, and on the 15th the officers and Riflemen who had been made prisoners re-joined the Battalion, having been released under the terms of the treaty. Major Mitchell had been roughly treated by General Jackson, because he refused to furnish him with information of our strength or movements. On the 31st March the Battalion embarked on board the ‘Dover,’ some few men being placed on board the ‘Norfolk’ transport. On the 4th April they set sail, and, having called at the Havannah, arrived at Plymouth, whence they were ordered round to Dover, where they disembarked on the 2nd June and moved to Shorncliffe, where they found three companies of the Battalion, the remaining two being in Flanders, as is now to be narrated. FOOTNOTES: [131] George Simmons had been brought up to the medical profession. [132] ‘Napier,’ Book xxiii. chap. 3. [133] Nineteen men of the 1st Battalion, and 1 bugler and 12 men of the 2nd Battalion, were returned as ‘missing.’ [134] He was, while the 1st Battalion were absent, temporarily attached to the 2nd Battalion; being employed on the telegraph of the Light Division. [135] ‘Twelve Years’ Military Adventure.’ [136] See Napier, Book xxiv. chap. 5. [137] Surtees, 296, 297. The context is very confused, the editor not having been able to decipher or to arrange Surtees’ MS. [138] Record, 2nd Battalion. As the return in the ‘London Gazette’ does not distinguish the regiments of the non-commissioned officers and privates, I am unable to give the casualties of the other Battalions. [139] It is evident from Sir Thomas Graham’s letters to Lord Bathurst and Lord Wellington (‘Supplementary Despatches,’ viii. 376-7) that he undertook this command very unwillingly and only from a sense of duty. To Lord Wellington he says ‘I cannot look forward to it otherwise than an irksome service, with scarce a chance of any material success.’ [140] It would appear from a private letter from Lord Bathurst to Lord Wellington, that the strength of the detachment of the 3rd Battalion was 250 men. ‘Supplementary Despatches,’ viii. 390. This is a clerical or typographical error for ‘of the three Battalions.’ The depôt companies were at this time very weak, and the strength of the whole detachment was about 250 men. [141] Graham’s Despatch, ‘Annual Register,’ lvi., 154. [142] Despatch, ‘Annual Register,’ 157.