The Fishguard Invasion by the French in 1797

The very curious incident related in the following narrative took place nearly a hundred years ago, and, as men’s memories are short, and the whole affair reads like fiction—and very improbable and imaginative fiction—it may be as well to write a few lines of introduction, and to give my authorities for the facts mentioned in the story. In the first place, the evidence of persons who had witnessed the landing, and who recollected it perfectly, and who have told the story to me—I have met many such in the course of my life, as my home was within sight of Fishguard Head. Probably the last of these eye-witnesses was the old woman who died a short time ago—on February 8, 1891. Her demise was announced by the Pembrokeshire papers as “The Death of a Pembrokeshire Centenarian.” The death occurred on Sunday morning at the Dyffryn Cottages, near Fishguard, of Eleanor (Nelly) Phillips at the age of 103. Her age is pretty accurately fixed by a statement she was wont to make, that she was nine years old when the French landed at Fishguard. She was a spinster, and had been bedridden for eight years. When a mere girl she was in service at Kilshawe, near Fishguard, and was driving cows from a field when the French frigates appeared off the coast in 1797. In the second place, the following books and pamphlets