ed
as a signal to drop tools and form for battle. The white uniforms lined
the breastwork in a triple row, with the grenadiers behind them as a
reserve, and the second battalion of Berry watching the flanks and rear.

Meanwhile the English army had moved forward from its camp by the
saw-mill. First came the rangers, the light infantry, and Bradstreet's
armed boatmen, who, emerging into the open space, began a spattering
fire. Some of the provincial troops followed, extending from left to
right, and opening fire in turn; then the regulars, who had formed in
columns of attack under cover of the forest, advanced their solid red
masses into the sunlight, and passing through the intervals between the
provincial regiments, pushed forward to the assault. Across the rough
ground, with its maze of fallen trees whose leaves hung withering in the
July sun, they could see the top of the breastwork, but not the men
behind it; when, in an instant, all the line was obscured by a gush of
smoke, a crash of exploding firearms tore the air, and grapeshot and
musket-balls swept the whole space like a tempest; "a damnable fire,"
says an officer who heard them screaming about his ears. The English had
been ordered to carry the works with the bayonet; but their ranks were
broken by the obstructions through which they struggled in vain to force
their way, and they soon began to fire in turn. The storm raged in full
fury for an hour. The assailants pushed close to the breastwork; but
there they were stopped by the bristling mass of sharpened branches,
which they could not pass under the murderous cross-fires that swept
them from front and flank. At length they fell back, exclaiming that the
works were impregnable. Abercromby, who was at the saw-mill, a mile and
a half in the rear, sent order to attack again, and again they came on
as before.

The scene was frightful: masses of infuriated men who could not go
forward and would not go back; straining for an enemy they could not
reach, and firing on an enemy they could not see; caught in the
entanglement of fallen trees; tripped by briers, stumbling over logs,
tearing through boughs; shouting, yelling, cursing, and pelted all the
while with bullets that killed them by scores, stretched them on the
ground, or hung them on jagged branches in strange attitudes of death.
The provincials supported the regulars with spirit, and some of them
forced their way to the foot of the wooden wall.

The French