more numerous army, besieged its almost
impregnable walls. Under Amherst, Boscawen, and Wolfe, no less than
twenty-three ships of war, eighteen frigates, sixteen thousand land
forces, with a proportionable train of cannon and mortars, were arrayed
against this great fortress in the year 1758. Here, too, many of our own
ancestral warriors were gathered in that memorable conflict; here Gridley,
who afterwards planned the redoubt at Bunker Hill, won his first laurels
as an engineer; here Pomeroy distinguished himself, and others whose names
are not recorded, but whose deeds survive in the history of a republic.
The very drum that beat to arms before Louisburgh was braced again when
the greater drama of the Revolution opened at Concord and Lexington.

The siege continued for nearly two months. From June 8th until July 26th,
the storm of iron and fire--of rocket, shot, and shell--swept from yonder
batteries, upon the castellated city. Then when the King's, the Queen's,
the Dauphin's bastions were lying in ruins, the commander, Le Chevalier
de Drucour, capitulated, and the lilies of the Bourbon waved over
Louisburgh no more.

And here we stand nearly a century after, looking out from these war-works
upon the desolate harbor. At the entrance, the wrecks of three French
frigates, sunk to prevent the ingress of the British fleet, yet remain;
sometimes visited by our still enterprising countrymen, who come down in
coasters with diving-bell and windlass, to raise again from the deep,
imbedded in sea-shells, the great guns that have slept in the ooze so
long. Between those two points lay the ships of the line, and frigates of
Louis; opposite, where the parapets of stone are yet visible, was the
grand battery of forty guns: at Lighthouse Point yonder, two thousand
grenadiers, under General Wolfe, drove back the French artillerymen, and
tamed their cannon upon these mighty walls. Here the great seventy-four
blew up; there the English boats were sunk by the guns of the fortress;
day and night for many weeks this ground has shuddered with the thunders
of the cannonade.

And what of all this? we may ask. What of the ships that were sunk, and
those that floated away with the booty? What of the soldiers that fell by
hundreds here, and those that lived? What of the prisoners that mourned,
and the captors that triumphed? What of the flash of artillery, and the
shattered wall that answered it? Has any benefit resulted to mankind from
this