says: "Of one company not more than five, and of another not more
than fourteen, escaped."

Lossing says: "Whole platoons were lain upon the earth, like grass by
the mower's scythe."

Marshall says: "The British line, wholly broken, fell back with
precipitation to the landing-place."

Frothingham quotes this statement of a British officer: "Most of our
grenadiers and light infantry, the moment they presented themselves,
lost three fourths, and many nine tenths, of their men. Some had only
eight and nine men to a company left, some only three, four, and five."

Botta says: "A shower of bullets. The field was covered with the slain."

Bancroft says: "A continuous sheet of fire."

Stark says: "The dead lay as thick as sheep in a fold."

It was, indeed, a strange episode in British history, in view of the
British assertion of assured supremacy, whenever an issue challenged
that supremacy.

Clinton and Burgoyne, watching from the redoubt on Copp's Hill, realized
at once the gravity of the situation, and Clinton promptly offered his
aid to rescue the army.

Four hundred additional marines and the forty-seventh regiment were
promptly landed. This fresh force, under Clinton, was ordered to flank
the redoubt and scale its face to the extreme left. General Howe, with
the grenadiers and light infantry, supported by the artillery, undertook
the storming of the breastworks, bending back from the mouth of the
redoubt, and so commanding the centre entrance.

General Pigot was ordered to rally the remnants of the fifth,
thirty-eighth, forty-third, and fifty-second regiments, to connect the
two wings, and attack the redoubt in front.

A mere demonstration was ordered upon the American left, while the
artillery was to advance a few rods and then swing to its left, so as to
sweep the breastwork for Howe's advance.

THE ASSAULT.

The dress parade movement of the first advance was not repeated. A
contest between equals was at hand. Victory or ruin was the alternative
for those who so proudly issued from the Boston barracks at sunrise for
the suppression of pretentious rebellion. Knapsacks were thrown aside.
British veterans stripped for fight. Not a single regiment of those
engaged had passed such a fearful ordeal in its whole history as a
single hour had witnessed. The power of discipline, the energy of
experienced commanders, and the pressure of honored antecedents,
combined to make the movement as trying as it was momen