time, within two days, occurred both a
cheering success and a disheartening rebuff. A French man-of-war with
seventy cannon and six hundred men was seen entering Louisburg. As if
in panic fright, one of the small English ships fled. The French ship
pursued. In a trice she was surrounded by the English fleet and
captured. The flight of the little vessel had been a trick. A few
days later four hundred English in whaleboats attempted the mad project
of attacking the Island Battery at the harbor entrance. The boats set
out about midnight with muffled oars, but a wind rose, setting a
tremendous surf lashing the rocks, and yet the invaders might have
succeeded but for a piece of rashness. A hundred men had gained the
shore when, with the thoughtlessness of schoolboys, they uttered a
jubilant yell. {219} Instantly, porthole, platform, gallery, belched
death through the darkness. The story is told that a raw New England
lad was in the act of climbing the French flagstaff to hang out his own
red coat as English flag when a Swiss guard hacked him to pieces. The
boats not yet ashore were sunk by the blaze of cannon. A few escaped
back in the darkness, but by daylight over one hundred English had been
captured. Cannon, mortars, and musketoons were mounted to command the
fort inside the walls, and a continuous rain of fire began from the
hills. In vain Duchambon, the French commander, waited for
reenforcements from Canada. Convent, hospital, barracks, all the
houses of the town, were peppered by bombs till there was not a roof
intact in the place. The soldiers, of whom there were barely two
thousand, were ready to mutiny. The citizens besought Duchambon to
surrender. Provisions ran out. Looking down from the tops of the
walls, cracking jokes with the English across the ditch, the French
soldiers counted more than a thousand scaling ladders ready for
hand-to-hand assault, and a host of barrels filled with mud behind
which the English sharpshooters crouched. It had just been arranged
between Warren and Pepperrell that the {220} former should attack by
sea while the latter assaulted by land, when on June 16 the French
capitulated. How the New England enthusiasts ran rampant through the
abandoned French fort need not be told. How Parson Moody, famous for
his long prayers, hewed down images in the Catholic chapel till he was
breathless and then came to the officers' state dinner so exhausted
that when asked to pronou