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Breckinridge, who would have been the President of the United States, had not the Democrats divided, was to lead it. This division of five brigades had formed under cover of a wood. On its flank was a battery of ten guns and two thousand of the fierce riders of the South under Wharton and Pegram. Dick felt instinctively that Colonel Kenton with his regiment was there in the very thick of it.
Cornwallis had about 7,000 men, many of whom had been in the field since February, 1780. At the beginning Cornwallis abandoned his weaker outer defenses, which Washington immediately turned into artillery battery positions. Once the siege began in earnest on October 6, the allied artillery pounded the British into submission. Parallel trenches were dug close to the British lines.
His researches on the dynamo caused him to devise what he calls an 'harmonic engine. It consists of a tuning-fork, kept in vibration by two small electro-magnets, excited with three or four battery cells. It is capable of working a small pump, but is little more than a scientific curiosity.
The battery having more men than was a quota for one company, the last recruits were required to enlist in other companies or to exchange with older members who wished to change. Thus some of our most interesting members left us, to join other commands, and the number of our guns was reduced from eight to six. The prisoners were now disposed of, and I returned to my old mess.
The American batteries now opened with a heavy cross-fire, which enfiladed several of the works. They also pushed forward a sap against the Star fort and erected a battery, composed of gabions, thirty-six yards only from the abattis and raised forty feet high so as to overlook the works of the garrison.
A very dense fog enveloped everything, confining the view of surrounding objects to a radius of about fifty yards. I was accompanied by a small advance-guard, my escort, and one piece of Henshaw's battery, a section of which, under Captain Henshaw, I had ordered to join my force.
Sir Henry Lawrence the same evening marched the Thirty-second Foot and and a battery of European artillery, with some native regiments to their lines, three miles from the city, surrounded and disarmed them, and arrested their ringleaders. After this act of decision and energy, Lucknow had peace for some time.
And now pieces passed their caissons, and now they were in line, then in double column, and presently were gleaming in battery again, faced to the rear. And now at command the tired lads dropped to the ground to rest, or sauntered from one lounging squad to another, to chat and chaff and puff cigarettes.
The patriotic act was so brave and touching that it thrilled all who witnessed the scene; and until the close of the war, when peace separated the surviving officers and men of the battery, that little flag was protected and cherished as a memento of the Perryville campaign.
Thus, the necessity for using two wads between the powder and the red-hot balls was obviated, and the gunners were able to fire much more rapidly than they would otherwise have done. The number of the Spanish soldiers on board the battery ships was 5260, in addition to the sailors required to work the ships.
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