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The creek that ran between our lines and the enemy's had been dammed in several places, forcing the water back to the depth of four to five feet. The fort was lined on three sides with the heaviest of field and siege pieces, and crowded to its utmost capacity with infantry. This fort was on an acute angle of the line of entrenchments.
Sir Francis gave advice that entrenchments should be thrown up on the north-east, and that instead of advancing towards the enemy they should await his coming, and refuse the battle that day if possible.
The second battalion had advanced at an interval of about seventy-five yards after the first, and the third had followed in turn, but they were ordered by General Upton to lie down as they approached the entrenchments.
Gustavus Adolphus was the first who landed. In the presence of his suite, he knelt on the shore of Germany to return thanks to the Almighty for the safe arrival of his fleet and his army. He landed his troops on the Islands of Wollin and Usedom; upon his approach, the imperial garrisons abandoned their entrenchments and fled.
These entrenchments, however, whether the men were disheartened by a sudden panic, or deceived by offers of quarter for both causes have been assigned the enemy was suffered to occupy without resistance. From Drogheda the conqueror led his men, flushed with slaughter, to the seige of Wexford. The tragedy, so recently acted at Drogheda, was renewed.
There was incessant fighting at very different points on one of the hottest days at six places simultaneously and, as a rule, the tried valour of the Caesarians had the advantage in these skirmishes; once, for instance, a single cohort maintained itself in its entrenchments against four legions for several hours, till support came up.
Down the river, below Quebec, in his six miles of entrenchments at Beauport, Montcalm was getting more and more uneasy on the fatal 12th. Where was Wolfe's army? The bulk of it, two brigades, was said to be at St Nicholas, thirteen miles above Quebec, facing the same thirteen miles that Bougainville's worn-out men had been so long defending. But where was Wolfe's third brigade?
If, in despite of the fury both of fire and water, they should accomplish this almost impossible passage, a fresh and vigorous enemy awaited the exhausted troops in an impregnable camp; and when they needed repose and refreshment they must prepare for battle. With exhausted powers they must ascend the hostile entrenchments, whose strength seemed to bid defiance to every assault.
Delayed by stress of weather, the fleet was not sighted off Algiers till June 13th, when it anchored in the Bay of Sidi Ferrūj, and there landed next day, with little opposition, and began to throw up entrenchments.
Here they build hovels, which they surround from time to time with palisades and muddy entrenchments; and here, in these squalid abodes of ignorance and misery, the genius of Liberty, conducted by the spirit of Commerce, descends at last to awaken mankind from its sloth and cowardly stupor. A longer night was to intervene; however, before the dawn of day.
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