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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.
The Robin Hoods and the men of Lincoln and Leicestershire were sustained in that shambles by the spirit that had come to them through the old yeoman stock in which their traditions were rooted, and those who had not fallen went forward, past their wounded comrades, past these poor, bloody, moaning men, to the German trenches behind the redoubt.
The young man remained standing and motionless, having but the force of will and not the power of execution. "Hear me, Maximilian," said his father. "Suppose I was a soldier like you, and ordered to carry a certain redoubt, and you knew I must be killed in the assault, would you not say to me, as you said just now, 'Go, father; for you are dishonored by delay, and death is preferable to shame!"
Several ineffectual attempts were made to storm these forts, and to dislodge the enemy at the point of the bayonet. Finally R.H. Anderson's Brigade of South Carolinians came up, and three regiments, led by Colonel Jenkins, made a flank movement, and by a desperate assault, took the redoubt on the left, with six pieces of artillery.
The express was directed to meet the Commander-in-Chief, who was then on his return from Hartford, but, taking different roads, they missed each other, and a delay attended the delivery of the papers, which ensured the escape of Arnold. Washington, with Generals Lafayette and Knox, had turned from the direct route in order to visit a redoubt.
As the result of this raid could not be said to have cleared the enemy of the extensive No Man's Land, the raid on Tank Redoubt had to be cancelled and the raiding party joined the Battalion in the line. The next fortnight must rank as among the most unpleasant and least satisfactory periods of the whole campaign.
Perceiving on his extreme right, toward the lake, a fine grove or copse, Gooding threw out Sharpe with the 156th New York to examine the wood with a view of attempting to turn the left flank of the Confederate lines. These, as it proved, did not extend beyond the grove, but there ended in an unfinished redoubt.
General Auguste de Caulaincourt was killed in a redoubt to which he had led the cuirassiers of General Montbrun, who had just been fatally wounded by a cannon-ball in the attack on this same redoubt. The Emperor often said, in speaking of generals killed in the army, "Such an one is happy in having died on the field of honor, while I shall perhaps be so unfortunate as to die in my bed."
They were poison-shells giving out noxious gases. All the chemistry of death was poured out on both sides and through it went the men of the Midland Division. The attack on the right was delivered by a brigade of Staffordshire men, who advanced in four lines toward the Big Willie trench which formed the southeast side of the Hohenzollern redoubt.
In order to avail himself of the spirit of emulation which existed between the troops of the two nations, and to avoid any cause of jealousy to either, Washington committed the attack of the one redoubt to the French and that of the other to the Americans. The latter were commanded by Lafayette, attended by Col. Alexander Hamilton, who led the advance, and the former by the Baron de Viomenil.