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It was in this fearful struggle that Ensign "Bob" Evans, who was with the naval force that charged up the unprotected beach, was so frightfully wounded that it was believed he could not live. When the surgeon made ready to amputate his shattered leg, Bob, who had secured possession of a loaded revolver, swore he would shoot any man who touched the limb with such purpose.
With the Colonies so loyal and so willing to assist Great Britain in time of trouble and danger, how was it that in a decade the Empire was shattered and the major portion of the Colonies were busy building up a nation of their own? At this distance of time it is still hard to view the question dispassionately. Who was responsible for this great criminal folly? Was it some individual?
With face pale, but steady, he traversed the entire length of the shattered train, examining, inquiring, making a record of the dead and injured, and in some cases examining papers and effects for purposes of identification.
So far, very well; the sacrifice was well worth while; and into these breaches came up the rear ships of each column, nearly fresh, forming in fact a reserve which fell upon the shattered ships of the enemy on either side of the breaks. Now this idea of a reserve prompts a thought as to the commander-in-chief.
More alarming symptoms he regarded with less apprehension, describing his own "shattered carcass" as in the worst plight of any in the fleet; and he says, "I have felt the blood gushing up the left side of my head; and, the moment it covers the brain, I am fast asleep." The fleet was in worse trim than the men; but when he compared it with the enemy's, it was with a right English feeling.
Again and again, through shattered ranks and over ground covered with the fallen, they went forward to the supreme sacrifice as cheerfully and as light-heartedly as if they were out for a holiday. They knew they could beat the enemy in front of them, and they went on and did it again and again, in spite of the wire, in spite of the mud, in spite of thousands of machine-gun bullets and shells.
As the discharge rang out, mingled with the roar of the guns, Hector shouted, "Fix bayonets, and charge!" The wooden shafts of the bayonets were thrust down the barrels of the firelocks, and with a cheer the seventy-five men rushed upon the shattered head of the column.
They told of the Crescent Regiment, known and loved on all these sidewalks and away up to and beyond their Bishop-General Polk's Trinity Church, whose desperate gallantry had saved that same Washington Artillery three of its pieces, and to whose thinned and bleeding ranks swarms of the huddled Western farm boys, as shattered and gory as their captors and as glorious, had at last laid down their arms.
Three British major generals, including Pakenham, were killed early in the action, and the total British loss exceeded two thousand. The American loss was but seventy-one. The shattered foe fell back, lay inactive for ten days, and then quietly withdrew as they had come. Though Jackson was not noted for piety, he always believed that his success on this occasion was the work of Providence.
The victor had the good sense and moderation to spare his prisoners, and set them free without ransom. He received in return an imperial amnesty; and from that period the count of Holland and his posterity formed a barrier against which the ecclesiastical power and the remains of the imperial supremacy continually struggled, to be only shattered in each new assault.
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