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Updated: May 15, 2025
They boasted that they had rice and gunpowder enough to last out six months in these places; but they were gradually surrounded on all sides by Malays and Dyaks, so that they could get no fresh stores. They built a breast-work by the river-side, dug a trench behind it, placed some brass guns in position, and then retired to eat their dinners in comfort behind their defences.
On the preservation of that post depended the whole fortune of the day, for Parma had already received the welcome intelligence that the Palisade now Fort Victory had been regained. He instantly ordered an outer breast-work of wool- sacks and sand-bags to be thrown up in front of Saint George, and planted a battery to play point-blank at the enemy's entrenchments.
He nodded his satisfaction, and we both worked on slowly and silently, building up till the erection became a breast-work, rapidly growing narrower as it rose higher; the sand poured in, filling up the interstices and trickling down on the other side, thus giving our rugged wall the appearance of being a natural heap, over which the dried sand had been swept in by the storm.
By dint of shouting strongly he made himself known, and the firing ceased, giving him time to run up to the breast-work, and then along it to the gateway, now doubly shut; but after a little parley he was admitted, and found himself in the presence of Captain Smithers and Ensign Long. "Ah, Gray!" exclaimed the former, "I had given you up. Were those your shots that gave the alarm?"
The piquets were to begin the attack, and to be sustained by the grenadiers; and the grenadiers by the battalions. The whole were ordered to march up briskly, to rush upon the enemy's fire, and to reserve their own until they had passed the breast-work. The troops marched to the assault with great intrepidity; but their utmost efforts could make no impression on the works.
Put the same men in the open field where a charge of bayonets was to be met, and they would doubtless have broken and fled without crossing steel. Nor, on the other hand, could any musketry have kept the English columns out of the cotton-bale breast-work; they had often in the Peninsula stormed stronger works than that, without faltering for artillery, musketry, or bayonet.
But this I did, in reality, in firing on the black people of the land, who were acting against their true king and lord. Little blood was shed in this affair, as I have ascertained, but all this business his Grace owes to his failure to reply to or satisfy me acting as if he wished open war with me, as was seen by the breast-work which he had constructed.
On his way he was struck by a cannon ball which carried off his head, and the army was thus left without a general. Sarsfield was at some distance with the reserve. There was no one to give any orders. The breast-work was carried. The Irish fought doggedly, retreating slowly from enclosure to enclosure.
At times he strolled to the breast-work, but no movement had been seen in that direction. In two hours Dias returned. "The gorge above is a quarter of a mile through, and very difficult to pass. It is half-blocked with great rocks in two or three places, and there would be immense difficulty in getting the mules over.
From both sides, under Capizucca and Aquila on the one band, and under Alexander on the other, the entrenchments of the patriots were at last assaulted, and as the royalists fell thick and fast beneath the breast-work which they were storming, their comrades clambered upon their bodies, and attempted, from such vantage-ground, to effect an entrance.
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