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The idle tale that James trembled at the mere view of a naked sword, which is produced as an instance of the effects of sympathy over the infant in the womb from his mother's terror at the assassination of Rizzio, is probably not true, yet it serves the purpose of inconsiderate writers to indicate his excessive pusillanimity; but there is another idle tale of an opposite nature which is certainly true: In passing from Berwick into his new kingdom, the king, with his own hand, "shot out of a cannon so fayre and with so great judgment" as convinced the cannoniers of the king's skill "in great artillery," as Stowe records.
At this point the left of the regiment was near the right of the house, and I claim that my officers and men captured two large brass pieces, literally punching the cannoniers from their guns. Privates John Fregan and Jasper Patterson, from Company "A," rushed down the hill, captured one caisson, with a cannonier and six horses, and brought them back."
The field began to be now clear; both armies stood, as it were, gazing at one another, only the king, having rallied his foot, seemed inclined to renew the charge, and began to cannonade them, which they could not return, most of their cannon being nailed while they were in our possession, and all the cannoniers killed or fled; and our gunners did execution upon Sir William Balfour's troops for a good while.
Several batteries were completely overrun, and the cannoniers sought and found safety in front of the works, whence the enemy had made their charge. At another point on the lines, where there was no infantry support, the enemy charged repeatedly and made every effort to carry the works, but were handsomely repulsed by artillery alone.
The left of the battalion advanced to within seventy yards of the work, being exposed to the fire of two pieces of artillery, en barbette, in addition to the fire of a considerable force of infantry and some of them still nearer, so that they had a destructive fire on the cannoniers and infantry; which position the battalion maintained until the enemy were driven from their guns and bastion, when they were followed into their work and surrendered."
The burnished howitzer flashed in the sunbeams, and we could discern the cannoniers standing by their posts. Bugles were braying and drums rolling. So near were they that we could distinguish the call. They were sounding the "long roll!" "Halt! Great Heaven!" cried Twing, jerking his horse upon its haunches; "we are riding into the enemy's camp!
Ricketts considers this a perilous job but proceeds to execute the order as to his own battery. A small ravine is in his front. With Ricketts gallantly leading, the battery dashes across the ravine at full gallop, breaking one wheel as it goes, which is at once replaced. A fence lies across the way. The cannoniers demolish it.
Half crying with joy, and still wild with anger, she kissed the beast, and abused her tormentors by turns. "Cannoniers that ye are," she cried, "ma foi! you'll have little face for the fire when the day comes that ye should face it! Pauvre Gregoire, they've left thee a tail like a tirailleur's feather! Plagues light on the thieves that did it!
An advancing Rebel regiment retires, as he pushes up to where the Union batteries and cannoniers lie wounded and dying the other three regiments following in line-of-battle until near the crest, when the fire of the Enemy's rifles and musketry, added to his heavy cannonading, grows so severe that the brigade is forced back to shelter in a roadway leading up the plateau.
Not far from me to the left I saw the vast Tophana barracks of the Cannoniers, and the Artillery-works, after long reluctance and delay, take wing together; and three minutes later, down by the water, the barrack of the Bombardiers and the Military School together, grandly, grandly; and then, to the right, in the valley of Kassim, the Arsenal: these occupying the sky like smoky suns, and shedding a glaring day over many a mile of sea and land; I saw the two lines of ruddier flaring where the barge-bridge and the raft-bridge over the Golden Horn made haste to burn; and all that vastness burned with haste, quicker and quicker to fervour to fury to unanimous rabies: and when its red roaring stormed the infinite, and the might of its glowing heart was Gravitation, Being, Sensation, and I its compliant wife then my head nodded, and with crooked lips I sighed as it were my last sigh, and tumbled, weak and drunken, upon my face.
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