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It appeared that the queen had been greatly upset by the night attack, and the capture of all the entrenchments; and had collected all her chiefs to decide what had best be done, now that the siege of Coomassie had been raised. Then it was understood why the advance had not been opposed. But for this council, we should have found every stockade occupied in force.
While some of the villagers were labouring on the entrenchments, others were employed in collecting provisions; and thus the hopes of the party that they should be able to make an effectual resistance rose considerably.
The next day the big naval guns had opened fire; but although their shell had reached the lower entrenchments of the Boers, their batteries on the hill had proved to be beyond their range even with the greatest elevation that could be given to them, while the Boer guns carried far beyond the camp.
This they managed to do, with the aid of a Maxim gun of the 11th; which had crossed one of the branches of the river, and got into a position flanking the entrenchments. All night the enemy kept up a heavy fire. In the morning the force were still unable to pass. However, during the day the 4th Sikhs came across on rafts, and passed the night with them.
Their motives were their feelings; their feelings were their traditions, and their traditions were back in the old entrenchments. The time for large changes had slipped by.
The anxiety of General Proctor to save the baggage waggons containing his own personal effects, had been productive of the most culpable delay, and at the moment when his little army should have been under cover of entrenchments, and in a position which offered a variety of natural defensive advantages, they found themselves suddenly overtaken by the enemy in the heart of a thick wood, where, fatigued by the long and tedious march they had made under circumstances of great privation, they had scarcely time to form in the irregular manner permitted by their broken position, before they found themselves attacked with great spirit, and on all sides by a force more than quadruple their own.
Stakes and strong hurdles interwoven with osier plaits, and protected by deep dykes, served at once to neutralise the effect of that arm in which William was most powerful, and in which Harold almost entirely failed; while the possession of the ground must compel the foe to march, and to charge, up hill, against all the missiles which the Saxons could pour down from their entrenchments.
On the first day of July he was in sight of the enemy's entrenchments at Dillingen, and encamped with his right at Amerdighem, and his left at Onderin-gen.
At nine in the evening the enemy, who had crept silently up, attempted to rush the camp on three sides. The troops were well prepared, and maintained a steady fire; although the enemy's swordsmen hurled themselves against our entrenchments in great numbers.
Three times the invaders were beaten back with heavy loss, and after each repulse the attack was renewed with fresh vigour, while within the entrenchments the pioneers still plied the pick and shovel, undismayed by the uproar around them.
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