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Updated: September 12, 2025
In every direction the dykes had burst, and the sullen wash of the liberated waves, bearing hither and thither the floating wreck of fascines and machinery, of planks and building materials, sounded far and wide over what should have been dry land.
The French army, in battle array at the foot of the hill where the King stood, behind fortifications of earth, behind redoubts and fascines of turf, perceived with alarm the men-at-arms and the light horse pressed between these two forces, ten times their superior in numbers. "Sound the charge!" cried Louis XIII; "or my old Coislin is lost."
Two could play at that game, however, and the British had the men and means to win. Their western batteries from the land were smashing the walls into ruins. Their Royal Battery wrecked the whole inner water-front of Louisbourg. Breaches were yawning elsewhere. British fascines were visible in large quantities, ready to fill up the ditch, which was already half full of debris.
This nobleman advancing within two leagues of the French lines, ordered a great number of fascines to be made, declaring he would attack them the next morning; so that Villars drew all his forces on that side, in full expectations of an engagement.
Within this framework they piled up fascines, stones, earth, and whatever else was at hand. The whole army was employed in this task, which was continued for seventy days and nights without intermission, the men working in regular spells. Meanwhile the Plataeans had not been idle.
Half their number carried cotton bags and fascines to fill the ditch. On the right of the road the 116th New York was deployed; on its left the 49th Massachusetts, closely supported by the 48th Massachusetts, the 2d Louisiana, of Dudley's brigade, and the reserve of the 21st Maine.
Where we come upon streams of any size or depth, light wooden bridges have been built; and fascines have made some boggy parts fordable in wet weather. Such is our road, and along it we proceed at a hand-gallop for the most part. The jolting may be imagined, it cannot be described; for the four wheels are never by any chance on the same level at one and the same time.
Behind him came troops of matchlock-men, who picked off every one of our men who showed their noses above the ramparts: and a great host of blackamoors with scaling-ladders, bundles to fill the ditch, fascines, gabions, culverins, demilunes, counterscarps, and all the other appurtenances of offensive war. On they came: my guns and men were ready for them. You will ask how my pieces were loaded?
At the edge of the moat opposite the wooden tower, a strong penthouse, which they called "a cat," might be seen stealing towards the curtain, and gradually filling up the moat with fascines and rubbish, which the workmen flung out at its mouth. It was advanced by two sets of ropes passing round pulleys, and each worked by a windlass at some distance from the cat.
These embankments are constructed of sand from the coast-dunes or from sand-banks, and of earth from the mainland or from flats outside the dikes, bound and strengthened by fascines, and provided with sluices, which are generally founded on piles and of very expensive construction, for drainage at low water.
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