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This step was no sooner taken, than, on the thirteenth of June in the afternoon, having received advice that the enemy had caused a large body of troops, followed by a second, to march on his right to Burghotte, he ordered his army to march that evening towards Hervorden; and, at the same time, major-general Hardenberg marched with four battalions of grenadiers, and a regiment of horse, to reinforce that post.
He had illusions, which he gave to the people. This was his power and his weakness; it was his beauty. He believed in glory. He had of life and of the world the same opinion as any one of his grenadiers. He retained always the infantile gravity which finds pleasure in playing with swords and drums, and the sort of innocence which makes good military men. He esteemed force sincerely.
The whole advanced with a shout, headed by Captain Thornton, the grenadiers preparing to throw their grenades among the bushes where the ambuscade lay, and the musketeers to support them by an instant and close assault. Dougal, forgotten in the scuffle, wisely crept into the thicket which overhung that part of the road where we had first halted, which he ascended with the activity of a wild cat.
During the day they stood to arms, and were drawn up in order of battle; at night, they bivouacked in a square round their leader; there the old grenadiers incessantly kept feeding their fires.
Some firing there was from Croats in the lower houses of the Village, and they had a cannon at the farther bridge-end; but they were glad to get away, and vanish in the night; muddy Weistritz singing hoarse adieu to their cannon and them. Prussian grenadiers plunged indignant into the houses; made short work of the musketries there.
The forlorn hope, consisting of a detachment from the grenadiers of Capt. Pinckney, joined by the Cadets, and led by Lieut. Mouatt, were to scale the walls of the fort on its south bastion; Col. Moultrie with the rest of Pinckney's Grenadiers, and Marion's Light Infantry, were to enter or force the gates over the ravelin; while Capt.
Clad in his favourite green uniform, he fared forth to his resting-place under two large weeping willow trees in a secluded valley: the coffin, surmounted by his sword and the cloak he had worn at Marengo, was borne with full military honours by grenadiers of the 20th and 66th Regiments before a long line of red-coats; and their banners, emblazoned with the names of "Talavera," "Albuera," "Pyrenees," and "Orthez," were lowered in a last salute to our mighty foe.
Wolfe was deeply moved by the disaster at the heights of Montmorenci, and in a General Order on the next day he rebuked the grenadiers for their precipitation. "Such impetuous, irregular, and unsoldierlike proceedings destroy all order, make it impossible for the commanders to form any disposition for an attack, and put it out of the general's power to execute his plans.
In the meantime, the boats were floated, and ranged in proper order, though exposed to a severe fire of shot and shells; and the general in person sounding the shore, pointed out the place where the troops might disembark with the least difficulty. Thirteen companies of Grenadiers, and two hundred men of the second American battalion, were the first who landed.
The British Grenadiers charged at this critical moment. The Highlanders rushing forward, with the claymore, hewed down every opponent, and the fate of the battle was no longer doubtful the French retreated. Wolfe had just been carried to the rear, mortally wounded in the groin.
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