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Updated: May 11, 2025
"But presently the roll of the American drums, the rattle of musketry, the tramp of horses, and the rumble of heavy gun-carriages fell upon his drowsy ear, and in a moment he was wide awake, the cards were dropped, he sprang to his feet, then rushed away to his quarters and mounted his horse with all speed; but at that time his soldiers were being driven by the Americans as chaff before the wind.
And when all were gone, and they of Carondelet street and its tributaries, massed in that old gray, brittle-shanked regiment, the Confederate Guards, were having their daily dress parade in Coliseum place, and only they and the Foreign Legion remained; when sister Jane made lint, and flour was high, and the sounds of commerce were quite hushed, and in the custom-house gun-carriages were a-making, and in the foundries big guns were being cast, and the cotton gun-boats and the rams were building, and at the rotting wharves the masts of a few empty ships stood like dead trees in a blasted wilderness, and poor soldiers' wives crowded around the "Free Market," and grass began to spring up in the streets, they were many still, while far away; but some marched no more, and others marched on bleeding feet, in rags; and it was very, very hard for some of us to hold the voice steady and sing on through the chorus of the little song:
The horizontal armor-plates, too, which protected the disappearing gun-carriages belonging to the huge guns of the other forts, had not been able to withstand the masses of steel which came down almost perpendicularly from above them.
It was three o'clock on the afternoon of the 18th when the last gun was got across. Three gun-carriages were broken during those efforts, but our men managed to save the pieces. Late in the operations the Germans again put in an appearance, but were held in respect by our Gatlings and mountain-guns. Half an hour, however, after our departure from Saint Agil, they entered the village.
The armory in that city was known to be the best stocked in all Europe and the King's surprise was great when he found gun-carriages in plenty, but not a single cannon. Looking about him, he saw evidence that the floor had been hastily relaid and remembered the "dead" monks at Würzburg. He had it taken up and a dark vault appeared. The King looked into it.
And on the following morning, an endless spectacle of war work gun-carriages, naval turrets, torpedo tubes, armed railway carriages, small Hotchkiss guns for merchant ships, tool-making shops, gauge shops and so on for ever. In the tool-making shops the output has risen from 44,000 to 3,000,000 a year!
Labouring through between them came detachments of British artillery, clattering gun-carriages, straight young figures on glossy horses, long Phidian lines of youths so ingenuously fair that one wondered how they could have looked on the Medusa face of war and lived.
Yet, spent as they were, their spirit was excellent, and they pushed and hauled at the gun-carriages when the wheels sank up to the axles in the mire, and the weary horses were floundering knee-deep unable to draw them through. The officers rode up and down the column encouraging the more active with words of praise, and the laggards with blows from the flat of their swords.
At this time the guns were still spiked, and the workshops in the city were going night and day to replace the gun-carriages that had been burned. In place of these, some of the guns and carriages were sent over from Castle Pinckney. No attempt had been made to fortify the Morris Island channel, and vessels could enter there without the slightest difficulty.
"The fact is, that the commandant is aware that you are acquainted with the weak points of the fort, that the gun-carriages are rotten, and many of the guns are themselves honeycombed or dismounted." We were conducted out of the way when the officer with the flag of truce entered the fort.
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