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Updated: June 29, 2025
The remaining inhabitants either fortified their dwellings or abandoned them for others more securely located. Meantime the monastery was placed in a state of siege; redoubts were raised; the windows walled half-way, and well supplied with loop-holes.
As they passed through the village of Beauport on their way, they became aware that a large portion of the English fleet had approached the shore, and was to all appearance making preparations for a repetition of the attack made on the neighbouring redoubts some weeks before, whilst other vessels were standing on towards Quebec.
But the Ring had sailed peacefully along, three thousand feet aloft, deluging the countryside with its dazzling light, sending its beams into the casemates of the huge fortresses of the Rhine and the outer line of the French fortifications, searching the redoubts and trenches, but doing no harm to the sleeping armies that lay beneath it; until at last the silence of the night had been broken by the thunder of "Thanatos," and in the twinkling of an eye the Lavender Ray had descended, to turn the village of Champaubert into the smoking crater of a dying volcano.
Long tiers of breastworks, and redoubts crowning every eminence, showed very plainly the great importance which Lee attached to holding the position. In fact, this was the key to the Southside road. Here was to take place the last great struggle. I rode on, in deep thought, but soon my reverie was banished.
On this neck of land the besieged had constructed one of the redoubts to which I alluded as having been lately thrown up; whilst on another table, at the opposite side of the left ravine, which winds round in the direction of the wall, as nearly as if it were the work of art, stands the other redoubt.
He found Colonel Tourtellotte's garrison composed of eight hundred and ninety men; his reenforcement was one thousand and fifty-four: total for the defense, nineteen hundred and forty-four. The outposts were already engaged, and as soon as daylight came he drew back the men from the village to the ridge on which the redoubts were built.
At last the archduke plucked up a heart and sent some troops against the rebels, who had constructed two forts on the river Demer near the city of Sichem. In vain Velasco, commander of the expedition, endeavoured to cut off the supplies for these redoubts. The vigour and audacity of the rebel cavalry made the process impossible.
The greatest obstacle now to be overcome by the enemy, was the passage of a deep, wide creek and swamp, half a mile from the river, which was commanded by Comphor and Coneby redoubts. At daylight of this, the 19th, we also discovered that the enemy had gained possession of Fort Wessels, the small works mentioned as being over a quarter of a mile on our right, and on a line with Fort Williams.
General Washington expressed his sense of this brilliant affair in his orders of the 15th, Head Quarters, before York-Town. "The Marquis Lafayette's division will mount the trenches tomorrow. The commander in chief congratulates the allied army on the success of the enterprise, last evening, against the two important redoubts on the left of the enemy's works.
The castle, bathed on its outward walls by the Waal and Meuse, and having two redoubts, defended by a double interior foss, would have been difficult to take by assaults had the number of the besieged been at all adequate to its defence.
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