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Updated: June 15, 2025
We collected our elephants, camels, and bullocks, and left them in charge of the five hundred irregular horse; then, placing two of the six-pounders behind the regiment of native cavalry, we moved slowly on till within two or three hundred yards of the enemy, when we gave them about twenty rounds of grape, killing great numbers. We then charged them, and cut up a great number more.
I knew that Bragg hated Davis bitterly, and that he had resigned from the army in 1855, or 1856, because Davis, as Secretary of War, had ordered him, with his battery, from Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, to Fort Smith or Fort Washita, in the Indian country, as Bragg expressed it, "to chase Indians with six-pounders."
Naught was now heard but the roaring of the two six-pounders and the whistling of shells. The dying and the wounded lay in masses in the dells and ravines below. In our own company we had, I think, eleven killed and twenty wounded, our total number being eighty only. I do repeat again, I never saw such soldiers. I began to think myself, in comparison with them, but yet a novice.
For removing this evil we threw out two six-pounders, and we had not fired many shots and given them more than a dozen shrapnells, when a tremendous explosion took place, which finally removed the annoyance. In the evening I heard the engineer say to Captain Nelley, commanding the breaching-battery, that he imagined we should, on the following evening, put a stop to their vaunting.
But it was more to his taste to command the Salem ship General Pickering of 180 tons which was fitted out under a letter of marque in the spring of 1780. She carried fourteen six-pounders and forty-five men and boys, nothing very formidable, when Captain Haraden sailed for Bilbao with a cargo of sugar.
Having abundance of spare time while preparations were making for a second attack on the fort, Lord Lake determined to disturb Holkar in his hiding-place; for which purpose a party of infantry was dispatched with about four six-pounders. We soon came within sight of him, sheltered a good deal from his view by high trees and jungle. The fort, observing our manoeuvres, commenced a heavy cannonade.
For although the Indiaman was certainly armed, after a fashion, most of her guns were "quakers", while the others ten in all were only six-pounders; and it would need the whole of her crew to work her only, under her awkward jury-rig, with no one to spare for fighting. However, it was useless to meet trouble half-way; so I determined to plod steadily onward and homeward, hoping for the best.
The other defences were more insignificant even than this; and the enemies' artillery amounted, by account, to three six-pounders and numerous swivels; from 350 to 500 men, about half of whom were armed with muskets, while the rest carried swords and spears. They were scattered in many forts, and had a town to defend, all of which increased their weakness.
The two six-pounders farther in advance were, however, lost, and had been hauled back by the enemy into Atlanta. Poor Captain de Gress came to me in tears, lamenting the loss of his favorite guns; when they were regained he had only a few men left, and not a single horse.
For the further defense of this gate and the magazine in its vicinity, there were two six-pounders so placed as to command it and a small bastion close by. Within sixty yards of the gate, and commanding two cross roads, were three six-pounders, and one twenty-four pound howitzer, which could be so managed as to act upon any part of the magazine in that neighborhood.
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