Fort Amity

by Arthur Quiller-Couch

"Etienne, he intends at least to summon us!"

So it proved. General Amherst was by no means the man to pass and leave a hostile post in his rear. His detractors indeed accused him of spending all his time upon forts, either in building or in reducing them. But he had two very good reasons for pausing before Fort Amitié; he did not know the strength of its defenders, and he wanted pilots to guide his boats down the rapids below.

Therefore he landed and sent an officer forward to summon the garrison.

The officer presented himself at the river-gate, and having politely suffered Sergeant Bédard to blindfold him, was led to the Commandant's quarters. A good hour passed before he reappeared, the Commandant himself conducting him; and meantime the garrison amused itself with wagering on the terms of capitulation.

At the gate the Englishman's bandage was removed. He saluted, and was saluted, with extreme ceremony. The Commandant watched him out of earshot, and then, rubbing his hands, turned with a happy smile.

"To your guns, my children!"

They obeyed him, while they wondered. He seemed to take for granted that they must feel the compliment paid them by a siege in form.

The day was now well advanced, and it seemed at first that the British meant to let it pass without a demonstration. Toward nightfall, however, four gunboats descended the river, anchored and dropped down the current, paying out their hawsers and feeling their way into range. But the Fort was ready for them, and opened fire before they could train their guns; a lucky shot cut the moorings of one clean and close by the stem; and, the current carrying her inshore, she was hulled twice as she drifted down-stream. The other three essayed a few shots without effect in the dusk, warped back out of range, and waited for daylight to improve their marksmanship.

And with daylight began one of the strangest of sieges, between an assailant who knew only that he had to deal with stout walls, and a defender who dared not attempt even a show of a sortie for fear of exposing the weakness of his garrison. The French had ammunition enough to last for a month, and cannon enough to keep two hundred men busy; and ran from one gun to another, keeping up pretences but doing little damage in their hurry. Their lucky opening shots had impressed Amherst, and he was one to cling to a notion of his enemy's strength. He solemnly effected a new landing at six hundred yards' distance, opened his lines across the north-western corner of the fort, kept his men entrenching for two days and two nights, brought up thirty guns, and, advancing them within two hundred yards, began at his leisure to knock holes in the walls. Meantime, twenty guns, anchored out in the river, played on the broad face of the fort and swept the Commandant's lunette out of existence. And with all this prodigious waste of powder but five of the garrison had fallen, and three of these by the bursting of a single shell. The defenders understood now that they were fighting for time, and told each other that when their comedy was played out and the inevitable moment came, the British General would not show himself fierce in revenge— "provided," they would add, "the Seigneur does not try his patience too far." It was Father Launoy who set this whisper going from lip to lip, and so artfully that none suspected him for its author; Father Launoy, who had been wont to excite the patriotism of the faithful by painting the English as devils in human shape. He was a brave man; but he held this resistance to be senseless and did not believe for an instant that Montreal would use the delay or, using it, would strike with any success.

At first the tremendous uproar of the enemy's artillery and its shattering effect on the masonry of their fortress, had numbed the militiamen's nerves; they felt the place tumbling about their ears. But as the hours passed they discovered that round-shot could be dodged and that even bursting shells, though effective against stones and mortar, did surprisingly small damage to life and limb; and with this discovery they began almost to taste the humour of the situation. They fed and rested in bomb-proof chambers which the Commandant and M. Etienne had devised in the slope of earth under the terre-plein; and from these they watched and discussed in safety the wreckage done upon the empty buildings across the courtyard.