The assault had been carried to within a short distance of the main walls where the officers lay bleeding from their wounds, the foremost of whom was the gallant Grondel. A number of Indian warriors issued from the fort to scalp him, on observing which a sergeant with four men rushed to his rescue, drove the Indians back into the fort, and raised his body to bear it off the field. Just as they started, every rescuer was killed. A stalwart Frenchman named Regnisse, seeing what had happened, dashed toward the body alone, under a galling fire, lifted the wounded man to his back and bore him off, though not without the receipt of another wound by Grondel.
Meanwhile, where were the courageous Choctaws who were so eager for the fray and who were the chief cause of bringing on the fight? While the French were exposed to a raking fire, these six hundred painted warriors remained at a safe distance on the plain, giving frequent vent to shouting and shrieking and yelling, interspersed now and then with dancing, and shooting into the air. This was the utmost of the service rendered by the Choctaw allies.
Though with a courageous few, Noyan had come under the shadow of the walls of the fort, he could do no more unsupported, and so proceeded to return, in order, to the fortified cabins, where he found his men crouching in fear, when he at once notified Bienville of the peril of the situation. He asked for a detachment to bear off the dead and wounded, and notified the governor that without troops to support him, nothing more could be done to capture the fort.
At this juncture, Bienville saw a demonstration made on the part of the savages in the fort, from an unconjectured quarter, to capture the cabins in which were gathered the men and officers, and made haste to send Beauchamp, with eighty men, to head off the movement, rescue the troops and to bring away the wounded and the dead. Beauchamp moved with speed, turned back the movement, and while many of the dead and wounded were recovered, he could not recover all. In this movement Beauchamp lost a number of men. So hot was the firing from the fort, that he was compelled to leave a number to the barbarity of the Chickasaws.
As Beauchamp was retiring in an orderly way, the Choctaws issued from their camp with much impetuosity and fury, as though they had at last resolved to carry everything before them. Fleet of foot, and filling the air with their wild yelling, they dashed toward the fort, but just then a well-directed fire into their ranks, from the Chickasaws, created a speedy rout, and they fled in every direction.
Had Bienville been able to bring his cannon so far into the interior, he would have demolished the fort in short order, but as it was, everything was against him. Instead of his plans being executed as originally formed, they fell to pieces, step by step, and his defeat was the most signal. Thus ended the campaign against the Chickasaws, the fiercest and most warlike of all the tribes. After all the imposing grandeur at the outset of the campaign it ended in a fiasco. The situation was much graver than Bienville seemed to apprehend. He was in the heart of the enemy’s country, without substantial support. His Choctaw allies had failed him, and in a grave crisis his own men had forsaken him. Nothing would have been easier than for the Chickasaws to cut him off from his boats, and extinguish the entire command, but, themselves unapprised of the conditions, they kept well within the enclosure of the fort. Other difficulties were in store for the unfortunate Bienville.
AFTER THE BATTLE, WHAT?
The battle of Ackia had lasted three hours, but during that brief time there were some as excellent exhibitions of bravery, as well as sad defections of soldiery, as can well be conceived. However, all the dramatic and tragical scenes were not confined to the battle, as other interesting details are to follow. The day was now closing. For about two hours, the utmost quiet had fallen on the scene. The noisy Choctaws, in a camp adjoining, had become strangely silent. Not a note of activity came from the fort, not a man was to be seen. The horses and cattle of the Chickasaws, grazing on the prairie when the battle began, had fled far across the plain, but now that the day was closing, and the firing had ceased, they came wending their way across the expanse to a small stream that flowed at the base of the hill.