[809] Burgoyne, who took out the flag of truce, says that the French officer who met him on the glacis used very angry words (ibid.).
[810] See Dickson Papers, ed. Col. Leslie, p. 970. The second breach is marked as ‘Lesser Breach’ on the map.
[811] Burgoyne, whose diary of the siege is one of the primary authorities, says that in his opinion the mine could have been much more useful than it was. ‘On the discovery of the drain, I should have immediately have altered the whole plan of attack. I would have made a “globe of compression” to blow in the counterscarp and the crest of the glacis, and then at low water have threatened an attack on the breaches, exploded the mine, and have made the real assault on the hornwork, which not being threatened had few people in it, and would undoubtedly have been carried easily.’ There was, he says, good cover in the hornwork, which would have been easily connected with the parallel, and used as the base for attacking the main front, with breaching batteries in its terre-plein and the crest of the glacis. Burgoyne, i. p. 271. But this is wisdom after the event.
[812] Jones, ii. p. 36.
[813] For all these details see Belmas, iv. pp. 620-1.
[814] Burgoyne says (i. 369) that the engineers on the 24th settled that the mine was no more than a signal ‘with a chance of alarming them’. On the 25th it would seem that a little more attention, but not nearly enough, was given to this useful subsidiary operation.
[815] Burgoyne says at 4.30.
[816] This is slurred over in the British narratives except Dickson’s Diary, p. 973. Belmas gives some account of it, however, though he calls the assailants British instead of Portuguese (iv. p. 623). They were some companies of the 8th Caçadores.
[817] Most of this narrative is from Colin Campbell’s long and interesting letter to Sir J. Cameron, printed on pp. 25-30 of his Life by General Shadwell.
[818] Gomm, p. 312.