“‘Why does he not come to see me?’
“I turned my head away, for his gallant young brother was amongst the slain. Captain Merry, of the 52nd, was sitting on the ground, sucking an orange.
“He said: ‘How are you? You see that I am dying: a mortification has set in.’
“A grape-shot had shattered his knee. He had told the doctor that he preferred death rather than permit such a good leg to be amputated.”
Escalade of the Castle.
General Picton with the Third Division was ordered to attack the castle by escalade. The castle was an old building on the summit of a hill about 100 feet high, on the north-east of the town.
At about ten o’clock on the night of the 6th of April, 1812, the Third Division advanced in that profound silence that rendered the coming storm more terrific. Our men were not perceived until they arrived at a little river not very distant from the works, when they distinctly heard the entire line of the French sentries give the alarm, and all the guns of the garrison opened at once.
The Escalade of the Castle
Many of the ladders were too short. In one case a brawny Irish private of herculean strength pulled up first his captain, “clever and clane,” as he said, and then five others.