The force that landed upon Groton side was led by Lieutenant-colonel Eyre against Fort Griswold, which then contained one hundred and fifty men, under Lieutenant-colonel William Ledyard, cousin of the celebrated traveler. The surrender of the fort being demanded and refused, the British assaulted it on three sides. They were resisted with determined courage, but at length effected an entrance into the work. Eyre had been wounded, and his successor, Montgomery, killed in the assault. Finding himself overpowered, Ledyard advanced and offered his sword to Major Bromfield, now in command of the enemy, who asked, "Who commands this fort?"
"I did," courteously replied Ledyard; "but you do now."
Bromfield immediately stabbed Ledyard with his own sword, and the hero fell dead at the feet of the coward and assassin.[319] This revolting deed was reserved for a Tory officer, of whom Arnold officially writes Sir H. Clinton, his "behavior on this occasion does him great honor." The survivors of the garrison were nearly all put to the sword, and even the wounded treated with incredible cruelty.[320]
Fort Griswold is a parallelogram, having a foundation of rough stone, on which very thick and solid embankments have been raised. It is the best preserved of any of the old earth-works I have seen since Fort George, at Castine. The position is naturally very strong, far stronger than Bunker Hill, which cost so many lives to carry. On all sides except the east the hill is precipitous; here the ascent is gradual, and having surmounted it, an attacking force would find itself on an almost level area of sufficient extent to form two thousand men. In consequence of the knowledge that this was their weak point of defense, the Americans constructed a small redoubt, the remains of which may still be seen about three hundred yards distant from the main work.
Groton was the seat of the Pequot power, the royal residence of Sassacus being situated on a commanding eminence called Fort Hill, four miles east of New London. This was his principal fortress, though there was another about eight miles distant from New London, near Mystic, which was the scene of the memorable encounter which all our historians from Cotton Mather to Dr. Palfrey have related with such minuteness. The conquest of the Pequots, with whom, man against man, no other of the red nations near their frontiers dared to contend, was heroic in the little band of Englishmen by whom it was effected. The reduction to a handful of outcasts of a nation that counted a thousand warriors was a stroke of fortune the English owed to the assistance of Uncas, a rebel against his lawful chieftain, Sassacus, and of Miantonimo, whose alliance had been secured by Roger Williams.[321]
STORMING OF THE INDIAN FORTRESS.
Captain John Mason, who had served under Fairfax in the Netherlands, is the ideal Puritan soldier. Before leading his men on to storm the Pequot stronghold, they knelt together in the moonlight, which shone brightly on that May morning, and commended themselves and their enterprise to God. Report says that the accompanying Narragansets and Mohegans were much astounded and troubled at the sight. Satisfied that he could not conquer the Pequots hand to hand with his little force, Mason himself applied a fire-brand to the wigwams. His own account of the Pequot war, reprinted by Prince in 1736, is the best and fullest narrative of its varying fortunes.
Mason relates that he had but one pint of strong liquors in his army during its whole march. Like a prudent commander, he carried the bottle in his hand, and ingenuously says, when it was empty the very smelling of it would presently recover such as had fainted away from the extremity of the heat. Among the special providences of the day he mentions that Lieutenant Bull had an arrow shot into a hard piece of cheese he carried, that probably saved his life; "which may verify the old saying," adds the narrator, that "a little armor would serve, if a man knew where to place it."[322] Fuller, in one of his sermons, has another and a similar proverb: "It is better to fight naked than with bad armor, for the rags of a bad corselet make a deeper wound, and worse to be healed, than the bullet itself." Mason ultimately settled in Norwich, and died there.