The Harbor Defences.
The most formidable of the harbor defences were the Island Battery, to which attention has been called in a previous chapter, the Circular Battery, a work situated at the extreme northwest corner of the city walls, and forming the reverse face of the powerful Dauphin Bastion, from which the West Gate of the city opened, with the Water Battery, or Batterie de la Gréve, placed at the opposite angle of the harbor shore.[19] The cross-fire from these two batteries effectually raked the whole harbor from shore to shore, but it was by no means so dangerous as that of the Island Battery, where ships must pass within point-blank range of the heaviest artillery.
Such, then, was the admirable system of harbor defences still remaining intact, even after the fall of the Royal Battery. Instead, therefore, of concentrating his whole fire upon one or two points, in his front, with a view of breaching the walls in the shortest time, and of storming the city at the head of his troops, Pepperell was made to throw half his available fire upon the batteries that were not at all in his own way, though they blocked the way to the fleet.[20]
It will be seen that these circumstances imposed upon Pepperell a task of no little magnitude. They compelled him to attack the very strongest, instead of the weakest, parts of the fortress, and necessarily confined the siege operations within a comparatively small space of the enemy’s long line.
No time was lost in getting the siege train over from Gabarus Bay to the positions marked out for erecting the breaching batteries. The infinite labor involved in doing this can hardly be understood except by those who have themselves gone over the ground. Every gun and every pound of provisions and ammunition had to be dragged two miles, through marshes and over rocks, to the allotted stations. This transit being impracticable for wheel-carriages, sledges were constructed by Lieutenant-Colonel Meserve of the New Hampshire regiment, to which relays of men harnessed themselves in turn, as they do in Arctic journeys, and in this way the cannon, mortars, and stores were slowly dragged through the spongy turf, where the mud was frequently knee-deep, to the trenches before Louisburg. None but the rugged yeomen of New England—men inured to all sorts of outdoor labor in woods and fields—could have successfully accomplished such a herculean task. But such severe toil as this was soon put half the army in the hospitals.
Nova Scotia freed of Invaders.
By the 5th of May Pepperell had got two mortar-batteries playing upon the city from the base of Green Hill, over which the road passes to Sydney. Meantime, Duchambon, seeing himself blockaded both by sea and by land, had hurriedly sent off an express to recall the troops that had gone out some time before against Annapolis, in concert with a force sent from Quebec, little dreaming that he himself would soon be attacked.[21] The first fruits of Shirley’s sagacity ripened thus early in relieving Nova Scotia from invasion.
First Sabbath in Camp.
The 5th being Sunday, divine service was held in the chapel of the Royal Battery. Pepperell’s hardy New Englanders listened to the first Protestant sermon ever preached, perhaps, on the island of Cape Breton, from the well-chosen text “Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise.” After their devotions were over, we are told that the troops “fired smartly at the city.”
Meantime, also, Colonel Moulton, who had been left at Canso for the purpose, rejoined the army after destroying St. Peter’s. Two sallies made by the enemy against the nearest mortar-battery had been repulsed. Its fire, augmented by some forty-two-pounders taken from the Royal Battery, already much distressed the garrison, its balls coming against the caserns and into the town, where they traversed the streets from end to end, and riddled the houses in their passage. It never ceased firing during the siege. In his report Duchambon calls it the most dangerous of any that the besiegers raised.