Garrison summoned.
On the 7th a flag was sent into the city with a summons to surrender. Firing was suspended until its return, with Duchambon’s defiant message, that inasmuch “as the King had confided to him the defence of the fortress, he had no other reply but by the mouths of his cannon.”
Scouting Party defeated.
This check prompted a disposition to attack the city by storm at once, but upon reflection more moderate counsels prevailed, and the attempt was put off. Pepperell went on with his approaches toward the West Gate, under a constant fire from all the enemy’s batteries. And as every collection of men drew the enemy’s fire to the spot, this work could only be done at night, under great disadvantages. The balls they sent him were picked up and returned from his own cannon with true New England thrift, in order to husband his own ammunition. While thus engaged with the enemy in his front, he had also to keep an eye upon the outlying parties of French and Indians in his rear, who had been scraped together from scattered settlements, and were lurking about his camp with the view of raiding it unawares. On May 10, a scouting party of twenty-five men from Waldo’s regiment was sent out to find and drive off these marauders. While they were engaged in plundering some dwelling-houses at one of the out-settlements, they themselves were unexpectedly attacked by a superior force, and all but three killed, the Indians murdering the prisoners in cold blood. On the following day our men returned to the scene of disaster, and after burying their fallen comrades, they burned the place to the ground.
With these events the campaign settled down into the slow and laborious operations of a regular siege; and here began those inevitable bickerings between the chiefs of the land and naval forces, which, in a man of different temper than Pepperell was, might have led to serious results.
Disagreements.
In Shirley, his lawful captain-general, Pepperell had always a superior whose orders he felt bound to obey to the best of his ability, cost what it might. Fortunately, Shirley’s power of annoyance was limited by distance, though he kept up an animated fire of suggestions. In Warren, however, the brusque and impulsive sailor, Pepperell now found a tutor and a critic, whose irritation at the subordinate part he was playing showed itself in unreasonable demands upon his slow but sure coadjutor, and now and then even in a hardly concealed sneer. As time wore on, Warren grew more and more restive and importunate, while Pepperell continued patient, calm, and methodical to the last. Warren would call his fleet-captains together, hold a council, discuss the situation from his point of view, and send off to Pepperell the result of their deliberations, with the final exhortation attached, “For God’s sake let us do something!”—that “something” being that Pepperell should practically finish the siege without him, as we have already shown. Warren was a man standing at a door to keep out intruders, while the two actual adversaries were fighting it out inside. He might occasionally halloo to them to be quick about it, but he was hardly in the fight himself.
Pepperell would then get his council together in his turn, and, smarting under the sense of injustice, would submit the lecture that Warren had read him, with its thinly veiled irony, and unconcealed hauteur, to which the imputation of ignorance was not lacking. The situation would then be again discussed in all its bearings, from the army’s standpoint, which might be stated as follows: The fortress cannot be stormed until we have made a practicable breach in the walls. We must finish our batteries before this can be done. Or let the commodore bring in his ships and assist in silencing the enemy’s fire. The army is losing strength every day by sickness, while the fleet is gaining by the arrival of fresh ships. We cannot, if we would, pull the commodore’s chestnuts out of the fire and our own too.
[18]Major Seth Pomeroy of Northampton, Mass., was lieutenant-colonel of Williams’s regiment in the battle of Lake George, 1755, succeeding to the command after Williams’s death. At the beginning of the Revolution he fought as a volunteer at Bunker Hill.
[19]Reference should be made to the plan at [page 91]. It will greatly simplify the siege operations to the reader if he will keep in mind the fact that the land attack was wholly confined within the points designated by A and B on this plan, or between the Dauphin and King’s bastions. For our purpose, it is only necessary to add that the harbor front was defended by a strong wall of masonry, joining the Water Battery, G, with the Dauphin Bastion, A. In this wall were five gates, leading to the water-side. It was the point at which the city would be exposed to assault from shipping or their boats.