Vernon acceded to the request, but with no very good grace. "I send the men," he wrote, "but I still think such a number unnecessary. Delay is your worst enemy; their engineers are better than yours, and a vigorous push is your best chance. No time should be lost in cutting off the communication between the town and the surrounding country. We hope that you will be master of St. Lazar to-morrow." The advice was sounder than ever, but Wentworth could not nerve himself to act on it. Shielding himself behind the vote of a council of war, he replied that the escalade of St. Lazar was impossible; the walls were too high and the ditch too deep. Would it not be possible, he asked, for the ships to batter the fort and sweep the isthmus that divided the town from the surrounding country for him. This was too much. The fleet had borne the brunt of the work so far, but it could not do everything. Vernon's tone, always overbearing, now became almost violent. "Pointis,[149] who knew the climate, tried the escalade and succeeded," he retorted, "the ships can do no more. If you had advanced at once when the Spaniards fled from you, we believe that you would have taken St. Lazar on the spot."
After digesting this unpalatable document for a day Wentworth decided after all for an escalade. Though he lacked Vernon's experience of the tropics he had a sufficient dread of the rainy season, which had already sent sickness into his camp to herald its approach. By some mischance, for which he disclaimed responsibility, neither tents nor tools were landed with the men;[150] and for three nights the troops, young, raw and shiftless, were compelled to bivouac. On the third day they began to fall down fast. A council of war was held, and although General Blakeney, an excellent officer, opposed the project to the last, it was decided to carry St. Lazar by assault. The fort indeed was nothing very formidable in itself, and could have been knocked to pieces without difficulty from another eminence called La Popa, about three hundred yards from it. The only engineer, however, had been killed before Boca Chica was taken, the artillerymen were wholly ignorant of their duty, and the tools had not been landed; so that although a battery on La Popa would have served the double purpose of destroying St. Lazar and battering the walls of the city, no attempt was made to erect it. And meanwhile the Spaniards had made use of their respite to strengthen St. Lazar by new entrenchments which were far from despicable, and had reinforced the garrison from the town. There, however, the matter was; and the problem, though it might be difficult in itself, was so far simple in that it admitted of but one solution. St. Lazar was practically inaccessible except on the side of the town, where it was commanded by the guns of Carthagena. The fort must, therefore, be carried from that side before daylight, and carried as quickly as possible.
April 9 20 .
Early in the morning of the 20th of April the columns of attack were formed. First came an advanced party of fifty men backed by four hundred and fifty grenadiers under Colonel Wynyard, then the two old regiments, the Fifteenth and Twenty-fourth, jointly one thousand strong; after them a mixed company of the Thirty-fourth and Thirty-sixth; then the Americans with woolpacks and scaling-ladders, and finally a reserve of five hundred of Wolfe's marines. The design was to assault the north and south sides of St. Lazar simultaneously, Wynyard taking the southern or weaker face, while Colonel Grant with the old regiments, on which Wentworth principally relied, assaulted the northern. A couple of Spanish deserters were at hand to guide the columns to their respective positions.
At four o'clock the march began, the fireflies still flickering overhead against the darkness, the air close and still, and alive with the chirping, whistling, and croaking of the noisy tropic night. Within the camp men were lying in scores under the scourge of yellow fever, some tossing and raving in delirium, some gasping in the agonies of the last fatal symptom, some prostrate in helpless and ghastly collapse, waiting only for the dead hour before the dawn when they should die. These were left behind, and the red columns disappeared silently into the darkness. Before long Wynyard's men reached the foot of the hill and began the ascent. The ground before them was so steep that they were forced to climb upon their hands and knees, and the officers began to doubt whether their guides might not have played them false. Still the grenadiers scrambled on almost to the top of the hill, and then suddenly, at a range of thirty yards, the Spaniards opened a deadly fire. Now was the time for a rush, which would have swept the Spaniards pell-mell from their entrenchments. One man with the traditions of Cutts the Salamander would have carried the fort in two minutes; a few score of undisciplined Highlanders with naked broadswords would have mastered it even without a leader; but the officers had no experience except of the parade ground. They were conscious of a heavy fire in front and flanks, so they wheeled their platoons outwards to right and left for "street-firing," as it was called, and advanced slowly in perfect order, the men firing steadily at the flashes of cannon and musketry that blazed before them over the parapet. Raked through and through by grape and round shot, the soldiers stood without flinching for a moment, and loaded and fired as they had been taught, while the grenadiers lit their fuses coolly and hurled their hand-grenades into the belt of flame before them. They did not know, poor fellows, that the grenades provided for them were so thick, owing to the negligence of the authorities of the Ordnance, that not one in three of them would burst. So Wynyard's column fired dutifully on, though the men that composed it were mown down like grass.
On the northern face of the hill, where Grant's column was engaged, a like tragedy was enacted. Grant himself was shot down early, and after his fall no man seemed to know what should be done. The men faced the fire gallantly enough and returned it with perfect order and steadiness, but without effect. There were calls for the woolpacks and scaling-ladders, but the undisciplined Americans had long since thrown them down and fled; and even had the ladders been forthcoming they were too short by ten feet to be of use. There were appeals for guns to silence the Spanish artillery, but these had been placed in the rear of the columns and were not to be brought forward. So for more than an hour this tragical fight went on. Day dawned at length; the light grew strong, and the guns of Carthagena opened fire on Grant's column with terrible effect. Still the English stood firm and fired away their ammunition. It was all that they had been bidden to do, and they did it. Wynyard, his grenadiers once thrown into action, seemed incapable of bringing up other troops to support them. General Guise, who was in charge of the combined attack, showed magnificent courage and set a superb example, but it was something more than courage that was wanted. It was now broad daylight, and the Spaniards began with unerring aim to pick off the English officers. Finally, a column of Spanish infantry issued from the gates of Carthagena to cut off the English from their ships, and at last at eight o'clock Wentworth gave the order to retire, Wolfe's marines coming forward to cover the retreat. The troops had been suffering massacre for close on three hours, but until that moment not a man turned his back. There was no pursuit and the retreat was conducted in good order; but the troops, who had borne up hitherto against hardship and sickness, were thoroughly and hopelessly disheartened.
April 10 21 .
April 14 25 .
The losses in the assault were very heavy. Of the fifteen hundred English engaged, forty-three officers and over six hundred men were killed and wounded, and the Fifteenth and Twenty-fourth both lost over a fourth of their numbers. The treachery of the guides was answerable for much, but the mismanagement of the officers was responsible for more. Colonel Grant was picked up alive, indeed, but desperately wounded. "The General ought to hang the guides and the King ought to hang the General," he gasped out in his agony; and a few hours later he was dead. Wentworth, striving hard to put a good face on the disaster, ordered a battery to be erected against Fort St. Lazar on that same evening; but by this time yellow fever had seized hold of the army in good earnest, and it was a question not of building batteries but of digging graves. On the 21st the General called a council of war and announced to the Admiral its decision that the number of men was insufficient for the work, and that the enterprise must be abandoned. "Since the engineers or pretended engineers of the army declare that they do not know how to raise a battery, we agree," answered Vernon and Ogle, "though if our advice had been taken we believe that the town might have fallen." Then with studied insolence of tone they proceeded to offer a few obvious suggestions for the withdrawal of the troops. The military officers, not a little hurt, remonstrated in mild terms against the taunt, and after a short wrangle Wentworth requested a general council of war, by which it was finally determined that the attack on Carthagena must be given up as impracticable.
April 17 28 .
It was indeed high time. Between the morning of Tuesday the 18th and the night of Friday the 21st of April the troops had dwindled from sixty-six hundred to thirty-two hundred effective men. The two old regiments had been much shattered in the attack of St. Lazar, and the residue of the British force consisted chiefly of young soldiers, while the twelve hundred Americans who still survived were distrusted by the whole army, and were in fact little better than an encumbrance. On the 28th the troops were re-embarked, poor Wentworth being careful to carry away every scrap of material lest the Spaniards should boast of trophies. The naval officers grudgingly consented to blow up the defences of Boca Chica, and then for ten terrible days the transports lay idle in the harbour of Carthagena.