ON CAPE BRETON. 



213 



plans of the best eugiueeriiig skill of the day. It was impossible with their limited force 

 of meu and weak artillery to attack the whole range of fortifications which extended from 

 the Dauphin or west gate to the shore, and therefore they confined their efforts to effecting 

 a breach iu the fortifications between the Dauphin's and the King's bastions. With this 

 object in view they constructed four fascine batteries which were respectively situated at 

 distances of 1,550, GOO, 440 and 250 yards from the walls. The last, or breaching, battery 

 was made eighteen days after the landing and did great execution on the west gate. 

 Before this work, however, was completed another fascine battery, named Titcomb's, or 

 the northwest battery — one of the most effective, according to Duchambon — was erected 

 on a rising ground on the western side of the barachois at the southwestern end of the 



^c^TVfe^ 





harbour. Ky the construction of this battery the men busy iu the breaching battery 

 were enabled to finish their work more rapidly, since it kept up a furious fire which 

 engaged all the attention of the men who defended the walls at the Dauphin bastion. 

 But at the very commencement of the siege, on the second day, there occurred an event 

 most fortunate for the besiegers. The grand or royal battery, situated on the western 

 shore of the harbour, and a very powerful auxiliary in the defences of the town, was 

 found suddenly deserted by the French. The English and French narratives give different 

 reasons for this hurried evacuation of an important work. The English accounts have 

 been to the effect that when Colonel Vaughan went on a reconnoitering expedition arouud 

 the harbour, during the afternoon of the 1st of May, he set fire to the storehouses at the 

 northeast arm, and as these contained a large quantity of pitch and other combustible 

 goods, they made great volumes of smoke, which enveloped the surrounding country and 

 produced so much consternation among the troops in the grand battery into which it was 

 carried that they supposed the whole army was about to attack them, and carelessly spik- 

 ing their guns they fled precipitately to the shelter of the town. When Vaughan was 

 returning to camp the next morning from his expedition he was surprised to see that 

 there was no flag flying over the battery, and no smoke coming from its chimneys; but 



• This list of signatures shows the Colonial and English officers who were present at a conncil of war held on 

 June 3, 1745, on board Warren's ship the Superbe. " Mem. Hist, of Boston," il. 118. 



