f^isit to Antwerp at the Capitulation of 1833. 233 



front by a high and strong rampart, pierced with port-holes, and well lined 

 \\\\\\ fa&cines , or long faggots ; all this had been performed under a galling 

 and point-blank fire from the cannon and musquetry of the citadel. Not- 

 withstanding, every thing was as neatly and exactly laid out, as though the 

 whole had been erected for a review on the Champ de Mars. As each gun 

 was discharged and recoiled, a gabion filled with earth was stuffed into the 

 port, to keep out the musquet bullets. The fascines near the muzzles of 

 the guns were intensely, we might say terrifically black, from the repeated 

 explosions. In front of the battery, the glacis, occupying the few yards 

 on the margin of the ditch, was ploughed up by the projectiles ; we do not 

 think six inches square together had escaped. The ditch, though wide 

 and deep, was almost choked up by the rubbish of the breach. On the 

 right of the breaching battery was a covered way or tunnel, beneath the 

 glacis, and opening upon the revetement of the counterscarp.* By means 

 of this tunnel, which communicated with the trenches, the grenadiers of 

 the forlorn hope were to pass into the ditch, filling it up with sand-bags in 

 their way, whensoever the breach should be declared practicable by the 

 engineers. To prevent this, Chass^ had prepared two tiers of batteries 

 upon the right flank of bastion Fernando; and thus raking or enfilading 

 the ditch, he rendered all passage impossible, so long as those batteries 

 could be served. They were in their turn battered by a counter or dis- 

 mounting battery, placed exactly in their front at right angles, and to the 

 left of the breaching battery. This counter battery consisted of six 18- 

 pounders, and had been beautifully played. One of Chass^'s batteries had 

 thus been totally annihilated, and the other could not much longer have 

 stood the tremendous fire. In the rear of the breaching battery, to the 

 right, were two heads or elevated banks, one above the other, behind which 

 musquetry was placed, to direct a galling fire upon the artillery men and 

 tiraiHeurs of the citadel. 



Below, in the ditch, on the extreme right, lay the ruins of the batardeau 

 or dam, a stout brick wall, separating the waters of the citadel from 

 those of the town ditches, and which had been blown well nigh out of 

 water, at an early period of the operations ; the ditches were in conse- 

 quence almost dry. 



We next proceeded to Fort St. Laurent, the lunette. Here also a tunnel 

 had been opened between the foremost trenches and the counterscarp (in 

 this case without a revetement), from which a miner was pushed, upon a 

 plank, across the ditch ; this man, applying himself to the opposite wall or 

 scarp, soon made by the help of a petard a small opening, and then a gal- 

 lery terminating in a chamber J in this latter a large quantity of powder 

 was deposited witli a lighted slow match, and the miner fairly made good 



• The counterscarp is that bank of the fosse or ditch, which is furthest from the 

 fortification ; and the wall with which such banks are usually lined is called a revete- 

 ment. 



No. 5— Vol. I. 2 I * 



