534 MILITARY PROJECTILES. 



effect of a breaching battery, that is, a battery of cannon, 

 intended to make a breach in a wall, by which the ene- 

 my might enter, and the other describing the effect of 

 shells. They give the reader a pretty vivid picture of the 

 nature of war. 



' When the morning bestowed its bright rays abroad, 

 we threw a little farther light upon the subject, by open- 

 ing our breaching battery, accompanied with such terri- 

 fic cheering and shouting, as seemed to startle the new 

 risen sun, which at that identical moment appeared. 

 The enemy, after a moment's pause, were seen in a tre- 

 mendous bustle, mustering their full force ; and their 

 heads were so thick, that, had our shelling battery been 

 ready, we might have made dreadful havoc among the 

 motley group. They shouted, yelled, screamed, groaned ; 

 small arms whistled, cannons roared ; and, in an instant, 

 the fort was enveloped in smoke. On the following 

 morning, I went again on duty in the trenches. We re- 

 tired into the wood before-mentioned, which had a path 

 of communication with the trenches, though it was a 

 considerable distance from the grand breaching battery. 

 Our operations against the fort continued active and re- 

 solute ; but our balls made but little impression upon the 

 mud bastions and curtains. Many of them scarcely 

 buried themselves, and others rolled down into the un- 

 der works of the enemy, and were kindly sent back to 

 us. It is almost folly to attempt to effect a practicable 

 breach in a fort built of such materials. The crust you 

 knock off the face of a bastion or curtain, forms a great 

 barrier to your upproach to a solid footing. Young en- 

 gineers are too apt to judge, from the appearance of the 

 fallen mud, that the breach is practicable ; when, the 

 first step the storming party takes, they find they sink up 

 to their necks in light earth. A woful instance of this 

 nature, I shall have to advert to more particularly in the 

 course of my narrative ; and, if it prove a timely hint to 

 the inexperienced, I shall be rewarded. Stone forts are 

 soon demolished ; when undermined well at the bottom, 

 the top will soon follow, and they cannot easily be repair- 

 ed ; but mud forts defy human power. 



