1690.] THE CANNONADE. 273 



and belched flame and smoke from all its batteries. 

 So fierce and rapid was the firing, that La Hon- 

 tan compares it to volleys of musketry ; and old 

 officers, who had seen many sieges, declared that 

 they had never known the like. 1 The din was pro- 

 digious, reverberated from the surrounding heights, 

 and rolled back from the distant mountains in one 

 continuous roar. On the part of the English, how- 

 ever, surprisingly little was accomplished beside 

 noise and smoke. The practice of their gunners 

 was so bad that many of their shot struck harm- 

 lessly against the face of the cliff. Their guns, 

 too, were very light, and appear to have been 

 charged with a view to the most rigid economy of 

 gunpowder ; for the balls failed to pierce the stone 

 walls of the buildings, and did so little damage that, 

 as the French boasted, twenty crowns would have 

 repaired it all. 2 Night came at length, and the 

 turmoil ceased. 



Phips lay quiet till daybreak, when Frontenac 

 sent a shot to waken him, and the cannonade began 

 again. Sainte-Helene had returned from Beauport ; 

 and he, with his brother Maricourt, took charge 

 of the two batteries of the Lower Town, aiming the 

 guns in person, and throwing balls of eighteen and 

 twenty-four pounds with excellent precision against 

 the four largest ships of the fleet. One of their 

 shots cut the flagstaff of the admiral, and the cross 

 of St. George fell into the river. It drifted with 

 the tide towards the north shore ; whereupon sev- 



1 La Hontan, I. 216; Juchereau, 320. 



2 Fere Germain, Relation cle la Defaite des Anglois. 



18 



