THE TOWN OF YORKTOWN. 689 



The morning was still, and the heavens overcast with sad clouds — as if 

 nature sympathizing with her children, was ready to drop showers of ce- 

 lestial pity on their strifes. No sooner had the ships floated up with- 

 in three cables length of the fort, than they began a most tremendous 

 cannonade ; while cannon balls and fire-tailed bombs, like comets, fell 

 upon it thick as hail. The gallant Smith and his myrmidons, stood the 

 shock to a miracle, and like men fighting under the eye of their Wash- 

 ington, drove the two-and-thirty pounders through them, with such spirit 

 and success, that in a little time, the Augusta, a heavy 64 gun ship took 

 fire and blew up, the horrible balloon and many of the crew. Another ship 

 called the Merlin, or Black Bird, soon got on the wing, blew up likewise 

 and went off in thunder to join the Augusta. At the same moment Col. 

 Donop, with his Hessians, made a gallant attack on the fort at Red 

 Bank. After a few well directed fires, Greene and his men artfully re- 

 tired from the out-works. The enemy, now supposing the day their own, 

 rushed on in vast numbers along a large opening in the fort, and within 

 twenty steps of a masked battery of eighteen pounders, loaded with 

 grape shot and spike nails. All at once, hell itself seemed to open be- 

 fore their affrighted view. But their pains and their terrors were but for 

 a moment. Together down they sunk by hundreds, into the sweet 

 slumbers of death, scarcely sensible of the fatal blow that reft their 

 lives. 



Heaps on heaps, the slaughtered Hessians lie ; 



Brave Greene beholds them with a tearful eye. 



Far now from home, and from their native shore, 



They sleep in death and hear of wars no more. 



" Poor Donop was mortally wounded, and taken prisoner. The atten- 

 tions of the American officers, and particularly the kind condolence 

 of the God-like Washington, quite overcame him: and his last moments 

 were steeped in tears of regret, for having left his native land, to fight a 

 distant people, who had never injured him. ' See here, Colonel,' said 

 the dying count, (to Col. Danl. Clymer, who had been sent by Wash- 

 ington to condole with him) ' see in me, the vanity of all human pride ! 

 I have shone in all the Courts of Europe, and now, I am dying here, on 

 the banks of the Delaware, in the house of an obscure Quaker."** 



As Captain Mauduit Duplessis was traversing the scene of slaughter 

 after the repulse, he was accosted by a voice from among the slain : 

 " Whoever you are, draw me hence." It was the unfortunate Count 

 Donop. Duplessis had him conveyed to a house near the fort, where 

 every attention was paid to his comfort ; he languished for three days, 

 during which Duplessis was continually at his bed-side. " This is 

 finishing a noble career early," said the Count sadly, as he found his 

 death approaching. Then, as if conscious of the degrading service in 

 which he had fallen, hired out by his prince to aid a foreign power in 



a Life of George Washington by M. L Weems, formerly Rector of Mt. Vernon Parish. 

 Phila. 1S09. 



