‘
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for the expedition, how
Providence will order the af-
fair, for which religious meetings every week are maintained.
I leave you in the hand of God.’
The troops made a jest of technical military terms; they laughed at proposals for zigzags and epaule-
ments.
The light of nature, however, taught them to erect fascine batteries at the west and south-west of the city.
Of these the most effective was commanded by Tidcomb, whose readiness to engage in hazardous enterprises was justly applauded.
As it was necessary, for the purposes of attack, to drag the cannon over boggy morasses, impassable for wheels,
Meserve,
a
New Hampshire colonel, who was a carpenter, constructed sledges; and on these the men, with straps over their shoulders, sinking to their knees in mud, drew them safely over.
Thus the siege proceeded
in a random manner.
The men knew little of strict discipline; they had no fixed encampment; destitute of tents to keep off the fogs and dews, their lodgings
were turf and brush houses; their bed was the earth—dangerous resting-place for those of the people ‘unacquainted with lying in the woods.’
Yet the weather was fair; and the atmosphere, usually thick with palpable fogs, was, during the whole siege, singularly dry. All day long, the men, if not on duty, were busy with amusements,—firing at marks, fishing, fowling, wrestling, racing, or running after balls shot from the enemy's guns.
The feebleness of the garrison, which had only six hundred regular soldiers, with about a thou-
sand
Breton militia, prevented sallies; the hunting parties, as vigilant for the trail of an enemy as for game, rendered a surprise by land impossible; while the fleet of
Admiral Warren guarded the approaches by sea.
Four or five attempts to take the island battery,
