enceinte of redoubts and wall-faced embankments which offered no weak point; while on the British side of the valley the hedgerows were not yet trampled down sufficiently to allow cavalry to advance unimpeded. At the onset, a hot encounter took place on the main road itself, at the very spot where our heroine had turned back in her walk a year before [ref. Chap. XIII.]; and here again the French got worsted and were forced up the hill, disputing the ground yard by yard; but as they retreated behind their strong places above, their artillery swept the hill side with a deadly fire; this was followed up by a simultaneous cavalry charge from the right and left centre which decimated the impetuous assailants, driving what remained of them back across the valley; and the British general feared for the moment that his own centre was broken. But La Roche’s tactics were more patient and cautious, and he did not permit the counter-charge to be followed up.
It proved very soon that the carrying by assault of Whitegate, though it was certainly magnificent, was not war. It should not have been done until the success of the British fleet had been made sure of; and Admiral St George did not succeed. His position was altogether a weak one. He could not break the enemy’s serried line of battle off Whitegate, strengthened as it was by the possession and fortification of the islet in front of the village; the new American dynamite rams darted about his ships like gadflies and inflicted great damage; lastly, he was rather annoyed than assisted by the blundering fire of Port Camden, which commanded his rearmost squadron, and whose shells, falling short of the enemy’s vessels, did execution, when they did any at all, upon British ships. The consequence was that no support whatever could be given by the fleet to the attack on Whitegate. On the contrary, as soon as the American naval commander, whose division of the Allied fleet was
