That battery, in spite of the heavy fire poured upon it, silenced the French guns, and broke to pieces a battery on Goat Island in the middle of the harbour. Its fire was soon followed by the bellow of the huge siege guns which had now been brought ashore, and very soon the din about the fortress of Louisbourg was such that men were deafened, and Steve had never heard the like of it before. Sorties were delivered, and were promptly met and driven back. The siege was pressed vigorously, shot and shell pouring on the devoted place, while the politest messages passed between besiegers and besieged. Then the Canadians and their Indians outside our lines delivered their attack, an attack which Steve and the light regiments, now employed as scouts, were able to detect in good time and drive off easily.
And so a month passed, a month of endless cannonading, till the fortress was shattered, and the walls and buildings flying in fragments everywhere. The French were in desperate plight, and wisely agreed to surrender, having fought most gallantly. Thus the formidable fortress came into our hands, and Pitt's forward policy began to bring a long-looked for success. We had captured a place for long the greatest menace to our power in America, and with it had taken some six thousand soldiers and sailors, thus reducing the enemy's strength, while it set ten thousand of our own troops free to operate in other quarters. As for the fortress itself, it was of no use to us, and some two years later was torn to pieces and utterly dismantled. Hardly a stone of that fine costly place can be seen to-day.
Steve did not long remain at Cape Breton, for scouts were required at Ticonderoga, and an urgent message had been sent through to General Amherst to ask for a supply. Steve and his friends were sent, therefore, and arrived in the neighbourhood of Fort William Henry, now reconstructed, only to hear the doleful tidings of a defeat, the effects of which required even more than the crowning victory at Louisbourg to counteract. For General Abercromby had made a most hopeless and inexcusable failure of his long projected attack on the French fort at Ticonderoga. Nor was this failure due to want of careful preparation, to unsuitable troops, or to lack of courage. Of the troops there were plenty and to spare. Had the attack been delivered by the same troops again, properly led over ground which had been carefully reconnoitred, there would have been a different result, in spite of the stubborn and wonderful gallantry of the French. But Abercromby made no use of the excellent scouting material which he possessed. He made no use of the few guns dragged to this part with infinite labour, but left them six miles in his rear. He had six thousand troops, all burning to avenge the massacre at Fort William Henry, and he launched his regiments one after another over open ground in a frontal attack upon the _chevaux de frise_ which the French had erected. Time and again gallant souls dashed forward, only to be beaten down and slain by the bullets and cannon of unseen marksmen and gunners. Why, the youngest subaltern, inexperienced in war, would have ordered all further attacks to cease till he had brought up his guns and smashed those formidable but flimsy defences to pieces. Not so General Abercromby. He had shown no lack of astuteness and organising ability up till now. But at this the critical time in the actions of this expedition he ruined all by his helpless and singularly unsuitable tactics, or, rather, by his absolute disregard of the simplest of tactics.