Amherst
had ordered the gunners to spare the houses of the town; but, according
to French accounts, the order had little effect, for shot and shell fell
everywhere. "There is not a house in the place," says the Diary just
quoted, "that has not felt the effects of this formidable artillery.
From yesterday morning till seven o'clock this evening we reckon that a
thousand or twelve hundred bombs, great and small, have been thrown into
the town, accompanied all the time by the fire of forty pieces of
cannon, served with an activity not often seen. The hospital and the
houses around it, which also serve as hospitals, are attacked with
cannon and mortar. The surgeon trembles as he amputates a limb amid
cries of _Gare la bombe!_ and leaves his patient in the midst of the
operation, lest he should share his fate. The sick and wounded,
stretched on mattresses, utter cries of pain, which do not cease till a
shot or the bursting of a shell ends them."[586] On the twenty-sixth the
last cannon was silenced in front of the town, and the English batteries
had made a breach which seemed practicable for assault.
[Footnote 586: Early in the siege Drucour wrote to Amherst asking that
the hospitals should be exempt from fire. Amherst answered that shot and
shell might fall on any part of so small a town, but promised to insure
the sick and wounded from molestation if Drucour would send them either
to the island at the mouth of the harbor, or to any of the ships, if
anchored apart from the rest.
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