Note 811 — Chapter I

Burgoyne, whose diary of the siege is one of the primary authorities, says that in his opinion the mine could have been much more useful than it was. ‘On the discovery of the drain, I should have immediately have altered the whole plan of attack. I would have made a “globe of compression” to blow in the counterscarp and the crest of the glacis, and then at low water have threatened an attack on the breaches, exploded the mine, and have made the real assault on the hornwork, which not being threatened had few people in it, and would undoubtedly have been carried easily.’ There was, he says, good cover in the hornwork, which would have been easily connected with the parallel, and used as the base for attacking the main front, with breaching batteries in its terre-plein and the crest of the glacis. Burgoyne, i. p. 271. But this is wisdom after the event.