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[241] advantage;1 the hostile force lay out of range behind the hills in rear of the town, and the artillerists were unable to give sufficient depression to their guns to reach the river-front of the city, along which the marksmen were posted, and the conflagration did not extend but died out. During the thick of the bombardment, a fresh attempt was made to complete the one half-finished bridge opposite the town; but this too failed. The day was wearing away, and affairs were at a dead-lock. In this state of facts, the chief of artillery, Brigadier-General Hunt, an officer of a remarkably clear judgment, made a suggestion that proved the fit thing to be done. He proposed that a party should be sent across the river in the open ponton-boats, and that after dislodging or capturing the opposing force, the bridges should be rapidly completed. The Seventh Michigan Regiment and the Nineteenth and Twentieth Massachusetts regiments of Howard's division volunteered for this perilous enterprise.2 Ten ponton-boats were lying on the brink of the river waiting to be added to the half-finished bridge. Rushing down the steep bank, the party found shelter behind these and behind the piles of planking destined for the covering of the bridge; and in this situation they acted for fifteen or twenty minutes as sharp-shooters, to hold in check the Southern tirailleurs opposite, while the boats were pushed into the stream. This being accomplished, the men quickly sought the boats, pushed off, and the oarsmen pulling lustily, they in a few minutes, notwithstanding the severe fire by which several were killed or wounded, came under cover of the opposite bluff. Other boats followed, and so soon as an adequate number of men were assembled on the Southern
1 It has, indeed, seldom been found that such bombardments of towns are of any avail, and, as Carnot observes, they are generally adopted only when real means are lacking. ‘Les bombardemens sont en general beaucoup moins a craindre qu'on ne le pense ordinairement. On les employe lorsqu'on manque de moyens reels.’—De la Defense des Places Fortes: Bibliothequ. Militaire, tome v., p. 523.
2 Couch's Report of Fredericksburg.
1866.
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