LV.

Dec.

Virginians by surprise. On Friday, the eighth of De- CHAP. cember, after dark, he sent about two hundred men, composed of all that had arrived of the fourteenth 1775. regiment, and of officers, sailors, and gunners from the ships, mixed with townsmen of Norfolk. They ar rived at the Great Bridge in the night, and halted for rest and refreshment. The Virginians could be approached only over a causeway of about one hundred and sixty yards in length, at the end of which was their breastwork. After the break of day, and before sunrise, Leslie planted two fieldpieces between the bridge and the causeway, and gave orders for the attack; but the Virginians had just beat the reveille, and at the first discharge of the cannon, the bravest of them, unmindful of order, rushed to the trenches. The regulars, about one hundred and twenty in number, led by Fordyce, a captain in the fourteenth, were met on the causeway by a well-directed fire; while Stevens, with a party of the Culpepper minute men, posted on an eminence about a hundred yards to the left, took them in flank: they wavered; Fordyce, with a courage which was the admiration of all beholders, rallied and led them on, when, struck with many rifle-balls, some say fourteen, he staggered and fell dead, within a few steps of the breastwork, or according to one account, having had his hand upon it. The two companies of negroes kept out of the way; so did the loyalists of Norfolk; the regulars displayed the conduct of the bravest veterans; but discouraged by the fall of their leader, and disabled by the incessant fire of the Amer ican sharpshooters, they retreated, after a struggle of about fourteen minutes, losing at least sixty-one in killed and wounded.

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Dec.

After the firing was over, the Virginians, who lost LV. not one man, and had but one slightly wounded, ran 1775. to bring in those of their enemies who needed the surgeon's aid. "For God's sake, don't murder us," cried one of the sufferers, who had been taught to fear the scalpingknife. "Put your arm round my neck," replied the Virginian, lifting him up, and walking with him slowly and carefully to the breastwork. When Leslie saw two of the "shirtmen" tenderly removing a wounded soldier from the bridge, he stepped upon the platform of the fort, and bowing with great respect, thanked them for their compassion. Fordyce was buried by the Virginians with all the honors due from a generous enemy to his unsurpassed gallantry. A rash adviser urged Woodford to attack the fort with muskets alone; but Pendleton had charged him "to risk the success of his arms as little as possible;" and he wisely put aside the proposal.

In the following night, Leslie, dejected by the loss of his nephew in the fight, abandoned the fort and retreated to Norfolk. Nothing could exceed the consternation of its Scotch inhabitants: rich factors, with their wives and children, leaving their large property behind, betook themselves on board ships, in midwinter, with scarcely the necessaries of life. Crowds of poor people and the runaway negroes were huddled together in the ships of war and other vessels, destitute of every comfort and even of pure air.

On the eleventh, Robert Howe, of North Carolina, arrived at the Great Bridge, and on the fourteenth he, as the higher officer, took possession of Norfolk. On the twenty first the Liverpool ship of war and the brig Maria were piloted into the harbor.

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Dec.

They brought three thousand stand of arms, with CHAP. which Dunmore had promised to embody negroes and Indians enough to reduce all Virginia to submis- 1775. sion. Martin of North Carolina despatched a tender to claim his part of the arms, and a thousand were made over to him.

The governor sent a flag of truce on shore to inquire if he and the fleet might be supplied with fresh provisions; and was answered in the negative. Showing his instructions to Belew, the captain of the Liverpool, who now commanded the king's ships in the Chesapeake, the two concurred in opinion, that Norfolk was "a town in actual rebellion, accessible to the king's ships;" and they prepared to carry out the king's instructions for such "a case."

CHAPTER LVI.

CHAP

LVI.

Jan.

THE NEW YEAR. 1776.

JANUARY, 1776.

NEW-YEAR'S day, 1776, was the saddest day that ever broke on the women and children then in Nor1776 folk. Warned of their danger by the commander of the squadron, there was for them no refuge. The King Fisher was stationed at the upper end of Norfolk; a little below her the Otter; Belew, in the Liverpool, anchored near the middle of the town; and next him lay Dunmore; the rest of the fleet was moored in the harbor. Between three and four in the afternoon the Liverpool opened its fire upon the borough; the other ships immediately followed the example, and a severe cannonade was begun from about sixty pieces of cannon. Dunmore then himself, as night was coming on, ordered out several boats to burn warehouses on the wharfs; and hailed to Belew to set fire to a large brig which lay in the dock. All the vessels of the fleet, to show their zeal, sent great numbers of boats on shore to assist in spreading the

LVI.

1776.

Jan.

flames along the river; and as the buildings were CHAP. chiefly of pine wood, the conflagration, favored by the wind, spread with amazing rapidity, and soon became general. Women and children, mothers with little ones in their arms, were seen by the glare, running through the shower of cannonballs to get out of their range. Two or three persons were hit; and the scene became one of extreme horror and confusion. Several times the British attempted to land, and once to bring cannon into a street; but they were driven back by the spirit and conduct of the Americans. The cannonade did not abate till ten at night; after a short pause it was renewed, but with less fury, and was kept up till two the next morning. The flames, which had made their way from street to street, raged for three days, till four fifths, or, as some computed, nine tenths, of the houses were reduced to ashes and heaps of ruins.

In this manner the royal governor burned and laid waste the best town in the oldest and most loyal colony of England, to which Elizabeth had given a name, and Raleigh devoted his fortune, and Shakespeare and Bacon and Herbert foretokened greatness; a colony where the people of themselves had established the church of England, and where many were still proud that their ancestors, in the day of the British commonwealth, had been faithful to the line of kings. On second thought, Dunmore feared he had done too much, and he insinuated that the "great number of boats" from his fleet had set fire only to the buildings nearest the water: but a fire kindled in many places along the outer row of houses built chiefly of pine, could extend itself with irresistible fury. Who can