Then Charlie withdrew this battalion also, and the town remained in
the hands of the enemy; who had lost, Charlie reckoned, fully fifteen
hundred men in the assault.
During the fight Tim and the faithful Hossein, now fully recovered and
promoted to the rank of an officer, had remained close beside him; and
were, with him, the last to leave the town.
The instant the evacuation was complete, the guns of the hill battery
opened upon the town; and a tremendous fire of musketry was poured
upon it from every point of the castle which commanded it; while the
guns, which from their lofty elevation, could not be depressed
sufficiently to bear upon the town, directed their fire upon the
bodies of troops still beyond the walls. The enemy had captured the
town, indeed, but its possession aided them but little in their
assault upon the fort. The only advantage it gave them, would have
been that it would have enabled them to attack the lower gate of the
fort, protected by its outer wall from the fire of the hill battery.
Charlie had, however, perceived that this would be the case, and had
planted a number of mines under the wall at this point. These were
exploded when the defenders of the town entered the fort, and a
hundred yards of the wall were thus destroyed; leaving the space,
across which the enemy must advance to the attack of the gate, exposed
to the fire of the hill battery, as well as of the numerous guns of
the fort bearing upon it.
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