The engineers, having cut off the branches, laid the trees upon a line on the heights, three or four of them placed horizontally one upon the other, which scarce made it above three feet high--so low that your soldiers might easily have jumped over it;--they made a line of the branches, at two paces distance, on the outside of the trenches (HH). It is certain that if the engineers had only thrown the trees with their heads outwards, and their branches sharpened in pricking points at their ends, it would have made a much stronger intrenchment, more difficult to be forced, and built much sooner.[C] I had not the time to continue the trenches down to the hollow (DD), at the foot of the height, and I placed there two companies of grenadiers. The hollow upon the right of the height, where the intrenchment was the worst of all my lines, was the post of the companies of marines (C); the regiments lined the rest of the trenches. Next day, the 8th of July, the English army appeared on the borders of the woods, about three hundred fathoms from the front of our intrenchment on the height, and instantly advanced to the attack, formed in three columns (EE), without halting a moment to examine the _locale_. Two of the columns attacked the height with the utmost impetuosity, but being very soon entangled among the branches, on the outside of the trenches, and impeded by them, they lost there a great many men; some few got through and, jumping into our trenches, were killed by our soldiers with their bayonets. The American riflemen were posted on two heights (GG), which commanded our trenches, from whence they saw sideways in some parts of them, and in others the rear of the soldiers (K). The regiment of Berry was, above all others, worried and tormented by their fire--one of these heights being scarce above eighty paces from the intrenchments. The third column attacked the hollow upon our right; but receiving a brisk fire at its front from the colony troops, and at the same time upon its right flank from the regiments on the height, the column soon wavered, wheeled to the right, and, presenting its front to the height, got out of the reach of the fire from the right of the colony troops; upon which M. Raymond, who commanded them, went out of the trenches with the right wing of these troops, and attacked the left flank of the column, whilst its head and right flank were fired at from the height and from the left of the colony troops in the trenches. The column, distressed by this firing, yet, nevertheless, keeping firm at the foot of the height, put in disorder the regiment of Berry, who abandoned that part of the intrenchment (II) above it.