Green brought to the attack six regiments and one battery, between 1,300 and 1,500 strong,(2) including three regiments of his own brigade, the 4th, 5th, and 7th Texas, and three regiments of Major's brigade--Lane's, Stone's, and Phillips's. The river, and therefore the bayou, were now low, exposing wide margins of batture, and Green's plan was, while surrounding and threatening the fort on its land faces, to gain an entrance on the water front by crossing the batture and passing around the ends of the stockades. At ten minutes past midnight the red light of a Coston signal from the fort announced to the Navy that the enemy were coming. At twenty minutes past one the fight was opened by the Confederates with musketry. Instantly the fort replied with the fire of its guns, and of every musket that could be brought to the parapet. Five minutes later the _Princess Royal_, which, since nightfall, had been under way and cleared for action, began shelling the woods on the right of the fort, firing a few 9-inch and 30-pounder shells over the works and down the bayou, followed presently by 30-pounder and 20-pounder shrapnel and 9-inch grape, fired at point-blank range in the direction of the Confederate yells. The assault was made in the most determined manner. Shannon, with the 5th Texas, passed some of his men around the end of the river stockade, others climbed and helped one another over, some tried to cut it down with axes, many fired through the loopholes; Phillips made a circuit of the fort and tried the bayou stockade, while Herbert's 7th Texas attempted to cross the ditch on the land side. The fight at the stockade was desperate in the extreme; those who succeeded in surmounting or turning this barrier found an impassable obstacle in the ditch, whose existence, strange to say, they had not even suspected. Here the combatants fought hand to hand; even the sick, who had barely strength to walk from the hospital to the rampart, took part in the defence. The Texans assailed the defenders with brickbats; these the Maine men threw back upon the heads of the Texans; on both sides numbers were thus injured. Lane, who was to have supported Phillips, somehow went adrift, and Hardeman, who was to have attacked the stockade on the bayou side, was delayed by his guide, but toward daylight he came up to join in the last attack. By way of a diversion, Stone had crossed the bayou to the east bank on a bridge of sugar coolers, and his part in the fight was confined to yells.