best officers had but a biscuit a day, lay at Launceston. They nevertheless marched the twenty miles to Stratton “with a resolution to fight with the enemy upon every disadvantage of place or number.” In the evening they halted, footsore and hungry, a mile from the base of the high hill on which the Parliamentarian troops lay in overwhelming strength, and determined to attack them at daybreak. Weary as they were, the men stood to their arms all night, for the enemy were too near to make rest possible, and with the first light, Sir Bevill, to whom every inch of the ground was, of course, perfectly familiar, and to whom, consequently, was committed the ordering of the fight, divided the troops into four storming parties. The little army was too small to merit, when divided into such parts, any other designation. In the morning the fight commenced, and continued till the afternoon was well advanced, but no impression could be made by the gallant Cornishmen, who were repulsed again and again. At last powder began to fail, and it became a question between retreat, which implied certain disaster, or victory. A final and heroic effort was made; muskets were laid aside, and, trusting to pike and sword alone, the lithe Cornishmen pressed onwards and upwards. Grenville led the party on the western slope, and Sir John Berkeley that on the northern, while Hopton and the other commanders scaled the south and east sides. Their silent march seems to have struck their opponents with a sense of power, and the defence grew feebler. Grenville first reached the crest, and seized the entrenchment, and captured the thirteen brass field-pieces and one mortar by which it was defended; and when Berkeley prevailed on the north side, the Parliamentarian horse fled from the hill headlong down the steep descent, and made off. This had its moral effect on the defenders of the other two sides of the camp, and their resistance perceptibly slackened. Soon the other two storming parties, who had had the steepest climb, pressed upward, and the enemy, despite the efforts of their officers to rally them, made off to the adjoining heights. The victorious commanders embraced one another on the hard-won hilltop, thanking God for a success for which at one time they had hardly ventured to hope. It was no time to prolong their rejoicings, as the enemy, demoralised though they were, appear to have rallied somewhat, and to have shown a disposition to renew the combat; but Grenville quickly turned their own captured cannon on them, and a few rounds sufficed to dislodge them. Panic ensued, and a general stampede, in which arms and accoutrements were flung aside, concluded the fight of Stratton. By this decisive victory, not only was Cornwall cleared of the enemy and secured for the King, but the whole of Devon, excepting a few of the principal towns, fell into the hands of the Royalists. The King was not unmindful of the gallant Sir Bevill’s