No other course remained but to carry the enemy’s work by an attack _de vive force_, and it was decided that this should take place on the 8th. Three companies of the Battalion were to precede the advance of the right column under General Gibbs, consisting of the 4th, 21st and 44th regiments; while the other two companies were in like manner to act with the left column. The Riflemen were to extend along the edge of the canal or ditch in front of the enemy’s rampart, and both parties so extended were to occupy the whole of the bank, or as it might be called, the crest of the glacis. At four o’clock in the morning the troops paraded; and by daylight the Riflemen were in their place. But the 44th Regiment, which had been appointed to carry ladders and fascines to enable the attacking force to cross the ditch, had come without them. Their commanding officer, the Hon. Colonel Mullens, had said loudly the night before when the regiment was detailed for this duty in orders, that ‘his regiment was sent on a forlorn hope’ and ‘was doomed.’ And on the regiment returning to fetch the ladders and fascines, he prudently did not come back to the front with them. The enemy meanwhile opened a furious fire on the troops, specially destructive to the Riflemen who were extended within 100 or 150 yards of the work. One regiment of the right attack, finding itself exposed to this fire, and without the fascines and ladders they had been led to expect, wavered, broke up, and fled to the rear, throwing the regiment which was following in support into confusion. Sir Edward Pakenham, who commanded, in trying to rally this column was killed; General Gibbs, who commanded it, was mortally wounded; and General Keane, who commanded the left attack, was wounded. This attack succeeded better; and for a time the troops composing it held a redoubt which the enemy had constructed in front of the ditch, and which they had stormed. But in the end they were obliged also to give way. Thus the Riflemen, extended in skirmishing order along the edge of the ditch, were left unsupported, and were obliged to retire as best they could. As their files were extended they presented a less prominent object for the enemy’s guns, and they eventually got away with comparatively small loss. Some of them had got quite to the edge of the ditch, and reported that they could have passed it, but the attacking columns which they expected never came up; and to have entered the enemy’s work without them would, of course, have been certain destruction. A gallant and successful diversion was made on the right bank of the Mississippi by a column under Colonel Thornton; but as the Battalion did not form part of it, it is not my province, as historian of the Regiment only, farther to notice it.