But he failed in doing so, General Drummond having come up with about three thousand men, of whom eighteen hundred were regulars. The enemy was five thousand strong, but General Drummond seized a commanding eminence which swept the whole field of battle. Nothing daunted, however, by this superiority of position, the Americans resolutely advanced to the charge, and the action, which commenced about six in the evening, soon became general along the whole line, the brunt of the battle falling, nevertheless, upon the British centre and left. General Riall, who commanded the left division of the army was forced back with his division, wounded, and made prisoner. The centre firmly maintained their ground. It was composed of the 89th, the Royals, and the King's regiment, well supported by the artillery, whose guns, worked with prodigious activity, carried great havoc in the enemy's ranks. Brown soon perceived that unless the guns were captured, the battle was lost; and he consequently bent all his energies to the accomplishment of that object. He ordered General Millar to charge up the hill and take the guns. The order was vigorously obeyed and five guns fell into the hands of the Americans, the British artillerymen being positively bayoneted in the act of loading, while the muzzles of the American guns were within a few yards of the English battery. It was now night and extremely dark. During the darkness some extraordinary incidents occurred. The British having, for a moment, been thrust back, some of the British guns remained for a few minutes in the enemy's hands. They were, however, not only quickly recovered, but the two pieces, a six pounder and a five and a half inch howitzer, which the enemy had brought up, were captured by the British, together with several tumbrils; and in limbering up the British guns, at one period, one of the enemy's six-pounders was put, by mistake, upon a British limber, and one of the British six-pounders was limbered on one of the enemy's. So that although American guns had been captured, yet as the Americans had captured one of the British guns, the British only gained, by the dark transaction, one gun. It was now 9 o'clock, and there was a short intermission of firing. Apparently the combatants sank to rest from pure exhaustion. It was a terrible repose. The din of battle had ceased, to be succeeded by the monotonous roar of the Great Falls. The moon had risen and at intervals glanced out of the angry blackish looking clouds, to reveal the pale faces of the dead, with still unrelaxed features, and some even yet, as it were, in an attitude of defiance. The field of strife was one sea of blood, and the groans of the wounded and the dying sent a shudder through the boldest. Occasionally the flash of a gun or a few bright flashes of musketry revealed more strikingly than even the moon's pale rays, the living, the dying, and the dead. Short as was the respite, the enemy was not idle while it lasted.