At last, while aides were still beating up for more support, and Putnam himself was returning from a similar errand, Howe put his troops in motion. This time the movement against the rail fence was but a feint; and now for the first time the artillery of either side did effective service in the battle. Against the protest of the artillery officers that the ground was too soft to take better position, Howe ordered them forward, and they loyally obeyed. They found a post from which they could enfilade the breastwork, and at their first discharge of grape sent its defenders into the redoubt for safety. It was the beginning of the end. Prescott, as he saw the breastwork abandoned, and marked the three advancing columns, saw that the redoubt was doomed. And yet the day ought not to have been lost. Had Ward but sent a hundred pounds of powder, the fight might have been won. But Prescott looked for it in vain. Or had those men, whom he saw shooting at long range from positions of safety, come forward to reinforce the defenders of the redoubt, the scales might have been turned. But the fight was to end as it had begun, with Prescott's small detachment still unsupported, left all day without food or water, and now at the end without powder. As the troops climbed the hill a few artillery cartridges were opened and their powder distributed among the provincials. Some of the men thus had three or four charges to their guns, some had only one; besides this, there were few bayonets among them. The wonder is that the men awaited the assault. This time the regulars came within twenty yards of the redoubt before the word was given to fire. The heads of the columns were swept away, but the rest came on, and mounted the parapet. The first who topped it were shot down, among them Pitcairn. But then the American powder was spent, and from three sides the British swarmed into the redoubt. Reluctantly Prescott gave his men the word to retreat. For a few moments the fighting was fierce. Some of the provincials were unwilling to run, and fought till they were killed. Some used stones, and some their clubbed muskets, retiring unwillingly. It might be supposed that the slaughter was great. But the British, for the very reason that they had entered from three sides, were afraid to fire on the farmers for the sake of their own men; the dust rose up in clouds, and so in the confusion most of the defenders escaped, like Peter Brown, who wrote his mother: "I was not suffered to be touched, although I was in the front when the enemy came in, and jumped over the walls, and ran half a mile, where balls flew like hailstones, and cannon roared like thunder."[100] Prescott came off unhurt. Those who saw him said that he "stepped long, with his sword up." He saved his life by parrying the bayonets which were thrust at him, although some of them pierced his clothes.