The World's Greatest Military Spies and Secret Service AgentsBarton, George
History
The World's Greatest Military Spies and Secret Service Agents
Barton, George
Secret service; Spies
Following this harangue they started off on their expedition with
O’Neill at their head. Before leaving, O’Neill instructed Le Caron
to bring to his support on their arrival a party of 400 men who were
coming from St. Albans. The men marched with a certain amount of
military precision for all of them had received some degree of military
training. There is no doubt of the patriotic feelings that filled their
hearts. In spite of the lack of uniformity, and possibly because of
it, the scene was picturesque. Here and there a Fenian coat with its
green and gray faced with gold sparkled in contrast with the civilian
clothing and the more somber garb of the others.
Finally the volunteers reached a little wooden bridge and deployed as
skirmishers in close order, advancing with fixed bayonets and cheering
wildly. Not a soldier appeared to dispute their way, but the dark
Canadian trees hid from their view the ambushed Canadian volunteers,
who were only awaiting the signal to spring out upon the unsuspecting
invaders.
All this time Le Caron, who had spent years of intimate association
with many of the Irishmen and who was regarded as their friend and
confidant, stood upon the hilltop to watch the inevitable slaughter.
They advanced a few yards farther, and on their startled ears came
the whistling sound of many bullets from the rifles of the ambushed
Canadians as they poured a deadly volley straight into their ranks.
Little remains to be told. There was fierce fighting and terrible
bloodshed, but the invaders were overcome by superior numbers and well
disciplined troops. Finally they were forced to retreat up to the hill
where Le Caron stood, still under the fire of their adversaries and
leaving their dead to be subsequently buried by the Canadians.
Seeing that all was over, for the time at least, the spy had hurried
off to the point where the St. Albans contingent had arrived and were
forming. He actually took part in this ceremony, and while engaged in
superintending it he was afforded, as he says, practical evidence of
the termination of O’Neill’s part in the fight. While he was standing
in the middle of the road where the men were forming into line, he was
startled by the cry:
“Clear the road, clear the road!”
He was almost knocked down by a team of horses pulling a covered
carriage, and as the conveyance flashed by him he caught through the
carriage window a hurried glimpse of the dejected face of General
O’Neill, who was seated between two men. He said in speaking of this
that he might have given the command to shoot the horses as they turned
an adjacent corner, but it was no part of his purpose to restore
O’Neill to his command.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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