Douglass, over a hundred yards away, feels the ground shake under him, then he sees a jet of flame shoot up from the fort for more than a hundred feet into the night sky, followed by a shower of stone, earth, chunks of timber, bits of human bodies. One of his own men falls dead, struck by debris. The carnage is ghastly. The Americans, most of them but not all protected by the walls of the barracks, are spared, but the British attackers are torn, crushed, mangled. Some, flung from the parapet, die on the bayonets of their commrades in the ditch below.
Nothing can stem the panic that follows.
Believing the entire fort is mined, the men break and flee across the plain to the safety of the British trenches. He is killed, too. At the memory of his commanders death and that of three quarters of his own men, the young officer bursts into tears. The General is heartsick, and not just over the death of his nephew. Clearly he has underestimated the size of the American force and the strength of it's defences and overestimated the effect of his artillery barrage.