Preparations were made, on the fourteenth, to carry them both by storm.  The attack of one was committed to the Americans, and of the other to the French.  The Marquis de Lafayette commanded the American detachment, and the Baron de Viominel the French.  Towards the close of the day, the two detachments marched with equal firmness to the assault.  Colonel Hamilton, who had commanded a battalion of light infantry throughout this campaign, led the advanced corps of the Americans; and Colonel Laurens turned the redoubt at the head of eighty men, in order to take the garrison in reverse, and intercept their retreat.  The troops rushed to the charge without firing a gun and without giving the sappers time to remove the abattis and palisades.  Passing over them, they assaulted the works with irresistible impetuosity on all sides at the same time, and entered them with such rapidity that their loss was inconsiderable.[85] This redoubt was defended by Major Campbell, with some inferior officers, and forty-five privates.  The major, a captain, a subaltern, and seventeen privates, were made prisoners, and eight privates were killed while the assailants were entering the works.

[Footnote 85:  One sergeant and eight privates were killed; and one lieutenant colonel, four captains, one subaltern, one sergeant, and twenty-five rank and file, were wounded.

The irritation produced by the recent carnage in fort Griswold had not so far subdued the humanity of the American character as to induce retaliation.  Not a man was killed except in action.  “Incapable,” said Colonel Hamilton in his report, “of imitating examples of barbarity, and forgetting recent provocation, the soldiery spared every man that ceased to resist.”  Mr. Gordon, in his History of the American War, states the orders given by Lafayette, with the approbation of Washington, to have directed that every man in the redoubt, after its surrender, should be put to the sword.  These sanguinary orders, so repugnant to the character of the Commander-in-chief and of Lafayette, were never given.  There is no trace of them among the papers of General Washington; and Colonel Hamilton, who took a part in the enterprise, which assures his perfect knowledge of every material occurrence, has publicly contradicted the statement.  It has been also contradicted by Lafayette.]

The redoubt attacked by the French was defended by a greater number of men; and the resistance, being greater, was not overcome so quickly, or with so little loss.  One hundred and twenty men, commanded by a lieutenant colonel, were in this work, eighteen of whom were killed, and forty-two, including a captain and two subaltern officers, were made prisoners.  The assailants lost, in killed and wounded, near one hundred men.