Fort de la Presentation - Part 3

The battle for Fort de la Presentation was about to begin, and I continued to have difficulty discerning which group was from which army. These men, judging by their costumes, were colonists, and they began the action:

Making war with muskets was a slow and tedious process, with much time needed to reload. The narrator said that a musket was good for about a dozen shots, after which the flash pan began getting fouled and needed cleaning:

The British soldiers marched in:

And, with the colonists, began firing at the French:

The French soldiers began marching, single file and accompanied by a drummer, toward the British:

The explosions of firing muskets shattered the formerly peaceful scene:

There were only a few Indians, but they too took part in the battle. My understanding is that there were Indians on both sides of the war, but these guys were fighting with the French:

It was a slow moving battle compared to modern warfare because of the time required to reload muskets:

Another group brought out a canon and it too began firing, adding to the noise:

Smoke filled the air:

And soldiers began dying:

The announcer quipped that this battle appeared to have ended in a tie, requiring another reenactment to be performed the following day. I had thoroughly enjoyed the color, the history and the action - but I decided to leave for home quickly, before there was a stampede of people and a traffic jam: