ed lightning point-blank on
the cuirassiers. The intrepid General Delort made the military salute to
the English battery.

The whole of the flying artillery of the English had re-entered the
squares at a gallop. The cuirassiers had not had even the time for a
halt. The disaster of the hollow road had decimated, but not discouraged
them. They belonged to that class of men who, when diminished in number,
increase in courage.

Wathier's column alone had suffered in the disaster; Delort's column,
which Ney had deflected to the left, as though he had a presentiment of
an ambush, had arrived whole.

The cuirassiers hurled themselves on the English squares.

At full speed, with bridles loose, swords in their teeth pistols in
fist,--such was the attack.

There are moments in battles in which the soul hardens the man until
the soldier is changed into a statue, and when all this flesh turns into
granite. The English battalions, desperately assaulted, did not stir.

Then it was terrible.

All the faces of the English squares were attacked at once. A frenzied
whirl enveloped them. That cold infantry remained impassive. The first
rank knelt and received the cuirassiers on their bayonets, the second
ranks shot them down; behind the second rank the cannoneers charged
their guns, the front of the square parted, permitted the passage of
an eruption of grape-shot, and closed again. The cuirassiers replied
by crushing them. Their great horses reared, strode across the ranks,
leaped over the bayonets and fell, gigantic, in the midst of these four
living wells. The cannon-balls ploughed furrows in these cuirassiers;
the cuirassiers made breaches in the squares. Files of men disappeared,
ground to dust under the horses. The bayonets plunged into the bellies
of these centaurs; hence a hideousness of wounds which has probably
never been seen anywhere else. The squares, wasted by this mad cavalry,
closed up their ranks without flinching. Inexhaustible in the matter of
grape-shot, they created explosions in their assailants' midst. The form
of this combat was monstrous. These squares were no longer battalions,
they were craters; those cuirassiers were no longer cavalry, they were
a tempest. Each square was a volcano attacked by a cloud; lava contended
with lightning.

The square on the extreme right, the most exposed of all, being in the
air, was almost annihilated at the very first shock. lt was formed
of the 75th regiment of Highland