four field-guns, St. Pol's brigade was beaten back, losing its
brigadier, and with him fell the chief staff officer of the division and
two colonels. The Russians followed up closely, and Bisson's brigade,
which for want of space in the trenches had been stationed in the
Careenage Ravine, was too far behind to afford effective aid. Bourbaki's
right being thus uncovered, he also was driven back, although supported
by Motterouge's other brigade.

After Bourbaki and St. Pol had been repulsed, the Voltigeurs and
Grenadiers of the Guard and Marolle's brigade were sent against the
curtain and Redan respectively. These they carried, but were once more
expelled from the Little Redan, Marolle and De Ponteves falling dead at
the head of their brigades, and Mellinet, Bisson, and Bourbaki being
wounded. The French still held the curtain, and Bosquet now ordered up
the two field-batteries then standing behind the Victoria redoubt. They
descended the ridge at the trot, unlimbered in front of the sixth
parallel, and, coming into action, fired with great effect on the
Russian infantry, which offered a broad target. Yet the batteries
suffered terribly; the commanding officer (Souty) was killed, and out of
the one hundred fifty men he brought down, only fifty-five returned when
the guns were dragged back by hand because they lost all their horses
except nineteen.

Bosquet, surrounded by several Russian officers, who were prisoners, and
their guards, was interrogating the captives when a shell burst over
them, killing or wounding both them and the guard--the General only
escaping. Later, when leaning on the parapet watching the progress of
the fight, he was struck in the face by a fragment of a shell. He had
just strength to send word to General Dulac to take his place, when he
fainted.

The struggle in and around the Malakoff was continued till three
o'clock, when Gortschakoff withdrew his troops from the work which they
had defended with such marvellous endurance for eleven months. The prize
was now won, but at heavy cost.

MacMahon's division, which assaulted with forty-five hundred bayonets
and two hundred officers, lost in killed and wounded just half its
strength.

Soon after the Russians had been driven from the salient of the
Malakoff, the French troops occupying it were fired on from the lower
part of the old masonry tower, which was loopholed, and inside which
five officers and sixty Russian soldiers had taken refuge. It w