out when the French cavalry
recoiled down the slope, remanned their guns, and opened a murderous
fire on the broken French. Noting this, an officer of cuirassiers drew
up his horse by a British battery, and while his men drew off, stood on
guard with his single sword, and kept the gunners from remanning it
till he was shot by a British infantryman. Directly the broken cavalry
was clear of the ridge, the French guns opened furiously on the British
lines, and men dropped thick and fast. The cavalry charges, as a
matter of fact, were welcomed as affording relief from the intolerable
artillery fire.

For two hours 15,000 French horsemen rode round the British squares,
and again and again the ridge and rear slope of the British position
was covered with lancers, cuirassiers, light and heavy dragoons, and
hussars, with the British guns in their actual possession; and yet not
a square was broken! A gaily dressed regiment of the Duke of
Cumberland's (Hanoverian) Hussars watched the Homeric contest from the
British rear, and Lord Uxbridge, as the British cavalry were completely
exhausted by their dashes at the French horsemen as they broke through
the chequer of the squares, rode up to them and called on them to
follow him in a charge. The colonel declined, explaining that his men
owned their own horses, and could not expose them to any risk of
damage! These remarkable warriors, in fact, moved in a body, and with
much expedition, off the field, Seymour (Lord Uxbridge's aide) taking
their colonel by the collar and shaking him as a dog shakes a rat, by
way of expressing his view of the performance.

VI. THE FIGHT OF THE GUNNERS

"Three hundred cannon-mouths roar'd loud;
And from their throats with flash and cloud
Their showers of iron threw."
--SCOTT.

One of the most realistic pictures of the fight at this stage is given
by Captain Mercer, in command of a battery of horse artillery. Mercer
was on the extreme British right during the first stage of the battle,
and only got occasional glimpses of the ridge where the fight was
raging--intermittent visions of French cavalry riding in furious
charges, and abandoned British batteries with guns, muzzle in air,
against the background of grey and whirling smoke. About three
o'clock, in the height of the cavalry struggle, Fraser, who was in
chief command of the horse artillery, galloped down the reverse slope
to Mercer's battery, his face black with po