art--discretion. They advanced
in two lines, quickening their pace as they closed upon the enemy. A
more fearful spectacle was never witnessed than by those who beheld
these heroes rushing to the arms of Death.

At the distance of twelve hundred yards, the whole line of the enemy
belched forth from thirty iron mouths a flood of smoke and flame,
through which hissed the deadly balls. Their flight was marked by
instant gaps in our ranks, by dead men and horses, by steeds flying
wounded or riderless across the plain. The first line is broken--it is
joined by the second--they never halt or check their speed an instant.
With diminished ranks thinned by those thirty guns which the Russians
had laid with the most deadly accuracy, with a halo of flashing steel
above their heads, and with a cheer which was many a noble fellow's
death-cry, they flew into the smoke of the batteries, but ere they were
lost from view the plain was strewn with their bodies and with the
carcasses of horses. They were exposed to an oblique fire from the
batteries on the hills on both sides, as well as to a direct fire of
musketry. Through the clouds of smoke we could see their sabres flashing
as they rode up to the guns and dashed into their midst, cutting down
the gunners where they stood. We saw them riding through the guns, as I
have said: to our delight we saw them returning after breaking through a
column of Russian infantry and scattering it like chaff, when the flank
fire of the battery on the hill swept them down scattered and broken as
they were. Wounded men and riderless horses flying towards us told the
sad tale. Demi-gods could not have done what they had failed to do.

At the very moment when they were about to retreat an enormous mass of
Lancers was hurled on their flank. Colonel Shewell saw the danger and
rode his few men straight to them, cutting his way through with fearful
loss. The other regiments turned and engaged in a desperate encounter.

With courage too great almost for credence, they were breaking their way
through the columns which enveloped them, when there took place an act
of atrocity without parallel in the modern warfare of civilized nations.
The Russian gunners, when the storm of cavalry passed, returned to their
guns. They saw their own cavalry mingled with the troopers who had just
ridden over them, and, to the eternal disgrace of the Russian name, the
miscreants poured a murderous volley of grape and canister on the