e foot of the redoubt. The palisades were broken
and the earthworks shattered by our balls. With a roar of "Vive
l'Empereur," our soldiers rushed across the ruins.

I raised my eyes. Never shall I forget the sight which met my view.
The smoke had mostly lifted, and remained suspended, like a canopy, at
twenty feet above the redoubt. Through a bluish mist could be perceived,
behind the shattered parapet, the Russian Grenadiers, with rifles
lifted, as motionless as statues. I can see them still,--the left eye of
every soldier glaring at us, the right hidden by his lifted gun. In an
embrasure at a few feet distant, a man with a fuse stood by a cannon.

I shuddered. I believed that my last hour had come.

"Now for the dance to open," cried the captain. These were the last
words I heard him speak.

There came from the redoubts a roll of drums. I saw the muzzles lowered.
I shut my eyes; I heard a most appalling crash of sound, to which
succeeded groans and cries. Then I looked up, amazed to find myself
still living. The redoubt was once more wrapped in smoke. I was
surrounded by the dead and wounded. The captain was extended at my feet;
a ball had carried off his head, and I was covered with his blood. Of
all the company, only six men, except myself, remained erect.

This carnage was succeeded by a kind of stupor. The next instant the
colonel, with his hat on his sword's point, had scaled the parapet
with a cry of "Vive l'Empereur." The survivors followed him. All that
succeeded is to me a kind of dream. We rushed into the redoubt, I know
not how, we fought hand to hand in the midst of smoke so thick that no
man could perceive his enemy. I found my sabre dripping blood; I heard
a shout of "Victory"; and, in the clearing smoke, I saw the earthworks
piled with dead and dying. The cannons were covered with a heap of
corpses. About two hundred men in the French uniform were standing,
without order, loading their muskets or wiping their bayonets. Eleven
Russian prisoners were with them. The colonel was lying, bathed in
blood, upon a broken cannon. A group of soldiers crowded round him. I
approached them.

"Who is the oldest captain?" he was asking of a sergeant.

The sergeant shrugged his shoulders most expressively.

"Who is the oldest lieutenant?"

"This gentleman, who came last night," replied the sergeant calmly.

The colonel smiled bitterly.

"Come, sir," he said to me, "you are now in chief command. Fortify the