e top of the ravine between the two
villages, cut gaps through our columns, but they closed up immediately,
and moved steadily up the hill. What remained of our division ran
across the bridge, followed by the artillerymen and their pieces with
the horses at a gallop.

Then we went down to the street, but we had not reached the bridge when
the cuirassiers began to file over it, followed by the dragoons and the
mounted grenadiers of the guard. They were passing everywhere, across
and around the village. It was like a new and innumerable army.

The slaughter began again on the hill, this time the battle was in the
open fields, and we could trace the outlines of the Prussian squares on
the hill-side at every discharge of musketry.

We rushed on over the dead and wounded, and when we were clear of the
village we could see that there was an engagement between the cavalry,
though we could only distinguish the white cuirasses as they pierced
the lines of the Uhlans; then they would be indiscriminately mingled
and the cuirassiers would re-form and set off again like a solid wall.

It was dark already, and the dense masses of smoke made it impossible
to see fifty paces ahead. Everything was moving toward the windmills,
the clatter of the cavalry, the shouts, the orders of the officers and
the file-firing in the distance, all were confounded. Several of the
squares were broken. From time to time a flash would reveal a lancer
bent to his horse's neck, or a cuirassier, with his broad white back
and his helmet with its floating plume, shooting off like a bullet, two
or three foot soldiers running about in the midst of the fray,--all
would come and go like lightning. The trampled grain, the rain
streaking the heavens, the wounded under the feet of the horses, all
came out of the black night--through the storm which had just broken
out--for a quarter of a second.

Every flash of musket or pistol showed us inexplicable things by
thousands. But everything moved up the hill and away from Ligny; we
were masters.

We had pierced the enemy's centre, the Prussians no longer made any
defence, except at the top of the hill near the mills and in the
direction of Sombref, at our right. St. Amand and Ligny were both in
our hands.

As for us, a dozen or so of our company there alone among the ruins of
the cottages, with our cartridge-boxes almost empty;--we did not know
which way to turn.

Zebede, Lieutenant Bretonville, and Capt