ry, the cannonade was redoubled; the
struggle seemed to have been transferred to that side, but nobody dared
to say, "The Prussians are attacking us; another army has come to crush
us."

No! the very idea was too horrible; when suddenly a staff officer
rushed past like lightning, shouting:

"Grouchy, Marshal Grouchy is coming!"

This was just at the moment when the four battalions of the Guard took
the left of the highway in order to go up in the rear of the orchard,
and commence the attack.

How many times during the last fifty years I have seen it over again at
night, and how many times I have heard the story related by others. In
listening to these accounts you would think that only the Guard took
part in the attack, that it moved forward like ranks of palisades; and
that it was the Guard alone which received the showers of shot.

But in truth this terrible attack took place in the greatest confusion;
our whole army joined in it; all the remnant of the left wing and
centre, all that was left of the cavalry exhausted by six hours of
fighting; every one who could stand or lift an arm. The infantry of
Reille which concentrated on the left, we who remained at Haie-Sainte,
_all_ who were alive and did not wish to be massacred.

And when they say we were in a panic of terror and tried to run away
like cowards, it is not true. When the news arrived that Grouchy was
coming, even the wounded rose up and took their places in the ranks; it
seemed as if a breath had raised the dead; and all those poor fellows
in the rear of Haie-Sainte with their bandaged heads and arms and legs,
with their clothes in tatters and soaked with blood, every one who
could put one foot before the other, joined the Guard when it passed
before the breaches in the wall of the garden, and every one tore open
his last cartridge.

The attack sounded, and our cannon began again to thunder. All was
quiet on the hill-side, the rows of English cannon were deserted, and
we might have thought they were all gone, only as the bear-skin caps of
the Guard rose above the plateau, five or six volleys of shot warned us
that they were waiting for us.

Then we knew that all those Englishmen, Germans, Belgians, and
Hanoverians, whom we had been sabring and shooting since morning, had
reformed in the rear, and that we must encounter them. Many of the
wounded retired at this moment, and the Guard, upon which the heaviest
part of the enemy's fire had fallen, a