scrambling over the little rivulet, which we had crossed so
resolutely an hour before, and pursued by the French cavalry, slaughtering
us and cutting us down.

And now the conquerors were met by a furious charge of English horse under
Esmond's general, General Lumley, behind whose squadrons the flying foot
found refuge, and formed again, whilst Lumley drove back the French horse,
charging up to the village of Blenheim and the palisades where Wilkes, and
many hundred more gallant Englishmen, lay in slaughtered heaps. Beyond
this moment, and of this famous victory, Mr. Esmond knows nothing; for a
shot brought down his horse and our young gentleman on it, who fell
crushed and stunned under the animal; and came to his senses he knows not
how long after, only to lose them again from pain and loss of blood. A dim
sense, as of people groaning round about him, a wild incoherent thought or
two for her who occupied so much of his heart now, and that here his
career, and his hopes, and misfortunes were ended, he remembers in the
course of these hours. When he woke up it was with a pang of extreme pain,
his breast-plate was taken off, his servant was holding his head up, the
good and faithful lad of Hampshire(9) was blubbering over his master, whom
he found and had thought dead, and a surgeon was probing a wound in the
shoulder, which he must have got at the same moment when his horse was
shot and fell over him. The battle was over at this end of the field, by
this time: the village was in possession of the English, its brave
defenders prisoners, or fled, or drowned, many of them, in the
neighbouring waters of the Donau. But for honest Lockwood's faithful
search after his master, there had no doubt been an end of Esmond here,
and of this his story. The marauders were out rifling the bodies as they
lay on the field, and Jack had brained one of these gentry with the
club-end of his musket, who had eased Esmond of his hat and periwig, his
purse, and fine silver-mounted pistols which the dowager gave him, and was
fumbling in his pockets for further treasure, when Jack Lockwood came up
and put an end to the scoundrel's triumph.

Hospitals for our wounded were established at Blenheim, and here for
several weeks Esmond lay in very great danger of his life; the wound was
not very great from which he suffered, and the ball extracted by the
surgeon on the spot where our young gentleman received it; but a fever set
in next day, as he was lyi