on, was to attack the breach, its
forlorn hope being led by Ensign Mackie, its storming party by General
Mackinnon himself. The lesser breach was a tiny gap, scarcely twenty
feet wide, to the left of the great breach; this was to be attacked by
the light division, under Craufurd, its forlorn hope of twenty-five men
being led by Gurwood, and its storming party by George Napier. General
Pack, with a Portuguese brigade, was to make a sham attack on the
eastern face, while a fourth attack was to be made on the southern
front by a company of the 83rd and some Portuguese troops. In the
storming party of the 83rd were the Earl of March, afterwards Duke of
Richmond; Lord Fitzroy Somerset, afterwards Lord Raglan; and the Prince
of Orange--all volunteers without Wellington's knowledge!

At 7 o'clock a curious silence fell suddenly on the battered city and
the engirdling trenches. Not a light gleamed from the frowning
parapets, not a murmur arose from the blackened trenches. Suddenly a
shout broke out on the right of the English attack; it ran, a wave of
stormy sound, along the line of the trenches. The men who were to
attack the great breach leaped into the open. In a moment the space
betwixt the hostile lines was covered with the stormers, and the gloomy
half-seen face of the great fortress broke into a tempest of fire.

Nothing could be finer than the vehement courage of the assault, unless
it were the cool and steady fortitude of the defence. Swift as was the
upward rush of the stormers, the race of the 5th, 77th, and 94th
regiments was almost swifter. Scorning to wait for the ladders, they
leaped into the great ditch, outpaced even the forlorn hope, and pushed
vehemently up the great breach, whilst their red ranks were torn by
shell and shot. The fire, too, ran through the tangle of broken stones
over which they climbed; the hand-grenades and powder-bags by which it
was strewn exploded. The men were walking on fire! Yet the attack
could not be denied. The Frenchmen--shooting, stabbing, yelling--were
driven behind their entrenchments. There the fire of the houses
commanding the breach came to their help, and they made a gallant
stand. "None would go back on either side, and yet the British could
not get forward, and men and officers falling in heaps choked up the
passage, which from minute to minute was raked with grape from two guns
flanking the top of the breach at the distance of a few yards. Thus
striving,