lank of the great
Rhune to storm the "Hog's Back" ridge of the Petite Rhune, a ridge
walled with rocks 200 feet high, except at one point, where it was
protected by a marsh. William Napier, who commanded the 43rd, has told
the story of the assault. He placed four companies in reserve, and led
the other four in person to the attack on the rocks; and he was chiefly
anxious not to rush his men--to "keep down the pace," so that they
would not arrive spent and breathless at the French works. The men
were eager to rush, however; the fighting impulse in them was on flame,
and they were held back with difficulty. When they were still nearly
200 yards from the enemy, a youthful aide-de-camp, his blood on fire,
came galloping up with a shout, and waving his hat. The 43rd broke out
of hand at once with the impulse of the lad's enthusiasm and the stroke
of his horse's flying hoofs, and with a sudden rush they launched
themselves on the French works still high above them.

Napier had nothing for it but to join the charging mass. "I was the
first man but one," he says, "who reached and jumped into the rocks,
and I was only second because my strength and speed were unequal to
contend with the giant who got before me. He was the tallest and most
active man in the regiment, and the day before, being sentenced to
corporal punishment, I had pardoned him on the occasion of an
approaching action. He now repaid me by striving always to place
himself between me and the fire of the enemy. His name was Eccles, an
Irishman." The men won the first redoubt, but simply had not breath
and strength enough left to reach the one above it, and fell gasping
and exhausted in the rocks before it, the French firing fiercely upon
them. In a few minutes, however, they had recovered breath; they
leaped up with a shout, and tumbled over the wall of the castle; and
so, from barrier to barrier, as up some Titanic stairway, the 43rd
swept with glittering bayonets. The summit was held by a powerful work
called the Donjon; it was so strong that attack upon it seemed madness.
But a keen-eyed British officer detected signs of wavering in the
French within the fort, and with a shout the 43rd leaped at it, and
carried it. It took the 43rd twenty minutes to carry the whole chain
of positions; and of the eleven officers of the regiment, six were
killed or desperately wounded. The French showed bravery; they fought,
in fact, muzzle to muzzle up the whole chai