cavalry reached their guns, to abandon them
and run for shelter beneath the bayonets of the nearest square, and the
brave fellows stood by their pieces pouring grape and solid shot into
the glittering, swift-coming human target before them till the leading
horses were almost within touch of the guns, when they ran and flung
themselves under the steady British bayonets for safety.

The French horsemen, as they mounted the British slope, saw nothing
before them but the ridge, empty of everything except a few abandoned
guns. They were drunk with the rapture of victory, and squadron after
squadron, as it reached the crest, broke into tempests of shouts and a
mad gallop. All the batteries were in their possession; they looked to
see an army in rout. Suddenly they beheld the double line of British
squares--or, rather, "oblongs"--with their fringe of steady steel
points; and from end to end of the line ran the zigzag of fire--a fire
that never slackened, still less intermitted. The torrent and tumult
of the horsemen never checked; but as they rode at the squares, the
leading squadron--men and horses--smitten by the spray of lead, tumbled
dead or dying to the ground. The following squadrons parted, swept
past the flanks of the squares, scourged with deadly volleys, struggled
through the intervals of the second line, emerged breathless and broken
into the space beyond, to be instantly charged by the British cavalry,
and driven back in wreck over the British slope. As the struggling
mass left the crest clear, the French guns broke in a tempest of shot
on the squares, while the scattered French re-formed in the valley, and
prepared for a second and yet more desperate assault.

Foiled in his first attack, Ney drew the whole of Kellerman's
division--thirty-seven squadrons, eleven of cuirassiers, six of
carabineers, and the Bed Lancers of the Guard--into the whirlpool of
his renewed assault, and this time the mass, though it came forward
more slowly, was almost double in area. Gleaming with lance and sword
and cuirass, it undulated as it crossed the broken slopes, till it
seemed a sea, shining with 10,000 points of glancing steel, in motion.
The British squares, on the reverse slope, as they obeyed the order,
"Prepare to receive cavalry!" and fell grimly into formation, could
hear the thunder of the coming storm--the shrill cries of the officers,
the deeper shouts of the men, the clash of scabbard on stirrup, the
fierce tramp