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, Napoleon at two o'clock gave orders for a general assault, and the whole of the French troops advanced against the suburbs. The attack of Ney's corps was directed against the Krasnoi suburb, which faced them, and against an advanced work known as the citadel. For two hours a terrible struggle went on. The Russians defended all the suburbs with desperate tenacity, every house and garden was the scene of a fierce encounter, men fought with bayonet and clubbed muskets, the cannon thundered on the heights, and Poniatowski established sixty guns on a hill on the French right, but a short distance from the river, and with these opened fire upon the bridges. It seemed that these must soon be destroyed, and the retreat of the Russian troops in Smolensk entirely cut off. In a short time, however, the Russians on the other side of the river planted a number of guns on a rise of equal height to that occupied by Poniatowski's artillery, and as their guns took his battery in flank, he was ere long forced to withdraw it from the hill. [Illustration: PLAN OF THE BATTLE OF SMOLENSK.] It was only after two hours' fighting that the Russians withdrew from the suburbs into the town itself, and as the bridges across the river had not suffered greatly from the fire of the great French battery, Barclay sent Prince Eugene of Wurtemberg across to reinforce the garrison. As soon as the Russians retired into the town a hundred and fifty guns opened fire on the wall to effect a breach, and at five a desperate assault was made upon one of the gates, which was for a moment captured, but Prince Eugene charged forward with his division and recaptured it at the point of the bayonet. The French shell and grape swept the streets and set fire to the town in a score of places, and several of the wooden roofs of the towers upon the wall were also in flames. After a pause for a couple of hours the French again made a serious and desperate assault, but the Russians sternly held their ground, and at seven o'clock made a sortie from behind the citadel, and drove the French out of the Krasnoi suburb. At nine the cannonade ceased. The French fell back to the position from which they had moved in the morning, and the Russians reoccupied the covered ways in front of the wall to prevent a sudden attack during the night. "What did I tell you, Jules?" the old sergeant said mournfully, when the shattered remains of the regiment fell out and proceeded to cook the
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