the smaller detachments of the plunderers had met with
severe retaliation.

At length we halted for the night, and orders were issued for a general
movement at daybreak, to attack the French force covering the siege of
Williamstadt. The order was received with shouts; and the night was
spent in great exultation. The cannonade, which was now within a few
miles of us, continued with such violence during the night that sleep
was next to impossible; and long before the first streak of light in the
east, we were busy in the numberless preparations for a first action.
Orderlies and aides-de-camp were speedily in motion, and at the first
tap of the _reveille_ all were on parade. The sun rose brightly, gave
one broad blaze along our columns, and after thus cheering us, instantly
plunged into a mist, which, except that it was not actually black,
obscured our road nearly as much as if it had been midnight. This was
simply a specimen of the new land on which we now set foot. But it
perplexed all the higher powers prodigiously--generals and the staff
galloping round us in all directions, the whole one mass of confusion.
Yet we still pushed on, toiling our puzzled way, when, as if by magic, a
regiment of the enemy's hussars dashed full into the flank of our
column. Never was there a more complete surprise. The enemy were as much
astonished as ourselves, for the collision had been the result of an
attempt to find their way through the fog back to their camp; but I now
for the first time saw the temper of John Bull in the field. The attack
of the hussars was evidently looked on by our men less as a military
manoeuvre, than as a piece of foreign impudence. To fire might be
hazardous to some of our advancing columns, which we could hear, though
not see; but the word "charge" from our gallant old colonel was enough;
they rushed with the bayonet on the cavalry, forced their way in between
the squadrons, which had been brought to a stand by the narrowness of
the dyke; and in five minutes the whole had laid down their arms, given
up their horses to our fifers and drummers, and were marching to the
rear.

As if to reward us for this dashing affair, a gust of wind blew aside
the fog; the sun gleamed again; and Williamstadt, the French camp, the
covering force formed in columns and waiting for us, and the whole
country to the horizon, green as a duckpond, and altogether as smooth,
burst on our view. The suddenness of the display was like the