their arms were useless till face to face with their enemy.
They stormed the battery of the terminus, from which the cannon fired
incessantly--one ball sweeping off fourteen at a time; but they only
hastened the more furiously over the dead bodies of their comrades.
One moment more--several guns opened at once, and a hundred mangled
bodies and headless trunks rolled in the dust and smoke. The next
instant, the troops which guarded the battery were scattered on every
side: the artillery stood valiantly by their guns to the last man. As
the besiegers advanced, they were assailed by a hot fire from the
windows of the houses, and from behind the barricades. The conflict
was long and desperate. At last, the tricoloured banner waving from
the windows announced that the besiegers were victorious.

This was the first action in which the Szeged battalion had been
engaged, and for numbers among them it was the last.

Meanwhile the red-caps marched steadily on to the flying bastions.
Unlike the young corps, these troops knew how to give place to the
enemy's balls, and never fired in vain; nor did they cover their eyes
from the fearful carnage around them, as most of the young troops did,
for death was familiar to them in all its forms. This was their
seventeenth engagement, and in each they had been foremost in the
attack.

The entrenchments were guarded by a body of _chasseurs_, who kept up a
constant harassing fire on the advancing troops.

The latter quickly thinned their lines, and forming into chain, rushed
on the entrenchments, heedless of the musket fire--their
standard-bearer foremost in the attack. A musket ball cut the staff of
the standard in two, and the soldier, placing the colours on his
sword, rushed on as before--another ball, and the standard-bearer fell
mortally wounded, holding up the colours with his last strength, till
a comrade received it on the point of his bayonet.

They reached the bulwarks, and, climbing on each other's shoulders,
their bayonets soon clashed with those of the enemy. An hour later,
they were in possession of the ramparts. The _chasseurs_, repulsed by
their desperate attack, retreated to the _tete de pont_, where they
rallied, under cover of some troops which had come to their
assistance. The red-caps were soon engaged with these fresh troops,
and their battle-cry was heard on the opposite side.

Meanwhile Vecsey's troops advanced impetuously to the redoubt, part of
the garrison of