The 18th was in line, and as steady as if exercising on Hounslow heath. On reaching its front, Vivian said, “Eighteenth, you will follow me;” on which the sergeant-major (Jeffs,) afterwards adjutant of the 7th hussars, and many of the men, coarsely but fiercely exclaimed with an oath, “Ay, general, anywhere you choose to lead us.” The charge was ordered, and in an instant an attack was made on the cavalry and guns. Colonel Murray, commanding the 18th, in making this charge, leaped his horse over the traces between the wheelers and leaders of a French gun which was dashing across his front in order to escape. The hussars were upon the artillery, slaughtering the drivers and gunners and securing the guns: these destructive engines being silenced, and the sting taken out of their cavalry, our infantry had full scope to act. In returning from this charge, Vivian found major Howard, with a small body of the 10th, near a French square, from whose fire he was rapidly losing his men. At this moment a fine and gallant soldier, lieutenant Gunning, fell. Vivian observed to Howard, “We have one of two things to do, either to retire a little out of the fire, or to attack;” and seeing some red-coated infantry approaching, who threw out a scattering fire upon the enemy’s square, almost as destructive to friends as to foes, Vivian ordered the charge and accompanied it. The men galloped up to the bayonets of the Imperial guard, and a fierce and bloody conflict ensued. Major Howard was shot by a musket-ball, and fell upon the enemy’s bayonets; “And he was of the bravest, and when shower’d The death-bolts deadliest the thinn’d files along, E’en where the thickest of war’s tempest lower’d, They reach’d no nobler breast than thine, young gallant Howard!” The red-coated infantry were colonel Halkett’s Osnabruckers, who shortly before had captured general Cambronne of the Imperial guard[73], and a battery. Adam’s brigade had followed the broken columns of the French guards and Donzelot’s into the valley in advance of the orchard of La Haye-Sainte; but now there was something of more importance on the right of the Genappe road that required their attention; this was three squares of the enemy flanked on their right by cuirassiers: they were the remains of the first attacking column of the Imperial guard, who had been rallied by Napoleon and posted here to cover the retreat. The Duke galloped into the valley to Adam’s brigade, and ordered Sir John Colborne to attack the rallied force of the Imperial guard, saying, “They won’t stand. Go on, Colborne, go on.”