“Now they urge their powerful steeds into the intervals between the necks of those of the cuirassiers. Swords brandished high in air gleam fitfully in rapid succession throughout the lines, here clashing together, there clanging against helmet and cuirass, which ring under their redoubled strokes. See, the struggle is but a moment doubtful: the cuirassiers, seemingly encumbered by their coats of mail, are yielding to superior strength, dexterity and bravery combined; men and horses reel and stagger to the earth: gaps open out in their line; numbers are backing out, others are fairly turning round; their whole line now bends and breaks asunder into fragments: in the next moment they appear, as if by a miracle, to be swept from off the crest of the position, and being closely and hotly pursued by the victors, the whole rushing down the other side of the ridge, are snatched from your view. Your attention is now irresistibly drawn to that part of the foreground immediately facing you, where you have barely time to catch sight of a line of British infantry just as it forces its way through the hedge that runs along the crest of the ridge, to charge a column advancing up the other side. “At the moment the shouts that proclaim its triumph reach your ear, you are struck by the majestic advance, close to your left, of another line of British horsemen. These halt just under the brow of the ridge. In their left front your eye now also embraces a line of British infantry moving quickly up the steep; whilst at the same time you see the heads of two hostile columns issuing through the hedge, and crowning the ridge amidst shouts of _Vive l’Empereur!_ The one nearest to you, finding no immediate opposition to its farther advance, is rapidly establishing itself on the height; the other is met by the advancing line of infantry. A struggle ensues; the farther column is concealed from your view by the smoke by which it is suddenly enshrouded: but, at the very moment when doubts arise in your mind as to the result, the cavalry rushes forward, and passing through intervals opened out for it by the infantry, charges both those heads of columns, cutting them up, as it were, root and branch; and then bounding through the hedge, the whole disappears as if by magic.