Vandeleur charged to their relief with his Light Dragoons--the 12th with bright yellow lancer facings, the 16th with scarlet, the buff 11th remaining in reserve. “Squadrons, right half-wheel! Charge!” and the sabres of our light horsemen were soon busy in the valley below. The ground was very soft, for a month after the battle some of the holes made by horses’ feet were measured, and found to be _eighteen_ inches deep, and in speaking of artillery movements it must be remembered that the guns were at times up to the axle in clay. The heavy cavalry regained our position; but so much had they suffered that, later in the day, when they were drawn up in line to show a bold front, there were only fifty of them; Somerset, who led the “Households,” losing his hat, and wearing the helmet of a life-guardsman, with its red and blue worsted crest, until nightfall. The attack had failed, and there was a long pause, broken only by the firing at Hougoumont and some feeble attempts on La Haye Sainte; but it was now the turn of our troops in the centre, from the _chaussée_ to the back of the château; and a terrible time they had! A renewal of the cannonade--a forming of our regiments into squares and oblongs--and then the grandest cavalry affair in history, as _forty_ squadrons of Cuirassiers and Dragoons crossed from the French right in beautiful order, wheeled up until they almost filled the space from Hougoumont to La Haye Sainte, and, about four o’clock, put spurs to their horses and began the THIRD ATTACK! A forest of sword-blades, an undulating sea of helmets, a roar of mighty shouting as they came through the yet untrampled grain. Wave after wave, far as the eye could scan, now glinting with thousands of bright points as the sullen sun shone for a moment upon them, now grey and sombre as the clouds closed together again. Nearer! nearer! nearer! Men clutched their muskets tighter and breathed hard; gunners rammed home and hastened to re-load before the smoke had drifted from the cannon. Suddenly they left their guns, and ran to the infantry for protection as the sea burst upon us, and our ridge became alive with furious horsemen, surging and foaming round and round the squares. There were many who thought that all was over, but the little clumps of scarlet fringed with steel were impenetrable. In vain the moustached troopers cut desperately at the bayonets; in vain they rode up and fired their pistols into the faces of our lads. For three-quarters of an hour they expended their strength in a hopeless task; and when our fresh cavalry from Dörnberg’s and Grant’s Brigades charged them, they went down the slope again, leaving the ground dotted with dead and dying.