Amid the cold grey mists of that dark November morning they bore the brunt of an almost hopeless struggle, as line after line of Russian soldiers, maddened with drink, swarmed up the hill from the valley of the Tchernaya to recoil with broken ranks from the base of the little battery that the Guards held with desperate courage. It was the key of the position: to have been forced from it would have brought destruction on the entire British camp. They knew this, and officers and men would all have died there gladly, like Leonidas and his three hundred at the pass of Thermopylæ, rather than have quitted the earthwork alive, though not dishonoured. Tears trickled down the cheeks of their royal leader as he saw his men falling, like autumn leaves, before the fire of the infuriated foe. With bleeding heart he gasped, “My poor Guards! What will they say in England?” Ay! what, indeed? What, but honour to the men who esteemed life as nothing in comparison with England’s reputation? What, but honour to the Duke who dared to sigh for his maimed and slaughtered men as a father would sorrow for his dying son? Even when ammunition failed them they did not abandon the post they had held so long, and at so great a cost. No! if they could no longer pour a shower of lead into the advancing masses of the Russians, they could at least rain stones upon them, and many a Russian soldier fell to the rear that day with loosened teeth and shattered jaws, smarting under the blows of the rough missiles that the Guards tore from the banks and mould around them. But succour was at hand: the red-breeched Zouaves of France came leaping to the rescue at the _pas de charge_; and, as they advanced, the Guards sprang, with a cheer, over the parapet of the earthwork, and drove the blades of Bayonne to the very muzzles of their muskets into the backs of the running foe, who left behind them more killed and wounded than the British numbered at the commencement of the battle. It may have been noticed that all officers in the Guards are entitled to hold that rank in the army which is immediately above the rank which they hold in their own regiments: an ensign in the Guards being styled “ensign and lieutenant” in his commission, and so on. The privilege of holding the rank of lieutenant-colonels and captains in the army was granted to captains and lieutenants in the Guards in 1691, when the allied armies, under the command of William III., were encamped on the plain of Gerpynes, in the Netherlands, near the French frontier, a few weeks before the battle fought between the Allies and the French on the banks of the little rivulet near Catoir; but the rank of lieutenant in the army was not held by ensigns in the Guards until after the battle of Waterloo, when this privilege was conceded to them by the Prince Regent, in an order from the War Office, dated July 29, 1815. [Illustration]