At Toulouse, Pack, as he galloped swiftly up with General Clinton's orders, drew rein in silence before the Black Watch. Then he spoke calmly, but with elation: "General Clinton has been pleased to grant my request that the 42nd shall have the honour of leading the attack. The 42nd will advance!" There were 500 who went in, and there were about ninety who came out alive. One can imagine then their terrible passage up to the fatal redoubt, and all the more clearly may be pictured the determination of it from the fact that, when they reached it, the enemy had fled. When they were before the heights of Alma, Sir Colin Campbell turned to them, and cried: "Men, the army is watching us. Make me proud of my Highland brigade!" From the future, near and far, the whole wide world watches them, and a great Empire has been made proud of them. Kinglake tells this part of the story with a fine touch. "Smoothly, easily, and swiftly," he says, "the Black Watch seemed to glide up the hill. A few instants before, and their tartans ranged dark in the valley; now their plumes waved on the crest." The enemy did not stay for the coming onslaught, for, as many said afterwards, they "did not like those men in the petticoats, with their red vulture plumes and their coloured tartans." At Ticonderoga, in 1758, they suffered heavily, in blood, though not in honour. Of that encounter an officer of the 55th, who was in the engagement, says: "It is with a mixture of esteem, grief, and envy, that I considered the great loss and immortal glory won by the Scots Highlanders in the late bloody affair." From all historical accounts it seems that the enemy was very strongly entrenched, in front by ditches, and on the battle side by barricades of felled trees. From this cover they sent volley upon volley into the ranks of the advancing Highlanders. "Yet," says one chronicler: "The Scots hewed their way through the obstacles with their broadswords, and--no ladders having been provided--made strenuous efforts to carry the breastwork, partly by mounting on each other's shoulders, and partly by placing their feet in holes which they dug with their swords and bayonets in the face of the works. After a desperate struggle, which lasted nearly four hours, General Abercromby, seeing no possible chance of success, ordered a retreat--an order which had to be _thrice repeated_ before the Highlanders would withdraw from the unequal contest!" What the Black Watch would have done at Balaclava and Inkerman, had they been there, can be conjectured, but, sufficient to say that Sevastopol bears witness to their many deeds of outright bravery. The officers of the Black Watch have always been, needless to say, the soul of honour of the body of their men. In the following letter--a letter which might form part of a great poem--Colonel Macleod writes to the Sultan Tippoo: