In another part of the old farmyard of Hougoumont stood the heavy wooden gate, which, of course, became a special object of attack on the part of the French; and after several hours of hard and desperate fighting (during which many useless attempts to open the gate had been made), they at last succeeded in forcing it. The moment was a critical one for the little garrison, and for a second or two, the defenders of the gate seemed stupefied; but there is, seemingly, a hero for every occasion, and a stout-built sergeant of the Coldstreams, named Graham, stepped forward just as the enemy began to push in at the gate, and placing his shoulder to the heavy structure, he, with almost superhuman energy, shut it against the foe. The shoulders of twenty or thirty stout men were instantly laid against the gate until it could be barricaded more strongly than before; and when the battle of Waterloo was won and lost, Hougoumont, though razed to the ground, remained untaken. In addition to this brave act, Sergeant Graham had also saved his captain's life several times during that eventful day; and when, some time afterwards, the Duke of Wellington was made trustee of a legacy of one hundred pounds left for the bravest man at Waterloo, and had sent it to Captain Macdonald (the commander at Hougoumont), the latter immediately returned it to the Duke with the reply, that Sergeant Graham was the hero of Waterloo, for he had by his own strength saved the British position. The sergeant eventually received the legacy and a commission. At the battle of the Alma, on the 20th September 1854, numerous instances of bravery occurred in the ranks of the Guards, foremost amongst which was the act of Sergeant Davis of the Scots Fusiliers, who, when the officer who was carrying the regimental colour was surrounded by the Russians and shot down, seized the sacred emblem of his regiment's honour, and battling his way forward single-handed, planted it triumphantly on the summit of the hard-won height. At Inkerman, the soldiers' battle, the brave Coldstreamers--George Monk's _Nulli Secundus_ men--made heroes of themselves, and immortalised their name. They went into action with sixteen officers and four hundred men; and of this small number they had thirteen officers and more than two hundred men killed and wounded. Eight of these officers were killed, amongst them being Colonels Cowell, Elliott, and Mackinnon, who fell in the act of leading their men on to the charge. At length the Grenadiers and Fusiliers, after much severe fighting, cut their way to the spot where their gallant comrades were being annihilated. Thus united, the three regiments bore down upon the enemy in a line of _single file_ (so fearfully had they suffered), and beat them back down the ravine.