The town was enter’d: first one column made Its sanguinary way good—then another; The reeking bayonet and the flashing blade Clash’d ’gainst the scimitar, and babe and mother With distant shrieks were heard Heaven to upbraid: Still closer sulphury clouds began to smother The breath of morn and man, where foot by foot The madden’d Turks their city still dispute. Koutousow, he who afterward beat back (With some assistance from the frost and snow) Napoleon on his bold and bloody track, It happen’d was himself beat back just now; He was a jolly fellow, and could crack His jest alike in face of friend or foe, Though life, and death, and victory were at stake; But here it seem’d his jokes had ceased to take: For having thrown himself into a ditch, Follow’d in haste by various grenadiers, Whose blood the puddle greatly did enrich, He climb’d to where the parapet appears; But there his project reach’d its utmost pitch (’Mongst other deaths the General Ribaupierre’s Was much regretted), for the Moslem men Threw them all down into the ditch again. And had it not been for some stray troops landing They knew not where, being carried by the stream To some spot, where they lost their understanding, And wander’d up and down as in a dream, Until they reach’d, as daybreak was expanding, That which a portal to their eyes did seem,— The great and gay Koutousow might have lain Where three parts of his column yet remain. And scrambling round the rampart, these same troops, After the taking of the ‘Cavalier,’ Just as Koutousow’s most ‘forlorn’ of ‘hopes’ Took like chameleons some slight tinge of fear, Open’d the gate call’d ‘Kilia,’ to the groups Of baffled heroes, who stood shyly near, Sliding knee-deep in lately frozen mud, Now thaw’d into a marsh of human blood. The Kozacks, or, if so you please, Cossacques (I don’t much pique myself upon orthography, So that I do not grossly err in facts, Statistics, tactics, politics, and geography)— Having been used to serve on horses’ backs, And no great dilettanti in topography Of fortresses, but fighting where it pleases Their chiefs to order,—were all cut to pieces. Their column, though the Turkish batteries thunder’d Upon them, ne’ertheless had reach’d the rampart, And naturally thought they could have plunder’d The city, without being farther hamper’d; But as it happens to brave men, they blunder’d— The Turks at first pretended to have scamper’d, Only to draw them ’twixt two bastion corners, From whence they sallied on those Christian scorners. Then being taken by the tail—a taking Fatal to bishops as to soldiers—these Cossacques were all cut off as day was breaking, And found their lives were let at a short lease— But perish’d without shivering or shaking, Leaving as ladders their heap’d carcasses, O’er which Lieutenant-Colonel Yesouskoi March’d with the brave battalion of Polouzki:—