This carnage was succeeded by a kind of stupor. The next instant the colonel, with his hat on his sword's point, had scaled the parapet with a cry of "Vive l'Empereur." The survivors followed him. All that succeeded is to me a kind of dream. We rushed into the redoubt, I know not how, we fought hand to hand in the midst of smoke so thick that no man could perceive his enemy. I found my sabre dripping blood; I heard a shout of "Victory"; and, in the clearing smoke, I saw the earthworks piled with dead and dying. The cannons were covered with a heap of corpses. About two hundred men in the French uniform were standing, without order, loading their muskets or wiping their bayonets. Eleven Russian prisoners were with them. The colonel was lying, bathed in blood, upon a broken cannon. A group of soldiers crowded round him. I approached them. "Who is the oldest captain?" he was asking of a sergeant. The sergeant shrugged his shoulders most expressively. "Who is the oldest lieutenant?" "This gentleman, who came last night," replied the sergeant calmly. The colonel smiled bitterly. "Come, sir," he said to me, "you are now in chief command. Fortify the gorge of the redoubt at once with wagons, for the enemy is out in force. But General C------ is coming to support you." "Colonel," I asked him, "are you badly wounded?" "Pish, my dear fellow. The redoubt is taken." End of Project Gutenberg's How The Redoubt Was Taken, by Prosper Merimee