cuirassiers, and the cuirassiers made breaches in the squares. Files of
men disappeared, trampled down by the horses, and bayonets were buried
in the entrails of these centaurs. Hence arose horrible wounds, such
as were probably never seen elsewhere. The squares, where broken by
the impetuous cavalry, contracted without yielding an inch of ground;
inexhaustible in canister they produced an explosion in the midst of
the assailants. The aspect of this combat was monstrous: these squares
were no longer battalions, but craters; these cuirassiers were no
longer cavalry, but a tempest,--each square was a volcano attacked by a
storm; the lava combated the lightning.
The extreme right square, the most exposed of all, as it was in the
air, was nearly annihilated in the first attack. It was formed of the
75th Highlanders; the piper in the centre, while his comrades were
being exterminated around him, was seated on a drum, with his bagpipe
under his arm, and playing mountain airs. These Scotchmen died thinking
of Ben Lothian, as the Greeks did remembering Argos. A cuirassier's
sabre, by cutting through the pibroch and the arm that held it, stopped
the tune by killing the player.
The cuirassiers, relatively few in number, and reduced by the
catastrophe of the ravine, had against them nearly the whole English
army; but they multiplied themselves, and each man was worth ten. Some
Hanoverian battalions, however, gave way: Wellington saw it and thought
of his cavalry. Had Napoleon at this moment thought of his infantry,
the battle would have been won, and this forgetfulness was his great
and fatal fault. All at once the assailers found themselves assailed;
the English cavalry were on their backs, before them the squares,
behind them Somerset with the one thousand four hundred Dragoon Guards.
Somerset had on his right Dornberg with the German chevau-legers, and
on his left Trip with the Belgian carbineers; the cuirassiers, attacked
on the flank and in front, before and behind, by infantry and cavalry,
were compelled to make a front on all sides. But what did they care?
They were a whirlwind; their bravery became indescribable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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