At last it was agreed that things were going badly and that a bayonet charge, only, would dislodge the enemy, who were rapidly cutting down the efficient strength of the army--making particular havoc among the officers. Colonel Darke was thereupon ordered to turn the left flank of the enemy, which he accomplished with firmness and success--driving the savages several hundred yards. Yet soon they swarmed back, not being held where they were, and, in turn drove the troops backward. About the cannon, which the Indians were taught to dread, the battle ebbed and flowed bloodily. As fast as the gunners were shot down others took their places. Now and again the red line swept up to the guns and the piles of slain were scalped, amid the smoke, in the very face of the army. On the left flank, too, the savages were beginning to overpower and gain the summit of the promontory and enter the lines. They were charged fiercely but after each charge there was a sudden dearth of officers, and the lines returned very thin. The army was now attacked from every side, though not until late in the long three hours of conflict did the Indians take the initiative. Their settled plan was to get the troops in range, lie low, make no noise save with their guns, retire when assaulted, but follow back eagerly. Such tactics were all that were necessary. As in Braddock's battle beside the Monongahela, so here, the white army on higher ground in plain sight could not do such fatal execution, by any means, as the Indian army strewn among the standing and fallen trees, the brush and rank grasses of the lower ground, and on the sloping sides of the promontory. By nine o'clock the army had been exposed for three hours to the merciless Indian fire. Hundreds had fallen; the ground was literally covered with dead and dying. The only question was, Could the remainder escape? The army was cut off from the road. Benjamin Van Cleve, a young man, has left record of this memorable break for the road when order to retreat was at last given: "I found," he says, "the troops pressing like a drove of bullocks to the right. I saw an officer ... with six or eight men start on a run a little to the left of where I was. I immediately ran and fell in with them. In a short distance we were so suddenly among the Indians, who were not apprised of our object, that they opened to us and ran to the right and left without firing. I think about two hundred of our men passed through them before they fired."[121] An opening being made, the army poured heedlessly along. No order or semblance of order existed, save in a remnant of Clark's command which essayed to cover the rear. In the very rear, on a horse which could not be pricked out of a walk, came St. Clair, unmindful of the bloody tumult behind him where the old men and wounded were being killed.