Under their green standards—the holy colour—with the crescent and star, massed in close column at quarter distance, the Turkish troops came on; and through the sea of red fezzes the cannon balls made many a deadly lane, until the battalions deployed into line, sending, as Studhome said, "many a believer to Paradise in a state of mutilation such as the houris wouldn’t appreciate." But on they went against that sheet of lead and iron, shoulder to shoulder with the French; and many a shaven crown and many a scarlet fez, with its broad military button and blue tassel, were lying on the turf, while, with visions of the dark-eyed girls of Paradise waving their green scarves from their couches of pearl, and crying, "Come, kiss me, for I love thee," many a grim, Turkish soul passed forth into the night of death. On the other flank were the French linesmen, crying on "_Dieu, et la Mère de Dieu_," to help them in their last agony, while the sisters of charity and the _vivandières_ rivalled each other in the rear in their attention to the wounded and dying. *CHAPTER XXXIX.* Three hundred cannon threw up their emetic, And thirty thousand muskets flung their pills Like hail to make a bloody diuretic. Mortality! thou hast thy monthly bills; Thy plagues, thy passions, thy physicians, yet tick, Like the death-watch, within our ears the ills Past, present, and to come;—but all may yield To the true portrait of one battle-field. BYRON. At half-past one the British infantry advanced into action; like lightning the order flew along the line, for it was borne by Nolan, the impetuous and the gallant. The village of Burliuk, the centre of our position, was still in flames that rose to a vast height, especially from the well-filled stackyards. To the right of the conflagration, two regiments of Adams’s brigade, the Welsh[*] and 49th, or Hertfordshire, crossed the river by a deep and dangerous ford, under a galling fire from the Russian Minie Riflemen, who were ensconced among the vineyards on the opposite bank. The remainder crossed on the left of Burliuk, and, both uniting beyond it, the whole division of De Lacy Evans found themselves engaged in sanguinary strife, while we, the cavalry, could but sit in our saddles and look on, but burning with impatience to advance. [*] 41st—so called since 1831.