On the extreme right, and in advance, a small sandbag work had been established and armed with two 18-pounders many days previously, not with a view to local defence, but to silence some Russian guns on the other side of the Chernaya which annoyed our camp, and having achieved the object our guns had been withdrawn. It was in the neighbourhood of this earthwork that very severe fighting took place, and it was captured and re-taken several times, the Guards especially sustaining the brunt of the conflict and suffering great losses. The Russian account says: 'The battle raged forward, backward, beneath, above, among bushes and underwood; above all, the sandbag battery on the wing had been the object of many an attack, until at length General Bentinck led up his Guards, the _élite_ of the English army. These chosen troops pressed irresistibly forward to the redoubt, and tore it from the Russians....' In the meantime Sir George Cathcart, with part of the Fourth Division, arrived to the support of our hardly pressed troops. Conceiving the extreme right to be the point most open to danger, he was marching in that direction when he received urgent messages requesting assistance in the centre and on the left. He accordingly detached the greater part of his brigade and a battery towards these points, but proceeded himself, with a small number of men, to reinforce the Guards. The enemy, in fact, were forcing our line at several places at once. Hardly had the battery just named got into action and fired a few rounds of case than it was run into and three of its guns momentarily captured, the officer commanding (Major Townsend) being killed. Three guns of Turner's battery were also taken and some of the gunners bayonetted at their posts; but in both instances the guns were re-taken immediately afterwards by the 77th and 88th Regiments.[14] Sir George Cathcart, under the impression that he could assist the Guards by a flank movement, moved for some distance down the slopes, near the sandbag battery, but suddenly found himself surrounded by a superior force, and fell, shot through the heart; General Torrens, who was with him, being also severely wounded.[12]