As the storming of Monterey opened, the head of the column recoiled in confusion from a deadly cross-fire, "producing the utmost confusion among the front of the assaulting brigade. The strong fort, Taneira, which had contributed most to the repulse, now ran up a new flag, and amid the wild cheering of its defenders redoubled its fire of grape and canister and musketry, under which the American lines wavered and were about to break. Colonel Davis, seeing the crisis, without waiting for orders, placed himself at the head of his Mississippians, and gave the order to charge. With prolonged cheers his regiment swept forward through a storm of bullets and bursting shells. Colonel Davis, sword in hand, cleared the ditch at one bound, and cheering his soldiers on, they mounted the works with the impetuosity of a whirlwind, capturing artillery and driving the Mexicans pell-mell back into the stone fort in the rear. In vain they sought to barricade the gate; Davis and McClung [the lieutenant-colonel] burst it open, and leading their men into the fort, compelled its surrender at discretion. Taneira was the key of the situation, and its capture insured victory. On the morning of the 23d of September, the following day, Henderson's Texas Rangers, Campbell's Tennesseeans, and Davis's Mississippians, the latter again leading the assault, stormed and captured El Diabolo, and the next day General Ampudia surrendered the city."[129] Davis's quickness, coolness, and dash--and especially his promptness to take such wise initiative as is permissible to a colonel in action--shone forth conspicuously in this affair. He was the very soul of the glorious stand of the Americans at Buena Vista against odds of more than 4 to 1. At the opening of the battle a ball drove a part of his spur into the right foot just below the instep, making a very painful wound. He kept his seat as though nothing had happened. Later in the day, his bleeding foot thrown over the pommel, he spurred his horse into leaping a ravine, in which he saw a horse and cart beneath him as he flew over. But his great exploit was the re-entering line of his regiment and Bowles's Indianians, with which he received the charge of a host of heavy cavalry. His rifles being without bayonets, the hollow square, then the approved mode of defence, was not to be thought of. So necessity, the mother of invention, suggested to him a formation which poured something like two crossing enfilades into the head of the cavalry column. The brilliant conception was brilliantly executed. The carnage that befel the cavalry drove it from the field. Did not the spirit of Napoleon looking on regret that he had not given the pesky Mamelukes like punishment? The world has noted how Sir Colin Campbell learned from Davis the right way of opposing infantry to the onset of heavy cavalry.