During part of the period thus occupied General Pape, holding one brigade in reserve at St. Marie, attacked with the other on the north of the high road. Starting at a quarter to six o’clock, this body of Guardsmen crossed the road facing north, and then wheeling in succession to the right, went obstinately forward. The French fire, from the outset, was close and deadly; officers of all ranks fell fast; companies were reduced to straggling groups or scattered files; the whole line was soon dispersed here and there; but they still pressed on. One moiety trended to the right another to the left, and General von Pape, watchful, active, and fortunate, for he was not hit, led fresh battalions to fill up the gaping intervals. Soon after the foremost bands had got within seven hundred yards of St. Privat, where, in places, at least, the slope afforded shelter, the reinforcements arrived; and it may be said that thenceforth a continuous, yet thin line, curved inwards at the northern end, and fringed with smoke and fire, stretched irregularly over the vast glacis-like declivities from opposite Amanvillers to the outskirts of Roncourt, where the Saxons prolonged the ragged and shapeless, but redoubtable array. Against this mere thread of riflemen, not even when they were weakest, the French directed no bold attack, perhaps because they had no reserves and stood in respectful awe of the hostile artillery which drew nearer and nearer as the evening wore on, until the black batteries formed a second line to the intrepid infantry. It was about seven o’clock. St. Privat was in flames, the black and tawny smoke of the burning village, boiling upwards, stood out against the obscured sky in strong contrast to the swelling clouds of white vapour, through which leaped incessant sparkles from hundreds of rifles, and the broader flashes of the cannon. At no preceding period of this dreadful day had the battle raged with such intensity; for now along the whole front of eight miles there was a deafening roar and crash and tumult, and a murky atmosphere concealing the ghastly sights which make these fields of carnage so appalling to the lively imagination, which seeks in vain to realize its multitude and variety of horror. Yet there was an element of grandeur and sublimity in the exhibition of courage, constancy and fortitude upon such a stupendous scale. “It is a good thing that war is so terrible,” said General Robert Lee, “otherwise we should become too fond of it.” Here, among these woods and villages of Lorraine, war showed in abundance its attractive and repulsive forms. _The Capture of St. Privat._