At 10 A.M. on August 20, the explosion of a barrel of gunpowder gave the signal for the attack, and from Cutts’s trenches began to emerge the red coats, to whom the most dangerous duty had, as usual, been entrusted; four sergeants, each followed by fifteen picked men, led the column; the grenadiers were close behind them; the 17th and Mackay’s followed in support, with the XVIIIth and Buchan’s in reserve. It was a desperate enterprise. Between the trenches and the Terra Nova was a stretch of several hundred yards of ground--smooth, coverless, and swept by frontal and cross fire, and before the grenadiers had crossed it they had left behind them a long trail of killed and wounded. Owing to a mistake in the organisation of the attack, the grenadiers and the 17th assailed the breach before the other regiments were at hand to support them, and by the time the XVIIIth came up the assault had been repulsed with heavy loss; many of the officers had been hit, and Cutts, the idol of the troops, was wounded and for the moment incapable of giving orders. Undismayed by the confusion and depression around them, the Irishmen with a yell rushed at the breach. At first they had to scramble over the bodies of those who fell in the first attempt, but half-way up they reached the grenadiers’ high-water mark, and thence struggled upwards over ground covered by no corpses but those of the XVIIIth. From the neighbouring works they were tormented by cross fire, but yet pushed on, to the admiration of their foes who through the clouds of smoke watched them gradually winning their way up the breach, the Colours high in air, despite the carnage among the officers who carried them. Mad with excitement, determined to win at all cost, the regiment by a splendid effort reached the top of the breach, where the Colours were planted to show the King, who from a hill behind the abbey eagerly watched the progress of his British troops, that the Terra Nova was his. But as the men surged forward they found themselves faced by a retrenchment undamaged by the bombardment. The officers, holding their lives as nothing for the honour of their country and their corps, led rush after rush against this retrenchment, but in vain. They could not reach it; guns posted on the flank of the breach mowed down whole ranks; infantry fired into them at close range. All that men could do the XVIIIth had done, but nothing could withstand such a torrent of lead; the second attack failed, and the remnants of the regiment were driven backwards down the breach, and then charged by a counter-attack of horse and foot which the French let loose upon them.