The details of the doings of the XVIIIth in the siege of Lille are very scanty; but it is known that in a great, though not very successful assault on September 7, when Eugene lost about 3000 men, his five British regiments between them had 350 casualties, or from a fifth to a sixth of their whole strength.[55] In a desperate attack on the counterscarp a fortnight later, Eugene was followed by a number of British troops, among whom were some regiments lent for the occasion by the covering army. In his memoirs he relates that after two assaults had been repulsed with great slaughter, he spoke a few words in English to the brave fellows who rallied round him, and then led them back to the fire, where a musket-ball knocked him senseless. The men thought he was dead; but an intelligent soldier remembered that he was a great friend of the Duke’s, and after looking for some conveyance on which to transport him to his quarters, carried him back on a dung cart! On the 9th of December de Boufflers surrendered on excellent terms, granted him as a proof of Marlborough’s admiration for his splendid defence, which had cost France 8000 men, and the Allies about 14,000 in killed and wounded alone. The returns of the British losses are incomplete: Millner states that from the beginning of the siege to October 22, when the French abandoned the town and retreated in the citadel, the five British regiments in Eugene’s force lost 1600 officers and men; the casualties for the remainder of the siege he was unable to obtain. Stearne briefly dismisses the services of the XVIIIth at Lille in the following words: “Our regiment suffered very much, having two captains and three subalterns killed: our major, with several other officers wounded, and upwards of 200 men killed and wounded.”[56]