'He was admirably cool,' wrote the Emperor to the Empress; 'we were in front of the line, and the bullets fell at our feet. Louis has kept one which fell close to him. Some of the soldiers shed tears on seeing him so calm.' Filled with enthusiasm by all this, General Froissard despatched two battalions of the 67th regiment, under Colonel Theobaudin, to attack the hamlet of St. Arnaul, which was occupied by our friends the Thuringians, and was further defended by batteries of guns on the right flank of the Saar. The 15th French regiment made a rush at those batteries, and captured them with great bravery. Theobaudin's battalion, supported now by the 40th and 66th regiments, and some mitrailleuses--those horrible weapons, now for the first time tried in active warfare--made a furious attack on the village of St. Arnaul. Shoulder to shoulder stood the resolute Thuringians--the lineal descendants of the ancient Hyrcinian foresters--volleying over wall and bank and hedge with their deadly needle-guns; but the French came rushing up the slope with glorious _élan_, though hundreds went rolling down, dead or dying, and choking in blood. With those dreadful showers of balls, the mitrailleuses, 'those master-pieces for death and carnage,' were heard amid the roar of the musketry by the strange noise of their discharge, which was dry, shrieking, and terrible! Their balls in continuous streams tore thtough the Prussian ranks, mowing them down as scythes mow a field of corn. Everywhere the smoke was dense. Heinrich had an epaulette torn off by one bullet, and the spike of his helmet by another, while Charlie was twice on the point of being taken prisoner, when his company was skirmishing in front, at the time when the 8th and 23rd French regiments were also in skirmishing order through some thickly wooded ravines. Two powerful soldiers attacked him--in fact, he had run against them in the smoke--and he must inevitably have been killed or taken had he not rid himself of one with his revolver, while Captain Schönforst passed his long straight sword through the body of the other. But the Prussian drums were now beating a retreat. It was impossible for the small force in Saarbrück--a mere weak advanced guard--to withstand the many battalions sent against it by the Emperor, especially as the attacking force was supported by an entire battery of mitrailleuses.