Nevertheless, at daybreak, the Zouaves and the colonial infantry close with the enemy “with their usual magnificent dash.” Doubtless, the hope of bringing succour to the defenders of Vaux is a very slender one. All the signs, in fact, go to prove that it is too late. If the German wireless message which announced the capitulation must be received with caution, the observing-stations have noticed changes in the aspect of the vaults: in front of rooms 7 and 8, the bomb-proof shelter of sandbags or stones is almost entirely destroyed. Under the tornado of fire--for the enemy knows how to keep what he has won--our infantrymen advance. They want to go on until they get into touch with their comrades. They will go on. A shell penetrates into the C.O.’s headquarters. The telephone apparatus remains intact, but the operator has both hands cut off by a splinter. He holds out the stumps to his chief and apologises: “I can no longer telephone.” Like the attack of June 6, that of the composite brigade succeeds in encircling the fort. The enemy, however, occupies the superstructure, and his machine-guns work great havoc in our ranks. His reinforcements are constantly coming up. The battalion on the right can only just hang on to the terrain, after very slow progress. In the centre, the advance continues up to the ditches of the fort. It is at this moment that the German machine-guns do us the most serious damage. The leaders of the expedition fall one after the other, among them Major Gilbert and Major Jérôme de Mouy. The latter was a cavalry officer who had passed the staff college; he had returned from Morocco and been awarded a staff appointment, but asked for the command of a battalion of Zouaves. The two battalions, deprived of their officers, are compelled to give up the scheme of recapturing the fort and to entrench themselves in the parallel lines from which they started. Suddenly an explosion occurs in the fort, and a dense black smoke issues from casemate 5. There is no human being left alive in this last stronghold.