The drums beat the charge, and we rushed in disorder upon the enemy. We came so close that the smoke did not prevent us from seeing the terrible expression on the faces of men ready to shed your blood. The patriots had not yet acquired the assurance that comes from the long habit of fighting and victory. Their movements were slack, they felt their way; fifty grenadiers of the Old Guard would have made head against an heterogeneous mass of undisciplined nobles, old and young: ten to twelve hundred foot-soldiers were taken aback by a few gun-shots from the Austrian heavy artillery; they retreated; our cavalry pursued them for two leagues. A deaf-and-dumb German girl, called Libbe, or Libba, had become attached to my cousin Armand and had followed him. I found her sitting on the grass, which stained her dress with blood: her elbow rested on her upturned knees; her hand, passed through her tangled yellow tresses, supported her head. She wept as she looked at three or four killed men, new deaf-mutes, lying around her. She had not heard the clap of the thunderbolts of which she saw the effect, nor could she hear the sighs which escaped her lips when she looked at Armand; she had never heard the sound of the voice of him she loved, and she would not hear the first cry of the child she bore in her womb: if the grave contained only silence, she would not know that she had sunk into it. For that matter, fields of slaughter lie on every hand: in the Eastern Cemetery[110] in Paris, twenty-seven thousand tombstones, two hundred and thirty thousand corpses, will show you the extent of the battle which death wages day and night at your doors. [Sidenote: The assault of Thionville.] After a somewhat long halt, we resumed our march, and arrived under the walls of Thionville at nightfall. The drums did not beat; the word of command was given in a whisper. The cavalry, in order to repulse any sortie, stole along the roads and hedges to the gate which we were to cannonade. The Austrian artillery, protected by our infantry, took up a position at fifty yards from the advanced works, behind a hastily thrown-up epaulement of gabions. At one o'clock on the morning of the 1st of September, a rocket, sent up from the Prince of Waldeck's camp on the other side of the place, gave the signal. The Prince commenced a smart fire, to which the town made a vigorous reply. We began to fire forthwith.