“After various successes and reverses, the French seemed about to gain the day. The English centre was broken, and Victor’s columns marching triumphantly through it. Just at this juncture, when the English were scattering on every side, Colonel Donellan, anxious to save the honor of his army, was seen advancing through the disordered masses, at the head of the 48th regiment. The retiring masses on every side pressed hard against these brave soldiers, and it seemed, at first, as though they must be carried away by them; but, wheeling back by companies, they opened to let the fugitives pass, and then, pursuing their proud and beautiful line, they marched straight upon the pursuing columns on the right side, and poured their rapid fire into the dense ranks. Closing on the foe with steadiness and firmness, these few soldiers arrested the progress of the entire mass. Then their artillery opened its fire upon them, and the cavalry rallied, and rode round to charge their flanks; and, after a short and earnest warfare, the tide of success turned, and victory, which seemed a moment before in the hands of the French, was wrested from their grasp, amid the loud shouts and earnest cheerings of the British. Their troops retired in good order to their former position, and at six o’clock the battle had closed. And now, as both parties were preparing to remove their wounded, and pay the last sad duties to the dead, one of those terrible events occurred which sometimes come to shock the human soul, and overrun a cup of misery already full. Hardly had the last troops withdrawn from the scene of contest, when the long dry grass took fire, and one broad flame swept furiously over the field, wrapping the dead and wounded together in its fiery mantle. The shrieks of the scorched and writhing victims, that struggled up through the thick folds of smoke that rolled darkly over them, were far more appalling than the uproar of battle, and carried consternation to every heart that heard. Two thousand men were killed on both sides, and eight thousand wounded.”[1]