In front the Russian entrenchments rose out of the vapours and fog in threatening silence; once beyond them, and they were free! The country and military honour called for this supreme sacrifice, and they offered it full willingly. At 9.30 a.m. the bugles sounded “Advance,” and the whole line, two miles long, began to move in one grand column. The Turks went at the quick, hurling a hail of lead before them. The troops kept repeating the Arabic phrase, “Bismillah rahmin!” (In the name of the merciful God!), but the fire became so deadly that they came to a dead-stop. The men in the front line lay down on their stomachs. After an interval of ten minutes, the bugles of the First Division sounded “Storm.” The men jumped to their feet and rushed at the nearest trench. A murderous discharge of rifle fire greeted them; many bit the dust. But very soon the Turks had the first trench in their possession, then a second and third; and before they knew what they were about, they were in the midst of the Russian guns, hacking, clubbing, stabbing, shooting, whilst overhead flew countless shells, hissing and leaving a white trail in their track. Then they waited for the support of the second line, which never came; but at noon the Russians came down upon them in force. Herbert was ordered to ride and report that they could not hold out longer without reinforcements. He says: “As I rode towards the centre, I was drawn into the vortex of a most awful panic--a wild flight for safety to the right bank of the river. “I had never been in a general retreat. It is far more terrible than the most desperate encounter. I was simply drawn along in a mad stream of men, horses, and carts. Officers, their faces streaming with perspiration in spite of the cold, were trying to restore order; the train got mixed with the infantry and the batteries, and the confusion baffles description. My horse slipped into a ditch, and I continued on foot. I heard that Osman had been wounded and carted across the river; the pitiless shells followed us even to the other side of the river. The screams of the women in the carts unnerved many a sturdy man. I came to a sort of barn, where two Saloniki horsemen stood sentry. Being dead-beat and hungry to starving-point, I sat down on a stone. Whilst I crunched a biscuit a cart drove up, and a man badly wounded in the leg was assisted into the building. So sallow and pain-drawn was his face that at first I failed to recognize Osman. There were tears in his eyes--tears of grief and rage rather than of physical pain--and in their expression lay that awful thought, ‘The game is up, the end is come,’ which we see in Meissonier’s picture of Napoleon in the retreat from Waterloo.”