They were more anxious to cover their own retreat.” Before daylight the Austrians fell back and the passage of the Danube was won. There was another morning’s work on October 11. [Sidenote: THE EAGLES AT HASLACH] At Haslach, on the north bank of the Danube, not far from Ulm, a brigade of Dupont’s Division of Ney’s corps, advancing on that side on its own account, was suddenly set on by five times its number of Austrians. The brigade was made up of three regiments: the 9me Légère (or 9th Light Infantry), the 32nd, and the 69th. They stumbled, as it were, suddenly on the Austrians, whereupon General Dupont, who was riding with the brigade, on the opposite side of the river from the rest of his troops, “judging that if he fell back it would betray his weakness,” made a dash at the enemy. His daring deceived the Austrians, who believed that he was the advanced guard of a large force close behind. They held back at first and awaited attack. Throwing the 32nd into Haslach to hold the village, Dupont boldly charged with the two other regiments, and at the first onset made 1,500 prisoners, numbers equal to a quarter of his total force. The Austrians, however, rallied and returned to the fight. They brought up reinforcements and entrenched themselves in the village of Jüningen, near by, where again Dupont attacked them. Five times did the 9th Light Infantry take and retake Jüningen at the point of the bayonet, their two battalion Eagles heading the attack each time. No fewer than six officers, bearing the Eagles in turn, fell in the fight. “Ces corps ne devaient étonner de rien,” commented Napoleon in praising Dupont and his men. At Elchingen, a village in the immediate neighbourhood of Ulm, the scene of the brilliant victory by which Marshal Ney won his title of Due d’Elchingen, the Eagles of two regiments won distinction, through the individual heroism of the officers who, holding them on high,--“En haut l’Aigle!” was the charging cry--led the onset that stormed the place.[7] [Sidenote: THE EAGLES STORM ELCHINGEN] Ney headed the 6th Light Infantry personally, “in full uniform and ablaze with decorations, offering a splendid target to the enemy.” Ney led the 6th with the Eagle of the First Battalion carried close at his side. Fifteen thousand Austrians with forty guns held Elchingen, and the post is described as being “one of the strongest positions that could be imagined.” The village itself, a large place, consisted of “successive piles of stone houses, intersected at right angles by streets, rising in the form of an amphitheatre from the banks of the Danube to a large convent which crowns the summit of the ascent. All the exposed points on heights were lined with artillery; all the windows filled with musketeers.” The village was on the north bank, and the river had to be crossed to get to it.