The Chasseurs d'Afrique, Turco and Zouave troops which had been detached from the Fourth Army to help the Belgians at Namur, arrived unexpectedly in Charleroi during the middle of the engagement. They were too late to keep the Germans from entering the city, but not too late to drive them out again, not too late to put a spike in Von Buelow's plan to flank the Fifth Army. In all the history of modern war, there has never been more savage street-fighting, hand to hand, tooth and claw, sword and bayonet, than in Charleroi. The Germans were more than five to one, but they could not stand cold steel. The onslaught of the French colonials was a spume of wrath that the invaders dared not face. They fled like gray rats. Then, upon doomed Charleroi, crashed the full force of the German field artillery. Church steeples and foundry chimneys fell like dry sticks before a whirlwind's blast, factories crumbled into ruin under the disintegrating effects of high explosive shells, burying French and Belgian defenders in the ruins. The blue sky overhead was gray with the web of flying steel, the gutters of the streets ran red. Trebly reënforced, the Germans charged Charleroi again. Here were no modern tactics, here was no battle born in the military schoolroom, but a savage, primitive combat, where each man fired, stabbed, thrust and clubbed to save himself and to fell his foe. Though outnumbered ten to one, the French drove the sharp-biting rats, back, back, and back beyond the outskirts of the town. Again the artillery deluged Charleroi with an avalanche of shell. Again the German infantry charged forward, now twenty to one, all fresh troops, against the wearied but still defiant Turco and Zouave regiments. The torrent was irresistible and Charleroi was again in German hands. This was the moment for which the French artillery had been waiting. No sooner was Charleroi filled with German troops than the French guns hammered at the shattered town. The French Army, however, had almost ignored the development of howitzers, which proved so valuable to the Germans. They had but few of their 3.9-inch (105 mm.) and 5.7-inch (155 mm. Rimailho) guns available for a reply to the German batteries and they could not retake the town. About midnight, the city burst into flames. That same Saturday had been one of disaster, also, for the Fourth Army, though in a lesser degree. Horace had partaken in the retreat from Givet, though, naturally, he did not know the character of the engagement, the night before. All next morning he stayed by the battery, acting as a driver, but the battery was not in action more than an hour. The army suffered heavily, but retreated in good order, the line stiffening, and holding the Germans in check. The battery slept that night on heaps of straw in a little chapel.