He was given a white flag and a trumpeter. They approached the town on horseback, and the gates opened to receive them. Ten minutes later there was a great commotion on the ramparts just in front of the general's camp. The trumpeter appeared, dragged roughly along by two Albanians. They ordered him to sound his trumpet to attract the attention of the French army.
He sounded the call. Just as all eyes were fixed upon the walls, a man approached holding in his hand a severed head wearing a turban. He extended his arm over the ramparts; the turban fell off, and the head dropped at the foot of the wall. It belonged to the Mussulman who had carried the summons. Ten minutes later the trumpeter came out of the same gate through which he had entered, but he was alone.
The next morning at seven o'clock, as Bonaparte had said, six pieces began to thunder one after the other. At four o'clock the breach was practicable, and Bonaparte ordered the assault. He looked around for Roland to give him the command of one of the regiments which were to enter the breach. Roland was not there.
The carabineers of the twenty-second light brigade and the chasseurs of the same brigade, supported by the artillery and the engineers, rushed forward to the assault, commanded by General Rambeau, Adjutant-general Nethervood, and Vernois. They all mounted to the breach; and in spite of the fusillade which met them in front, and the showers of grape from the few cannon which had not been silenced, and which took them from behind, they waged a terrible fight over the fallen tower.
The struggle lasted for a quarter of an hour, and the besiegers had not been able to enter the breach, nor had the besieged succeeded in forcing them back. All the efforts on both sides seemed to be concentrated on the spot, when suddenly Roland appeared upon the dismantled tower holding a Turkish standard and followed by some fifty men. He waved the standard crying: "The city is taken!"
This is what had happened: That morning about six o'clock, the hour of dawn in the East, Roland had gone down to his bath in the sea, and there had discovered a sort of breach in the angle made by a wall and a tower. He had assured himself that the breach led into the city; then he took his bath and returned to the army just as the bombardment had begun. There, as he was well known to be one of Bonaparte's privileged favorites, and at the same time one of the most recklessly daring officers in the army, cries of "Captain Roland! Captain Roland!" resounded on all sides.
Roland knew what that meant. It meant, "Haven't you something impossible to attempt? Here we are."
"Fifty volunteers!" he cried.
A hundred offered themselves.
"Fifty!" he repeated.