But nothing could stop the eighteenth. They continued to advance at the same pace, driving the Turks before them to the foot of the intrenchments, which they attempted to carry by storm; but there the soldiers were driven back by a hot fire which raked them diagonally. General Fugière, who led the attack, received a bullet in the head in the beginning. The wound was a slight one, and he kept on, and spoke encouragingly to his men. But when a ball carried away his arm he was obliged to stop.
Adjutant-general Lelong, who came up with a battery of the seventy-fifth, made heroic efforts to induce the soldiers to defy this hurricane of fire. Twice he led them up to it and twice he was repulsed. The third time he darted forward and was on the verge of springing over the intrenchments when he fell dead.
Roland, who was standing near Bonaparte, had for a long time been asking for a command of some sort, which the latter hesitated to give him, until at length he felt that the moment had come for a supreme effort. He turned toward him. "Very well, go!" he said to him.
"Thirty-second brigade!" shouted Roland.
And the gallant survivors of Saint-Jean-d'Acre ran off after him, led by their major, Armagnac. Sub-lieutenant Faraud, recovered from his wound, was in the first rank.
Meanwhile, Brigadier-general Morange had made another attempt; but he was also driven back, leaving thirty men on the glacis and in the trench. The Turks thought that they had conquered. Carried away by their custom of cutting off the heads of the dead, for which they received fifty paras apiece, they left the redoubt in disorder, and began the bloody work.
Roland pointed them out to his indignant soldiers.
"All our men are not dead," he cried; "some of them are only wounded. Let us save them."
At that moment Murat caught a glimpse through the smoke of what was going on. He darted forward under the fire of the artillery, passed through it, cut off the redoubt from the village with his cavalry, and fell upon the men who were engaged in the horrible operation of cutting off heads on the other side of the redoubt, while Roland attacked it in front, dashing in among the Turks with his usual reckless daring, where he mowed down the harvesters.
Bonaparte saw that the Turks had been taken at a disadvantage by this unexpected onslaught, and he sent Lannes with two battalions. Lannes attacked the redoubt with his usual impetuosity, on the left face and at the gorge. Pressed thus on all sides the Turks tried to reach the village of Aboukir; but Murat was between the village and the redoubt with his cavalry, and behind him was Roland and the thirty-second brigade, and at their right Lannes and his two divisions.