Can we stand it? Our men are falling on every side—officers, sword in hand, sergeants, rank and file, piled here and there, or crawling in agony and writhing in anguish and pain.
How hot the fire! how wild the din! We are being annihilated. Where are our supports, and why do they not make haste to help us? We know not. We do not know that the Guards are even then hurrying up to our support. Yet Codrington seems to have done about all a brave man could do.
He is outnumbered—beaten and flying. Ah! there was no fear before, but now as we are hurled down the hills, something more than fear, and akin to the nightmare terror that seizes a runaway horse, fills our breast, and it is sauve qui peut.
A few minutes more and our supports would have been on the field of battle.
There come the Guards. They have advanced in good order. They have forded the stream, and are bravely rushing on up the hill thus:—
Left Battalion. | Centre Battalion. | Right Battalion.
THE COLDSTREAMS. | SCOTS FUSILIERS. | GRENADIERS.
Now, what happens? Alas! our broken and retreating ranks sweep down on that centre battalion, and carry it right before us to the banks of the stream.
Are we beaten? Is the battle lost? These questions we may put to ourselves, even to each other, but we cannot answer.
Personally—that is, as far as our four regiments are concerned, to say nothing of the Scots Fusiliers that were hurled back by us—we are defeated. There is no other name for it.
Our losses, though we are ignorant of this at present, are fifty commissioned officers, about the same number of sergeants, not including twelve officers of the daring 7th. In rank and file altogether over one thousand men lie dead or wounded.