"Mercy!" he exclaimed, when the centre battalion was swept down the hill, "the movement on my left is defeat and retreat. Am I to conform to that? I'll be hanged if I do. On, men. Forward!"
"Thank Heaven!" he afterwards said, "I disobeyed orders."
So might our sailor-hero Nelson have said, for he disobeyed orders, and put the glass to his blind eye.
Let Hood continue to advance with his Grenadiers; and the cool, courageous, precise Coldstreams go onwards too. Both have deadly work before them.
But here we are among the Highlanders; and is it not true what Scott says?—
"Ne'er in battle-field throbbed heart more brave
Than that which beats beneath the Scottish plaid."
And now they were going into action—to do or to die. Yes, to do or to die. They have never been in battle before—that is, in a real fight like this. But it never occurred to them that they might or could be beaten. They were nearly all young soldiers those kilted warriors of the north—of the 42nd or Black Watch, the 93rd or Sutherland Highlanders, and the 79th or Camerons. Most of them spoke their native Doric, broad and harsh, yet kindly even in the ear of an Englishman, or the Gaelic; and many of them had left the plough-stilts or the flail, to flail the Russians in another fashion, with that bravest of soldier-Scots, Sir Colin Campbell, at their head.
These men were strong and tough as the heather on their native hills, lithesome too, swinging in step, and with no end of courage, go, and stay.
No wonder that Campbell was proud of his Highlanders on this day of all days; and it was a leader like him they needed, and nothing else, to take them straight forward into the cauldron of fire and death.
But not only was Campbell proud of them, but the whole army also, just as they were of the Guards.