In spite of the close discharges of the musketry which cut them to pieces, they rushed headlong upon the front ranks of the Chilians, and at length attacked them hand to hand. The Chilian cavalry then dashed in, and charged them to the very centre.
But General Bustamente had foreseen this movement. On his side he executed the same manoeuvre, so that the two bodies of cavalry came in contact with a noise like thunder. Calm and cool at the head of his squadron, the general charged.
As Don Tadeo had predicted to Valentine, the battle was rudely contested along the whole line; the Araucanos, with their tenacity which nothing can repel, and their contempt of death, allowed themselves to be slaughtered by the Chilian bayonets without yielding. Antinahuel was in the van of his warriors, animating them with his gestures and his voice.
"What men!" the count could not refrain from exclaiming; "what mad rashness!"
"Is it not?" Don Tadeo replied; "They are demons."
"Pardieu!" Valentine cried. "What brave soldiers! Why, they will all be killed if they go on so."
"All!" Don Tadeo replied.
The principal efforts of the Araucanians were directed against the square where the general-in-chief was, surrounded by his staff. There the fight was changed into a butchery; firearms had become useless, bayonets, hatchets, sabres, and clubs furrowed breasts and crushed skulls. Antinahuel looked around him. His followers were falling like ears of ripe corn; the forest of bayonets which barred their passage must be broken through at all hazards.
"Aucas!" he cried, in a voice of thunder "forward!"
With a movement rapid as thought, he lifted his horse, made it plunge, and hurled it upon the front ranks of the enemy. The breach was opened by this stroke of extraordinary audacity; the warriors rushed in after him. A frightful carnage ensued—a tumult impossible to be described! With every blow a man fell. The Aucas had plunged like a wedge into the square, and had broken it.