"Qui vive?"
"Artois," I replied, while we all pressed forward at a trot.
"A quel regiment?" shouted the vidette, in great haste.
"Les Hussards de la Reine," said I, giving the name of Boisguiller's well-known corps, which was in the camp at Corbach.
"Très bien! replied the soldier, but the next moment he could hear Preston's words of command, given sternly and low—
"Prepare to charge—charge!"
The Frenchman's carbine flashed redly through the gloom, almost in our faces; the bullet whistled over our heads to the rear, where a fearful cry told that it had found a fatal billet among the Inniskillings; then wheeling round his horse, he galloped to the rear, where his comrades were formed in column of squadrons.
Ere the echoes of his shot had died away on the night wind, we heard the cheers of the 20th and the sound of the Highland bagpipe mingling with the hoarse hurrah of Bulow's light troop, as the town was assailed on three other points at once. Then the opening musketry flashed redly in various quarters, and the gleam of sudden fires shot upward in the murky air.
Sword in hand we burst, with the weight and fury of a landslip, among the French cavalry, and drove them back, not so much by dint of edge or point, as by the sheer weight of our men and horses. So sudden was the shock, so irresistible our charge, that they scarcely made any resistance, but were thrust pell-mell into the town, in the narrow streets of which they were so intermingled with our men and the Inniskillings that in many instances neither of us could use our swords. For some minutes, at this crisis, I found myself completely isolated and wedged among the French, some of whom actually laughed at the whole affair.
Captain Cunninghame, of our first troop, in consequence of a blow which had penetrated the back of his grenadier cap, fell backward on his horse's crupper insensible, but could fall no further so dense was the living press around him; and thus he remained until the place surrendered.