The fire from the chassepots was deadly, and in their eagerness to come to close quarters, the Prussian officers were seen brandishing their straight-cutting swords and heard crying—
'Vorwarts! vorwarts! Hoch Germania!'
On the other hand the French were not slow in crying—
'En avant! en avant! à bas la Prusse, et vive la France.' For they were ceasing to shout the Emperor's name now.
The whole of the villages had to be stormed by the Prussians in succession. The French resisted nobly; hence the slaughter was terrible. In one rifle-pit alone there lay seven hundred and eighty-one corpses; the chateau of Colombey was taken and recaptured three times at the point of the bayonet.
The livelong day the battle lasted over all the ground before Metz, seven and a half miles in length. The air was loaded with the smoke of cannon and musketry, enveloping alike the dead and wounded, who lay everywhere, in fields and gardens, under hedgerows and hayricks, in vineyards and rifle-pits.
The Prussians were every moment receiving fresh reinforcements, and the troops of Bazaine, unable to check their advance, fell slowly back upon Metz, but fighting every foot of the way.
The 95th were at the third capture of the Chateau of Colombey, out of which the French Voltigeurs were driven in a fair hand-to-hand conflict, leaving behind them a vast number of wounded and slain. Among the former, supporting himself against a fragment of the shot-shattered wall, was a French captain bleeding profusely from a wound in the breast.
The fähnrich of Charlie's company, young Donnersberg, approached and offered him his handkerchief to staunch the bleeding, when the Frenchman, inspired by some sudden gust of national hate and rancour, uttered 'a good garrison oath,' and with all the strength that yet remained in his arm, ran his sword through the body of the German, and killed him on the spot.
Both fell nearly at the same time, as two or three bayonets clashed in the body of the Frenchman, who lay over a pile of dead, bleeding from several wounds. A few minutes after, Charlie chanced to pass where he still lay in the courtyard of the chateau, to all appearance dead. On his breast was the handsome white enamelled Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, conspicuous among his Crimean medals.