"Steady the ladder, Evan Bean Iverach," cried Stuart. "Keep close by me, and show yourself your father's son. God aid our steel! Follow me, soldiers,—forward!—Hurrah!" With his sword in his right hand, his bonnet in his left, and his dark hair waving about his face, he ascended the ladder fearlessly, and striking up the bayonets which bristled over the parapet, leaped upon it, brandished his sword, miraculously escaping the shower of shot which hailed around him. With dauntless bravery he sprang from the parapet among them, and instantly the French gave way before the irresistible stream of British troops who poured in upon them, and a desperate struggle took place—short, bloody, but decisive.
"Ah, mon Dieu! Raille—raille! soldats! Diable! Croisez la baïonette!" shouted D'Estouville frantickly,—setting his men the example by throwing himself headlong on the bayonets of the assailants,—but he was driven back, and his efforts were in vain; a score of ladders had been placed against the glacis at other places, and the works were stormed on almost every part at once. The defenders were driven back, but fighting with true French bravery for every inch of ground. The British assailed them with irresistible impetuosity, bearing them backwards with the charged bayonet, the clubbed musquet, the pike, and the sword. By the particular favour of Providence Ronald escaped the dangers of the forlorn hope, while the soldiers who composed his band were mown down like leaves in autumn; but while pressing forward among the enemy, two powerful grenadiers of les Gardes Français rushed upon him with their levelled bayonets, putting him in imminent peril. The pike of a serjeant of the 50th freed him of one assailant, and closing with the other, he dashed his head against the breech of a carronade, and passed his sword through the broad breast of a third who came up to his rescue, and the warm blood poured over the hand and blade of his conqueror, who now could scarcely keep his feet on the wooden platform surrounding the inner side of the breast-work, which was covered with blood and brains, and piled with dead and wounded—with drums, dismounted cannon, and broken weapons. The scene which was now presented, is far beyond my humble powers of description. The blaze of cannon and musquetry from Ragusa, at the other end of the pontoon bridge,—where the garrison fired at the risk of killing their comrades,—glared on the glassy bosom of the Tagus, tinging it with that red and golden colour so freely bestowed upon it by poets. But within the inner talus of the breast-work and bloody platform, the scene would have produced horror in one less excited than men contending hand to hand, and who regarded honour rather than life.
There lay the ghastly dead, cold and pale in the grey light of the morning,—across them in heaps the wounded, quivering with intensity of agony, grasping the gory ground with convulsive clutches, and tearing up the earth, which was soon to cover them, in handfuls, while their eyes, starting from the sockets, were becoming glazed and terrible in death. Others, who had received wounds in less vital parts of the frame, were endeavouring to drag themselves from the press, or stanch their streaming blood, imploring those who neither heard or heeded them for "Water! water for the love of God!" Yells of sudden agony, the deep groan of the severely wounded and hoarse death-rattle of the dying men, mingled and were lost in the tumultuous shouts of the French, the steady and hearty cheers of the British, the clash of steel, the tramp of feet and discharge of musquetry, the notes of the wild war pipes of the 71st and 92nd, which were blown loud enough to awaken the heroes of Selma in their tombs. Many acts of personal heroism were performed on both sides before the enemy were fairly driven from their works, for which they fought with the characteristic bravery of their gallant nation.
But longer contention would have been madness. The right wing of the Highland Light Infantry, and the whole of the 50th regiment, poured in upon them like a flood: the whole place was captured in the course of fifteen minutes, and its garrison driven into the little square formed by their barracks, and into the bastion from which their imperial tri-colour flung its folds over the conflict.
"On! Forward! Capture the colours before they are destroyed!" was now the cry; and hundreds, following Colonel Stuart of the 50th, pressed forward into the bastion, across the demi-gorge of which the enemy had cast bundles of fascines, composed of billets of wood, baskets of earth, &c., over which they presented their bayonets, and kept up a rapid fire.
Still eager to distinguish himself, Ronald pressed on by the side of the colonel of the 50th, and while endeavouring to break the hedge of steel formed by the enemy's bayonets, he was thrust in among them and borne to the ground, and his campaigns would probably have ended there, had not Evan Iverach, at the peril of his life, plunged over the fascines after him, and borne to the earth a French officer, whose sabre was descending on his master's head.
The athletic Highlander pinned the Gaul to the earth, and unsheathing a skene-dhu (black knife), drove it through the breast of his discomfited foe.
"Nombril de Belzebub! Les sauvages Ecossais! Sacre bleu! Camarades, sauvez-moi!"—but his comrades had barely time to save themselves from the tide of armed men, who poured through the gap which Evan and his master had formed.
"Hurrah, Highlanders!" cried the stentorian voice of Campbell from another part of the works, where he appeared on foot at the head of his company (he was major by brevet) armed with a long Highland dirk in addition to his formidable Andrea Ferrara. "Hurrah! brave hearts! Give them Egypt over again! Mount the platform, lads! slue round the cannon, and blow their skulls off!" A hundred active Highlanders obeyed the order. The twenty-four pounders were reversed, loaded, pointed, and fired in a twinkling, sending a tremendous volley of grape-shot among the dense mass which crowded the dark square, from which arose a yell such as might come from the regions of the damned, mingled with the gallant cry of "Vive l'Empereur!"
"Well done, brave fellows! Load and fire again! there's plenty of grape! Another dose! Give it them!—hurra!" cried the inexorable Campbell again. The effects of the second volley were indeed appalling, as, from the elevation of the platform, the shot actually blew off the skulls of the unfortunate French in scores. This was the decisive stroke. The bastion and square were alike abandoned, and all rushed towards the Tagus, to cross and gain the tower of Ragusa; but the garrison of that place, on finding that fort Napoleon was captured and its guns turned on them by the German artillery, to ensure their own retreat destroyed that of their comrades, by cutting the pontoon bridge. D'Estouville's troops had now no alternative but to surrender themselves prisoners of war.