German battery, bayoneting all the German gunners.
“Their losses, it is said, exceeded those of the Light Brigade at
Balaklava. Of a whole battalion only 100 men, it is reported, returned
unscathed. Their bravery, however, was powerless against the German
advance, which crept, foot by foot, through the outskirts of Charleroi
to the very heart of the town.
“There in the narrow streets the carnage was indescribable. A French
infantryman told me that the roads became so jammed with dead that the
killed remained standing upright where they had been shot, supported by
their dead comrades.”