Our sharpshooters behind the ammunition wagons did not fire, doubtless
for fear of hitting their comrades; our gunners on the bastion leaned
down to see, and the file of Cossacks stretched to the corner near the
drawbridge.
There were seven or eight hundred of them. We heard them cry, "Hurra!
hurra! hurra!" like crows. Several officers in green cloaks and small
caps galloped at the sides of their lines, with raised sabres. I
thought our poor sergeant and his thirty men were lost; I thought
already, "How sorry little Safel and Sorle will be!"
But then, as the Cossacks formed in a half-circle at the left of the
outworks, I heard our gun-captain call out, "Fire!"
I turned my head; old Goulden struck the match, the fusee glittered,
and at the same instant the bastion with its great baskets of clay
shook to the very rocks of the rampart.
I looked toward the road; nothing was to be seen but men and horses on
the ground.
Just then came a second shot, and I can truly say that I saw the
grape-shot pass like the stroke of a scythe into that mass of cavalry;
it all tumbled and fell; those who a second before were living beings
were now nothing. We saw some try to raise themselves, the rest made
their escape.
The firing by file began again, and our gunners, without waiting for
the smoke to clear away, reloaded so quickly that the two discharges
seemed to come at once.
This mass of old nails, bolts, broken bits of cast-iron, flying three
hundred metres, almost to the little bridge, made such slaughter that,
some days after, the Russians asked for an armistice in order to bury
their dead.
Four hundred were found scattered in the ditches of the road.
This I saw myself.
And if you want to see the place where those savages were buried, you
have only to go up the cemetery lane.
On the other side, at the right, in M. Adam Ottendorf's orchard, you
will see a stone cross in the middle of the fence; they were all buried
there, with their horses, in one great trench.
You can imagine the delight of our gunners at seeing this massacre.
They lifted up their sponges and shouted, "Vive l'Empereur!"
The soldiers shouted back from the covered ways, and the air was filled
with their cries.
Our sergeant, with his thirty men, their guns on their shoulders,
quietly reached the glacis. The barrier was quickly opened for them,
but the two companies descended together to the moat and came up again
by the postern.