"No sudden burst of undisciplined valour, no nervous enthusiasm
weakened the stability of their order; their flashing eyes were
bent on the dark columns in their front; their measured tread
shook the ground; their dreadful volleys swept away the head of
every formation; their deafening shouts overpowered the dissonant
cries that broke from all parts of the tumultuous crowd as slowly,
and with a horrid carnage, it was pushed by the incessant vigour
of the attack to the farthest edge of the height. There the French
reserve, mixing with the struggling multitude, endeavoured to
restore the fight, but only augmented the irremediable disorder,
and the mighty mass, giving way like a loosened cliff, went
headlong down the steep; the rain flowed after in streams
discoloured with blood, and eighteen hundred unwounded men, the
remnant of six thousand unconquerable British soldiers, stood
triumphant on the fatal hill!
* * * * *
"The laurel is nobly won when the exhausted victor reels as he
places it on his bleeding front.
"All that night the rain poured down, and the river and the hills
and the woods resounded with the dismal clamour and groans of
dying men."
Sir William Napier seems intimately to have known the transience of
the gratitude of nations to those who fight their battles for them.
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