The French were but thirty yards away.  A tremendous volley was poured into them, and then the British with a shout rushed forward, scrambled through a double hedgerow that separated them from the French, and fell upon them with the bayonet.  The charge was irresistible.  Taken in the act of deploying, the very numbers of the French told against them, and they were borne down the slope in confusion.  Picton, struck by a musket ball in the head, fell dead, and Kempt assumed the command, and his brigade followed up the attack and continued to drive the enemy down the hill.  In the meantime the French cavalry were approaching.  The cuirassiers had passed La Haye Sainte, and almost cut to pieces a Hanoverian battalion which was advancing to reinforce the defenders.

At this moment Lord Edward Somerset led the house-hold brigade of cavalry against the cuirassiers, and the elite of the cavalry of the two nations met with a tremendous shock; but the weight and impetus of the heavy British horsemen, aided by the fact that they were descending the hill, while their opponents had hardly recovered their formation after cutting up the Hanoverians, proved irresistible, and the cuirassiers were driven down the hill.  A desperate hand-to-hand conflict took place; and it was here that Shaw, who had been a prize-fighter before he enlisted in the Second Life Guards, killed no less than seven Frenchmen with his own hand, receiving, however, so many wounds, that on the return of the regiment from its charge he could no longer sit his horse, and crawling behind a house died there from loss of blood.

While the Second Life Guards and First Dragoon Guards pursued the cuirassiers down the slope, the Royals, Scots Greys, and Inniskillens rode to the assistance of Pack’s brigade, which had been assailed by four strong brigades of the enemy.  Pack rode along at the front of his line calling upon his men to stand steady The enemy crossed a hedge within forty yards of the Ninety-second, and delivered their fire.  The Highlanders waited till they approached within half the distance, and then pouring in a volley, changed with leveled bayonets.  The French stood firm, and the Ninety-second, numbering less than two hundred and fifty men, burst in among them; a mere handful among their foes.  But just at this moment Ponsonby’s heavy cavalry came up, and passing through the intervals of the companies and battalions, fell upon the French infantry.  In vain the enemy endeavored to keep their formation; their front was burst in, their center penetrated, and their rear dispersed, and in five minutes the great column was a mass of fugitives.  Great numbers were killed, and two thousand prisoners taken.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE ROUT.