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Armed only with the latter weapon, they were often known, during their long and heroic struggle for independence, to leap their horses over the Muscovite bayonets, stab the soldiers, and break up and put to flight their serried battalions.
And it was not yet finished: the companies and battalions and brigades were being re-formed, the musketry rattled in the vicinity of Haie-Sainte, and the cannon thundered near Hougoumont. "It was only just a beginning," the officers said. You would have thought that men's lives were of no value!
Happily the onslaughts of the wild, angry dervishes did not quite synchronise, and Colonel Macdonald was able to devote virtually his whole firing strength to the overthrow of the Khalifa's division ere rapidly turning about first one then another of his battalions to deal with the Sheikh Ed Din's unbroken columns.
The soldiers of French nationality, being thus spread from north to south, were in insufficient numbers everywhere. Napoleon thought he could supplement them by joining to their battalions those of his allies, but this was to dilute a good wine with muddy water.
On the night of the fourth a fleet of flatboats passed above the town with the baggage and stores. On the fifth, Murray, with four battalions, marched up to the River Etechemin, and forded it under a hot fire from the French batteries at Sillery.
I had a few savings, thank heaven; and I husbanded them as carefully as shipwrecked mariners do their last ration of food, when I unexpectedly found some work. "It was one Sunday, and I had gone out to see some battalions of National Guards passing along the Boulevard, when suddenly I saw one of the vivandieres, who was marching behind the band, stop, and run towards me with open arms.
Well, I have seen generals capering on horseback at the head of their crimson battalions; bishops sailing down cathedral aisles, with downcast eyes, pressing their trencher caps to their hearts with their fat white hands; college heads when her Majesty is on a visit; the doctor in all his glory at the head of his school on speech-day: a great sight and all great men these.
So spake he, and Hector rejoiced greatly to hear his saying, and went into the midst and restrained the battalions of the Trojans, with his spear grasped by the middle; and they all sate them down. But the flowing-haired Achaians kept shooting at him, aiming with arrows and casting stones.
Every one comprehended what a frightful shock it would be for the country when it learnt that they had surrendered themselves prisoners of war; but all things well considered, it was thought best to accept these terms, and so preserve to the King the twenty-six battalions and the twelve squadrons of dragoons who were there.
The soldierly informant at "Intelligence" reminded the listener, too, that battalions which might be squeezed or might run into unexpected obstacles would suffer fearfully as in all great battles and one must be careful not to be over-depressed by the accounts of the survivors or over-elated by the roseate narratives of battalions which had swept all before them with slight loss.
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