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The French infantry now advanced along the valley behind Pepper Hill, and with the aid of a French force that had fought its way through the fortified fieldworks of Caurières Wood took Louvemont by a brilliant assault. In front of Douaumont the French troops made a rapid advance, but in Hardaumont Wood their forward movement on the right flank encountered stubborn opposition.
The several bridges over the creek were from a mile to two miles apart, but had been destroyed or dismantled, and earthworks for artillery had been prepared commanding them. The whole constituted a formidable line of fieldworks when held by an adequate force.
The reader may accordingly judge what appearance a country presented which, to the extent of fifteen or twenty miles round, was thus treated; where every house was fortified, every road blocked up, every eminence mined with fieldworks, and every place swarming with armed men. Nor was its aspect less striking by night than by day.
A line of hastily constructed fieldworks arise. A shout such a shout rolls from right to left of Lee's lines. It has a meaning, and that meaning is that Grant's advance is baffled! But the Federal commander is not to be shut off. If he cannot advance one way, he will another. Hence, the parallel lines are started the farther he stretches to our right, we must stretch also.
Nor was it until the cavalry of the left, under Major-General Sir Joseph Thackwell, had moved forward, and ridden through the openings of the intrenchments made by our sappers, in single file, and re-formed as they passed them, and the 3d dragoons, whom no obstacle usually held formidable by horse appears to check, had on this day, as at Ferozeshah, galloped over and cut down the obstinate defenders of batteries and fieldworks, and until the full weight of three divisions of infantry, with every field artillery gun which could be sent to their aid, had been cast into the scale, that victory finally declared for the British.
In this advance the French troops captured the villages of Vacherauville and Louvemont, the fortified farm of Chambrettes, and the fortified fieldworks of Hardaumont and Bezonvaux. The results gained by the French in this advance compare favorably with General Mangin's sensational exploit on October 24, 1916, when Fort Douaumont was taken.
The fortifications at Sobraon had been repeatedly reconnoitred by the Commander-in-Chief, who satisfied himself that not fewer than thirty thousand men, the best of the Khalsa troops, were covered by these formidable intrenchments, guarded by seventy pieces of cannon, and united by a good bridge to a reserve on the opposite bank, where the enemy had a considerable camp and some artillery, commanding and flanking his fieldworks on the British bank.
The Emperor knew these things well, and did not undervalue them; and it was with a very different impression of his present enemy from that which filled his mind in the Austrian campaign, that he remarked to Soult, "We shall want the mattock in this war," thereby implying that, against such an adversary, fieldworks and intrenchments would be needed, as well as the dense array of squadrons and the bristling walls of infantry.
The ins and outs of these works were thoroughly well known to Charles Gordon and his brother, who stole out at night but we will leave him to tell his own story. However, it was a very serious affair, for like the upsetting of a hive, the Cadets came out, and only darkness, speed, and knowledge of the fieldworks thrown up near the lecture-room enabled us to escape.
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