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The Egyptian gunners were cut down, and then the horsemen dashed into the infantry behind, who were already turning to fly. The opening of the British guns in their rear at once checked the advance of the assailants of the garrison of Kassassin.
Scarcely had they reached camp when a heavy and continuous roar was heard; the Egyptians, with a force of 13,000 men, had advanced with the intention of crushing the small bodies of British troops in their isolated posts. The garrison of Kassassin consisted only of a battalion of Marine Artillery, the 46th and 84th Regiments. The enemy came on in overwhelming numbers, and with great resolution.
While the preparations for a forward movement were going on, a portion of the British troops pushed forward; and a brigade, among whom was a battalion of the marines, occupied Kassassin, a few miles distant from the Egyptian position.
The company, therefore, determined in 1861 to prolong the canal from Kassassin to the centre of the isthmus, and in the year 1863 they brought the fresh-water canal as far as Suez. In one or two places the bed of the old canal was cleared out and made to serve the new canal.
The cavalry charge completed the confusion of the enemy, and in a short time the plain was covered with bodies of the flying Egyptians making their way back to Tel-el-Kebir, from which they had started in the morning, confident in their power to annihilate the little British force at Kassassin.
No one at the table had even turned his head for the battlefields of Kassassin and Tel-el-Kebir. After all, why should they? Yes, when there was a fever actually fever in the city itself!
Seven Krupp guns, an immense quantity of rifles and ammunition, and seventy-five railway waggons, loaded with provisions, fell into our hands. The troops now advanced as far as Kassassin, where the advanced troops were under the command of General Graham.
In a week he would sail for England; he lay awake, counting up the years since the packet had cast off from Dover pier, and he found that the tale of them was good. Kassassin, Tel-el-Kebir, the rush down the Red Sea, Tokar, Tamai, Tamanieb the crowded moments came vividly to his mind.
Instead of advancing direct upon Kassassin, General Lowe took his men by a long detour by the right, and so came round in the darkness upon the enemy's rear. It was not until they arrived within a mile that the enemy saw the black mass advancing in the moonlight over the sandy plain. A battery of nine guns at once opened upon them, and the Horse Artillery replied immediately to the enemy's fire.
The old canal which left the Nile at Cairo had long ceased to flow beyond the outskirts of the city, and the still more ancient canal from the neighbourhood of Bubastis, now known as the Wady Canal, extended only a few miles in the direction of the isthmus as far as Kassassin. During the construction of the Suez Canal the need of supplying the labourers with fresh water was imperative.
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