THE JMAIN FIGHT. 347 • front!'* At this bidding, not only the drum- chap. niers, but with them also the buglers, ran boldly ' out to the front, and in another moment they '•'^i'^"^- were storming and storming at the conscience of the troubled battalion with their passionate
- Double quick, charge.' "f* Nor altogether in vain.
Men could not indeed at the instant recover for- mation, but they could and they did stay their flight one after another, and front once more to the enemy. The few English soldiery whose line we saw broken by fugitives remained intermixed with their friendly disturbers. Some here, and some there, wherever they most fitly could, they all now aligned with the French, and stood with them shoulder to shoulder. But what was the sudden constraint which held back the exulting enemy in the midst of his charge, and gave the French time for this rally ? Without firing a shot, Colonel Daubeney, at the coionei liead of his thirty men of the 55th, had been all this singufw^' while approaching the right flank of the great ^ '^'^^**' trunk column ; and perceiving, when near, that the head of the column was engaged M'ith troops in its front, he resolved to attack its second bat- talion, the battalion which, at quarter distance, was next in rear to the one standing foremost. That second battalion, as it happened, had been ordered the moment before to deploy to its right, and the evolution was beginning accordingly, ' Avancez, les tambours ! ' t The ' ms de charge.'
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