In consequence of these prompt arrangements, the assailants were
received with a cross-fire of the batteries, and case-shot and
musketry from several redoubts, which raked their flanks as they
advanced. But in defiance of this shower of bullets, they pressed on
with an intrepidity worthy of a better cause, and overleaping the
ditch by squadrons, entered the camp. A passage once secured, the
Cossacks rushed in by thousands, and spreading themselves in front of
the storming party, put every soul to the spear who opposed them.
The Polish works being gained, the enemy turned the cannon on its
former masters, and as they rallied to the defence of what remained,
swept them down by whole regiments. The noise of artillery thundered
from all sides of the camp; the smoke was so great, that it was
hardly possible to distinguish friends from foes; nevertheless, the
spirits of the Poles flagged not a moment; as fast as one rampart was
wrested from them, they threw themselves within another, which was as
speedily taken by the help of hurdles, fascines, ladders, and a
courage as resistless as it was ferocious, merciless, and sanguinary.
Every spot of vantage position was at length lost; and yet the Poles
fought like lions; quarter was neither offered to them nor required;
they disputed every inch of ground, until they fell upon it in heaps,
some lying before the parapets, others filling the ditches and the
rest covering the earth, for the enemy to tread on as they cut their
passage to the heart of the camp.
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