But how they fought, those Frenchmen! Their lives were no more to them than the mud under their feet.

There was one--I can see him now--a stoutish ruddy man on a crutch.

He hobbled up alone in a lull of the firing to the side gate of Hougoumont and he beat upon it, screaming to his men to come after him.
For five minutes he stood there, strolling about in front of the gun-barrels which spared him, but at last a Brunswick skirmisher in the orchard flicked out his brains with a rifle shot.

And he was only one of many, for all day when they did not come in masses they came in twos and threes with as brave a face as if the whole army were at their heels.
So we lay all morning, looking down at the fight at Hougoumont; but soon the Duke saw that there was nothing to fear upon his right, and so he began to use us in another way.
The French had pushed their skirmishers past the farm, and they lay among the young corn in front of us popping at the gunners, so that three pieces out of six on our left were lying with their men strewed in the mud all round them.

But the Duke had his eyes everywhere, and up he galloped at that moment--a thin, dark, wiry man with very bright eyes, a hooked nose, and big cockade on his cap.