whose name adorned the bridge and the “unconquerable” defences. The most dreadful confusion reigned in our ranks. Descending suddenly from the high moral level of our souls, all those who had not fallen desired life of one accord, and, leaping over the wounded and trampling the dead under foot, we fled towards the bridge, abandoning that horrible sepulchre before it should shut us in, entombing us all.
On the bridge we were swallowed up by insupportable terror and disorder. There is nothing more frenzied than a coward. His abject meannesses are as great as the sublimities of his valor.
Our leaders kept crying out to us, “Back, you rabble! The redoubt del Pilar has not surrendered!” striking our swords with their sabres. We turned back on the bridge, unable to go further, as reinforcements came, and we stumbled over one another, the fury of our fear mingling with the impetus of their bravery.
“Back, cowards!” cried our officers, striking us in the faces, “and die in the breach!”
The redoubt was vacated. None but the dead and the wounded were there. Suddenly we saw advance amid the dense smoke and the blackness of powder, leaping over the lifeless bodies and the heaps of earth and the ruins, and the guns we had thrown down, and the shattered works, a figure, dauntless, pale, splendid, of tragic calmness. It was a woman who had made her way forward and, penetrating the abandoned place, was marching like a queen towards the horrible breach. Pirli, who was lying on the ground, wounded in the leg, exclaimed in affright,
“Manuela Sancho, where are you going?”
All this passed in much less time than I take to tell it. After Manuela Sancho, first one, then another, then many hurried, then all, urged on by the leaders whose sabre-cuts had prodded us to the point of duty. This