Lord Raglan saw the error and would have skilfully averted the
impending evil.
"That opening leaves the left of the Guards exposed," he said to
Airey. "Tell Cathcart to fill it."
"You are to move to the left and support the Guards," was the message
conveyed to Cathcart, "but not to descend or leave the plateau. Those
are Lord Raglan's orders."
But Sir George chose to interpret them his own way, and already--with
Torrens's brigade and a weak body at best--he had gone down the hill
to join the Guards. In the sharp but misdirected encounter which
followed, the general lost his life, and his force, with the Guards,
were for a time cut off from their friends.
A Russian column had wedged in at the gap and for a time forbade
retreat, but it was at length sheered off by the first of the French
reinforcements; and the intercepted British, in greatly diminished
numbers, by degrees won their way home.
This fighting around the Sandbag Battery had cost us very dear:
Cathcart was killed, the Guards were decimated, and Wilders's brigade,
now commanded by Colonel Blythe, had fallen back, spent and
disorganised. So serious indeed were these losses that for the next
hour the brigade possessed no coherent shape, and only by dint of the
unwearied exertions of its officers was it rallied sufficiently to
share in the later phases of the fight.
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