After Bourbaki and St. Pol had been repulsed, the Voltigeurs and Grenadiers of the Guard and Marolle’s brigade were sent against the curtain and Redan respectively.  These they carried, but were once more expelled from the Little Redan, Marolle and De Ponteves falling dead at the head of their brigades, and Mellinet, Bisson, and Bourbaki being wounded.  The French still held the curtain, and Bosquet now ordered up the two field-batteries then standing behind the Victoria redoubt.  They descended the ridge at the trot, unlimbered in front of the sixth parallel, and, coming into action, fired with great effect on the Russian infantry, which offered a broad target.  Yet the batteries suffered terribly; the commanding officer (Souty) was killed, and out of the one hundred fifty men he brought down, only fifty-five returned when the guns were dragged back by hand because they lost all their horses except nineteen.

Bosquet, surrounded by several Russian officers, who were prisoners, and their guards, was interrogating the captives when a shell burst over them, killing or wounding both them and the guard—­the General only escaping.  Later, when leaning on the parapet watching the progress of the fight, he was struck in the face by a fragment of a shell.  He had just strength to send word to General Dulac to take his place, when he fainted.

The struggle in and around the Malakoff was continued till three o’clock, when Gortschakoff withdrew his troops from the work which they had defended with such marvellous endurance for eleven months.  The prize was now won, but at heavy cost.

MacMahon’s division, which assaulted with forty-five hundred bayonets and two hundred officers, lost in killed and wounded just half its strength.

Soon after the Russians had been driven from the salient of the Malakoff, the French troops occupying it were fired on from the lower part of the old masonry tower, which was loopholed, and inside which five officers and sixty Russian soldiers had taken refuge.  It was impossible to dislodge them, as the only entrance was strongly blocked on the inside.  After a time some gabions were collected, and having been placed in position close to the loopholes, were lighted, but before the defenders could be smoked out, a mortar fired against the door blew it away, and the Russians surrendered.  The gabions burning fiercely, the officers became alarmed lest the fire should be communicated to some of the surrounding magazines, and an attempt was made to extinguish the blazing fragments.  As this was difficult, sappers were set to work to dig a trench and throw the excavated earth on the fire.  While the men were digging, four wires, communicating with mines, were found and cut.

While the Russian officers were surrendering, a desperate struggle was carried on at the far end of the Malakoff enclosure, the Russians coming over the parapets in three heavy columns.  Khrouleff, the “fighting general,” being wounded, had been replaced by General Martinau.  The combatants fought hand to hand till, Martinau, losing an arm, and his men being out of ammunition, Gortschakoff ordered them to give up the struggle and fall back.