from Canto VIII

71

For having thrown himself into a ditch,
     Followed in haste by various grenadiers,
Whose blood the puddle greatly did enrich,
    He climbed to where the parapet appears;
But there his project reached its utmost pitch;
    (‘Mongst other deaths the General Ribaupierre’s
Was much regretted) for the Moslem Men
Threw them all down into the ditch again.

72

And had it not been for some stray troops, landing
     They knew not where, being carried by the stream
To some spot, where they lost their understanding,
     And wandered up and down as in a dream,
Until they reached, as day-break was expanding,
     That which a portal to their eyes did seem,—
The great and gay Koutousow might have lain
Where three parts of his column yet remain.

73

And scrambling round the rampart, these same troops,
     After the taking of the “Cavalier,”
Just as Koutousow’s most “Forlorn” of “Hopes”
    Took like camelions some slight tinge of fear,
Opened the gate called “Kilia” to the groups
     Of baffled heroes who stood shyly near,
Sliding knee-deep in lately frozen mud,
Now thawed into a marsh of human blood.

74

The Kozaks, or if so you please, Cossacques—
     (I don’t much pique myself upon orthography,
So that I do not grossly err in facts,
     Statistics, tactics, politics and geography)—
Having been used to serve on horses’ backs,
    And no great dilettanti in topography
Of fortresses, but fighting where it pleases
Their chiefs to order,—were all cut to pieces.

75

Their column, though the Turkish batteries thundered
     Upon them, ne’ertheless had reached the rampart,
And naturally thought they could have plundered
     The city, without being further hamper’d;
But as it happens to brave men, they blundered—
     The Turks at first pretended to have scampered,
Only to draw them ‘twixt two bastion corners,
From whence they sallied on those Christian scorners.

76

Then being taken by the tail—a taking
     Fatal to bishops as to soldiers—these
Cossacques were all cut off as day was breaking,
     And found their lives were let at a short lease—
But perished without shivering or shaking,
    Leaving as ladders their heaped carcases,
O’er which Lieutenant Colonel Yesouskoi
Marched with the brave battalion of Polouzki:—

77

This valiant man killed all the Turks he met,
     But could not eat them, being in his turn
Slain by some Mussulmans, who would not yet,
     Without resistance, see their city burn.
The walls were won, but ‘twas an even bet
     Which of the armies would have cause to mourn:
‘Twas blow for blow, disputing inch by inch,
For one would not retreat, nor t’other flinch.

78

Another column also suffered much:—
     And here we may remark with the Historian,
You should but give few cartridges to such
     Troops as are meant to march with greatest glory on:
When matters must be carried by the touch
     Of the bright bayonet, and they all should hurry on,
They sometimes, with a hankering for existence,
Keep merely firing at a foolish distance.

79

A junction of the General Meknop’s men
     (Without the General, who had fallen some time
Before, being badly seconded just then)
     Was made at length with those who dared to climb
The death-disgorging rampart once again;
     And though the Turk’s resistance was sublime,
They took the bastion, which the Seraskier
Defended at a price extremely dear.

80

Juan and Johnson, and some volunteers
     Among the foremost, offered him good quarter,
A word which little suits with Seraskiers,
     Or at least suited not this valiant Tartar.
He died, deserving well his country’s tears,
     A savage sort of military martyr.
An English naval officer, who wished
To make him prisoner, was also dished: