By a rapidly increasing flanking l2 and direct fire, converging on the salient, the Russians diminished our force; and as we were weakened they were strengtliened by parties from botli re-entering angles. The 3rd Buffs and 41st parties came in through the embrasvires immediately after the 97th and 90th, till the enemy made their rush, and drove the English into the angle, and finally over the parapet to the exterior slope, where men of different regiments of the Light and Second Divisions were closely packed together firing into the Redan as long as their ammunition lasted, and as long as supplies were handed from those in rear to the front. One hour and a half had elapsed, the Russians having cleared the Redan, but not yet being in possession of the parapets, when they made a second charge with bayonets under a heavy fire of musketry, and throwing great quantities of large stones, and grape, and small round-shot, drove those in front back on the men in the rear, who were thrown into the ditch.
The gabions in the parapet also gave way, and rolled down with those upon them; and the men in the rear, thinking all was lost, retired precipitately into the fifth parallel. A party of the 30th advanced from this parallel just as Colonel Windham was asking for reinforcements, and ran up to the salient of the Redan, where they suffered severe loss. The leader ofthe ladder party Avas killed by a gun fired as he entered the embrasure; Captain Sibthorpo was hit in two places; Lieutenant Fitzgerald and Ensign Hill were wounded; Lieut. -Colonel Legh escaped unhurt; Lieut.- Colonel Handcock was mortally wounded; Captain Hutton's body was found in the White Blogs on the 10th September; poor M'Gregor fell, inter prlmos, inside the Redan; Captain Lumley, Avho shot two Russians in the angle on entering, was badly wounded; and Lieutenant Goodenough died of his wounds soon after; Captain AVoods and Lieutenant Browne were also hit, and Lieutenant Wliitehead was alone untouched, — so that the 97th Regiment had five officers killed and six wounded, out of a complement of tliirteen engaged; and their loss in non-commissioned officers and men was 201 out of 360.
Those officers of the regiment who saw Colonel Windham in the Redan say they were in ten minutes before they observed him. Captain Rowland's 41st made a very gallant attempt to charge across the open space with a few men, but they were nearly all killed or wounded, and he was obliged to retire. Lieutenant Whitehead, Captain Sibthorpe, Lieutenants Browne and Eitzgerald, remained, with Colonel Legh, till only three privates were left in the angle, and they then all retreated together. Immediatelyafter the head of the storming party of the Light Division entered, Colonel Windham got inside the Eedan on their right, below the salient on the proper left face of the Eedan, but in spite of all his exertions, he could do little more than the gallant officers of the 90th and 97th, and of the supporting regiments.
As the Light Division rushed out into the open they were swept by the guns of the Barrack Battery and by several pieces on the proper right of the Eedan, loaded heavily with grape, which caused considerable loss amongst them ere they reached the salient or apex of the work at which they were to assault. The storming columns of the Second Division issuing out of the fifth pai-allel rushed up immediately after the Light Division, but when they came close to the apex. Brigadier Windham very judiciously brought them, by a slight detour, to the right flank of the Light Division, so as to come a little down on the slope of the proper left face of the Eedan. The first embrasure to which they came Avas in flames, but, moving on to the next, the men leaped into the ditch, and, with the aid of ladders and of each other's hands, scrambled up on the other side, climbed the parapet, or poured in through the embrasure which was undefended.
Colonel Windham was the first or one of the very first men to enter on this side, and with him entered Daniel Mahony, a great grenadier of the 41st, Kennelly and Cornellis of the same regiment. As Mahony entered with a cheer, he was shot through the head by a Eussian rifleman and fell dead before Colonel Windham, at the same moment Kennelly and Cornellis were wounded on each side of him. (The latter claims the reward of ol. offered by Colonel Herbert to the first man of his division who entered the Eedan.) Eunning parallel to the faces of the Eedan there is, as I have described, an inner parapet intended to shield the gunners at the embrasures from the eflPects of any sheU which might burst the body of the work, and strike them down if this high bank were not there to afford protection from the splinters.