OF THE SOUSDAL COUNTER-GUARD. 211 Guerin of the French Engineers and the officers chap. . . VII and men working under his guidance made haste _ to clench the victory. Eeversing the parapets of the captured Work, they converted to the use of the French what so lately had sheltered the Eussians, and achieved under fire the perilous resulting and difficult task of forming (by flying sap) the pietesuc- gabionaded approach — full 350 yards long — that French. would link to their system of trenches the newly effected conquest. The conduct of the French troops, that night, was, as Lord Eaglan said, ' very ' brilliant.' * The time for attacking and seizing this work of counter-approach was happily chosen ; for (ex- cept as regards the small mortars) it had not as yet been armed, though its ramparts had already attained such a height and solidity that, when once in the hands of the victor, they afforded him a much-needed shelter against the fire of the place. It was not without making sacrifices that the Losses su*. French achieved this conquest of what at the first the night had been only a chain of those aggravated Eifle- theistof pits which Todleben used to call ' Lodgments, In killed and wounded, they lost, it would seem, about 600 officers and men ; t the Eussians 425.1
- I quote this high praise from Lord Raglan's published
Despatch, May 5, 1855. t Niel, p. 241. The numbers killed and wounded on the French Left at the time in question — i.e., from the 1st to the 2d of May — is stated at 602, and it does not appear that there was any other combat that night. The French losses at the battle of the Alma were not, it seems, quite so great as those they sustained in this combat. t Todleben, vol. ii. p. 199, May.
