Page:Julian Niemcewicz - Notes of my Captivity in Russia.djvu/46

18 disadvantages of the terrain, continued to advance. Their fire became more and more rapid and terrible; a shower of balls of every size, grape-shot, and grenades, spreading, as they burst, death on all sides, overwhelmed us. One of those grenades burst just between General Kosciuszko, his aide-de-camp Fischer, and myself, and its splinters passing over our heads, struck, at fifty paces, a gunner, who fell dead on the spot. General Kosciuszko apprehending at the beginning of the battle, that the enemy would lodge themselves in the village which covered our left wing, gave orders to set it on fire. As soon as the red balls were thrown, flames and curling clouds of smoke rose to the skies; these, and the poor peasants of the village, with their wives and children in tears,