ten o'clock at night
There was Austerlitz , with its sun of glory shining forth from amid the wintry sky , Austerlitz , commencing with the capture of the plateau of Pratzen and ending with the frightful catastrophe on the frozen lake , where an entire Russian corps , men , guns , horses , went crashing through the ice , while Napoleon , who in his divine omniscience had foreseen it all , of course , directed his artillery to play upon the struggling mass . There was Jena , where so many of Prussia 's bravest found a grave ; at first the red flames of musketry flashing through the October mists , and Ney 's impatience , near spoiling all until Augereau comes wheeling into line and saves him ; the fierce charge that tore the enemy 's center in twain , and finally panic , the headlong rout of their boasted cavalry , whom our hussars mow down like ripened grain , strewing the romantic glen with a harvest of men and horses . And Eylau , cruel Eylau , bloodiest battle of them all , where the maimed corpses cumbered the earth in piles ; Eylau , whose new-fallen snow was stained with blood , the burial-place of heroes ; Eylau , in whose name reverberates still the thunder of the charge of Murat 's eighty squadrons , piercing the Russian lines in every direction , heaping the ground so thick with dead that Napoleon himself could not refrain from tears . Then Friedland , the trap into which the Russians again allowed themselves to be decoyed like a flock of brainless sparrows , the masterpiece of the Emperor 's consummate strategy ; our left held back as in a leash , motionless , without a sign of life , while Ney was carrying the city , street by street , and destroying the bridges , then the left hurled like a thunderbolt on the enemy 's right , driving it into the river and annihilating it in that _ cul-de-sac _ ; the slaughter so great that at ten o'clock at night the bloody work was not completed , most wonderful of all the successes of the great imperial epic . And Wagram , where it was the aim of the Austrians to cut us off from the Danube ; they keep strengthening their left in order to overwhelm Massena , who is wounded and issues his orders from an open carriage , and Napoleon , like a malicious Titan , lets them go on unchecked ; then all at once a hundred guns vomit their terrible fire upon their weakened center , driving it backward more than a league , and their left , terror-stricken to find itself unsupported , gives way before the again victorious Massena , sweeping away before it the remainder of the army , as when a broken dike lets loose its torrents upon the fields . And finally the Moskowa , where the bright sun of Austerlitz shone for the last time ; where the contending hosts were mingled in confused _ melee _ amid deeds of the most desperate daring : mamelons carried under an unceasing fire of musketry , redoubts stormed with the naked steel , every inch of ground fought over again and again ; such determined resistance on the part of the Russian Guards that our final victory was only assured by Murat 's mad charges , the concentrated fire of our three hundred pieces of artillery , and the valor of Ney , who was the hero of that most obstinate of conflicts . And be the battle what it might , ever our flags floated proudly on the evening air , and as the bivouac fires were lighted on the conquered field out rang the old battle-cry : _ Vive Napoleon !