However, on the 21st of October, after Mont Valérien had all the morning kept up a seemingly ineffective fire, General Ducrot advanced at about one o'clock to attack the position of the Prussian 19th Brigade whose supports held the line Bougival--Jonchère--Fohlenkoppel. Fourteen French field-batteries deployed on either side of Rueil and about the southern base of Valérien; the infantry advanced in five columns behind this artillery front.
On the German side only two batteries could at first engage in the unequal duel, and one of these near the Villa Metternich had very soon to retire. The French guns advanced rightward to within 1400 paces of Bougival, and at three o'clock four companies of Zouaves rushed out of Rueil. Being received with a hot fire, they wheeled into the park of Malmaison, and without opposition seized the Château of Buzanval and the eastern slope of the deep-cut ravine of Cucufa. And here one of their batteries was brought up into the fighting-line to support them.
While the main body of the 9th Division advanced from Versailles on Vaucresson, the 10th deployed against the ravine and at Villa Metternich. The infantry fire lasted for a full hour, and wrought the French much loss. When at about four o'clock they seemed sufficiently shaken, and a reinforcement of the Guard Landwehr had come up from St. Germain on the left, the German left wing advanced from Bougival and over the height of Jonchère, forced its way into Malmaison in spite of violent opposition, and followed the retreating Zouaves as far as Rueil. The right wing at the same time having turned the head of the Cucufa ravine, charged against its eastern slope, drove out the enemy, seized the battery of two guns, and occupied the Château of Buzanval.
The French now retired on all sides, firing ceased by six o'clock, and the 10th Division, which had repulsed the enemy's assaults single-handed, re-established its previous fore-post line.
The struggle had cost the Germans 400 men. The French, on the other hand, had in this luckless enterprise left 500 dead and wounded, and 120 prisoners.
Soon after this affair the French began to throw up entrenchments within 800 paces of the line of the Guard Corps; and in the early morning of the 28th, General Bellemare, under cover of the darkness, advanced on Le Bourget with a force of several battalions.