cumstances, shows also, more or less, to the world at
large that the causes were more of a general than of a particular
nature.

He who has not been present at the loss of a great battle will have
difficulty in forming for himself a living or quite true idea of it, and
the abstract notions of this or that small untoward affair will never
come up to the perfect conception of a lost battle. Let us stop a moment
at the picture.

The first thing which overpowers the imagination--and we may indeed say,
also the understanding--is the diminution of the masses; then the loss
of ground, which takes place always, more or less, and, therefore, on
the side of the assailant also, if he is not fortunate; then the rupture
of the original formation, the jumbling together of troops, the risks
of retreat, which, with few exceptions may always be seen sometimes in
a less sometimes in a greater degree; next the retreat, the most part of
which commences at night, or, at least, goes on throughout the night.
On this first march we must at once leave behind, a number of men
completely worn out and scattered about, often just the bravest, who
have been foremost in the fight who held out the longest: the feeling
of being conquered, which only seized the superior officers on the
battlefield, now spreads through all ranks, even down to the common
soldiers, aggravated by the horrible idea of being obliged to leave in
the enemy's hands so many brave comrades, who but a moment since were of
such value to us in the battle, and aggravated by a rising distrust
of the chief, to whom, more or less, every subordinate attributes as
a fault the fruitless efforts he has made; and this feeling of being
conquered is no ideal picture over which one might become master; it is
an evident truth that the enemy is superior to us; a truth of which
the causes might have been so latent before that they were not to be
discovered, but which, in the issue, comes out clear and palpable, or
which was also, perhaps, before suspected, but which in the want of
any certainty, we had to oppose by the hope of chance, reliance on
good fortune, Providence or a bold attitude. Now, all this has proved
insufficient, and the bitter truth meets us harsh and imperious.

All these feelings are widely different from a panic, which in an
army fortified by military virtue never, and in any other, only
exceptionally, follows the loss of a battle. They must arise even in
the best of Armies,