cavalry, no one has ever been able to say why;
and it galloped off the field toward the Bormida, shouting, "To the
bridges!" The panic then reached to men of all arms, and cavalry,
artillery, and infantry were soon crowded together on the banks of the
stream which they had crossed in high hopes but a few hours before. The
artillery sought to cross by a ford, but failed, and the French made
prisoners, and seized guns, horses, baggage, and all the rest of
the trophies of victory. Thus a battle which confirmed the Consular
government of Bonaparte, which prepared the way for the creation of
the French Empire, and which settled the fate of Europe for years, was
decided by the panic cries of a few horse-soldiers. The Austrian cavalry
has long and justly been reputed second to no other in the world, and in
1800 it was a veteran body, and had been steadily engaged in war, with
small interruption, for eight years; but neither its experience, nor its
valor, nor regard for the character which it had to maintain, could save
it from the common lot of armies. It became terrified, and senselessly
fled, and its evil example was swiftly communicated to the other troops:
for there is nothing so contagious as a panic, every man that runs
thinking, that, while he is himself ignorant of the existence of any
peculiar danger, all the others must know of it, and are acting upon
their knowledge. That Austrian panic made the conqueror master of Italy,
and with France and Italy at his command he could aspire to the dominion
of Europe. The man who began the panic at Marengo really opened the way
to Vienna to the legions of France, and to Berlin, and (but that brought
compensation) to Moscow also.

There were panics in most of the great battles of the French Empire,
or those battles were followed by panics. At Austerlitz the Austrians
suffered from them; and though the Russian soldiers are among the
steadiest of men, and keep up discipline under very extraordinary
difficulties, they fared no better than their associates on that
terrible field. They had more than one panic, and the confusion
was prodigious. It was while flying in terror, that the dense, yet
disorderly crowds sought to escape over some ponds, the ice of which
broke, and two thousand of them were ingulfed. One of their generals,
writing of that day, said,--"I had previously seen some lost battles,
but I had no conception of such a defeat." Jena was followed by panics
which extended th