"We must have your name, if you
will permit us to use it; there will be more efficacy in it than in
many an army." Such was the esteem in which the great President's noble
character and eminent abilities were held by his countrymen! [1013]

An incident is related by the historian of the Peninsular War,
illustrative of the personal influence exercised by a great commander
over his followers. The British army lay at Sauroren, before which Soult
was advancing, prepared to attack, in force. Wellington was absent, and
his arrival was anxiously looked for. Suddenly a single horseman was
seen riding up the mountain alone. It was the Duke, about to join his
troops. One of Campbell's Portuguese battalions first descried him,
and raised a joyful cry; then the shrill clamour, caught up by the next
regiment, soon swelled as it ran along the line into that appalling
shout which the British soldier is wont to give upon the edge of
battle, and which no enemy ever heard unmoved. Suddenly he stopped at a
conspicuous point, for he desired both armies should know he was there,
and a double spy who was present pointed out Soult, who was so near that
his features could be distinguished. Attentively Wellington fixed his
eyes on that formidable man, and, as if speaking to himself, he said:
"Yonder is a great commander; but he is cautious, and will delay his
attack to ascertain the cause of those cheers; that will give time for
the Sixth Division to arrive, and I shall beat him"--which he did. [1014]

In some cases, personal character acts by a kind of talismanic
influence, as if certain men were the organs of a sort of supernatural
force. "If I but stamp on the ground in Italy," said Pompey, "an army
will appear." At the voice of Peter the Hermit, as described by the
historian, "Europe arose, and precipitated itself upon Asia." It was
said of the Caliph Omar that his walking-stick struck more terror into
those who saw it than another man's sword. The very names of some men
are like the sound of a trumpet. When the Douglas lay mortally wounded
on the field of Otterburn, he ordered his name to be shouted still
louder than before, saying there was a tradition in his family that a
dead Douglas should win a battle. His followers, inspired by the sound,
gathered fresh courage, rallied, and conquered; and thus, in the words
of the Scottish poet:--

"The Douglas dead, his name hath won the field." [1015]

There have been some men whose greatest c