all was over. Back behind the ramparts fell the French,
crushed and dispirited, for nothing now remained to them but surrender.
And for this great victory Prince Ferdinand's thanks were chiefly
bestowed on those British regiments whose magnificent valour and
steadiness had alone made it possible.

But the British cavalry, under Lord George Sackville, did not come in
for equal commendation. Lord George and the Prince had long been at
daggers drawn. Hence, probably, it may have been, that when the French
were broken and in full flight, and Prince Ferdinand's repeated orders
to bring up his cavalry reached Lord George, that officer ignored or
wilfully disobeyed them. The Marquis of Granby, Lord George's second in
command, had already begun to move forward with the Blues, and behind
were the Scots Greys and other famous regiments, thirsting to be at the
throats of the French. But Lord George Sackville's peremptory orders
brought them to a grudging and reluctant halt. Thus, throughout an
engagement which brought honour so great to their countrymen, the
British cavalry stood idle in the rear, chafing at their inaction and
openly murmuring.

And now that all chance of further fighting was over for the day,
parties of the men, irritated and bent on picking a quarrel, had strayed
from their own lines, and made their way over to the bivouacs of the
British infantry regiments, where already camp fires were twinkling, and
the men around them slaking with wine throats parched by long hours of
marching and fighting.

Those were days when, after a victory, discipline went to the wall and
was practically non-existent; they were days when the bodies of those
who were killed in action were robbed, almost as they fell--nay, when
even the wounded, as they lay helpless, were stripped naked by their own
comrades and left to perish on the field (though _that_, indeed, was
common enough amongst our troops even in the Peninsular War half a
century later). And now, here at Minden, as ever after a great
engagement, when villages or towns are sacked, much plunder had fallen
into the hands of the victorious army; wine and brandy from the
wine-houses of the wrecked villages was being poured recklessly down the
ever-thirsty throats of the men, and soldiers, already half drunk, were
to be seen knocking out the heads of up-ended wine-casks the quicker to
get at their contents, whilst others, shouting and singing, reeled
about, many of them perhaps