anic that happened the day after
the Battle of Solferino, and which was brought on by the appearance of a
few Austrian hussars, who came out of their hiding-place to surrender,
many thousand men running for miles, and showing that the most
successful army of modern days could be converted into a mob by--
nothing.

Seldom has the world seen such a panic as followed the Battle of
Vittoria, in which Wellington dealt the French Empire the deadly blow
under which it reeled and fell; for, if that battle had not been fought
and won, the Allies would probably have made peace with Napoleon,
following up the armistice into which they had already entered with him;
but Vittoria encouraged them to hope for victory, and not in vain. The
French King of Spain there lost his crown and his carriage; the Marshal
of France commanding lost his _baton_, and the honorable fame which he
had won nineteen years before at Fleurus; and the French army lost its
artillery, all but one piece, and, what was of more consequence, its
honor. It was the completest rout ever seen in that age of routs and
balls. And yet the defeated army was a veteran army, and most of its
officers were men whose skill was as little to be doubted as their
bravery.

There were panics at Waterloo, not a few; and, what is remarkable, they
happened principally on the side of the victors, the French suffering
nothing from them till after the battle was lost, when the pressure of
circumstances threw their beaten army into much confusion, and it was
not possible that it should be otherwise. Bylandt's Dutch-Belgian
brigade ran away from the French about two o'clock in the afternoon, and
swept others with them in their rush, much to the rage of the British,
some of whom hissed, hooted, and cursed, forgetting that quite as
discreditable incidents had occurred in the course of the military
history of their own country. One portion of the British troops that
desired to fire upon those exhibitors of "Dutch courage" actually
belonged to the most conspicuous of the regiments that ran away at
Falkirk, seventy years before. At a later hour Trip's Dutch-Belgian
cavalry-brigade ran away in such haste and disorder that some squadrons
of German hussars experienced great difficulty in maintaining their
ground against the dense crowd of fugitives. The Cumberland regiment
of Hanoverian hussars was deliberately taken out of the field by its
colonel when the shot began to fall about it, and neithe