lness, and daring, filed into the long street of Roubaix. The Guards
and the guns went through the passage in perfect formation in spite of the
shots dropping from the suburbs, which were already beginning to harass
the cavalry behind them. Immediately to their rear was the Austrian horse,
while, last of all, defending the retreat, the English Dragoons were just
entering the village. In the centre of this long street a market-place
opened out. The Austrian cavalry, arrived at it, took advantage of the
room afforded them; they doubled and quadrupled their files until they
formed a fairly compact body, almost filling the square. It was precisely
at this moment that the French advance upon the eastern side of the
village brought a gun to bear down the long straight street and road,
which led from the market square to Wattrelos. The moment it opened fire,
the Austrians, after a vain attempt to find cover, pressed into the side
streets down the market-place, fell into confusion. There is no question
here of praise or blame: a great body of horsemen, huddled in a narrow
space, suddenly pounded by artillery, necessarily became in a moment a
mass of hopeless confusion. The body galloped in panic out of the village,
swerved round the sharp corner into the narrower road (where the French
had closed in so nearly that there was some bayonet work), and then came
full tilt against the British guns, which lay blocking the way because the
drivers had dismounted or cut the traces and fled. In the midst of this
intolerable confusion a second gun was brought to bear by the French, and
the whole mob of ridden and riderless horses, some dragging limbers, some
pack-horses charged, many more the dispersed and maddened fragments of the
cavalry, broke into the Guards, who had still kept their formation and
were leading what had been but a few moments before an orderly retreat.

It is at this point, I think, that the merit of this famous brigade and
its right to regard the disaster not with humiliation but with pride, is
best established. For that upon which soldiers chiefly look is the power
of a regiment to reform. The Guards, thus broken up under conditions which
made formation for the moment impossible, and would have excused the
destruction of any other force, cleared themselves of the welter,
recovered their formation, held the road, permitted the British cavalry to
collect itself and once more form a rearguard, and the retreat upon Lannoy
w