On the whole, there are few losses. The engagement, if there is one, is an affair of a second. The proof is that in this action of cavalry against cavalry, the conquered alone loses men, and he loses generally few. The battle against infantry is alone the really deadly struggle. Like numbers of little chasseurs have routed heavy cuirassiers. How could they have done so if the others had not given way before their determination? The essential factor was, and always is, determination. The cavalry's casualties are always much less than those of the infantry both from fire and from disease. Is it because the cavalry is the aristocratic arm? This explains why in long wars it improves much more than the infantry. As there are few losses between cavalry and cavalry, so there is little fighting. Hannibal's Numidians, like the Russian Cossacks, inspired a veritable terror by the incessant alarms they caused. They tired out without fighting and killed by surprise. Why is the cavalry handled so badly?--It is true that infantry is not used better.--Because its role is one of movement, of morale, of morale and movement so united, that movement alone, often without a charge or shock action of any sort can drive the enemy into retreat, and, if followed closely, into rout. That is a result of the quickness of cavalry. One who knows how to make use of this quickness alone can obtain such results. All writers on cavalry will tell you that the charge pushed home of two cavalry bodies and the shock at top speed do not exist. Always before the encounter, the weaker runs away, if there is not a face to face check. What becomes then of the MV squared? If this famous MV squared is an empty word, why then crush your horses under giants, forgetting that in the formula besides M there is V squared. In a charge, there is M, there is V squared, there is this and that. There is resolution, and I believe, nothing else that counts! Cohesion and unity give force to the charge. Alignment is impossible at a fast gait where the most rapid pass the others. Only when the moral effect has been produced should the gait be increased to take advantage of it by falling upon an enemy already in disorder, in the act of fleeing. The cuirassiers charge at a trot. This calm steadiness frightens the enemy into an about face. Then they charge at his back, at a gallop. They say that at Eckmuehl, for every French cuirassier down, fourteen Austrians were struck in the back. Was it because they had no back-plate? It is evident that it was because they offered their backs to the blows.