Things, however, had not gone well with Mansel and his brigade. Whether it was by Otto’s fault or by his own that he had gone astray, and whether he attempted and failed in an attack upon the French who were obstructing Pocklington’s retreat, is a mystery. We know only that Craig reported, with great regret, that the brigade had behaved ill; that he attributed the fault mainly to Mansel, whom after the action of the 17th he had already reported as an incompetent officer; but that the troops also were to blame, though the Royals had immediately recovered themselves and protected the retreat of the other two regiments. More curious still, the list of casualties shows that the Third Dragoon Guards suffered the very heavy loss of thirty-eight men and forty-six horses killed, besides nine more men wounded and missing, though the casualties of the Royals and the Blues were trifling.[223] From this I infer that Mansel led his brigade to the sound of the guns, and, being ordered to attack the fresh division of the enemy that had come upon the ground, contrived by irresolution and mismanagement to bring the Third Dragoon Guards under enfilading fire of the French cannon, and to throw the whole of the six squadrons into confusion. In any case it is certain that the brilliant attack of the Fifteenth was insufficiently supported, and that Mansel and his brigade, justly or unjustly, lay under reproach, until two days later they redeemed their good name beyond all chance of cavil. The casualties of the French in this action were eight hundred men killed and four hundred wounded, besides three guns taken; while the Fifteenth escaped with a loss of thirty-one men and thirty-seven horses killed and wounded, and the Leopold Hussars with a loss of ten men and eleven horses killed and wounded and the same number missing. The Emperor of Austria conferred on the officers of the Fifteenth a gold medal and the much-coveted order of Maria Theresa; and the regiment still bears on its appointments the name of Villers-en-Cauchies. With a little more luck, or, it may be, a little better management, Otto would have achieved one of the greatest successes ever recorded of cavalry against infantry, and annihilated the whole of the force that had moved out from Cambrai.