Dragoon Guards, taking command of both brigades, led them as straight as Mansel. In a very few minutes the whole mass of the French was broken up and flying southward in wild disorder, with the sabres hewing mercilessly among them. The misfortunes of the enemy did not end here, for one of their detachments, which had been pushed forward to Troisvilles, was driven back by a couple of British guns under Colonel Congreve, and joined the rest in flight. Meanwhile Chappuis’s second column had advanced a little beyond Maurois with its guns, when the appearance of the fugitives warned them to retire; but in this quarter, too, there was a vigilant Austrian officer, Major Stepheicz, with two squadrons of the Archduke Ferdinand’s Hussars and four of the Seventh and Eleventh British Light Dragoons. Following up the French column he drove its rearguard in upon the main body a little to westward of Maretz, and a few miles further on fell upon the main body also, dispersed it utterly, and captured ten guns. Twelve hundred Frenchmen were killed in this part of the field alone, so terrible was the Austrian hussar in pursuit; two thousand more had fallen under the sabres of Otto’s division, which likewise captured twenty-two guns and three hundred and fifty prisoners. The shattered fragments of the French infantry fled by a wide detour to Cambrai; and Pichegru’s attack on this side was not merely beaten off, but his troops were literally hunted from the field. So ended the greatest day in the annals of the British horse, perhaps the greater since the glory of it was shared with the most renowned cavalry in Europe. The loss of the Austrians was nine officers, two hundred and twenty-eight men, and two hundred and eight horses; that of the British, six officers, one hundred and fifty-six men, and two hundred and eighty-nine horses, killed, wounded, and missing. The British regiments that suffered most heavily were the Blues and the Third Dragoon Guards, each of which had sixteen men and twenty-five horses killed outright; and the determination of the Third to prove that the harsh criticism of their comrades on the 24th was unjust, is shown by the fact that five out of the six officers injured in the charge belonged to them. Mansel, the Brigadier, who was also their Colonel, died as has been told. Of the Captains one, his own son, was overpowered and taken in a desperate effort to extricate his father, and another was wounded. Of the Lieutenants one was killed and another, if not two more, wounded. The Major in command, however, had the good fortune not only to escape unhurt but to receive the sword of General Chappuis. The total loss of the covering army was just under fifteen hundred men; that of the French was reckoned, probably with less exaggeration than usual, at seven thousand, while the guns taken from them numbered forty-one. ◆April 27.◆