The issue was decided at the first encounter. Constantine charged at the head of his Gallic horse—now accustomed to and certain of victory—into the cavalry of Maxentius, which broke and ran in disorder from the field. Only the Prætorians made a gallant and stubborn resistance and fell where they had stood, knowing that it was they who had raised Maxentius to the throne and that their destruction was involved in his. While these fought valiantly with the courage of despair, their comrades were crowding in panic towards the already choked bridges. At the Milvian Bridge the passage was jammed, and the pursuers wrought great execution. The pontoon bridge collapsed, owing to the treachery of those who had cut or loosened its supports. All the reports agree that there was a sickening slaughter, and that hundreds were drowned in the Tiber in their vain effort to escape. Among the victims was Maxentius himself. He was either thrust into the river by the press of frenzied fugitives or was drowned in trying to scale the high bank on the opposite shore, when weighed down by his heavy armour. His corpse was recovered later from the stream, which the Panegyrists hailed in ecstatic terms as the co-saviour of Rome with Constantine and the partner of his triumph.[46] ----- Footnote 46: _Pan. Vet._, ix., 18. ----- The victor entered Rome. He had won the prize which he sought—the mastery of the West—and, like scores of Roman conquerors before him, he marched through the famous streets. His triumphal procession was graced, says Nazarius, not by captive chiefs or barbarians in chains, but by senators who now tasted the joy of freedom again, and by consulars whose prison doors had been opened by Constantine’s victory—in a word, by a Free Rome.[47] Only the head of Maxentius, whose features still wore the savage, threatening look which even death itself had not been able to obliterate, was carried on the point of a spear behind Constantine amid the jeers and insults of the crowd. Another Panegyrist gives us a very lively picture of the throngs as they waited for the Emperor to pass, describing how they crowded at the rear of the procession and swept up to the palace, almost venturing to cross the sacred threshold itself, and how, when Constantine appeared in the streets on the succeeding days, they sought to unhorse his carriage and draw it along with their hands. One of the conqueror’s first acts was to extirpate the family of his fallen rival. Maxentius’s elder son, Romulus, who for a short time had borne the name of Cæsar, was already dead; the younger son, and probably the wife too, were now quietly removed. There were other victims, who had committed themselves too deeply to Maxentius’ fortunes to escape. Rome, says Nazarius,[48] was reconstituted afresh on a lasting basis by the complete destruction of those who might have given trouble. But still the victims were comparatively few, so few, in the