As soon as the combatants were fairly engaged, one of the wings of Pyrrhus's army began to give way. The other wing, on the contrary, which was the one that Pyrrhus himself personally commanded, was victorious. Pyrrhus himself led his soldiers on; and he inspired them with so much strength and energy by his own reckless daring, that all those portions of the Roman army which were opposed to them were beaten and driven back into the camp. This success, however, was not wholly owing to the personal prowess of Pyrrhus. It was due, in a great measure, to the power of the elephants, for they fought in that part of the field. As the Romans were almost wholly unaccustomed to the warfare of elephants, they knew not how to resist them, and the huge beasts bore down all before them wherever they moved. In this crisis, Curius ordered a fresh body of troops to advance. It was a corps of reserve, which he had stationed near the camp under orders to hold themselves in readiness there, to come forward and act at any moment, and at any part of the field wherever their services might be required. These troops were now summoned to advance and attack the elephants. They accordingly came rushing on, brandishing their swords in one hand, and bearing burning torches, with which they had been provided for the occasion, in the other. The torches they threw at the elephants as soon as they came near, in order to terrify them and make them unmanageable; and then, with their swords, they attacked the keepers and drivers of the beasts, and the men who fought in connection with them. The success of this onset was so great, that the elephants soon became unmanageable. They even broke into the phalanx, and threw the ranks of it into confusion, overturning and trampling upon the men, and falling themselves upon the slain, under the wounds which the spears inflicted upon them. [Illustration: THE ROUT.] A remarkable incident is said to have occurred in the midst of this scene of confusion and terror, which strikingly illustrates the strength of the maternal instinct, even among brutes. It happened that there was a young elephant, and also its mother, in the same division of Pyrrhus's army. The former, though young, was sufficiently grown to serve as an elephant of war, and, as it happened, its post on the field of battle was not very far from that of its mother. In the course of the battle the young elephant was wounded, and it uttered immediately a piercing cry of pain and terror. The mother heard the cry, and recognized the voice that uttered it through all the din and uproar of the battle. She immediately became wholly ungovernable, and, breaking away from the control of her keepers, she rushed forward, trampling down every thing in her way, to rescue and protect her offspring. This incident occurred at the commencement of the attack which the Roman reserve made upon the elephants, and contributed very essentially to the panic and confusion which followed.