The men who were so panic-stricken on that fateful Sunday were not cowards. Many of them fought valiantly and stalwartly later in the war. They were simply victims of an insensate and highly contagious panic. They were not yet soldiers. They had not yet learned the first lesson of the soldier, namely, the imperative necessity of preserving organization, fighting every force encountered, and waiting for orders that must be obeyed at all costs, especially before giving way to the enemy. Their imaginations had been inflamed by the stories related at their camp fires respecting Stuart's mythical Mamelukes and their terrible skill in horsemanship. In brief all courage, all cohesion, and all soldierly quality had completely gone out of the Federal army. Men who had fought courageously an hour before had become as hares fleeing from pursuing hounds, and their flight knew no halting until they had passed the long bridge into the streets of Washington, where they paused only to gather breath for a still further flight if such should become necessary. In all this the confusion was increased and multiplied by the presence among the fugitives of a multitude of panic-stricken picnickers--Congressmen, civilians of every sort, and lavishly dressed women--who had gone out in carriages and carryalls to see the spectacle of a Federal army walking over the Confederates, and to follow the fleeing rebels all the way to Richmond, feasting meanwhile upon the champagne, the boned turkey, the sandwiches and the truffled game with which they had so lavishly supplied themselves that the Confederates fed fat for days afterwards upon the provisions that the picnickers abandoned in their flight. The presence of these people within the lines of a fighting army was in itself a conspicuous illustration of the utterly unmilitary and undisciplined condition of that army. Imagine, if it be possible to imagine, such a horde of sightseers attempting to follow Grant into the Wilderness, or Sherman on his march to the Sea! But the war was very young when the battle of Manassas was fought, and so these people were permitted to be there, to add to the completeness of a rout that could never have been equaled in its insanity at any later period of the conflict. As to the total number of men engaged on either side at Manassas, the statistics are varying and untrustworthy. It is certain that there was no very great or decisive disparity of numbers. The Federal army outnumbered that of the Confederates by only three or four thousand men. General Beauregard has estimated his total force, including the necessary garrison of the works, which of course was not actually engaged, at a total of 29,188 men. According to Dr. Rossiter Johnson, an unusually accurate and conscientious historian on the Northern side whose means of information are of the very best, McDowell's total force, including those detached to guard the line of retreat upon Washington, was about 34,000 men.