Exact statistics in such a case are of no moment. Where armed mobs, undisciplined, ill-organized, and unused to the strenuous work of war, meet in battle quite other things than numbers are apt to be decisive. The Federal commanders reported a loss of 470 killed, 1,071 wounded and 1,793 missing--a total loss of 3,334 men. The Confederate loss was officially reported at 387 killed, 1,582 wounded and 13 missing, making a total of 1,982. If greater attention is here given to this first important battle than to others of larger magnitude to be treated in future pages of this work, it is because of the extraordinary effect the battle had, as will be set forth in the next chapter, and because of the peculiar danger to which the Confederate victory for a time subjected the Federal cause. CHAPTER XV THE PARALYSIS OF VICTORY On the evening of the twenty-first day of July, 1861, the Confederate army at Manassas rested upon one of the completest and most spectacular victories that had ever been won by any army over any adversary. The assailing army had not only been repelled--all possibility of resistance was gone from it. Not only had it been driven pell-mell from the field with every circumstance of demoralization that could add picturesqueness to its flight, but the uttermost link of cohesion that could hold its battalions together for any purpose of resistance was completely broken up and destroyed. Divisions were dissipated, brigades were broken into bits, regiments no longer existed and even companies were scattered to the winds. Only demoralized and panic-stricken fugitives, each madly seeking safety, remained. That which had been a most gallant "army with banners" at sunrise had become before nightfall a panic-stricken mob without possibility of cohesion or stamina and utterly without a sense of soldierly duty. Then followed the strangest event of the war. This victory, the completest, the most picturesque, the most absolute that could be imagined, had the effect of paralyzing the winners of it to an extent to which even defeat could not have done. The story is too strange and historically of too much import to be told otherwise than in its fulness. Let us first consider the character and composition of the two armies that fought at Manassas. The Confederate volunteers were enlisted for twelve months. The term might have been made longer without the loss of a volunteer. For these young men, whatever their contract with the Government might stipulate, fully intended to remain in the service so long as the war should last. They felt it to be their own personal war and most of them had nothing else to do than fight it out to the end, however long it might endure. Indeed it was certain that so long as it lasted no young man of the South could long remain out of the army without incurring damning disgrace at home.