Then came Napoleon, and though the Cavalry had not such a pre-eminent place in his armies as in those of Frederick the Great, for it was not as efficient, yet it was used in vast numbers and at times with tremendous effect. Murat was perhaps the most conspicuous figure among all Napoleon’s Marshals, and other Cavalry leaders made great names for themselves. At Marengo, at Austerlitz, and in many more of Napoleon’s famous battles, the French horsemen won undying renown; and if at last his Cuirassiers had to recoil before the fire of the British squares at Waterloo, every one knows with what magnificent courage and devotion they strove again and again to cut their way to victory. Among Napoleon’s enemies too, Prussian and Austrian, Russian and British, the Cavalry did much fine work throughout; and it is not perhaps too much to say that the Russian horsemen, especially the Cossacks, by destroying his famous squadrons in the great retreat, were among the most notable causes of his downfall. This much is certain, that when he fell the Cavalry of Europe held a high place in the battlefield. Infantry had become the backbone of most armies, and the power of Artillery had vastly increased, but Cavalry was still a powerful and necessary arm. Then came another marked change in the conditions of war. A generation after the Conqueror’s death the rifle took the place of the smooth-bore musket in the hands of the Infantry, and the same principle was applied to cannon. The result was that the power of firearms was greatly increased in range and accuracy, and that the value of Cavalry in battle was proportionately lowered. Soon afterwards the introduction of breech-loading gave the rifled weapons a vastly greater rapidity of fire, which also told heavily against the mounted arm. It was one thing for Cavalry to remain out of range, a few hundred yards away, and then to charge against the slow and inaccurate fire of a smooth-bore musket. It was a very different thing for them to advance from a much greater distance, against a rifle which not only carried three times as far as the musket, but shot straight, and could be loaded in a quarter of the time. From the middle of the nineteenth century it began to be held, at all events in France and England, that the chance of a successful attack by Cavalry armed only with the sword or lance upon Infantry in the battlefield, except under very unusual circumstances, was practically at an end. It seemed a fatal blow to the system of Frederick, and to the hope of the horseman in his long rivalry with the foot soldier.