is undeniable greatness in the disciplined courage, and in the
love of honour, which make the combatants confront agony and
destruction. And the powers of the human intellect are rarely
more strongly displayed than they are in the Commander, who
regulates, arrays, and wields at his will these masses of armed
disputants; who, cool yet daring, in the midst of peril reflects
on all, and provides for all, ever ready with fresh resources and
designs, as the vicissitudes of the storm of slaughter require.
But these qualities, however high they may appear, are to be
found in the basest as well as in the noblest of mankind.
Catiline was as brave a soldier as Leonidas, and a much better
officer. Alva surpassed the Prince of Orange in the field; and
Suwarrow was the military superior of Kosciusko. To adopt the
emphatic words of Byron:--

"'Tis the Cause makes all,
Degrades or hallows courage in its fall."

There are some battles, also, which claim our attention,
independently of the moral worth of the combatants, on account of
their enduring importance, and by reason of the practical
influence on our own social and political condition, which we can
trace up to the results of those engagements. They have for us
an abiding and actual interest, both while we investigate the
chain of causes and effects, by which they have helped to make us
what we are; and also while we speculate on what we probably
should have been, if any one of those battles had come to a
different termination. Hallam has admirably expressed this in
his remarks on the victory gained by Charles Martel, between
Tours and Poictiers, over the invading Saracens.