CXIX.

EVENTS GREAT, BECAUSE OF THEIR RESULTS.

Great actions and striking occurrences having excited a temporary
admiration, often pass away and are forgotten, because they leave no
lasting results, affecting the prosperity and happiness of communities.
Such is frequently the fortune of the most brilliant military achievements.
Of the ten thousand battles which have been fought, of all the fields
fertilized with carnage, of the banners which have been bathed in blood, of
the warriors who have hoped that they had risen from the field of conquest
to a glory as bright and as durable as the stars, how few that continue
long to interest mankind! The victory of yesterday is reversed by the
defeat of to-day; the star of military glory, rising like a meteor, like a
meteor has fallen; disgrace and disaster hang on the heels of conquest and
renown; victor and vanquished presently pass away to oblivion, and the
world goes on in its course, with the loss only of so many lives and so
much treasure.

But if this be frequently, or generally, the fortune of military
achievements, it is not always so. There are enterprises, military as well
as civil, which sometimes check the current of events, give a new turn to
human affairs, and transmit their consequences through ages. We see their
importance in their results, and call them great because great things
follow. There have been battles which have fixed the fate of nations. These
come down to us in history with a solid and permanent interest not created
by a display of glittering armor, the rush of adverse battalions, the
sinking and rising of pennons, the flight, the pursuit, and the victory;