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The Roman vanguard dispersed; a Paelignian cohort was overthrown and almost annihilated; the legions themselves hurriedly retreated till they reached a hill close upon the Roman camp. Here the fortune of the day changed.
Down to the minutest detail, the same causes and actions had produced the same results a century earlier in the Netherlands; and even as, first, King William of Prussia, and then revolutionary France, had devastated the Netherlands, so had the Kaiser's legions overrun England. It was not for lack of warning that our politicians had blindly followed so fatal a lead.
Taking advantage of a moment when the watch on the walls had relaxed its vigilance, Caesar marshalled his legions behind his works, and poured them suddenly against the opposing ramparts. They gained the summit of the walls, which the defenders abandoned without a blow, rallying, however, in the middle of the town, in such hasty array as the emergency would allow.
Thus the King had about 800 or 900 Swiss and little more than one battalion of the National Guard. Mandat, one of the six heads of the legions of the National Guard, to whose turn the command fell on that day, was true to his duty, but was sent for to the Hotel de Ville and assassinated.
Then, in this combat of legions of saints against Satan are developed the fearful sufferings from persecutions.
On their arrival in Thrace, they were joined by Richomer, count of the domestics; and the auxiliaries of the West, that marched under his banner, were composed of the Gallic legions, reduced indeed, by a spirit of desertion, to the vain appearances of strength and numbers.
In the midst of the camp stood the king's tent, surrounded by foot and chariot-guards. The auxiliary troops were encamped in divisions according to their nationality, and between them the Egyptian legions of heavy-armed soldiers and archers.
The appointed number of men was left with Murray; and Wallace, joining his other chieftains, bade his friend and honest servant adieu. He now awakened to a sense of the present scene, and speeded his legions over his and dale, till they entered on the once luxuriant banks of the Annan-this territory of some of the noblest in Scotland, till Bruce, their chief, deserted them.
When the legions were enrolled, the men were ill armed, undrilled, and unprovided a mere mob, gathered hastily together and ignorant of the first elements of their duty. With the officers it was still worse. The subordinate commands fell to young patricians, carpet knights who went on campaigns with their families of slaves.
The Roman legions obeyed because of their regard for their citizenship; the soldiers of Cromwell and the Japanese from religious motives, the Germans from fear of their superior officers, and the British and French armies of to-day from patriotism and a high sense of duty. When a soldier obeys from a sense of duty he will "carry on" even if his officers are killed or disabled.
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