fresh division of the enemy that had come upon the ground, contrived by irresolution and mismanagement to bring the Third Dragoon Guards under enfilading fire of the French cannon, and to throw the whole of the six squadrons into confusion. In any case it is certain that the brilliant attack of the Fifteenth was insufficiently supported, and that Mansel and his brigade, justly or unjustly, lay under reproach, until two days later they redeemed their good name beyond all chance of cavil. The casualties of the French in this action were eight hundred men killed and four hundred wounded, besides three guns taken; while the Fifteenth escaped with a loss of thirty-one men and thirty-seven horses killed and wounded, and the Leopold Hussars with a loss of ten men and eleven horses killed and wounded and the same number missing. The Emperor of Austria conferred on the officers of the Fifteenth a gold medal and the much-coveted order of Maria Theresa; and the regiment still bears on its appointments the name of Villers-en-Cauchies. With a little more luck, or, it may be, a little better management, Otto would have achieved one of the greatest successes ever recorded of cavalry against infantry, and annihilated the whole of the force that had moved out from Cambrai.
As matters stood, however, the reverse to the French produced little effect on Pichegru. Successive reinforcements had more than made good his losses; and on the 24th of April the combined strength of the armies of the North and of the Ardennes, not counting fifty thousand men employed as garrisons, was little short of two hundred thousand men free for service in the field, or nearly two to one of Coburg's force. Relying upon this numerical superiority the French General started for Lille, in order from thence to direct
