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of the rudest nations of India, effected conquests whicli extended from 

 Delhi to Calcutta and to Bombay, 1,000 miles east and south. In the 

 middle ages of European history, cavalry was the principal force, and the 

 infantry little better than a hastily levied rabble. Fire-arms restored 

 the infantry to its just position, and at present, what with rifled small-arms 

 and rifled cannons, to say nothing of Armstrong and Whitvvorth guns, 

 which would mow down a cavalry when it was only visible with a spy- 

 glass, an unsupporred cavalry would be annihilated During the 

 battle which my valued friend Lord Clyde fousj;ht with the rebels at 

 Cawnpore, the scene of the too-famous massacre, a Serjeant's party of 

 rifles was in skirmishing order in advance, when a body of Indian 

 cavalry, seeing them scattered, came down to cut them up individually ; 

 the Serjeant ordered the bugle to be sounded, the men formed, and by a 

 cool, well-directed fire quickly emptied many a saddle. The horsemen 

 fell, said an amateur, like an undermined wall. In an Indian 

 battle, known under the name of that of Luswari, fought in 1803, 

 the English cavalry, headed by the commander-in-chief, a brave 

 old man of sixty-five — the future Lord Lake — charged a Mahratta 

 infantry protected by seventy-five pieces of artillery, and was 

 defea|ed with heavy loss, but the infantry coming up, routed the 

 Mahratta infantry and captured the guns. The infantry that did 

 this consisted chiefly of one regiment, her Majesty's 76th. 



One of the first occasions in modern war that cavalry and infantry 

 were fairly opposed to each other occurred in 1704. Charles the Twelfth, 

 in his victorious career of conquest in Poland, which he himself compared 

 to a hunting party, was in pursuit of a Saxon corps of infantry comt 

 manded by the celebrated Marshal Schulemburgh, the same man tha- 

 had defended Corfu against the Turks, and, for that act, the Republic 

 of Venice erected a statue to him. Schulemburgh received the 

 charge of the veteran Swedish cavalry in three lines, the front rank 

 kneeling, and defeated it : he then retreated in hollow square, pursued 

 by the Swedes, under the King — passed through a wood, forded a small 

 river first, and in the course of the night, by boats, crossed the broad 

 Oder. Charles, who expected in the morning to compel him to surrender 

 at discretion, saw him safe and inaccessible on the opposite bank of the 

 river. It was the Swedish hero's first check, and he exclaimed with 

 generosity, " Schulemburgh has defeated me to-day." It is Voltaire 

 that tells the story, in a book as pleasant as any romance, and perhaps 

 in some degree partaking of one. 



You will observe that the Saxon infantry was drawn up in three 



