Our next capitulations must be selected
from history nearer to us, and therefore
more interesting than that of Rome. The
humiliation in the cases we now cite may
have been slighter, but then it was our
forefathers' humiliation, and the dates render
them more useful as points of comparison
with the recent overwhelming disaster at
Sedan. Let us take an instance from the
war with America, which gave the United
States their independence: a war which
never throve in our hands. Our generals
were stiff, formal martinets, who, disdaining
the Yankee sharpshooters, and unwilling
or unable to adapt themselves to the
mode of warfare required in a new country,
entangled their armies in pathless forests,
and placed their regiments where they were
butchered without the power even of taking
a dying revenge. Burgoyne was a leader
of this sort. He arrived at Quebec with
seven thousand one hundred and seventy-
three English and German soldiers in May,
1777. Investing Ticonderoga, he threw a
bridge of boats over the Hudson, and
encamped on the heights of Saratoga. He
was soon attacked there by Gates, the
American general, who obtained considerable
advantage over him in two actions
near Stillwater. Burgoyne soon found
himself with little more than five thousand
men, no forage for his dying horses, and
food running short. His Indian allies
deserted him, no diversion was made in his
favour from New York. At last,
completely hemmed in and unable to break
away, the outwitted general and his three
thousand five hundred men laid down their
arms. This victory gave the colonists the
first real hope of final independence.

Nor was this to be the only disgrace of
England during the ill-omened war. In
1781 Lord Cornwallis, to revenge the defeat
of Lieutenant-Colonel Tarleton by General
Morgan at the battle of the Cowpens,
drove Morgan out of North Carolina, and
defeated General Greene at Guilford. But
in the mean time the French and Americans
were converging on Virginia. Seeing an
opening, Washington promptly abandoned
his intended attack on New York, and bore
down on the English general. He found
Cornwallis in an embarrassed position at
Yorktown, on the banks of the York river,
with seven hundred of his men on the
opposite shore. Yorktown was instantly
invested, batteries opened, and two English
redoubts carried. Cornwallis planned a bold
escape by crossing to the opposite point,
mounting his infantry on cavalry horses,
cutting his way through the French
besiegers, and breaking through to Maryland,
Pennsylvania, and Jersey, to join the
English in New York. But the plan did not
work, and on October the 19th, 1781, he
surrendered, with seven thousand and
seventy-three men, together with his military
chest and several ships of war.

But when we come to the wars of
Napoleon, we meet with capitulations of much
greater magnitude. Here was a great
player, indeed, and though the chess-board
was not so large, the checkmates were more
sudden, and were more tremendous in their
results. The first Italian campaign of
Napoleon (1796) was a brilliant sequence of
victories. From Monte-Notte to Lodi, from
Rovere to Rivoli, from Rivoli to Arcola, the
French carried all before them, and ended in
cooping the baffled Wurmser and his army
within the walls of Mantua. Nine thousand
of the Austrian garrison were soon down
with marsh fever, and already nearly all the
cavalry horses had been killed and salted
for food.

After a brave and sullen defence, Wurmser,
with no prospect of relief, and with
only three days' more provisions, surrendered
on honourable and generous terms,
as Napoleon was eager to march on Rome
and Venice. Bonaparte refused to be
personally present when the brave old soldier
surrendered his sword, and his twenty
thousand men laid down their muskets. In
that six months' siege the Germans are
said to have lost by disease and in sallies
twenty- seven thousand men.

But at Ulm, in 1805, Napoleon had a
still greater triumph. The French had
advanced to reconquer Bavaria from the
Austrians under Mack; who, with a
Tyrolese, Dalmatian, and Italian army, took
the field against them. Mack, deserted by
the Archduke Ferdinand, presently found
himself with thirty thousand men shut
up in Ulm. In vain he waited for the
arrival of Russian succour, or for the
Archduke Charles to shake off Massenna,
who was hanging 011 his haunches. After a
short interval of frustrated hope, Mack
surrendered with his twenty-seven thousand
men. Napoleon stood by a watch-fire on
a hillock at the foot of the Michaelsberg, as
the Austrian soldiers filed out between the
French infantry and cavalry. The Austrians
it is said, flung down their arms with
irrestrainable anger.

Great checkmates were those of Ulm
and Mantua, but, after all, were they to be
compared to that which so lately ended at