There were panics at Waterloo, not a few; and, what is remarkable, they happened principally on the side of the victors, the French suffering nothing from them till after the battle was lost, when the pressure of circumstances threw their beaten army into much confusion, and it was not possible that it should be otherwise.  Bylandt’s Dutch-Belgian brigade ran away from the French about two o’clock in the afternoon, and swept others with them in their rush, much to the rage of the British, some of whom hissed, hooted, and cursed, forgetting that quite as discreditable incidents had occurred in the course of the military history of their own country.  One portion of the British troops that desired to fire upon those exhibitors of “Dutch courage” actually belonged to the most conspicuous of the regiments that ran away at Falkirk, seventy years before.  At a later hour Trip’s Dutch-Belgian cavalry-brigade ran away in such haste and disorder that some squadrons of German hussars experienced great difficulty in maintaining their ground against the dense crowd of fugitives.  The Cumberland regiment of Hanoverian hussars was deliberately taken out of the field by its colonel when the shot began to fall about it, and neither orders nor entreaties nor arguments nor execrations could induce it to form under fire.  Nay, it refused to form across the high-road, out of fire, but “went altogether to the rear, spreading alarm and confusion all the way to Brussels.”  Nothing but the coming up of the cavalry-brigades of Vivian and Vandeleur, at a late hour, prevented large numbers of Wellington’s infantry from leaving the field.  The troops of Nassau fell “back en masse against the horses’ heads of the Tenth Hussars, who, keeping their files closed, prevented further retreat.”  The Tenth belonged to Vivian’s command.  D’Aubreme’s Dutch-Belgian infantry-brigade was prevented from running off when the Imperial Guard began their charge, only because Vandeleur’s cavalry-brigade was in their rear, with even the squadron-intervals closed, so that they had to elect between the French bayonet and the English sabre.  There was something resembling a temporary panic among Maitland’s British Guards, after the repulse of the first column of the Imperial Guard, but order was very promptly restored.  It is impossible to read any extended account of the Battle of Waterloo without seeing that it was a desperate business on the part of the Allies, and that, if the Prussians could have been kept out of the action, their English friends would have had an excellent chance to keep the field—­as the killed and wounded.  Wellington never had the ghost of a chance without the aid of Buelow, Zieten, and Bluecher.[C]