Coolness and courage.
With great decision of character he combined unrivalled coolness and courage.
He appeared absolutely insensible to fear.
The roar of cannon, the rattle of musketry, the clash of squadrons, anti the shock and confusion of battle seemed to compose rather than to agitate him. His heroic courage and sublime composure enabled him in the greatest confusion of battle to readily discover the slighest weakness of his assailant and to promptly repair any mistake or disorder of his own. He watched the tide of battle with the same composure as that with which the expert chess-player watches the movements of his opponent.
So calm was he amid every difficulty and so composed was he amid every danger, that what had been so eloquently said of the great
Conde is eminently true of him, that those fighting around him declared that “if they had an affair of importance to transact with him they would have chosen for it that very moment when the fires of battle were raging around him, so much did his spirit appear elevated above them, and, as it were, inspired in such terrible encounters, like those lofty mountains whose summits rising above clouds and storm find their serenity in their elevation and lose not a single ray of the light by which they are enveloped.”
