the command of Charleston as an indignity. Yet when it was offered him, he answered: "I have no preference to express. Will go wherever ordered. Do for the best." 31 Surely it was the response of a noble and finely tempered spirit.
As regards purely military qualities Beauregard was in many ways interesting. He was a fighter, there can be no question of that; had martial instincts that were French, if nothing else was, the furia francese in its native purity. How characteristic are the trifling anecdotes of his youth. When he was a boy of nine, a grown man teased him past bearing. The child seized a stick and flew at his tormentor with such stormy violence that he was obliged to retreat to a shed and remain there till higher powers released him.32 Again, the boy was walking solemnly into church to his first communion. He heard a drum outside, forgot everything, and ran from the very altar. 33
As a mature soldier, he had perfect calmness and control in strain and exposure. Defeat could not alter him. He took his measures and gave his orders with promptness and lucidity. When the right moment came, he could rush to lead a charge and sweep every man along with him. In critical dispatches he could drop all his rodomontade and rhetoric. Does not this one, to Van Dorn asking for arms, ring with the crystal sonority of Napoleon's? "I regret I have none; could not remove all I took, but we will take more. Come on!"
