the Emperor declared. “Let us carry our victorious Eagles to the Pillars of Hercules.”But if Wellington was condemned to be called the “hideous leopard,” so were all those who followed him, and his Commanders divided their troops into groups. There were the “furious leopards,” the “lean leopards,” the “vicious leopards,” and the “loathsome leopards.”“Let us teach them to loathe us,” Lord Cheriton had said before the Battle of Vitoria and the French had fled before the ferocity and deadly aim of the loathsome leopards.Those who served under Lord Cheriton knew him to be hard and ruthless, a man who would drive those who served him to the utmost limit of endurance as he drove himself.He was also completely just.His men did not love him, but they respected him and as one trooper was heard to say:“‘E ’ad I lashed to a pulp for plunderin’, but by God, in a fight I’d rather have ’im with I than the Almighty ’imself!”The fact that he had in a strange way a look of a leopard added to the legends which grew up round him during the years of war.As Wellington knew, he had not only the essential attributes of leadership, but that indefinable sixth sense which could at the last minute turn a defeat into a victory.“Only the loathsome leopard could have pulled that one off!”
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