You are here

قراءة كتاب Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 3, no. 18, November, 1851

تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"

‏اللغة: English
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 3, no. 18, November, 1851

Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 3, no. 18, November, 1851

تقييمك:
0
No votes yet
دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
الصفحة رقم: 7

fall upon my ear without awakening within me the emotions of childhood. The Angelus bell transported me back to pensive yet pleasant memories, when in the midst of earnest thoughts and burdened with the weight of an imperial crown, I heard its first sounds under the shady woods of St. Cloud. And often have I been supposed to have been revolving the plan of a campaign or digesting an imperial law, when my thoughts were wholly absorbed in dwelling upon the first impressions of my youth. Religion is in fact the dominion of the soul. It is the hope of life, the anchor of safety, the deliverance from evil. What a service has Christianity rendered to humanity! What a power would it still have, did its ministers comprehend their mission."

Early in November the Austrians commenced their march. The cold winds of winter were sweeping through the defiles of the Tyrol, and the summits of the mountains were white with snow. But it was impossible to postpone operations; for unless Wurmser were immediately relieved Mantua must fall, and with it would fall all hopes of Austrian dominion in Italy. The hardy old soldier had killed all his horses, and salted them down for provisions; but even that coarse fare was nearly exhausted, and he had succeeded in sending word to Alvinzi that he could not possibly hold out more than six weeks longer. Napoleon, the moment he heard that the Austrians were on the move, hastened to the head-quarters of the army at Verona. He had stationed General Vaubois, with twelve thousand men, a few miles north of Trent, in a narrow defile among the mountains to watch the Austrians, and to arrest their first advances. Vaubois and his division, overwhelmed by numbers, retreated, and thus vastly magnified the peril of the army. The moment Napoleon received the disastrous intelligence, he hastened, with such troops as he could collect, like the sweep of the wind, to rally the retreating forces and check the progress of the enemy. And here he singularly displayed that thorough knowledge of human nature which enabled him so effectually to control and to inspire his army. Deeming it necessary, in his present peril, that every man should be a hero, and that every regiment should be nerved by the determination to conquer or to die, he resolved to make a severe example of those whose panic had proved so nearly fatal to the army. Like a whirlwind, surrounded by his staff, he swept into the camp, and ordered immediately the troops to be collected in a circle around him. He sat upon his horse, and every eye was fixed upon the pale and wan, and wasted features of their young and adored general. With a stern and saddened voice he exclaimed, "Soldiers! I am displeased with you. You have evinced neither discipline nor valor. You have allowed yourselves to be driven from positions where a handful of resolute men might have arrested an army. You are no longer French soldiers! Chief of the staff, cause it to be written on their standards, They are no longer of the army of Italy."

The influence of these words upon those impassioned men, proud of their renown and proud of their leader, was almost inconceivable. The terrible rebuke fell upon them like a thunderbolt. Tears trickled down the cheeks of these battered veterans. Many of them actually groaned aloud in their anguish. The laws of discipline could not restrain the grief which burst from their ranks. They broke their array, crowded around the general, exclaiming, "we have been misrepresented; the enemy were three to our one; try us once more; place us in the post of danger, and see if we do not belong to the army of Italy!" Napoleon relented, and spoke kindly to them, promising to afford them an early opportunity to retrieve their reputation. In the next battle he placed them in the van. Contending against fearful odds they accomplished all that mortal valor could accomplish, rolling back upon the Austrians the tide of victory. Such was the discipline of Napoleon. He needed no blood-stained lash to scar the naked backs of his men. He ruled over mind. His empire was in the soul. "My soldiers," said he "are my children." The effect of this rebuke was incalculable. There was not an officer or a soldier in the army who was not moved by it. It came exactly at the right moment, when it was necessary that every man in the army should be inspired with absolute desperation of valor.

Alvinzi sent a peasant across the country to carry dispatches to Wurmser in the beleaguered city. The information of approaching relief was written upon very thin paper, in a minute hand, and inclosed in a ball of wax, not much larger than a pea. The spy was intercepted. He was seen to swallow the ball. The stomach was compelled to surrender its trust, and Napoleon became acquainted with Alvinzi's plan of operation. He left ten thousand men around the walls of Mantua, to continue the blockade, and assembled the rest of his army, consisting only of fifteen thousand, in the vicinity of Verona. The whole valley of the Adige was now swarming with the Austrian battalions. At night the wide horizon seemed illuminated with the blaze of their camp fires. The Austrians, conscious of their vast superiority in numbers, were hastening to envelop the French. Already forty thousand men were circling around the little band of fifteen thousand who were rallied under the eagles of France. The Austrians, wary in consequence of their past defeats, moved with the utmost caution, taking possession of the most commanding positions. Napoleon, with sleepless vigilance, watched for some exposed point, but in vain. The soldiers understood the true posture of affairs, and began to feel disheartened, for their situation was apparently desperate. The peril of the army was so great, that even the sick and the wounded in the hospitals at Milan, Pavia, and Lodi, voluntarily left their beds and hastened, emaciate with suffering, and many of them with their wounds still bleeding, to resume their station in the ranks. The soldiers were deeply moved by this affecting spectacle, so indicative of their fearful peril and of the devotion of their comrades to the interests of the army. Napoleon resolved to give battle immediately, before the Austrians should accumulate in still greater numbers.

A dark, cold winter's storm was deluging the ground with rain, as Napoleon roused his troops from the drenched sods upon which they were slumbering. The morning had not yet dawned through the surcharged clouds, and the freezing wind, like a tornado, swept the bleak hills. It was an awful hour in which to go forth to encounter mutilation and death. The enterprise was desperate. Fifteen thousand Frenchmen, with frenzied violence, were to hurl themselves upon the serried ranks of forty thousand foes. The horrid carnage soon began. The roar of the battle, the shout of onset, and the shriek of the dying, mingled in midnight gloom, with the appalling rush and wail of the tempest. The ground was so saturated with rain that it was almost impossible for the French to drag their cannon through the miry ruts. As the darkness of night passed and the dismal light of a stormy day was spread around them, the rain changed to snow, and the struggling French were smothered and blinded by the storm of sleet whirled furiously into their faces. Through the live-long day this terrific battle of man and of the elements raged unabated. When night came the exhausted soldiers, drenched with rain and benumbed with cold, threw themselves upon the blood-stained snow, in the midst of the dying and of the dead. Neither party claimed the victory, and neither acknowledged defeat. No pen can describe, nor can imagination conceive, the horrors of the dark and wailing night of storm and sleet which ensued. Through the long hours the groans of the wounded, scattered over many miles swept by the battle, blended in mournful unison with the wailings of the tempest. Two thousand of Napoleon's little band were left dead upon the field, and a still larger number of Austrian corpses were covered with the winding-sheet of

Pages