bridges ready for crossing the ditches and canals; but the enemy stood
in good order, and three days' hard fighting had nearly exhausted his
own men. In one of his conversations at St. Helena, he thus told the
sequel. "At Arcola I gained the battle with twenty-five horsemen. I
perceived the critical moment of lassitude in either army--when the
oldest and bravest would have been glad to be in their tents. All my men
had been engaged. Three times I had been obliged to re-establish the
battle. There remained to me but some twenty-five _Guides_. I sent them
round on the flank of the enemy with three trumpets, bidding them blow
loud and charge furiously. _Here is the French cavalry_, was the cry;
and they took to flight."... The Austrians doubted not that Murat and
all the horse had forced a way through the bogs; and at that moment
Buonaparte commanding a general assault in front, the confusion became
hopeless. Alvinzi retreated finally, though in decent order, upon
Montebello.

It was at Arcola that Muiron, who ever since the storming of Little
Gibraltar had lived on terms of brotherlike intimacy with Napoleon,
seeing a bomb about to explode threw himself between it and his general,
and thus saved his life at the cost of his own. Napoleon, to the end of
his life, remembered and regretted this heroic friend.

In these three days Buonaparte lost 8000 men: the slaughter among his
opponents must have been terrible. Davidowich, in never coming up to
join Alvinzi after his success over Vaubois, and Wurmser, in remaining
quiet at Mantua, when by advancing with his garrison he might have
incommoded the French rear, were guilty of grievous misjudgment or
indecision. Once more the rapid combinations of Napoleon had rendered
all the efforts of the Austrian cabinet abortive. For two months after
the last day of Arcola, he remained the undisturbed master of Lombardy.