al
engagement, Provera attacking in front, and Wurmser, by
preconcerted arrangement, sallying out from behind at the head of a
strong force. The latter was thrown back into the town by Serurier,
who commanded the besiegers, but only after a fierce and deadly
conflict on the causeway. This was the road from Mantua to a
country-seat of its dukes known as "La Favorita," and was chosen for
the sortie as having an independent citadel. Victor, with some of the
troops brought in from Rivoli, the "terrible fifty-seventh
demi-brigade," as Bonaparte designated them, attacked Provera at the
same time, and threw his ranks into such disorder that he was glad to
surrender his entire force. This conflict of January sixteenth, before
Mantua, is known as the battle of La Favorita, from the stand made by
Serurier on the road to that residence. Its results were six thousand
prisoners, among them the Vienna volunteers with the Empress's banner,
and many guns. In his fifty-fifth year this French soldier of fortune
had finally reached the climax of his career. Having fought in the
Seven Years' War, in Portugal and in Corsica, the Revolution gave him
his opening. He assisted Scherer in the capture of the Maritime Alps,
and fought with leonine power at Mondovi and these succeeding
movements. While his fortunes were linked with Bonaparte's they
mounted higher and higher. As governor of Venice he was so upright and
incorruptible as to win the sobriquet "Virgin of Italy." The
discouragement of defeat under Moreau in 1798 led him to retire into
civil life, where he was a stanch Bonapartist and faithful official to
the end of the Napoleonic epoch, when he rallied to the Bourbons.

Bonaparte estimated that so far in the Italian campaigns the army of
the republic had fought within four days two pitched battles, and had
besides been six times engaged; that they had taken, all told, nearly
twenty-five thousand prisoners, including a lieutenant-general, two
generals, and fifteen colonels; had captured twenty standards, with
sixty pieces of artillery, and had killed or wounded six thousand men.

This short campaign of Rivoli was the turning-point of the war, and
may be said to have shaped the history of Europe for twenty years.
Chroniclers dwell upon those few moments at St. Mark and the plateau
of Rivoli, wondering what the result would have been if the Austrian
corps which came to turn the rear of Rivoli had arrived five minutes
sooner. But an accura