barriers
offered by the River Tagliamento and the many commanding heights of
the Carnic and the Noric Alps were as nothing to the triumphant
republicans; and from the heights that guard the province of Styria,
the genius of Napoleon flashed as a terrifying portent to the Court of
Vienna and the potentates of Central Europe. When the tricolour
standards were nearing the town of Leoben, the Emperor Francis sent
envoys to sue for peace;[72] and the preliminaries signed there,
within one hundred miles of the Austrian capital, closed the campaign
which a year previously had opened with so little promise for the
French on the narrow strip of land between the Maritime Alps and the
petty township of Savona.

These brilliant results were due primarily to the consummate
leadership of Bonaparte. His geographical instincts discerned the
means of profiting by natural obstacles and of turning them when they
seemed to screen his opponents. Prompt to divine their plans, he
bewildered them by the audacity of his combinations, which overbore
their columns with superior force at the very time when he seemed
doomed to succumb. Genius so commanding had not been displayed even by
Frederick or Marlborough. And yet these brilliant results could not
have been achieved by an army which rarely exceeded 45,000 men without
the strenuous bravery and tactical skill of the best generals of
division, Augereau, Massena, and Joubert, as well as of officers who
had shown their worth in many a doubtful fight; Lannes, the hero of
Lodi and Arcola; Marmont, noted for his daring advance of the guns at
Castiglione; Victor, who justified his name by hard fighting at La
Favorita; Murat, the _beau sabreur_, and Junot, both dashing cavalry
generals; and many more whose daring earned them a soldier's death in
order to gain glory for France and liberty for Italy. Still less ought
the soldiery to be forgotten; those troops, whose tattered uniforms
bespoke their ceaseless toils, who grumbled at the frequent lack of
bread, but, as Massena observed, never _before_ a battle, who even in
retreat never doubted the genius of their chief, and fiercely rallied
at the longed-for sign of fighting. The source of this marvellous
energy is not hard to discover. Their bravery was fed by that
wellspring of hope which had made of France a nation of free men
determined to free the millions beyond their frontiers. The French
columns were "equality on the march"; and the soldiery, anim