past, and
when fighting under my magnanimous father I myself proudly recognized
your valor. I am convinced that on the field of honor and glory you will
know how to justify, as well as to augment, your military renown.

"You will have as comrades those intrepid French troops--the conquerors
in so many distinguished campaigns--with whom you fought side by side at
Tchernaya, whom Napoleon III, always prompt to further the defence of a
righteous cause and the victory of civilization, generously sends in
great numbers to our aid. March then, confident of success, and wreathe
with fresh laurels that standard which, rallying from all quarters the
flower of Italian youth to its threefold colors, points out your task of
accomplishing that righteous and sacred enterprise--the independence of
Italy, wherein we find our war-cry."

The Austrian army to the number of one hundred seventy thousand
men--besides those remaining in the Lombardo-Venetian fortresses--was
commanded by General Gyulai, the successor of Radetzky, who had died the
year before, at the age of ninety-one. Gyulai meant to attack and rout
the Sardinian army before it could join its French allies. On April 29th
he crossed the Ticino; then spreading out his forces along the Sesia, he
reconnoitred as far as Chivasso. These districts abound in cultivated
rice-fields and are intersected by many canals: it was therefore easy,
by flooding the ground, to hinder the march of the Austrian troops on
Turin.

Meanwhile, the Sardinian army, composed of sixty thousand men, awaited
the arrival of the French forces on the right bank of the Po. On May
12th Napoleon III, already preceded into Italy by one hundred twenty
thousand of his men, debarked at Genoa, and on the 14th was at
Alessandria, where, near the mouth of the Tanaro, the allied armies met.
The Austrian troops covered a long tract, from Novara to Vercelli, then
extended down the line of the Sesia as far as the Po, and thence reached
the mouth of the Tanaro. Gyulai, seeing the enemy concentrated on the
right bank of the Po, believed that Napoleon. III intended crossing that
river in the direction of Piacenza--as Napoleon I had crossed in
1796--and so massed his troops to the south. At this juncture a portion
of his army encountered the French and Sardinians at Montebello, where
the extreme right wing of the allies was posted. The Austrian General
met with such a determined resistance that he imagined this must be the
ce