rely lain
down in ranks, upon the margin of the Tagliamento, no longer adequately
guarded--and had forded the stream ere the Austrian line of battle could
be formed. In the action which followed (March 12) the troops of the
Archduke displayed much gallantry, but every effort to dislodge Napoleon
failed; at length retreat was judged necessary. The French followed hard
behind. They stormed Gradisca, where they made 5000 prisoners; and--the
Archduke pursuing his retreat--occupied in the course of a few days
Trieste, Fiume, and every stronghold in Carinthia. In the course of a
campaign of twenty days, the Austrians fought Buonaparte ten times, but
the overthrow on the Tagliamento was never recovered; and the Archduke,
after defending Styria inch by inch as he had Carinthia, at length
adopted the resolution of reaching Vienna by forced marches, there to
gather round him whatever force the loyalty of his nation could muster,
and make a last stand beneath the walls of the capital.

This plan, at first sight the mere dictate of despair, was in truth that
of a wise and prudent general. The Archduke had received intelligence
from two quarters of events highly unfavourable to the French. General
Laudon, the Austrian commander on the Tyrol frontier, had descended
thence with forces sufficient to overwhelm Buonaparte's lieutenants on
the upper Adige, and was already in possession of the whole Tyrol, and
of several of the Lombard towns. Meanwhile the Venetian Senate, on
hearing of these Austrian successes, had plucked up courage to throw
aside their flimsy neutrality, and not only declared war against France,
but encouraged their partizans in Verona to open the contest with an
inhuman massacre of the French wounded in the hospitals of that city.
The vindictive Italians, wherever the French party was inferior in
numbers, resorted to similar atrocities. The few troops left in Lombardy
by Napoleon were obliged to shut themselves up in garrisons, which the
insurgent inhabitants of the neighbouring districts invested. The
Venetian army passed the frontier; and, in effect, Buonaparte's means
of deriving supplies of any kind from his rear were for the time wholly
cut off. It was not wonderful that the Archduke should, under such
circumstances, anticipate great advantage from enticing the French army
into the heart of Austria; where, divided by many wide provinces and
mighty mountains and rivers from France, and with Italy once more in
arms