said, 'here we all are together. Now, get it well into
your pates that in a fortnight's time from now you will be the victors,
and dressed in new clothes; you shall all have greatcoats, strong
gaiters, and famous pairs of shoes; but, my children, you will have to
march on Milan to take them, where all these things are.'

"So they marched. The French, crushed as flat as a pancake, held up
their heads again. There were thirty thousand of us tatterdemalions
against eighty thousand swaggerers of Germans--fine tall men and well
equipped; I can see them yet. Then Napoleon, who was only Bonaparte
in those days, breathed goodness knows what into us, and on we marched
night and day. We rap their knuckles at Montenotte; we hurry on to
thrash them at Rivoli, Lodi, Arcola, and Millesimo, and we never let
them go. The army came to have a liking for winning battles. Then
Napoleon hems them in on all sides, these German generals did not know
where to hide themselves so as to have a little peace and comfort;
he drubs them soundly, cribs ten thousand of their men at a time by
surrounding them with fifteen hundred Frenchmen, whom he makes to spring
up after his fashion, and at last he takes their cannon, victuals,
money, ammunition, and everything they have that is worth taking; he
pitches them into the water, beats them on the mountains, snaps at them
in the air, gobbles them up on the earth, and thrashes them everywhere.

"There are the troops in full feather again! For, look you, the Emperor
(who, for that matter, was a wit) soon sent for the inhabitant, and told
him that he had come there to deliver him. Whereupon the civilian finds
us free quarters and makes much of us, so do the women, who showed great
discernment. To come to a final end; in Ventose '96, which was at that
time what the month of March is now, we had been driven up into a corner
of the Pays des Marmottes; but after the campaign, lo and behold! we
were the masters of Italy, just as Napoleon had prophesied. And in the
month of March following, in one year and in two campaigns, he brings
us within sight of Vienna; we had made a clean sweep of them. We had
gobbled down three armies one after another, and taken the conceit out
of four Austrian generals; one of them, an old man who had white hair,
had been roasted like a rat in the straw before Mantua. The kings were
suing for mercy on their knees. Peace had been won. Could a mere mortal
have done that? No. God helped him