Now let Dermoncourt speak; from his version we shall really see what my father's deeds were; for my father always effaced himself in his own reports, above all when speaking of himself:—
"The army stopped at Bolzano for forty-eight hours, a long halt for this campaign, which was more like a race than a war. General Delmas remained at Bolzano to keep an eye on Laudon's troops, and on the road from Innsbruck. The rest of the army, with General Dumas at its head, prepared to march next day for Brixen, to try and catch up with General Kerpen's army, which had gone in that direction.
"The road we followed skirted a kind of watershed, half stream, half torrent, which had its source among the Noire mountains, and which, swollen by the waters of the Riente, flows into the Adige, below Bolzano. Sometimes the road ran along the right bank of the river; sometimes, crossing the stream, it followed the left bank; then, after several miles, it would cross back to the other side again. The retreat of the Austrians had been so rapid that they had not even blown up the bridges. We marched after them at double quick pace, and we were almost in despair at ever overtaking them, when our scouts came to tell us that they had barricaded the bridge of Clausen with carts, and this time really seemed to intend to dispute our crossing.
"The general at once set off with fifty dragoons, to examine the nature of the ground: I followed him.
"When we reached the bridge of Clausen, we found it effectually barred, with infantry and cavalry behind. We thought that, when the general had examined the position, he would wait for reinforcements; but he never dreamt of such a thing.
"'I Come on, come on,' he said—'I want twenty-five men on foot to clear this bridge for me!'
"Twenty-five dragoons threw their horses' bridles into their comrades' hands, and rushed to the bridge in the very middle of the fire of the Austrian infantry.
"It was not easy work; for, to begin with, the waggons were heavy to move, and the bullets fell like hail.
"'Come along, lazy-bones,' the general called out to me; 'aren't you going to lend a hand to these good fellows?'
"I dismounted and put my shoulder to the waggons; but the general, finding that the bridge could not be cleared quickly enough, leapt from his horse, and he too came to help us. In an instant he did more single-handed with his herculean strength than the twenty-five of us together. When I say twenty-five I exaggerate; the Austrian bullets had made their gaps, and five or six of our men were disabled. Fortunately about sixty foot-soldiers now came up to our assistance at a run. They distributed themselves on both sides of the bridge, and opened hot fire, which soon began to distress the Austrians, and to prevent them from aiming straight. It ended in our overturning the carts into the torrent—an easy matter, as the bridge had no parapet.
"Scarcely was the passage free than the general leapt to his horse and, without waiting to see if he were being followed or not, he dashed down the village street leading from the bridge.
"In vain did I shout after him, 'But, General, there are only the two of us!'
"He did not hear, or rather, he would not hear. Suddenly we found ourselves face to face with a platoon of cavalry, upon which the general fell; and, as the men were all in line, with one single back-handed blow of his sabre he killed the quartermaster, gashed the soldier horribly who was next to him, and with the point of the weapon wounded a third. The Austrians not conceiving it possible that two men would have the audacity to charge them thus, wheeled to the right-about; but the horses stumbled, and horses and riders fell pell-mell. Our dragoons came up at this moment with the foot-soldiers astride behind them, and the whole of the Austrian platoon was captured.
"I paid the general a compliment upon his sabre blow, telling him I had never seen its equal.
"'That is because you are a greenhorn,' he replied, 'but do your best not to get killed, and before the finish of the campaign you will have seen plenty like it.'
"We had taken a hundred prisoners. But he soon descried a considerable body of cavalry climbing a mountain at the other side of the village. No sooner did the general see this body than he pointed them out to his dragoons, and, leaving the prisoners to the care of the infantry, he set off with his fifty men to pursue the Austrians.
"The general and I were so splendidly mounted that we gained rapidly on our soldiers. The Austrians believing that they were being pursued by the whole of our army, fled at top speed. And again it came about that the general and I found ourselves alone.
"At length, when we had reached an inn, at a point where the road curved, I pulled up, and said to him:
"'General, what we are about to undertake, or rather, what you mean to undertake, is not reasonable. Let us stop and wait till our men come up. Besides, the look of the ground indicates that there is a plateau behind the house, and we shall perhaps find the enemy there drawn up ready for battle.'
"'All right, my boy; go and see if it is so,' he said. 'Our horses can get their breath in the meantime.'
"I dismounted and walked round the inn, where I soon discovered three trim squadrons all drawn up ready for battle, about two hundred paces off. I returned to tell the general, who, without a word in reply, set off riding in the direction of the enemy's squadrons. I remounted my horse and followed him.
"He had hardly gone a hundred yards before he came within earshot of the enemy. The commanding officer recognised him, and addressed him in French.
"'Oh! so it is you, you black devil!' he said to us.
"Schwartz Teufel was the Austrians' nickname for the general.
"'Come on a hundred paces, you scurvy knave,' said the general, 'and I shall make it two hundred.'
"And with this reply, he put his horse to a gallop.
"All this time I was yelling like a demon, following the general, whom I dared not leave, 'Here, dragoons, come on!'
"The enemy accordingly expected to see a considerable force appear at any moment, and, with their commanding officer at their head, they turned and fled.
"The general was on the point of pursuing them single-handed, but I caught hold of his horse by the bridle and compelled him to wait till our forces could come up and occupy the position just vacated by the enemy.
"But when we were once more rejoined, there was no holding the general back, and we set off again to chase the Austrians. I managed, however, this time to arrange that our skirmishers should go in front, as the road was very uneven.
"The skirmishers went on ahead, and we made good use of the time to breathe our horses.
"In an hour's time we heard firing, which indicated that our men were at close quarters with the Austrians. The general sent me ahead to see what it meant.
"I returned in ten minutes.
"'Well!' said the general, I what is going on down there?'
"'The enemy is engaging us, General, but one of our soldiers who speaks German told me it was only a ruse to induce us to cross the bridge of Clausen. The bridge crossed, the enemy intends to take its revenge.'
"'Ah! that is his dodge, is it?' said the general. 'Very well! we will go and have a look. Forward—dragoons!'
"And at the head of our fifty or sixty men we again charged the enemy.
"We reached the famous bridge; there was only just room for three horses to cross abreast, and not the slightest suggestion of a parapet.
"It was as I had told the general: the enemy had merely made a show of resistance to entice us to pursue them. The general crossed the bridge convinced that the Austrians would not dare to turn round upon us. We therefore entered the principal street, following the steps of our skirmishers and the dozen dragoons whom the general had sent on to support them, and we were almost in the middle of the street when we beheld our skirmishers and our dragoons being driven back by a whole squadron of cavalry. It was not a retreat—it was a rout.
"Fear is infectious. It took possession of the dragoons who were with us, or rather, our dragoons took possession of it; they all fled after their comrades, scampering off at full gallop; only about a dozen stayed by us.
"With this dozen of men we checked the enemy's charge, and soon, whether for good or ill, we found ourselves back at the bridge again; but here our few remaining dragoons deserted us, and stampeded as though their salvation lay on the other side of the bridge.
"To tell how the general and I got back to the bridge would be a difficult matter; I saw the general raise his sabre, as a thresher lifts his flail, and each time the sword fell a man was felled. But I was soon so busy looking after myself that I was compelled to lose sight of the general; two or three Austrian cavalrymen made a furious set at me, determined to take me, dead or alive. I wounded one with the point of my sword, I cut open the head of another, but the third dealt me a cut with his sword between the joints of the shoulder, which made me rein in my horse so sharply that the beast, whose mouth was very tender, reared and fell back on top of me into a ditch. This was exactly to my Austrian's mind: he continued to belard me with sword-cuts, and would assuredly soon have spitted me altogether, if I had not managed to draw a pistol out of my holsters with my left hand. I fired at random; I did not know whether I hit the horse or the rider, but I know the horse swung round on his hind legs, set off at a gallop and, when about twenty or twenty-five yards off me, he rid himself of his rider.
"As no one else engaged my attention, I turned round towards the general; he was standing at the head of the bridge of Clausen and holding it alone against the whole squadron; and as the men could only get at him two or three abreast, because of the narrowness of the bridge, he cut them down as fast as they came on.
"I stood there astounded; I had always regarded the story of Horatius Cocles as a fable, and here I saw the very same thing being acted before my own eyes. In a short while, I struggled to extricate myself from under my horse, and succeeded in dragging myself out of the ditch, then I shouted with all my might: 'Dragoons, to your general!'
"I was quite past defending him myself, my right arm being nearly disjointed.
"Luckily, the general's second aide-de-camp, Lambert, arrived just at that moment with a reinforcement of fresh troops. He learnt what was happening from the fugitives, whom he rallied; and together they rushed to the general's assistance; they only just rescued him in time, as he himself acknowledged.
"He had killed seven or eight men, and wounded twice that number, but his strength had begun to wane.
"He had received three wounds, one in the arm, one in the thigh, and the other on his head.
"This last had broken the iron of his headpiece; but, like the other two wounds, it only slightly grazed the outer skin.
"The general had, besides, received seven bullets through his cloak. His horse had been killed under him, but happily its body acted as a barricade across the bridge, and perhaps this circumstance had saved him, for the Austrians had begun to rifle his valise and his holsters, and this gave him time to catch a riderless horse and to recommence his fight.
"Thanks to Lambert's reinforcement, the general was able to take up the offensive and to give the cavalry such a hot chase that we never saw them again throughout the whole campaign."
My father sent the cloak pierced with seven bullets to Joubert as a talisman, but it did not suffice to defend him at Novi.
Dermoncourt's wound was pretty serious, and he was obliged to keep his bed. My father left him at Brixen, and went to lend a hand to Delmas, who, as we have said, was stationed at Bolzano to oppose Laudon.
Laudon, after having reprovisioned his army and being somewhat recovered from our dressing down at the crossing of the Weiss, and from his defeat at Newmark, reinforced also by the Tyrolese peasants, had recommenced serious operations against Delmas, who was isolated at Bolzano with a mere handful of men.
Left to his own resources, and cut off from the main army, which was nine leagues away, Delmas sent a messenger to General Joubert, who had rejoined my father at Brixen on the 7th Germinal. This messenger announced that Delmas feared he might be attacked at any moment, and felt himself too weak to be able to hold out for long.
Joubert showed the despatch to my father, who had hardly dismounted from his horse. My father suggested he should start at once with his cavalry, which he thought would be sufficient to extricate Delmas, and even to settle with Laudon. Joubert accepted his offer, and my father went, leaving Joubert the commission to recover his pistols, no matter at what cost. It will be remembered that my father set immense store by these pistols, which my mother had given him: they had saved his life in the camp of la Madeleine.
He made such good progress that on the following morning he and all his cavalry had reached Bolzano.
The cavalry—men and horses—seem to have caught some of their master's spirit. Their confidence in him had been complete since they had seen his hand-to-hand struggle with the enemy in previous encounters, and they were ready to follow-him to the world's end.