Those nine hundred men were indeed the stone redoubt that General Bonaparte had ordered them to be. Artillery, musketry, bayonets, all were turned upon them, but they yielded not an inch.
Bonaparte was watching them with admiration, when, turning in the direction of Novi, he caught the gleam of Desaix’s bayonets. Standing on a knoll raised above the plain, he could see what was invisible to the enemy.
He signed to a group of officers who were near him, awaiting orders; behind stood orderlies holding their horses. The officers advanced. Bonaparte pointed to the forest of bayonets, now glistening in the sunlight, and said to one of the officers: “Gallop to those bayonets and tell them to hasten. As for Desaix, tell him I am waiting for him here.”
The officer galloped off. Bonaparte again turned his eyes to the battlefield. The retreat continued; but Roland and his nine hundred had stopped General Elsnitz and his column. The stone redoubt was transformed into a volcano; it was belching fire from all four sides. Then Bonaparte, addressing three officers, cried out: “One of you to the centre; the other two to the wings! Say everywhere that the reserves are at hand, and that we resume the offensive.”
The three officers departed like arrows shot from a bow, their ways parting in direct lines to their different destinations. Bonaparte watched them for a few moments, and when he turned round he saw a rider in a general’s uniform approaching.
It was Desaix—Desaix, whom he had left in Egypt, and who that very morning had said, laughing: “The bullets of Europe don’t recognize me; some ill-luck is surely impending over me.”
One grasp of the hand was all that these two friends needed to reveal their hearts.
Then Bonaparte stretched out his arm toward the battlefield.
A single glance told more than all the words in the world.
Twenty thousand men had gone into the fight that morning, and now scarcely more than ten thousand were left within a radius of six miles—only nine thousand infantry, one thousand cavalry, and ten cannon still in condition for use. One quarter of the army was either dead or wounded, another quarter was employed in removing the wounded; for the First Consul would not suffer them to be abandoned. All of these forces, save and excepting Roland and his nine hundred men, were retreating.