From hence it was two days’ march to Orcza, where Ney arrived on November 20, his followers being reduced to 1500 men. He had baulked the Russian regular troops; but he found Platoff and his cossacks upon the right bank of the Dnieper, and suffered severely from their marauding warfare. Napoleon had given him up for lost; when he heard that he had rejoined the army he leaped for joy, as he exclaimed, “Then I have saved my eagles! I have 200,000,000 in the Tuileries: I would have given them all rather than lose such a man!”[164]
An anecdote of similar resolution and readiness, curious on account of the nature of the danger to be avoided, is told by the Florentine historians of the fourteenth century. At that time Italian warfare was chiefly carried on by hired soldiers, men usually of profligate lives and broken fortunes, unfitted by the licence of a camp for peaceful industry, or driven to forsake it by the insecurity of property in those calamitous times, when he who sowed the seed had no assurance that he should reap the harvest. The long wars between France and England under Edward III. swelled the numbers of these men to a fearful extent; and the reader who will consult Froissart concerning the state of France at this period, will there find a fearful picture of the misrule and misery produced by men of this description, who, when there was no regular war to occupy their swords, formed themselves into troops, took possession by force or fraud of some castle or stronghold, and lived by levying contributions on the peasantry, and plundering all persons who came in their way. Such spirits readily flocked round the banner of any soldier of repute who offered a price for their services; nor were men of birth and reputation wanting to lead them into the foreign market, who readily overlooked the character of their followers in consideration of the wealth and consequence to be derived from their support. Among the most distinguished, and also the most honourable of this class, was an Englishman, named Sir John Hawkwood, long practised in the Italian wars, and at the time we speak of, in the service of Florence. In the year 1391, that city being at war with the Duke of Milan, planned a double invasion of his dominions. The Count d’Armagnac, a French nobleman of high military renown, was hired to invade Milan from the west, while on the east Hawkwood advanced from Vicenza, through Verona and Brescia. The two armies were intended to unite and lay siege to Milan; but the scheme was deranged by the defeat and total destruction of the Count d’Armagnac, and Hawkwood, who, before he heard that news, had advanced within fifteen miles of the city, on a sudden found himself in imminent danger.
On looking at a map, the reader will observe that all the country between the Alps and Po is intersected by numerous rivers; which, like those of Holland, for the most part flow at a higher level than the neighbouring plains, and are kept within their course by lofty dikes. Hawkwood had crossed the Adige, Mincio, and Oglio; and consequently when Jacopo del Verme, the Milanese general, marched against him at the head of a superior force elated with victory, his situation became very uncomfortable. To give battle was hazardous, for a defeat with three large rivers in his rear would have been utter destruction; and it was scarcely less dangerous to attempt to cross them, without having first gained some advantages, and struck terror into the enemy. In this dilemma he remained quiet for a time, retained his soldiers strictly within the camp, without regarding the insults and provocations of the enemy, until this apparent timidity led them into an imprudent bravado, which gave him an opportunity of attacking to advantage and routing them with considerable slaughter.
He judged rightly that this blow would keep his adversary quiet for a little while, and immediately broke up his camp and crossed the Oglio without hindrance; the enemy following, but being too late, or too much cowed to molest him. He passed the Mincio also, and was then in a plain, enclosed by the dikes of the Po, Mincio, and Adige, and lying below the level of those rivers. The last was still to be crossed; and it presented greater difficulties than the Oglio and Mincio, both on account of the greater volume and velocity of its stream, and because the enemy had pre–occupied and fortified its dikes. Hawkwood was encamped on a small eminence in the plain,—we may suppose rather at a loss how to prosecute his retreat,—when suddenly the whole of the low country was flooded. They had cut the dikes of the Adige, in hope of drowning or starving the invader into submission. The inundation gained ground every hour, and threatened the camp itself. As far as the eye could reach all was water. Provisions began to fail; and Del Verme, who with his troops shut up the only road to escape, sent Hawkwood the enigmatical present of a fox in a cage. The Englishman received the gift, and requested the messenger to carry back word that the fox seemed nothing dismayed, and probably knew very well by what door he should get out of his cage.
“It is generally confessed,” says Poggio, “that no other captain, except Hawkwood, whose sayings and doings deserve to be commemorated among the subtleties of ancient generals and orators, could have overcome the difficulties and dangers in which the Florentine army was now involved.” It is not every one assuredly that would have nerve to adopt the measure which he adopted. In the middle of the night he abandoned his camp, trusting himself and his army boldly to the inundated plain, and shaped his course parallel to the dikes of the Adige. He advanced all the next day, and part of the succeeding night, through water up to the horses’ bellies; his progress delayed by the deep mud, and by numerous trenches which intersected the fields; and which, beneath the universal covering of water, could no longer be distinguished from the solid ground. In this manner he traversed all the valley of Verona; at length, opposite to Castel Baldo, he crossed the dry bed of the Adige, there exhausted of its waters, and found repose and refreshment for his exhausted army within the Paduan frontier. The weaker horses, and a large part of the infantry, perished in this march by suffocation, fatigue, and cold; some saved themselves by clinging to the horses’ tails. But the bulk of the army was saved, and Jacopo del Verme took care not to tempt the waters by engaging in so hazardous a pursuit.[165]
CHAPTER XVII.
