The Professor got out a large atlas, and occasionally showed me the places on the map. “I will tell you,” he said, “there is a remarkable account of Suvórof’s adventure in the Swiss novelist Ernst Zahn’s ‘Albin Indergand.’ It is right from the life. But I will do my best.
“Suvórof, who had crossed the Alps and seized Turin and Milan, was ordered by the Emperor to have his plans approved before being put into execution. He complained of this absurd restriction. ‘In war,’ he said, ‘circumstances are changing from one moment to another; consequently there can be no precise plan of action.’
“He was surrounded by jealousies and by spies, and the Austrian court issued orders without consulting him.
“He was so disgusted with the condition of things that he was tempted to throw up his command. He wrote to the Emperor asking if he might be recalled: ‘I wish to lay my bones in my fatherland and pray God for my Emperor.’ The battle of the Trebbia was succeeded by the sanguinary fight at Novi, where Suvórof allowed his forces to be almost annihilated before he woke to the danger in which he was placed. At this battle the French loss was twelve thousand; that of the Allies eight thousand, of which one-fourth were Russians. The Russians began to sack Novi, but Suvórof managed to restrain them. He was then ordered to lead the armies in Switzerland.
“He was heartbroken at the vain result of his efforts and triumphs.
“He was almost seventy years old, and during his professional career of half a century, he had never been defeated.
“He had for a local guide through Switzerland Colonel Weywrother, an Austrian officer. Misled by him the Russian general calculated that he could reach Schwyz in seven days. He had twenty thousand men. Uncorrected by Weywrother, he selected a road which ended at Altorf whence the only passage to Lucerne and Schwyz was by water. When, after an incredibly rapid march, covering in four days a space usually requiring a week, they reached Taverna, not one of the fifteen hundred mules ordered was on hand and all the advantage of this marvellous forced passage was lost. They were delayed five days, and then only six hundred and fifty mules came.
“The Grand Duke Constantine suggested dismounting the four thousand Cossacks and using their horses as pack-animals. Lieutenant-General Rosenberg, with a division of six thousand, attempted to turn the Saint-Gotthard pass by the Val di Blegno, Dissentis and the Oberalp Lake. He was obliged to bivouac at Cassaccia, nearly two thousand three hundred meters above the sea, in bitter cold without fire or any sort of shelter. But he succeeded in getting behind the enemy’s position.
“Suvórof, mounted on a Cossack horse and wearing the cloth uniform-coat of a private over his flimsy suit, and topping all with his famous threadbare cloak, rode up from Bellinzona, accompanied by an aged peasant guide, who did not know that the road ended at Altorf.