When the French rushed upon the bridges, they were repulsed by the guns of the Austrians. Napoleon sprang from his horse, seized a standard, and shouted, "Follow your general!" but he was borne by the struggling soldiers off the bridge into the marsh.
Frenzied at the probable loss of their general, the French fought desperately. Muiron, who had saved Napoleon at Toulon when he was wounded in the thigh, covered his general with his own body, and received his death wound from a shell. Lannes received three wounds in endeavoring to protect Napoleon, who was finally extricated, and was again at the head of the column. After three days of battle, the French were victorious. It is estimated that twenty thousand men perished in the swamps of Arcola.
Napoleon wrote a letter of sympathy to the young widow of Muiron, who in a few weeks died at the birth of a lifeless child.
To the Directory he wrote: "Never was a field of battle more valiantly disputed than the conflict at Arcola. I have scarcely any generals left. Their bravery and their patriotic enthusiasm are without example."
In the midst of this toil and carnage, Napoleon could find time to write to Josephine. She had followed him for a while after coming to Milan, but her dangers were so great that it was soon found to be impossible.
After Arcola he writes her: "At length, my adored Josephine, I live again. Death is no longer before me, and glory and honor are still in my breast.... Soon Mantua will be ours, and then thy husband will fold thee in his arms, and give thee a thousand proofs of his ardent affection. I shall proceed to Milan as soon as I can; I am a little fatigued. I have received letters from Eugène and Hortense. I am delighted with the children.... Adieu, my adorable Josephine. Think of me often. Death alone can break the union which sympathy, love, and sentiment have formed. Let me have news of your health. A thousand and a thousand kisses."
If she does not write often he is distressed; "Three days without a word from you," he writes, "and I have written you several times. This absence is horrible; the nights are long, tiresome, dull; the days are monotonous.... I don't really live away from you; my life's happiness is only to be with my sweet Josephine. Think of me! write to me often, very often; it is the only balm in absence which is cruel, but I hope will be short.... Day before yesterday I was in the field all day. Yesterday I stayed in bed. A fever and a raging headache prevented me from writing to my dear one; but I received her letters. I pressed them to my heart and my lips; and the pang of absence, a hundred miles apart, vanished."
Yet, with all this intensity of feeling, Napoleon had wonderful self-command. He said, "Nature seems to have calculated that I should endure great reverses. She has given me a mind of marble. Thunder cannot ruffle it. The shaft merely glides along."
Austria made another desperate effort to overcome Napoleon and save Würmser, shut up in Mantua. At four o'clock in the morning, Jan. 14, 1797, the battle of Rivoli began. For twelve hours Napoleon was in the hottest of the fight. Three horses were shot under him.
After a desperate but victorious battle, the troops marched all night, conquered Provera before Mantua the next day, and La Favorita on the third day. The Austrian army had lost thirty thousand men in three days, of whom twenty thousand were taken prisoners. Napoleon, in his report of the battle of Favorita, spoke of the terrible Fifty-seventh. Thereafter the Fifty-seventh adopted the name of "The Terrible," proud of this distinction of their chief.