crossing that river in the direction of Piacenza—­as Napoleon I had crossed in 1796—­and so massed his troops to the south.  At this juncture a portion of his army encountered the French and Sardinians at Montebello, where the extreme right wing of the allies was posted.  The Austrian General met with such a determined resistance that he imagined this must be the centre of the enemy, and felt convinced that he had guessed the latter’s intention; he therefore caused his army to pursue its march southward.

By this movement Vercelli was abandoned by the Austrians and it was immediately reoccupied by the Sardinians.

Napoleon now prepared a bold flank movement, by leaving the Po for the Ticino, and to mask this manoeuvre ordered the Sardinians to make an advance.  Thus, while Victor Emmanuel, at the head of his men, flung himself from Vercelli on Palestro—­meriting, by the skill of his military tactics, the acclamations of a regiment of zouaves whom he headed as corporal—­the French, taking ad vantage of the Alessandria, Casale, and Novara Railway, made for the bridge of Buffalora over the Ticino.  Only then did Gyulai perceive this clever stratagem which threw Lombardy open to the allies, and he was consequently obliged to cross the Ticino to block the enemy’s way to Milan.

On June 4th, at Magenta, nearly the whole of the Austrian army engaged the French forces; the battle, which was most desperate, lasted all day, and was remarkable for the prodigies of valor performed.  The Austrians, driven back into Magenta itself, maintained, even in that village, such a stout resistance that they had to be dislodged by house-to-house fighting.

On June 8th Victor Emmanuel and Napoleon III made their triumphal entry into Milan—­now freed from the Austrian yoke.  On the same day a French corps repulsed the Austrians at Melegnano, while Garibaldi entered Bergamo from the other side.  Garibaldi, who had been the last to leave Lombardy in 1848, was now the first to set foot in its territory in 1859.  Since May 23d he had led his own Cacciatori to the Lombard shores of Lake Maggiore, had defeated the Austrians at Varese, entered Como, routed the enemy afresh at San Fermo, and was now proceeding to Bergamo and Brescia, with the intention of reaching the Trentine Alps, to cut off the enemy’s retreat.

After the Battle of Magenta, Gyulai had been dismissed from the command, and his post was assumed by the Emperor Francis Joseph himself, assisted by the aged Marshal Hess.  On the night of June 23d the retreating Austrians crossed the Mincio, but a few hours after retraced their steps and took up their position on the hills to the south of the Lake of Garda.  On the morning of the 24th the Franco-Sardinian army began their march at dawn, and shortly afterward, to their great amazement, encountered the Austrians, who they imagined had crossed the Mincio the night before.  The struggle was terrible; in fact, the line covered by the fighting extended a distance of five leagues.