wing betrayed him into a fatal imprudence.  Sending out feelers after his hard-pressed colleague on the north, he dangerously prolonged his line, an error in which he was deftly encouraged by Bonaparte, who held back his own left wing.  Meanwhile the French were rolling in the other extremity of the Austrian line.  Marmont, dashing forward with the horse artillery, took the enemy’s left wing in flank and silenced many of their pieces.  Under cover of this attack, Fiorella’s division was able to creep up within striking distance; and the French cavalry, swooping round the rear of this hard-pressed wing, nearly captured Wuermser and his staff.  A vigorous counterattack by the Austrian reserves, or an immediate wheeling round of the whole line, was needed to repulse this brilliant flank attack; but the Austrian reserves had been expended in the north of their line; and an attempt to change front, always a difficult operation, was crushed by a headlong charge of Massena’s and Augereau’s divisions on their centre.  Before these attacks the whole Austrian line gave way; and, according to Colonel Graham, nothing but this retreat, undertaken “without orders,” saved the whole force from being cut off.  The criticisms of our officer sufficiently reveal the cause of the disaster.  The softness and incapacity of Wuermser, the absence of a responsible second in command, the ignorance of the number and positions of the French, the determination to advance towards Castiglione and to wait thereabouts for Quosdanovich until a battle could be fought with combined forces on the 7th, the taking up a position almost by haphazard on the Castiglione-Medole line, and the failure to detect Fiorella’s approach, present a series of defects and blunders which might have given away the victory to a third-rate opponent.[61]

The battle was by no means sanguinary:  it was a series of manoeuvres rather than of prolonged conflicts.  Hence its interest to all who by preference dwell on the intellectual problems of warfare rather than on the details of fighting.  Bonaparte had previously shown that he could deal blows with telling effect.  The ease and grace of his moves at the second battle of Castiglione now redeemed the reputation which his uncertain behaviour on the four preceding days had somewhat compromised.

A complete and authentic account of this week of confused fighting has never been written.  The archives of Vienna have not as yet yielded up all their secrets; and the reputations of so many French officers were over-clouded by this prolonged melee as to render even the victors’ accounts vague and inconsistent.  The aim of historians everywhere to give a clear and vivid account, and the desire of Napoleonic enthusiasts to represent their hero as always thinking clearly and acting decisively, have fused trusty ores and worthless slag into an alloy which has passed for true metal.  But no student of Napoleon’s “Correspondence,” of the “Memoirs”