The third day was decisive.  On this occasion also he carried Arcola; and, by two stratagems, was enabled to make his victory effectual.  An ambuscade, planted among some willows, suddenly opened fire on a column of Croats, threw them into confusion, and, rushing from the concealment, crushed them down into the opposite bog, where most of them died.  Napoleon was anxious to follow up this success by charging the Austrian main body on the firm ground behind the marshes.  But it was no easy matter to reach them there.  He had, in various quarters, portable bridges ready for crossing the ditches and canals; but the enemy stood in good order, and three days’ hard fighting had nearly exhausted his own men.  In one of his conversations at St. Helena, he thus told the sequel.  “At Arcola I gained the battle with twenty-five horsemen.  I perceived the critical moment of lassitude in either army—­when the oldest and bravest would have been glad to be in their tents.  All my men had been engaged.  Three times I had been obliged to re-establish the battle.  There remained to me but some twenty-five Guides.  I sent them round on the flank of the enemy with three trumpets, bidding them blow loud and charge furiously. Here is the French cavalry, was the cry; and they took to flight."...  The Austrians doubted not that Murat and all the horse had forced a way through the bogs; and at that moment Buonaparte commanding a general assault in front, the confusion became hopeless.  Alvinzi retreated finally, though in decent order, upon Montebello.

It was at Arcola that Muiron, who ever since the storming of Little Gibraltar had lived on terms of brotherlike intimacy with Napoleon, seeing a bomb about to explode threw himself between it and his general, and thus saved his life at the cost of his own.  Napoleon, to the end of his life, remembered and regretted this heroic friend.

In these three days Buonaparte lost 8000 men:  the slaughter among his opponents must have been terrible.  Davidowich, in never coming up to join Alvinzi after his success over Vaubois, and Wurmser, in remaining quiet at Mantua, when by advancing with his garrison he might have incommoded the French rear, were guilty of grievous misjudgment or indecision.  Once more the rapid combinations of Napoleon had rendered all the efforts of the Austrian cabinet abortive.  For two months after the last day of Arcola, he remained the undisturbed master of Lombardy.  All that his enemy could show, in set-off for the slaughter and discomfiture of Alvinzi’s campaign, was that they retained possession of Bassano and Trent, thus interrupting Buonaparte’s access to the Tyrol and Germany.  This advantage was not trivial; but it had been dearly bought.

A fourth army had been baffled; but the resolution of the Imperial Court was indomitable, and new levies were diligently forwarded to reinforce Alvinzi.  Once more (January 7, 1797) the Marshal found himself at the head of 60,000:  once more his superiority over Napoleon’s muster-roll was enormous; and once more he descended from the mountains with the hope of relieving Wurmser and reconquering Lombardy.  The fifth act of the tragedy was yet to be performed.