Bonaparte had gone to wage the last decisive battle.  He writes to her from Verona a few lines that he has arrived there, and that he is just going to mount his horse to pursue the march.  In this letter, however, he does not tell Josephine that General Vaubois, with his fugitive regiments, has been beaten by the Tyrolese, and that, driven from their mountains, he has arrived in Verona; that Alvinzi occupies the Tyrol and has pushed on to Brenta and to Etsch.  Bonaparte was gathering his troops to drive away General Alvinzi, who had occupied the heights of Caldiero, from these important positions, and to take possession of them by main force.  A violent and desperate struggle ensued, and the day ended with victory on the side of the Austrians.  Bonaparte had to return to Verona; Alvinzi maintained himself on the heights.

To the irritated general, disappointed in his plans and humiliated, his love becomes his “bete de souffrance,” upon which he takes vengeance for the defeat of Caldiero.  Josephine has to endure the flaming wrath of Bonaparte, in whom now general and lover are fused into one; but in his expressions of anger the general has no complaints—­it is the lover who murmurs, who reprimands, and is irritated.

On the evening of the 12th November, the day of the defeat of Caldiero, Bonaparte returned to Verona.  The next day he wrote to Josephine: 

“Verona, the 3d Frimaire, Year V.” (November 13, 1796)

“I love you no more; on the contrary, I hate you.  You are a wicked creature, very inconsistent, very stupid, very silly.  You do not write to me.  You do not love your husband.  You know how much pleasure your letters would afford, and you do not write to him even six lines, which you can readily scribble out.”

“How, then, do you begin the day, madame?  What important occupation takes away your time from writing to your very excellent lover?  What new inclination chokes and thrusts aside the tender, abiding love which you have promised him?  What can this wonderful, this new love be, which lays claim to all your time, and rules over your days, and hinders you from occupying yourself with your husband?  Josephine, be on your guard; on some evil night the doors will be burst open and I shall stand before you!”

“In truth, I am restless, my dear one, because I receive no news from you.  Write me at once four pages about those things, which fill my heart with emotion and pleasure.

“I trust soon to fold you in my arms, and then I will overwhelm you with a million of kisses burning like the equator.”

“Bonaparte.”

Whilst Bonaparte was pursuing and engaging with Wurmser and Alvinzi in bloody hostilities, and writing to Josephine tender and angry letters of a lover ever jealous, ever dissatisfied and envious, Josephine was leading in Milan a life full of pleasure and amusement, full of splendor and triumphs, of receptions and festivities.  Every new victory, every onward movement, was for the inhabitants of Milan, and her proud and rich nobles, a fresh and welcome occasion to celebrate and glorify the wife of General Bonaparte, and, through her, the hero who was to take away from their necks the yoke of the Austrian, and who suspected not that he was so soon to place upon them another yoke.