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Yes, the Tyrolese had destroyed the bridge of Laditch; and while a small division of their men had quickly moved on to occupy the Muhlbach pass, the others, under the command of Anthony Wallner, had taken position on the opposite bank of the Eisach, in order to prevent the enemy from crossing the river.
They are exhausted and weary, owing to the heavy exertions of the day; hunger and thirst torment them, and their strength is gone. "Give us something to eat! Give us something to drink!" they shout to the women occupying the mountain-path in their rear up to the solitary house, the inn Zur Eisach, which has already been hit by many a ball from the enemy's guns.
These various corps d'armee, by which the Tyrol was thus attacked simultaneously on every point, were to concentrate in the heart of the country. Lefebvre found the Brenner open. The Tyrolese, headed by Haspinger, had burned the bridges on the Oberau and awaited the approach of the enemy on the heights commanding the narrow valley of Eisach.
Yonder, at the extremity of the plain through which the soldiers were now marching; yonder, on the bank of the Eisach, was seen a motley crowd ascending the slopes of the mountains on both sides of the river. "Yes, there are the Tyrolese, there are our enemies," cried the Bavarians and French, with grim satisfaction; and they marched at the double-quick toward the bank of the river.
The Bavarians and French forced a passage through the ranks of their enthusiastic enemies with the courage and wrath of despair; hundreds of them remained dead on the bloody field, but nearly two thousand ascended the Eisach toward Sterzing. Anthony Wallner beckoned to his daughter, and stepped with her behind a jutting rock.
Then he looked down attentively into the depth, where only a footpath meandered close along the bank of the foaming Eisach. A few soldiers were now seen entering the defile yonder, where the road projected between two jutting rocks forming the background of the gorge. The form of a Tyrolese sharpshooter appeared at the same moment on the top of the precipitous rock.
In alliance with the Helvetii, the Cimbri had without difficulty passed from the Seine to the upper valley of the Rhine, had crossed the chain of the Alps by the Brenner pass, and had descended thence through the valleys of the Eisach and Adige into the Italian plain.
One detachment of our men, commanded by my Lieutenant Panzl, will push on quickly on the mountain-road to the Muhlbach pass. The rest of us will follow you, but we must previously detain the enemy at the gap of Brixen; and while we are doing duty, another detachment of our men will go farther down to the bridge of Laditch and destroy it in order to prevent the enemy from crossing the Eisach.
But now this arch had disappeared, or rather its central part had been removed, and between its two extremities yawned a terrible abyss, through which the Eisach rushed with thundering noise. "The Tyrolese have destroyed the bridge!" exclaimed Von Wreden, in dismay. "Ah, the brigands!" said Bisson, contemptuously.
While Anthony Wallner and his sharpshooters occupied the mountain- gorges this side of Brixen on the road to Mittewald, Joseph Speckbacher and his men had penetrated far beyond Mittewald toward Sterzing, and had learned that the Saxons, under General Royer, were resting at Sterzing with the intention of advancing in the morning through the wild valley of the Eisach toward Brixen.
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