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Meanwhile some of his foot-soldiers had worked their way round this obstacle by a goat-track among the hills and had already reached Ivrea lower down the valley. Still the fort held out against the cannonade of the French.
The march of the Consul received no new check until he reached the town of Ivrea, where, after two days' hard fighting, Lannes at length forced an entrance, and the garrison, with severe loss, withdrew. Buonaparte then took the road to Turin, and the vanguard had another severe piece of service at the bridge of Chiusilla, where 10,000 Austrians had been very strongly posted.
In this way the whole army was after a delay of four days once more united; and after a further three days' march through the valley of the Doria, which was ever widening and displaying greater fertility, and whose inhabitants the Salassi, clients of the Insubres, hailed in the Carthaginians their allies and deliverers, the army arrived about the middle of September in the plain of Ivrea, where the exhausted troops were quartered in the villages, that by good nourishment and a fortnight's repose they might recruit from their unparalleled hardships.
The duke of Savoy, being unable to face the enemy in the field, was obliged to lie inactive. He saw the duke de Vendome reduce Vercelli and Ivrea, and undertake the siege of Verac; while he posted his little army on the other side of the Po, at Crescentino, where he had a bridge of communication by which he supplied the place occasionally with fresh troops and provisions.
"Late upon a warm afternoon I was entering the town of Ivrea, and passing a large stone building, I stopped to examine some leaves on a bush which grew by the roadside. While I was doing this, and comparing the shape and size of the leaves with some drawings I had in a book which I took from my pocket, I heard a voice behind me and apparently above me.
Meanwhile some of his foot-soldiers had worked their way round this obstacle by a goat-track among the hills and had already reached Ivrea lower down the valley. Still the fort held out against the cannonade of the French.
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