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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.
But a fatal division of their forces by the Lake of Garda enabled Buonaparte to hurl them back broken upon Trent, and to shut up their general, Wurmser, in Mantua with the remnant of his men; while fresh victories at the bridge of Arcola and at Bassano drove back two new Austrian armies who advanced to Wurmser's rescue.
Having made the mother of his child a pretty and sweet-tempered mulattress whom he met on a short trip to New Orleans, and whom he brought back to Arcola, he became deeply attached to the charming creature and to his son, so much the more so as, with a simple difference of complexion and of hair, the child was the image of him.
But before describing the final attempt of the Hapsburgs to wrest Italy from their able adversary, it will be well to notice his growing ascendancy in diplomatic affairs. While Bonaparte was struggling in the marshes of Arcola, the Directory was on the point of sending to Vienna an envoy, General Clarke, with proposals for an armistice preliminary to negotiations for peace with Austria.
Never did fortune within so short a time show herself under two such various faces. At two o'clock all denoted the desolation of a defeat, with all its fatal consequences; at five victory was again faithful to the flag of Arcola. Italy was reconquered by a single blow, and the crown of France appeared in the perspective.
The battles of Lodi, Arcola, Rivoli, were won, and in ten months Napoleon was master of Italy. By the treaty of Campo Formio, October 17, 1797, northern Italy was divided into four republics, with their capitals respectively at Milan, Genoa, Bologna, and Rome. And in return for her acquiescence in this redistribution of her Italian territory, Austria received Venice.
What! All these enormities were to be committed! And by whom? By a Colossus? No, by a dwarf. People laughed at the notion. They no longer said "What a crime!" but "What a farce!" For after all they reflected; heinous crimes require stature. Certain crimes are too lofty for certain hands. A man who would achieve an 18th Brumaire must have Arcola in his past and Austerlitz in his future.
The incarnation of ambition was long since complete; its attendant imperious manner was suffered to develop but slowly. In Bonaparte was perceptible, as Victor Hugo says, the shadowy outline of Napoleon. Bassano and Arcola.
Having made the mother of his child a pretty and sweet-tempered mulattress whom he met on a short trip to New Orleans, and whom he brought back to Arcola, he became deeply attached to the charming creature and to his son, so much the more so as, with a simple difference of complexion and of hair, the child was the image of him.
Though at Arcola the republicans had been severely checked, yet further west Masséna had held his own; and the French movement as a whole had compelled Alvintzy to suspend any advance on Verona or on Mantua, to come down from the heights of Caldiero, and to fight on ground where his superior numbers were of little avail.
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