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With a last effort he threw himself with the soldier into the depth, and both disappeared in the waters of the Eisach. Speckbacher's servant the faithful Zoppel, had seen and understood everything; and when the two sank into the foaming torrent, he wiped a tear from his eyes. "He died like a brave son of the Tyrol," he murmured, "and the Holy Virgin will assuredly bid him kindly welcome.
He had found out at the bridge of the Eisach, on the plain of the Sterzinger Moos, and at the Muhlbacher Klause, that the French had to deal with an enemy who was terribly in earnest; that the whole Tyrol was in insurrection; that Chasteler, with a body of armed peasants, as well as a few regular troops, was descending the Brenner, and already menacing his rear; while the rocks and thickets in his front and flanks were bristling with the peasants of the Innthal, who in great strength obstructed his advance.
No less than eight new and oppressive taxes were imposed, and levied with the utmost rigor; the very name of the country, as I said before, was abolished; and, after the model of revolutionary France, the Tyrol was divided into the departments of the Inn, the Adige, and the Eisach; the passion plays, which formed so large a part of the amusements of our people, were prohibited; all pilgrimages to chapels or places of extraordinary sanctity were forbidden.
At this moment loud cheers burst from the lips of the enemy. The Tyrolese started. They looked back, and saw to their dismay that the engineers had succeeded in finishing the temporary bridge across the Eisach, and that nothing prevented the enemy now from passing over to their side of the river. "Surrender! Lay down your arms!" shouted Lieutenant-Colonel von Wreden, on the other bank.
All at once a loud, shrill whistle resounded in front of the entrance to the defile; it was repeated all around the gloomy gorge. "That is the signal that the enemy has passed the inn am Sack and is entering the defile of the Eisach," murmured Zoppel, examining once more the edge of his hatchet with his hand.
In the first place, they erected "triumphal arches" to the enemy; that is to say, they obstructed the road by raising a number of abatis, besmeared with pitch the wooden railing of the bridge built across the Eisach near the village of Pleis, loosened the planks of the bridge, and began to build "avalanches."
They stood on both sides of the ropes, hatchet in hand, casting fiery glances into the defile on the bank of the Eisach, and between overhanging wood-clad precipices. Profound silence reigned all around; only from time to time a rustling noise was heard in the shrubbery; the flashing barrel of a rifle was then seen, and it seemed as though the fleet-footed chamois appeared on the heights above.
Mountains of corpses were piled up, rivers of blood flowed down into the waters of the Eisach, and the crimson-colored waves carried down through the Tyrol the intelligence that the struggle for the fatherland had commenced. Nevertheless, the forces of the enemy were too numerous for the Tyrolese and the small advanced guard of the Austrians to annihilate them entirely.
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.
Suddenly he uttered a cry of surprise, and looked steadfastly toward the extremity of the valley, where the rocks jutted out again into it, and where the furious Eisach makes a sudden bend from one side of the valley to the other. Formerly there had risen here, between tremendous rocks, the majestic arch of the bridge of Laditch.
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