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Updated: June 21, 2025
The prairie rivers of the western United States have deep channels, because the mineral matter they carry down is not heavy enough to resist the impulse of even a moderate current, and those tributaries of the Po which deposit their sediment in the lakes the Ticino, the Adda, the Oglio, and the Mincio flow in deep cuts, for the same reason. Baumgarten, p. 132.
There had been a striking scene in the Italian Chamber about this time, when the Prime Minister, Orlando, announced that high military opinion had been opposed to the holding of the Piave line, recommending a further retreat to the line of the Mincio, or the Adige, or even the Po, which would have involved the surrender of Venice, Padua, Vicenza and Verona.
By adroit moves on the borders of the lake, Bonaparte now sought to make Beaulieu nervous about his communications with Tyrol through the river valley of the Adige; he completely succeeded: seeking to guard the important positions on that river between Rivoli and Roveredo, Beaulieu so weakened his forces on the Mincio, that at Borghetto and Valeggio he had only two battalions and ten squadrons of horse, or about two thousand men.
Before the commencement of hostilities a secret treaty was concluded between Napoleon III. and the Austrian Government, according to which Venetia was to be ceded to the Emperor for Italy, even if Austrian arms were victorious both on the Mincio and on the Maine.
Even if Mélas had possessed a year's supplies in Alessandria, he would none the less have been cut off from his base of the Mincio as soon as the victorious enemy occupied the line of the Po.
Thenceforth nothing could surpass the discomfiture and disarray of the Austrians. They fled in all directions upon the Mincio, where Wurmser himself, meanwhile, had been employed in revictualling Mantua. A mere accident had once more almost saved the Imperialist.
In the very heart of these grim ramparts, like a Swiss hamlet amid its mountain ranges, or a jewel in its iron-bound casket, lay the little town of Peschiera, sleeping quietly beside the blue and full-flooded Mincio, Virgil's own river: "Where the slow Mincius through the valley strays; Where cooling streams invite the flocks to drink, And reeds defend the winding water's brink."
Beaulieu took up a position behind the Mincio, notwithstanding which, Bonaparte carried the again ill-defended bridge at Borghetto by storm. While in this part of the country, he narrowly escaped being taken prisoner by a party of skirmishers, and was compelled to fly half-naked, with but one foot booted, from his night quarters at St. Georgio. Beaulieu now withdrew into the Tyrol.
And Alison, in cautious but significant phrase, remarks, "These conditions did not differ materially from those offered by Napoleon before the renewal of the war; a remarkable circumstance , when it is remembered how vast and addition the victories of Marengo, Hohenlinden, and the Mincio, had since made to the preponderance of the French armies."
I should not be at all surprised were the Italian headquarters to be established by to-morrow either at Piubega or Gazzoldo, if not actually at Goito, a village, as you know, which marks the Italian-Austrian frontier on the Mincio.
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