o Mantua. With these, some sixteen
thousand men in all, the veteran general forced a way, by a series of
most brilliant movements, past the flank of the blockading French
lines, where he made a gallant stand first at St. Georges and then at
Favorita. But he was driven from both positions and forced to find a
refuge in the famous fortress.

The lightning-like rapidity of these operations completed the
demoralization of the Austrian troops. The fortified defiles and
cliffs of the Tyrol fell before the French attacks as easily as their
breastworks in the plains. Wurmser had twenty-six thousand men in
Mantua; but from fear and fever half of them were in the hospitals.

Meanwhile, disaster had overtaken the French arms in the North.
Jourdan had crossed the Rhine at Duesseldorf, as Moreau had at Kehl.
They had each about seventy-five thousand men, while the army of the
Austrian archduke Charles had been reduced by Wurmser's departure for
Italy to a number far less. According to the plan of the Directory,
these two French armies were to advance on parallel lines south of the
neutral zone through Germany, and to join Bonaparte across the Tyrol
for the advance to Vienna. Moreau defeated the Austrians, and reached
Munich without a check. Wuertemberg and Baden made peace with the
French republic on its own terms, and Saxony, recalling its forces
from the coalition, declared itself neutral, as Prussia had done. But
Jourdan, having seized Wuerzburg and won the battle of Altenkirchen,
was met on his way to Ratisbon and Neumarkt, and thoroughly beaten, by
the same young Archduke Charles, who had acquired experience and
learned wisdom in his defeat by Moreau. Both French armies were thus
thrown back upon the Rhine, and there could be no further hope of
carrying out the original plan. In this way the attention of the world
was concentrated on the victorious Army of Italy and its young
commander, whose importance was further enhanced by the fulfilment of
his own prophecy that the fate of Europe hung on the decision of his
campaign in Italy.

This was not an empty boast. The stubborn determination of Francis to
reconquer Italy had given new courage to the conservatives of central
and southern Italy, who did not conceal their resolve nor their
preparations to annihilate French power and influence within the
borders of Modena, Rome, and Naples. Bonaparte was thus enabled to
take another momentous step in emancipating himself from the
Di