ulsed with
loss; but when he found Massena, in the mean time, was turning the left
of his line, and that he was thus pressed on both flanks, his situation
became almost desperate. The cavalry of the Piedmontese made an effort
to renew the combat. For a time they overpowered and drove back those of
the French; and General Stengel, who commanded the latter, was slain in
attempting to get them into order. But the desperate valor of Murat,
unrivalled perhaps in the heady charge of cavalry combat, renewed the
fortune of the field; and the horse, as well as the infantry of Colli's
army, were compelled to a disastrous retreat. The defeat was decisive;
and the Sardinians, after the loss of the best of their troops, their
cannon, baggage, and appointments, and being now totally divided from
their Austrian allies, and liable to be overpowered by the united forces
of the French army, had no longer hopes of effectually covering Turin.
Bonaparte, pursuing his victory, took possession of Cherasco, within ten
leagues of the Piedmontese capital.

Thus Fortune, in the course of a campaign of scarce a month, placed her
favorite in full possession of the desired road to Italy, by command of
the mountain-passes, which had been invaded and conquered with so much
military skill. He had gained three battles over forces far superior to
his own; inflicted on the enemy a loss of twenty-five thousand men in
killed, wounded, and prisoners; taken eighty pieces of cannon, and
twenty-one stands of colors; reduced to inaction the Austrian army;
almost annihilated that of Sardinia; and stood in full communication
with France upon the eastern side of the Alps, with Italy lying open
before him, as if to invite his invasion. But it was not even with such
laurels, and with facilities which now presented themselves for the
accomplishment of new and more important victories upon a larger scale,
and with more magnificent results, that the career of Bonaparte's
earliest campaign was to be closed. The head of the royal house of
Savoy, if not one of the most powerful, still one of the most
distinguished in Europe, was to have the melancholy experience, that he
had encountered with the "Man of Destiny," as he was afterward proudly
called, who, for a time, had power, in the emphatic phrase of Scripture,
"to bind kings with chains, and nobles with fetters of iron."

The shattered relics of the Sardinian army had fallen back, or rather
fled, to within two leagues o