and men, under the
command of Count Merci. The hostile forces soon met, and battle after
battle thundered over the Italian plains. On the 29th of June the two
armies encountered each other in the vicinity of Parma, in such numbers
as to give promise of a decisive battle. For ten hours the demoniac
storm raged unintermitted. Ten thousand of the dead covered the ground.
Neither party had taken a single standard or a single prisoner, an event
almost unparalleled in the history of battles. From the utter exhaustion
of both parties the strife ceased. The Sardinians and French, mangled
and bleeding, retired within the walls of Parma. The Austrians, equally
bruised and bloody, having lost their leader, retired to Reggio. Three
hundred and forty of the Austrian officers were either killed or
wounded.

The King of Sardinia was absent during this engagement, having gone to
Turin to visit his wife, who was sick. The morning after the battle,
however, he joined the army, and succeeded in cutting off an Austrian
division of twelve hundred men, whom he took prisoners. Both parties now
waited for a time to heal their wounds, repair their shattered weapons,
get rested and receive reinforcements. Ten thousand poor peasants, who
had not the slightest interest in the quarrel, had now met with a bloody
death, and other thousands were now to be brought forward and offered as
victims on this altar of kingly ambition. By the middle of July they
were again prepared to take the field. Both parties struggled with
almost superhuman energies in the work of mutual destruction; villages
were burned, cities stormed, fields crimsoned with blood and strewn with
the slain, while no decisive advantage was gained. In the desperation of
the strife the hostile battalions were hurled against each other until
the beginning of January. They waded morasses, slept in drenching
storms, and were swept by freezing blasts. Sickness entered the camp,
and was even more fatal than the bullet of the foe. Thousands moaned and
died in their misery, upon pallets of straw, where no sister, wife or
mother could soothe the dying anguish. Another winter only afforded the
combatants opportunity to nurse their strength that they might deal
still heavier blows in another campaign.

While the imperial troops were struggling against Sardinia and France on
the plains of Lombardy, a Spanish squadron landed a strong military
force of French and Spaniards upon the peninsula of souther