ne, and easily gained
that village and its castle from a French detachment commanded by
General Valette.

The feeble defence of so important a position threw Bonaparte into one
of those transports of fury which occasionally dethroned his better
judgment. Meeting Valette at Montechiaro, he promptly degraded him to
the ranks, refusing to listen to his plea of having received a written
order to retire. A report of General Landrieux asserts that the rage
of the commander-in-chief was so extreme as for the time even to
impair his determination. The outlook was gloomy. The French seemed
about to be hemmed in amidst the broken country between Castiglione,
Brescia, and Salo. A sudden attack on the Austrians was obviously the
only safe and honourable course. But no one knew precisely their
numbers or their position. Uncertainty ever preyed on Bonaparte's
ardent imagination. His was a mind that quailed not before visible
dangers; but, with all its powers of decisive action, it retained so
much of Corsican eeriness as to chafe at the unknown,[58] and to lose
for the moment the faculty of forming a vigorous resolution. Like the
python, which grips its native rock by the tail in order to gain its
full constricting power, so Bonaparte ever needed a groundwork of fact
for the due exercise of his mental force.

One of a group of generals, whom he had assembled about him near
Montechiaro, proposed that they should ascend the hill which dominated
the plain. Even from its ridge no Austrians were to be seen. Again the
commander burst forth with petulant reproaches, and even talked of
retiring to the Adda. Whereupon, if we may trust the "Memoirs" of
General Landrieux, Augereau protested against retreat, and promised
success for a vigorous charge. "I wash my hands of it, and I am going
away," replied Bonaparte. "And who will command, if you go?" inquired
Augereau. "You," retorted Bonaparte, as he left the astonished circle.

However this may be, the first attack on Castiglione was certainly
left to this determined fighter; and the mingling of boldness and
guile which he showed on the following day regained for the French not
only the village, but also the castle, perched on a precipitous rock.
Yet the report of Colonel Graham, who was then at Marshal Wuermser's
headquarters, somewhat dulls the lustre of Augereau's exploit; for the
British officer asserts that the Austrian position had been taken up
quite by haphazard, and that fewer than