xecuted, as if they had committed a crime in endeavouring to rescue
their country from the arm of a foreign invader. Everywhere the same
ferocious system was acted on. The insurgent commanders were tried by
courts-martial, and shot without ceremony. At Lugo, where a French
squadron of horse had been gallantly and disastrously defeated, the
whole of the male inhabitants were massacred. These bloody examples
quelled the insurrections; but they fixed the first dark and indelible
stain on the name of Napoleon Buonaparte.

The spirit of the Austrian and Catholic parties in Lombardy thus
crushed, the French advanced on the Mincio. The general made such
disposition of his troops, that Beaulieu doubted not he meant to pass
that river, if he could, at Peschiera. Meantime he had been preparing to
repeat the scene of Placenza;--and actually, on the 30th of May, forced
the passage of the Mincio, not at Peschiera, but further down at
Borghetto. The Austrian garrison at Borghetto in vain destroyed one arch
of the bridge. Buonaparte supplied the breach with planks; and his men,
flushed with so many victories, charged with a fury not to be resisted.
Beaulieu was obliged to abandon the Mincio, as he had before the Adda
and the Po, and to take up the new line of the Adige.

Meanwhile an occurrence, which may be called accidental, had nearly done
more than repay the Austrians for all their reverses. The left of their
line, stationed still further down the Mincio,--at Puzzuolo, no sooner
learned from the cannonade that the French were at Borghetto, than they
hastened to ascend the stream, with the view of assisting the defence of
their friends. They came too late for this; the commander at Borghetto
had retreated before they arrived. They, however, came unexpectedly;
and, such was the chance, reached Valleggio after the French army had
pursued the Austrians through it and onwards--and, at the moment when
Buonaparte and a few friends, considering the work of the day to be
over, and this village as altogether in the rear of both armies, were
about to sit down to dinner in security. Sebetendorff, who commanded the
Puzzuolo division, came rapidly, little guessing what a prize was near
him, into the village. The French general's attendants had barely time
to shut the gates of the inn, and alarm their chief by the cry "To
arms." Buonaparte threw himself on horseback, and galloping out by a
back passage, effected the narrowest of escapes from the