position was one of great perplexity: for
though Massena's division from the Adige was now beginning to come
into touch with Bonaparte's chief force, yet the fronts of Wuermser's
columns were menacing the French from that side, while the troops of
Quosdanovich, hovering about Lonato and Salo, struggled desperately to
stretch a guiding hand to their comrades on the Mincio.

Wuermser was now discovering his error. Lured towards Mantua by false
reports that the French were still covering the siege, he had marched
due south when he ought to have rushed to the rescue of his
hard-pressed lieutenant at Brescia. Entering Mantua, he enjoyed a
brief spell of triumph, and sent to the Emperor Francis the news of
the capture of 40 French cannon in the trenches, and of 139 more on
the banks of the Po. But, while he was indulging the fond hope that
the French were in full retreat from Italy, came the startling news
that they had checked Quosdanovich at Brescia and Salo. Realizing his
errors, and determining to retrieve them before all was lost, he at
once pushed on his vanguard towards Castiglione, 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 assem