I myself will take sixty thousand
men, new recruits and the fragments of regiments which remain, and
with them I will march to encounter an equally powerful enemy on
a more difficult field of warfare."
Marshal Melas had spread his vast host of one hundred and forty
thousand Austrians through all the strongholds of Italy, and was
pressing, with tremendous energy and self-confidence upon the frontiers
of France. Napoleon, instead of marching with his inexperienced
troops, two-thirds of whom had never seen a shot fired in earnest,
to meet the heads of the triumphant columns of Melas, resolved
to climb the rugged and apparently inaccessible fastnesses of the
Alps, and, descending from the clouds over path-less precipices,
to fall with the sweep of the avalanche, upon their rear. It was
necessary to assemble this army at some favorable point;--to gather
in vast magazines its munitions of war. It was necessary that
this should be done in secret, lest the Austrians, climbing to the
summits of the Alps, and defending the gorges through which the
troops of Napoleon would be compelled to wind their difficult and
tortuous way, might render the passage utterly impossible.
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