In person he had visited
the army to inspire his troops with enthusiasm. The command of the
imperial forces was intrusted to his second brother, the Archduke
John. Napoleon moved with his accustomed vigor. The political
necessities of Paris and of France rendered it impossible for him
to leave the metropolis. He ordered one powerful army, under General
Brune, to attack the Austrians in Italy, on the banks of Mincio,
and to press firmly toward Vienna. In the performance of this
operation, General Macdonald, in the dead of winter, effected his
heroic passage over the Alps by the pass of the Splugen. Victory
followed their standards.
Moreau, with his magnificent army, commenced a winter campaign on
the Rhine. Between the rivers Iser and Inn there is an enormous
forest, many leagues in extent, of sombre firs and pines. It is
a dreary and almost uninhabited wilderness, of wild ravines, and
tangled under-brush. Two great roads have been cut through the
forest, and sundry woodmen's paths penetrate it at different points.
In the centre there is a little hamlet, of a few miserable huts,
called Hohenlinden. In this forest, on the night of the 3d of
December, 1800, Moreau, with sixty thousand men, encountered the
Archduke John with seventy thousand Austrian troops.
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