CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE PASS OF THE SPLUGEN-THE PASS OF BERNHARDINA—THE VALLEY OF MISOCCO.

Ir was while "the snowy amphitheatre of the Alps" was the scene of the martial struggles which have already been partially traced, that an army of reserve, consisting of fifteen thousand men, was moved forward to the valley of the Rhine in the Grisons; and it was destined to menace the rear of the imperial army on the Mincio, while Brune attacked it in front. This auxiliary corps would probably have rendered more important service, if it had been directed to the grand army of Moreau, which was destined to operate in the valley of the Danube, the true avenue to the Austrian states; but such a disposition would have ill accorded with the views of the first consul, who was little anxious to put a preponderating force, so near their frontier, into the hands of a dreaded rival, and destined for himself the principal part in the campaign, with the troops which he was to lead from the Noric Alps to Vienna.

Independently of this secret feeling, Napoleon was misled by the great results of the Italian campaigns of 1796 and 1797, and the paralysing effect of the march of the army of reserve across the great St. Bernard. He imagined that Italy was the theatre where the decisive events were to take place, and had yet to learn the superior importance of the valley of the Danube, in which he himself, on future occasions, was destined to strike such redoubtable blows. "It is fortunate for the historian," says Alison, to whom we are indebted for these details, "that this destination of Macdonald's corps took place, as it brought to light the intrepidity and heroism of that gallant officer, of whose descent Scotland has so much reason to be proud; while it led to the interesting episode of the passage of the Splugen, perhaps the most wonderful achievement of modern times, and which has been portrayed by one of its ablest leaders, Count Mathieu Dumas, with the fidelity of Xenophon, and the power of Livy."

The army of Macdonald, which was announced to consist of forty thousand men, and was furnished with staff and other appointments adequate to that number, in reality amounted only to fifteen thousand troops. Macdonald no sooner discovered this great deficiency, than he made the most urgent representations to the first consul, and requested that the chosen reserve of ten thousand men, which Murat was leading from the camp at Amiens to the plains of Italy, should be put under his orders. But Napolcon, who intended this corps in the Alps to operate in the campaign more by the apprehensions it excited among the Imperialists than by its actual achievements in the field, refused to change the destination of Murat's division, and it continued its route for the banks of the Mincio. He still believed that the frontier of the Irun would sufficiently cover the Hereditary States on that side, and that it was by accumulating ninety thousand men in the Southern Tyrol and Italy that the decisive blow against the Austrian power was to be struck. The command of this great army, destined to dictate peace under the walls of Vienna, he ultimately designed for himself.

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Of all the passes from Switzerland to Italy, there was none which presented more serious internal obstacles, and was more carefully guarded by the enemy, than that

which leads over the Splugen into the Italian Tyrol. It is first necessary to pass from the valley of the Rhine, near its source, over the Splugen into that of the Adda, which descends in a rapid course from the Julian Alps to the lake of Como; from thence, if an

advance to the eastward is required, the Col Apriga, a steep ridge entangled with wood and lofty chestnuts, must be surmounted, which brings the traveller into the valley of the

Oglio; between which and the stream of the Adige there is interspersed the rugged ridge of the Mont Torral, the sunny summit of which was occupied, and had been carefully fortified, by the Austrian troops. Macdonald was no sooner made acquainted with these obstacles, than he despatched the chief of the stuff, General Mathieu Dumas, to lay before the first consul an account of the almost insurmountable difficulties which opposed his progress. No man could be better qualified than the officer whose graphic pencil has so well described the passage to discharge this delicate mission; for he was equally competent to appreciate the military projects of the general-in-chief, and to portray the physical obstructions which opposed their execution.

Napoleon listened attentively to his statement, interrogated him minutely on the force and position of Hilliers' corps, and the divisions of Laudon, Davidowich, and Wickasso wich, which were stationed near the head of the valleys, which in that part of the Alps separate Italy from Germany; and then replied, "We shall wrest from them without a combat that immense fortress of the Tyrol; we must manœuvre on their flanks; menace their last line of retreat, and they will immediately evacuate all the upper valleys. I shall make no change in my dispositions. Return quickly; tell Macdonald that an army can pass, in any season, where two men can place their feet. It

is indisputable that, in fifteen days after the commencement of hostilities, the army of the Grisons should have seen the sources of the Adda, the Oglio, and the Adige; that it should have opened its fire on the Mont Torral which separates them; and that, having descended to Trent, it should form the left wing of the army of Italy, and threaten, in concert with the troops on the Mincio, the rear of Bellegarde's army. I shall take care to forward to it the necessary reinforcements. It is not by the numerical force of an army, but by its distinction and the importance of its operations, that I estimate the merit due to its commander."

Having received these verbal instructions, Macdonald procceded to obey them, with the devotion of a good soldier. His troops advanced, the moment the armistice was denounced, into the upper Rheinthal, and concentrated between Coire and Tusis, at the entrance of the Via Mala, which is the commencement of the ascent of the Splugen; while, at the same time, to distract the enemy and to conceal his real designs, demonstrations were made towards Feldkirch, as if it were intended to break into the Tyrol in that quarter. A few days were spent at Tusis in organising the army, and making the necessary preparations for the formidable undertaking which awaited them, of crossing in the depth of winter the snowy summits of the mountains.

All the artillery was dismounted, and placed on sledges constructed in the country, to which oxen were harnessed; the artillery ammunition was divided, and placed on the backs of mules; and in addition to his ordinary arms, ball-cartridge, and knapsack, every soldier received five days' provisions and five packets of cartridges to bear on his shoulders over the rugged ascent. The passage of the Via Mala was now made. Emerging from this gloomy defile, the road traverses for two leagues the open and smiling valley of Schams; it next ascends, by a winding course, the pine-clad cliffs of La Roffla, and at length reaches, in a narrrow and desolate pastoral valley, the village of Splugen, situated at the foot of the ascent of the mountain of the same name.

Doubt rests as to a route over the Splugen at a very early period, but it is certain that in the twelfth century a communication existed between the village of Isola on its southern flank and Neufunnen in the Rheinwald. There was an inn at that period near the Schneehorn, which, as well as the Col itself, has been entombed for ages by an immense glacier, through the surface of which the bell of the buried hospice having made its way, was removed to Isola. Ebel supposes that in the fourteenth century the glacier of Tambo so extended itself as to block up this ancient track by the Schneehorn, when for the first time the track over the Splugen became a substitute for the former, and, following the glens of the Piz Beverin, re-established the communication between Chiavenna and Thusis. About the middle of the fifteenth century, when the gorge of the Roffla and. Via Mala had been considered practicable, the free passage of the Splugen arose into fresh importance, and as it opened a line of direct intercourse between Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, it rivalled the St. Gothard as a medium of traffic. Still, these paths, just broad enough for the employment of beasts of burden during summer, and of small sledges in winter, were beset by great perils in this transport of merchandise.

The old road, leaving the waters of the Rhine which descend cold and clear from the glaciers of the Hinter Rhein, turned short to the left hand, and ascended a lateral valley as far as its upper extremity, where it emerged on the bare face of the mountains above the region of wood, and, by a painful ascent, often of forty-five degrees elevation, the summit was ultimately gained.

A mountain pass in these regions is, as we have seen, beset with peculiar and imminent perils, of which we may give the following instance :

M. Buchwalder, an engineer who made a trigonometrical survey of Switzerland, thus describes a storm on the Sentis:-"In the evening it rained very heavily, and the cold and wind were such that they prevented me from sleeping all night. At four o'clock in the morning, the mountain was covered with clouds; some were passing over our heads; the wind rose very high. However, some larger clouds, coming from the west, united and slowly condensed. At six o'clock the rain began again, and the thunder was heard in the distance. Soon a very violent gust warned me that a tempest was coming. The hail fell in such abundance, that in an instant it covered the Sentis with a layer of ice four centimètres thick. After these preliminaries the storm seemed to calm down ; but it was a silence during which nature was preparing itself for a terrible crisis. At a quarter past eight the thunder roared afresh, and its noise, coming nearer and nearer, was heard interruptedly till ten o'clock. I went out to examine the sky, and to measure the depth of the snow a few feet from the tent. Hardly had I done this, when the thunder1 roared most terrifically, and forced me to take refuge in my tent, as well as my assistant. We laid down side by side on a plank. Then a huge cloud, black as night, enveloped the Sentis; the rain and hail fell in torrents; the wind whistled furiously; the flashes of lightning were so close and mingled as to resemble a fire; the peals of thunder followed rapidly one after another, dashing as it were against themselves and the mountain sides, and, indefinitely repeated in space, were both a sharp crash, a distant echo, and a deep,

long bellowing. I felt that we were in the centre of the tempest, and the lightning displayed to me all the grandeur and horror of the scene. My assistant could not help making some sign of terror, and asked me if we did not incur some danger; I reassured him by telling him that at the time when M. Biot and Arago were making their observations in Spain, the thunderbolts struck their tent, but glided off again without touching them. I was quite tranquil, for accustomed as I am to the noise of thunder, I am still studying it when it is roaring around me. These words, however, recalled to my mind the idea of danger, and I immediately understood it. At that moment a globe of fire appeared at my companion's feet, and I felt myself struck on my left leg by a violent electric shock. IIe uttered a plaintive cry. I turned towards him, and saw on his countenance the effect of the thunderbolt; the left side was furrowed with brown or red sears; his hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes were crisp and burnt; his lips and nostrils were of a brown violet; his breast still heaved every moment, but soon the noise of respiration ceased. I felt all the horror of my position, but I forgot my own sufferings to seek to convey help to a man whom I saw dying. I called him, he did not answer. His right eye was open and shining; a ray of intelligence seemed to escape from it, and I entertained some hope; but the left eye remained closed, and on raising the eyelid I saw that it was dull. I, however, supposed that there remained some life in the right side, for if I attempted to close the eye on this side, an attempt which I repeated three times, it reopened and appeared animate. I put my hand to his heart, it was beating no longer; I pricked the limbs, the body, and the lips with a compass; all was immoveable; he was dead, and I could not believe it. Physical pain at length made me cease this useless contemplation. My left leg was paralyzed, and I felt a trembling, an extraordinary movement; I experienced besides a general shaking, a sense of oppression and irregular throbbings at my heart. The most sinister reflections came into my mind. Was I going to perish like my unhappy companion? I thought so by my sufferings, and nevertheless reason told me that the danger was over. With the greatest difficulty I reached the village of Alt-khann. My instruments had been similarly struck by the thunder."

But when the newly fallen snow has effaced all traces of the path in those elevated regions, above the zone of the arbutus and rhododendron, when the avalanches or the violence of the winds have carried off the black poles which mark the course of the road, it is not possible to ascend with safety to the higher parts of the mountain. The traveller must advance with cautious steps, sounding as he proceeds, as in an unknown sea beset with shoals; the most experienced guides hesitate as to the direction they should take; for in that snowy wilderness the horizon is bounded by icy peaks, affording few landmarks to direct their steps, even if they should be perceived for a few moments from amidst the mantle of clouds which usually envelope their summits.

The immense labours which are requisite, during the winter season, to open this passage, are, therefore, at once apparent. For an extent of five leagues, from the village of Splugen to that of Isola, it is necessary either to clear away the snow, so as to come to the earth, or to force a passable road over its top; and the most indefatigable efforts cannot always secure success in such an enterprise. The frequent variations of the atmosphere, the clouds which suddenly rise up from the valleys beneath, the terrible storms of wind which arise in these elevated regions, the avalanches which descend with irresistible force from the overhanging glaciers, destroy in an instant the labours of weeks, and obliterate prodigious toils of human industry under a mountain of snow.

Such were the difficulties which stared Macdonald in the face, in the first mountain ridge which lay before him in the passage of the Alps. He arrived in the evening of the 26th of November, at the village of Splugen, the point where the mountaia passage may properly be said to begin, with a company of sappers, and the first sledges carrying