The Column, erected to commemorate this glorious victory, has been thrown down by order of the Austrian government--a poor piece of puerile spite, but worthy of legitimacy. Alexandria is, or rather _was_, for the fortifications no longer exist, more remarkable for being an important military post than for the beauty of the city itself. There is, however, a fine and spacious _Place_, which serves as a parade for the garrison, and being planted with trees by the French when they held it, forms an agreeable promenade. The fortifications were blown up by the Austrians before the place was given over to the Sardinian authorities, a flagrant breach of faith and contract, since by the treaty of 1814 they were bound to give up all the fortified places that were restored or ceded to the King of Sardinia in the same state in which they were found when the French evacuated them, and the Austrians took possession provisorily. The French regarding (and with reason) this fortress as the key of Lombardy always kept the fortifications in good repair and well provided with cannon. But the Austrian government, knowing itself to be unpopular in Italy and trembling for the safety of her dominions, being always fearful that the Piedmontese Government might one day be induced to favour an insurrectionary or national movement in the north of Italy, determined, finding that it could not keep the fortress for itself, which it strove hard to do under divers pretexts, to render it of as little use as they possibly could do to the King of Sardinia; so they blew up the fortifications and carried off the cannon, leaving the King without a single fortified place in the whole of his Italian dominions to defend himself, in case of attack, against an Austrian invasion. On the morning of the 15th August we passed thro' Tortona, now no longer a fortress of consequence. All this country may be considered as classic ground, immortalized by the campaigns of Napoleon, when commander in chief of the army of the French Republic in Italy, a far greater and more illustrious _rôle_ than when he assumed the Imperial bauble and condescended to mix with the vulgar herd of Kings.