Early in September, Napoleon again defeated Würmser at Bassano. After the battle, at midnight Napoleon rode over the battle-field by moonlight, the quiet broken only by the moans of the wounded and dying. Suddenly a dog sprang from beneath the cloak of his dead master, rushed to Napoleon as though asking aid, and then back to the body, licking the face and hands of the dead, and howling piteously. Napoleon was strongly moved, and said years afterward, "I know not how it was, but no incident upon any field of battle ever produced so deep an impression upon my feelings. 'This man,' thought I, 'must have had among his comrades friends, and yet here he lies forsaken by all except his faithful dog.' ... Certainly, in that moment, I should have been unable to refuse any request to a suppliant enemy." When at St. Helena, Madame Montholon, seeming to be afraid of a dog, Napoleon said, "He who does not love a dog has never known what real fidelity means." Austria soon put another general in the field with over sixty thousand men. She was determined not to lose Italy. At first the French army lost some battles, the general-in-chief not being with them. When he came to his army, he said to some regiments, "Soldiers, I am not satisfied with you. You have shown neither discipline, constancy, nor courage.... Let it be written on the colors, 'They are not of the army of Italy.'" The men seemed heart-broken. "Place us in the van of the army," they said, "and you shall then judge whether we do not belong to the army of Italy." They were soon put to the test. Napoleon marched out of Verona on the night of Nov. 14, descended the Adige river, and fell upon the rear of Alvinzi, the Austrian general, at Arcola. The village is surrounded by marshes, crossed by causeways or bridges. When the French rushed upon the bridges, they were repulsed by the guns of the Austrians. Napoleon sprang from his horse, seized a standard, and shouted, "Follow your general!" but he was borne by the struggling soldiers off the bridge into the marsh. Frenzied at the probable loss of their general, the French fought desperately. Muiron, who had saved Napoleon at Toulon when he was wounded in the thigh, covered his general with his own body, and received his death wound from a shell. Lannes received three wounds in endeavoring to protect Napoleon, who was finally extricated, and was again at the head of the column. After three days of battle, the French were victorious. It is estimated that twenty thousand men perished in the swamps of Arcola. Napoleon wrote a letter of sympathy to the young widow of Muiron, who in a few weeks died at the birth of a lifeless child. To the Directory he wrote: "Never was a field of battle more valiantly disputed than the conflict at Arcola. I have scarcely any generals left. Their bravery and their patriotic enthusiasm are without example."