By his uncertain and dilatory movements Gyulai gave the Sardinians time to concentrate an army of 80,000 men around the fortress of Alessandria, and lost all the advantage of being the first in the field. In early May the French army reached Italy, partly by way of the St. Bernard Pass, partly by sea; and Garibaldi, with his mountaineers, took up a position that would enable him to attack the right wing of the Austrians. [=The French in Italy and the March on Milan=] Later in the month Napoleon himself appeared, his presence and the name he bore inspiring the soldiers with new valor, while his first order of the day, in which he recalled the glorious deeds which their fathers had done on those plains under his great uncle, roused them to the highest enthusiasm. While assuming the title of commander-in-chief, he left the conduct of the war to his able subordinates, MacMahon, Niel, Canrobert, and others. The Austrian general, having lost the opportunity to attack, was now put on the defensive, in which his incompetence was equally manifested. Being quite ignorant of the position of the foe, he sent Count Stadion, with 12,000 men, on a reconnoisance. An encounter took place at Montebello on May 20th, in which, after a sharp engagement, Stadion was forced to retreat. Gyulai directed his attention to that quarter, leaving Napoleon to march unmolested from Alessandria to the invasion of Lombardy. Gyulai now, aroused by the danger of Milan, began his retreat across the Ticino, which he had so uselessly crossed. [=A Campaign of Blunders=] The road to Milan crossed the Ticino River and the Naviglio Grande, a broad and deep canal a few miles east of the river. Some distance farther on lies the village of Magenta, the seat of the first great battle of the war. Sixty years before, on those Lombard plains, Napoleon the Great had first lost, and then, by a happy chance, won the famous battle of Marengo. The Napoleon now in command was a very different man from the mighty soldier of the year 1800, and the French escaped a disastrous rout only because the Austrians were led by a worse general still. Some one has said that victory comes to the army that makes the fewest blunders. Such seems to have been the case in the battle of Magenta, where military genius was the one thing wanting.