Nothing displays more powerfully the force of egotism than the simple truth that, when any man sets himself down to write the events of his life, the really momentous occurrences in which he may have borne a part occupy a conspicuously small place, when each petty incident of a merely personal nature, is dilated and extended beyond all bounds. In one sense, the reader benefits by this, since there are few impertinences less forgivable than the obtrusion of some insignificant name into the narrative of facts that are meet for history. I have made these remarks in a spirit of apology to my reader; not alone for the accuracy of my late detail, but also, if I should seem in future to dwell but passingly on the truly important facts of a great campaign, in which my own part was so humble. I was a soldier in that glorious army which Moreau led into the heart of Germany, and whose victorious career would only have ceased when they entered the capital of the Empire, had it not been for the unhappy mistakes of Jourdan, who commanded the auxiliary forces in the north. For nigh three months we advanced steadily and successfully, superior in every engagement; we only waited for the moment of junction with Jourdan’s army, to declare the empire our own; when at last came the terrible tidings that he had been beaten, and that Latour was advancing from Ulm to turn our left flank, and cut off our communications with France. Two hundred miles from our own frontiers—separated from the Rhine by that terrible Black Forest whose defiles are mere gorges between vast mountains—with an army fifty thousand strong on one flank, and the Archduke Charles commanding a force of nigh thirty thousand on the other—such were the dreadful combinations which now threatened us with a defeat not less signal than Jourdan’s own. Our strength, however, lay in a superb army of seventy thousand unbeaten men, led on by one whose name alone was victory. On the 24th of September, the order for retreat was given; the army began to retire by slow marches, prepared to contest every inch of ground, and make every available spot a battle-field. The baggage and ammunition were sent on in front, and two days’ march in advance. Behind, a formidable rear-guard was ready to repulse every attack of the enemy. Before, however, entering those close defiles by which his retreat lay, Moreau determined to give one terrible lesson to his enemy. Like the hunted tiger turning upon his pursuers, he suddenly halted at Biberach, and ere Latour, who commanded the Austrians, was aware of his purpose, assailed the imperial forces with an attack on right, centre, and left together. Four thousand prisoners and eighteen pieces of cannon were trophies of the victory.