The day after this decisive battle our march was resumed, and the advanced-guard entered that narrow and dismal defile which goes by the name of the “Valley of Hell,” when our left and right flanks, stationed at the entrance of the pass, effectually secured the retreat against molestation. The voltigeurs of St. Cyr crowning the heights as we went, swept away the light troops which were scattered along the rocky eminences, and in less than a fortnight our army debouched by Fribourg and Oppenheim into the valley of the Rhine, not a gun having been lost, not a caisson deserted, during that perilous movement. The Archduke, however, having ascertained the direction of Moreau’s retreat, advanced by a parallel pass through the Kinzigthal, and attacked St. Cyr at Nauendorf, and defeated him. Our right flank, severely handled at Emmendingen, the whole force was obliged to retreat on Huningen, and once more we found ourselves upon the banks of the Rhine, no longer an advancing army, high in hope, and flushed with victory, but beaten, harassed, and retreating! The last few days of that retreat presented a scene of disaster such as I can never forget. To avoid the furious charges of the Austrian cavalry, against which our own could no longer make resistance, we had fallen back upon a line of country cut up into rocky cliffs and precipices, and covered by a dense pine forest. Here, necessarily broken up into small parties, we were assailed by the light troops of the enemy, led on through the various passes by the peasantry, whose animosity our own severity had excited. It was, therefore, a continual hand-to-hand struggle, in which, opposed as we were to over numbers, well acquainted with every advantage of the ground, our loss was terrific. It is said that nigh seven thousand men fell—an immense number, when no general action had occurred. Whatever the actual loss, such were the circumstances of our army, that Moreau hastened to propose an armistice, on the condition of the Rhine being the boundary between the two armies, while Kehl was still to be held by the French. The proposal was rejected by the Austrians, who at once commenced preparations for a siege of the fortress with forty thousand troops, under Latour’s command. The earlier months of winter now passed in the labors of the siege, and on the morning of New Year’s Day the first attack was made; the second line was carried a few days after, and, after a glorious defense by Desaix, the garrison capitulated, and evacuated the fortress on the 9th of the month. Thus, in the space of six short months, had we advanced with a conquering army into the very heart of the Empire, and now we were back again within our own frontier; not one single trophy of all our victories remaining, two-thirds of our army dead or wounded, more than all, the prestige of our superiority fatally injured, and that of the enemy’s valor and prowess as signally elevated.