The night after the battle of Bassano, the moon rose cloudless and brilliant over the sanguinary scene. Napoleon, who seldom exhibited any hilarity or even exhilaration of spirits in the hour of victory, rode, as was his custom, over the plain, covered with the bodies of the dying and the dead, and, silent and thoughtful, seemed lost in painful reverie. It was midnight. The confusion and the uproar of the battle had passed away, and the deep silence of the calm starlight night was only disturbed by the moans of the wounded and the dying. Suddenly a dog sprung from beneath the cloak of his dead master, and rushed to Napoleon, as if frantically imploring his aid, and then rushed back again to the mangled corpse, licking the blood from the face and the hands, and howling most piteously. Napoleon was deeply moved by the affecting scene, and involuntarily stopped his horse to contemplate it. In relating the event, many years afterward, he remarked, "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. What a strange being is man! How mysterious are his impressions! I had, without emotion, ordered battles which had decided the fate of armies. I had, with tearless eyes, beheld the execution of those orders, in which thousands of my countrymen were slain. And yet here my sympathies were most deeply and resistlessly moved by the mournful howling of a dog. Certainly in that moment I should have been unable to refuse any request to a suppliant enemy." [Illustration: THE DEAD SOLDIER AND HIS DOG.] Austria was still unsubdued. With a perseverance worthy of all admiration, had it been exercised in a better cause, the Austrian government still refused to make peace with republican France. The energies of the empire were aroused anew to raise a fourth army. England, contending against France wherever her navy or her troops could penetrate, was the soul of this warfare. She animated the cabinet of Vienna, and aided the Austrian armies with her strong co-operation and her gold. The _people_ of England, republican in their tendencies, and hating the utter despotism of the old monarchy of France, were clamorous for peace. But the royal family and the aristocracy in general, were extremely unwilling to come to any amicable terms with a nation which had been guilty of the crime of renouncing monarchy.