As soon as the morning dawned, Alvinzi perceived that Verona was evacuated, and in astonishment he heard the thunder of Napoleon's guns reverberating over the marshes which surrounded Arcola. He feared the genius of his adversary, and his whole army was immediately in motion. All day long the battle raged on those narrow causeways, the heads of the columns rushing against each other with indescribable fury, and the dead and the dying filling the morass. The terrible rebuke which had been inflicted upon the division of Vaubois still rung in the ears of the French troops, and every officer and every man resolved to prove that _he_ belonged to the army of Italy. Said Augereau, as he rushed into the mouth of a perfect volcano of flame and fire, "Napoleon may break my sword over my dead body, but he shall never cashier _me_ in the presence of my troops." Napoleon was every where, exposed to every danger, now struggling through the dead and the dying on foot, heading the impetuous charge; now galloping over the dykes, with the balls from the Austrian batteries plowing the ground around him. Wherever his voice was heard, and his eye fell, tenfold enthusiasm inspired his men. Lannes, though severely wounded, had hastened from the hospital at Milan, to aid the army in this terrible emergence. He received three wounds in endeavoring to protect Napoleon, and never left his side till the battle was closed. Muiron, another of those gallant spirits, bound to Napoleon by those mysterious ties of affection which this strange man inspired, seeing a bomb shell about to explode, threw himself between it and Napoleon, saving the life of his beloved general by the sacrifice of his own. The darkness of night separated the combatants for a few hours, but before the dawn of the morning the murderous assault was renewed, and continued with unabated violence through the whole ensuing day. The French veterans charged with the bayonet, and hurled the Austrians with prodigious slaughter into the marsh. Another night came and went. The gray light of another cold winter's morning appeared faintly in the east, when the soldiers sprang again from their freezing, marshy beds, and in the dense clouds of vapor and of smoke which had settled down over the morass, with the fury of blood-hounds rushed again to the assault. In the midst of this terrible conflict a cannon-ball fearfully mangled the horse upon which Napoleon was riding. The powerful animal, frantic with pain and terror, became perfectly unmanageable. Seizing the bit in his teeth, he rushed through the storm of bullets directly into the midst of the Austrian ranks. He then, in the agonies of death, plunged into the morass and expired. Napoleon was left struggling in the swamp up to his neck in the mire. Being perfectly helpless, he was expecting every moment either to sink and disappear in that inglorious grave, or that some Austrian dragoon would sabre his head from his body or with a bullet pierce his brain.