A sanguinary and decisive conflict, renowned in history as the battle of Castiglione, inflicted the final blow upon the Austrians. They were routed with terrible slaughter. The French pursued them, with merciless massacre, through the whole day, in their headlong flight, and rested not until the darkness of night shut out the panting, bleeding fugitives from their view. Less than one week had elapsed since that proud army, sixty thousand strong, had marched from the walls of Trent, with gleaming banners and triumphant music, flushed with anticipated victory. In six days it had lost in killed, wounded, and prisoners forty thousand men, ten thousand more than the whole army which Napoleon had at his command. But twenty thousand tattered, exhausted, war-worn fugitives effected their escape. In the extreme of mortification and dejection they returned to Trent, to bear themselves the tidings of their swift and utter discomfiture. Napoleon, in these conflicts, lost but seven thousand men. These amazing victories were to be attributed entirely to the genius of the conqueror. Such achievements history had never before recorded. The victorious soldiers called it, "_The six days' campaign_." Their admiration of their invincible chief now passed all bounds. The veterans who had honored Napoleon with the title of _corporal_, after "the terrible passage of the bridge of Lodi," now enthusiastically promoted him to the rank of _sergeant_, as his reward for the signal victories of this campaign. The aristocratic governments which, upon the marching of Wurmser from Trent, had perfidiously violated their faith, and turned against Napoleon, supposing that he was ruined, were now terror-stricken, anticipating the most appalling vengeance. But the conqueror treated them with the greatest clemency, simply informing them that he was fully acquainted with their conduct, and that he should hereafter regard them with a watchful eye. He, however, summoned Cardinal Mattei, the legate of the perjured Pope, to his head-quarters. The cardinal, conscious that not a word could be uttered in extenuation of his guilt, attempted no defense. The old man, high in authority and venerable in years, bowed with the humility of a child before the young victor, and exclaimed "peccavi! peccavi!"--_I have sinned! I have sinned!_ This apparent contrition disarmed Napoleon, and in jocose and contemptuous indignation he sentenced him to do penance for three months, by fasting and prayer, in a convent.