narrow defiles of the mountains, with the French in hot pursuit behind, hurling upon them every missile of destruction, bullets, and balls, and craggy fragments of the cliffs, was a calamity to be avoided at every hazard. Upon the summit of Mount Tarwis, the battle, decisive of this fearful question, was to be fought. It was an appropriate arena for the fell deeds of war. Wintry winds swept the bleak and icy eminence, and a clear, cold, cloudless sky canopied the two armies as, with fiend-like ferocity, they hurled themselves upon each other. The thunder of artillery reverberated above the clouds. The shout of onset and the shrieks of the wounded were heard upon eminences which even the wing of the eagle had rarely attained. Squadrons of cavalry fell upon fields of ice, and men and horses were precipitated into fathomless depths below. The snow drifts of Mount Tarwis were soon crimsoned with blood, and the warm current from human hearts congealed with the eternal glacier, and there, embalmed in ice, it long and mournfully testified of man's inhumanity to man. The Archduke Charles, having exhausted his last reserve, was compelled to retreat. Many of the soldiers threw away their arms, and escaped over the crags of the mountains; thousands were taken prisoners; multitudes were left dead upon the ice, and half-buried in the drifts of snow. But Charles, brave and energetic, still kept the mass of his army together, and with great skill conducted his precipitate retreat. With merciless vigor the French troops pursued, pouring down upon the retreating masses a perfect storm of bullets, and rolling over the precipitous sides of the mountains huge rocks, which swept away whole companies at once. The bleeding, breathless fugitives at last arrived in the valley below. Napoleon followed close in their rear. The Alps were now passed. The French were in Austria. They heard a new language. The scenery, the houses, the customs of the inhabitants, all testified that they were no longer in Italy. They had with unparalleled audacity entered the very heart of the Austrian empire, and with unflinching resolution were marching upon the capital of twenty millions of people, behind whose ramparts, strengthened by the labor of ages, Maria Theresa had bidden defiance to the invading Turks. Twenty days had now passed since the opening of the campaign, and the Austrians were already driven over the Alps, and having lost a fourth of their numbers in the various conflicts which had occurred, dispirited by disaster, were retreating to intrench themselves for a final struggle within the walls of Vienna. Napoleon, with 45,000 men, flushed with victory, was rapidly descending the fertile steams which flow into the Danube.