The very day Napoleon left Paris, Desaix arrived in France from Egypt. Frank, sincere, upright, and punctiliously honorable, he was one of the few whom Napoleon truly loved. Desaix regarded Napoleon as infinitely his superior, and looked up to him with a species of adoration; he loved him with a fervor of feeling which amounted almost to a passion. Napoleon, touched, by the affection of a heart so noble, requited it with the most confiding friendship. Desaix, upon his arrival in Paris, found letters for him there from the First Consul. As he read the confidential lines, he was struck with the melancholy air with which they were pervaded. "Alas!" said he, "Napoleon has gained every thing, and yet he is unhappy. I must hasten to meet him." Without delay he crossed the Alps, and arrived at the head-quarters of Napoleon but a few days before the battle of Marengo. They passed the whole night together, talking over the events of Egypt and the prospects of France. Napoleon felt greatly strengthened by the arrival of his noble friend, and immediately assigned to him the command of a division of the army. "Desaix," said he, "is my sheet anchor." "You have had a long interview with Desaix," said Bourrienne to Napoleon the next morning. "Yes!" he replied; "but I had my reasons. As soon as I return to Paris I shall make him Minister of War. He shall always be my lieutenant. I would make him a prince if I could. He is of the heroic mould of antiquity!" Napoleon was fully aware that a decisive battle would soon take place. Melas was rapidly, from all points, concentrating his army. The following laconic and characteristic order was issued by the First Consul to Lannes and Murat: "Gather your forces at the river Stradella. On the 8th or 9th at the latest, you will have on your hands fifteen or eighteen thousand Austrians. Meet them, and cut them to pieces. It will be so many enemies less upon our hands on the day of the decisive battle we are to expect with the entire army of Melas." The prediction was true. An Austrian force advanced, eighteen thousand strong. Lannes met them upon the field of Montebello. They were strongly posted, with batteries ranged upon the hill sides, which swept the whole plain. It was of the utmost moment that this body should be prevented from combining with the other vast forces of the Austrians. Lannes had but eight thousand men. Could he sustain the unequal conflict for a few hours, Victor, who was some miles in the rear, could come up with a reserve of four thousand men. The French soldiers, fully conscious of the odds against which they were to contend, and of the carnage into the midst of which they were plunging, with shouts of enthusiasm rushed upon their foes. Instantaneously a storm of grape-shot from all the batteries swept through his ranks. Said Lannes, "_I could hear the bones crash in my division, like glass in a hail-storm._" For nine long hours, from eleven in the morning till eight at night,