Our regiment, after I had been some time in it, was commanded into Italy, and one of the most considerable actions that I was in was the famous attack upon Cremona, in the Milanese, where the Germans, being privately and by treachery let into the town in the night through a kind of common sewer, surprised the town and got possession of the greatest part of it, surprising the mareschal, Duke de Villeroi, and taking him prisoner as he came out of his quarters, and beating the few French troops which were left in the citadel; but were in the middle of their victory so boldly and resolutely attacked by two Irish regiments who were quartered in the street leading to the river Po, and who kept possession of the water-gate, or Po gate, of the town, by which the German reinforcements should have come in, that, after a most desperate fight, the Germans had their victory wrung out of their hands, and not being able to break through us to let in their friends, were obliged at length to quit the town again, to the eternal honour of those Irish regiments, and indeed of their whole nation, and for which we had a very handsome compliment from the king of France. I now had the satisfaction of knowing, and that for the first time too, that I was not that cowardly, low-spirited wretch that I was when the fellow bullied me in my lodgings about the bill of £30. Had he attacked me now, though in the very same condition, I should, naked and unarmed as I was, have flown in the face of him and trampled him under my feet. But men never know themselves till they are tried, and courage is acquired by time and experience of things. Philip de Comines tells us that, after the battle of Monteleri, the Count de Charolois, who till then had an utter aversion to the war, and abhorred it and everything that belonged to it, was so changed by the glory he obtained in that action, and by the flattery of those about him, that afterwards the army was his mistress and the fatigues of the war his chief delight. It is too great an example for me to bring in my own case, but so it was, that they flattered me so with my bravery, as they called it, on the occasion of this action, that I fancied myself brave, whether I was so or not, and the pride of it made me bold and daring to the last degree on all occasions. But what added to it was, that somebody gave a particular account to the Court of my being instrumental to the saving the city, and the whole Cremonese, by my extraordinary defence of the Po gate, and by my managing that defence after the lieutenant-colonel who commanded the party where I was posted was killed; upon which the king sent me a public testimony of his accepting my service, and sent me a brevet to be lieutenant-colonel, and the next courier brought me actually a commission for lieutenant-colonel in the regiment of ——.