[Footnote 7: After this anecdote, the author of Waverley lugs into his narrative, the following compliment to the national vanity of his countrymen. (Vol. iii, p. 137.) “This somewhat resembles the charge which foreign tacticians have brought against the English, that they gained victories by continuing, with their insular ignorance and obstinacy, to fight on, long after the period when if they had known the rules of war, they ought to have considered themselves as completely defeated.” Such impertinence and bad taste deter imitation, or it might be said, this charge against Sir Walter's compatriots has never been urged by officers of the army or navy of the United States—neither on the lakes nor on the ocean; at Saratoga, nor at New Orleans, where the “flower of the peninsular veterans,” as Sir Walter himself admits, (vol. viii. p. 474,) led by the disciple and brother-in-law of Wellington—sought a combat with an inferior force of western militia, and were perfectly sensible of a total defeat. “Testis Metaurum flumen et Asdrubal Devictus, et pulcher fugatis Ille dies Latio tenebris.”] Although the possession of Milan and the submission of Lombardy were consequences of the battle of Lodi, Bonaparte was disappointed in one of the principal objects which he hoped to gain by it. Wukassowich and {545} Colli, feebly annoyed by Kilmaine, had crossed the Adda at Cassano, in the forenoon of the day; he forced a passage at Lodi, and taking the upper route, by the way of Brescia, to Mantua, were beyond the reach of interception. Relinquishing, therefore, further efforts against these Generals, he determined to attack Pizzighitone before it could be put in a state of defence, and marched for that purpose on the morning of the 11th, down the left bank of the Adda. The flight of a few shells seconded by the cannonade of Mesnard from the right bank of the river, compelled the garrison of three hundred men, which Liptay had left behind him, to surrender. Cremona, a more important fortress, opened its gates the same day to General Beaumont, who after charging a body of the fugitives from Lodi, appeared before it with an advance guard of cavalry.