“We recognised each other in the light of the blazing houses, and with transports of joy and gratitude and cries of ‘Long live our rescuers!’ our men threw themselves on the necks of their deliverers.” In that dramatic fashion the battle of Dürrenstein reached its close. The Russians fell back under cover of the night, retreating up the lateral valley-pass, by which way at the outset they had worked their way round, guided by the Austrian general, Schmidt, to surprise and cut off Gazan’s division. Napoleon, in his great relief at learning that Mortier had come through without disaster, for once blamed nobody. He knew that he himself was most of all to blame, for exposing to sudden attack a comparatively weak detachment of his army in the face of an enemy still full of fight, on the farther side of a deep and rapid river. “It seemed,” in Marbot’s words, “as if no explanation of this operation beyond the Danube satisfactory to military men being possible, there was a desire to hush up its consequences.” [Sidenote: BY WAY OF COVERING THE BLUNDER] By way of covering up his own glaring blunder Napoleon heaped praises on the troops engaged. He expressed unbounded admiration at the stand they had made. In the 22nd “Bulletin of the Grand Army,” issued from Schönbrunn, near Vienna, two days later, the Emperor declared that “le combat de Dürrenstein sera à jamais mémorable dans les annales militaires.” Gazan, he said, had shown “beaucoup de valeur et de conduite.” The 4me and 9me Légère and the 32nd and 100th of the Line, wrote Napoleon, “se sont couverts de gloire.” CHAPTER IV ON THE FIELD OF AUSTERLITZ Austerlitz, the crowning triumph of the First War of the Grand Army, set its _cachet_ to the fame of the Eagles. Napoleon there lured the enemy on into attacking him at apparent disadvantage on ground of his own choosing. Then, availing himself to the fullest extent of the flagrant blundering of his assailants, he struck at them with a smashing, knock-down blow from the shoulder. [Sidenote: LURED ON TO MEET THEIR FATE]