Bonaparte, with the consular guard,--a picked corps of twelve hundred trusted veterans which he had developed from that formed for personal protection in his first Italian campaign,--stood at Tortona. He could hardly trust himself to believe that the Austrians would be bold enough to make a direct attack, and had therefore disposed his troops in this scattered way. But Melas, though slow and old-fashioned, was intrepid, and the Austrians were daring fighters. On the morning of the fourteenth he began to cross the Bormida, and as his van drove the French outposts to Marengo, he was able to deploy east of the stream. Victor received orders to hold the village at any cost, in order to gain time for concentrating the scattered French columns to the right and left of his position, which was to be the center. On a level battle-field the solid brick or stone walls of a village, of a churchyard, or of great farm-courts like those of Lombardy, afford the most desirable shelter, and oftentimes, as at Marengo, Aspern, and even Waterloo, the loss or gain of such a position turns the tide of battle; for an army equipped with flint-lock muskets and small unrifled field-pieces, though victorious in the open, dares not leave a considerable portion of their enemy thus ensconced in the rear. Hence the ever-recurring and enormous importance of farmsteads and hamlets in the Napoleonic battle-fields. Lannes was to deploy on the right, and Murat was sent with his cavalry in part to support the forming line, and in part to prevent a flank movement along the slow, willow-bordered current of the Bormida. If Desaix could come up in time, he would form the left; in the mean time the younger Kellermann was stationed with his dragoons to guard Victor's open flank.