The life and times of Cavour Author:William Roscoe Thayer Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XXIII MAGENTA AND SOLFERINO GYULAI'S inexplicable indecision puzzled Napoleon III, who, having drawn his military knowledge out of the books, expec... more »ted his opponent to follow the rules. Napoleon himself, also neglecting to maintain an efficient scouting service, assumed that the Austrians would attempt to join battle with him before he could gain a foothold in Lombardy. Having this in view he concentrated his army at Novara, and then instructed General Camou, with his division of light infantry of the Guard, to seize the bridge over the Ticino at Turbigo. Camou made the passage unopposed, and bivouacked in the little town. MacMahon and Espinasse, finding the still more important crossing at San Martino undefended, seized the bridge-head, and set their engineers to work to strengthen the viaduct the Austrians had weakened but failed to blow up. Thus on that night of June 2, two French commands were picketed on Lombard soil. The next day, early, MacMahon reached Turbigo, and rode on to Robecchetto, a village a mile and a third beyond, where, on climbing into the belfry, he saw a battalion of Austrians within gunshot of him, tramping along the wooded road. He had barely time to mount his horse, gallop back to Turbigo and send his men against them. They proved to be a column under General Cordon sent to block the passage at Turbigo: but they were too late; and after a two hours' hot encounter with La Motte- rouge's division and the Algerian sharpshooters, they retired. Being thus in possession of two entrances into Lombardy, Napoleon determined to move his entire left wing across the river on the following day. He was in the position of a novice who, through good luck which he ought not to have banked upon, had made a stroke that would have glorified any professional. Not...« less