political condition of Italy. The serious and religious tendencies
of his mind are developed by the following note, which four days
after the battle of Marengo, he wrote to the Consuls in Paris:
"To-day, whatever our atheists may say to it, I go in great state
to the To Deum which is to be chanted in the Cathedral of Milan. *
* The Te Deum , is an anthem of praise, sung in churches on occasion
of thanksgiving. It is so called from the first words "Te Deum
laudamus," Thee God we praise

An unworthy spirit of detraction has vainly sought to wrest from
Napoleon the honor of this victory, and to attribute it all to the
flank charge made by Kellerman. Such attempts deserve no detail
reply. Napoleon had secretly and suddenly called into being an army,
and by its apparently miraculous creation had astounded Europe. He
had effectually deceived the vigilance of his enemies, so as to
leave them entirely in the dark respecting his point of attack.
He had conveyed that army with all its stores, over the pathless
crags of the Great St. Bernard. Like an avalanche he had descended
from the mountains upon the plains of startled Italy. He had
surrounded the Austrian hosts, though they were doubled his numbers,
with a net through which they could not break. In a decisive
battle he had scattered their ranks before him, like chaff by the
whirlwind. He was nobly seconded by those generals whom his genius
had chosen and created. It is indeed true, that without his generals
and his soldiers he could not have gained the victory. Massena
contributed to the result by his matchless defense of Genoa; Moreau,
by holding in abeyance the army of the Rhine; Lannes, by his iron
firmness on the plain of Montebello; Desaix, by the promptness
with which he rushed to the rescue, as soon as his car caught the
far-off thunders of the cannon of Marengo; and Kellerman, by his