It’s already past eleven, the captain replied

captain replied

melancholy. “No one has come, nor shows any sign of coming to help. We will give in to dire necessity.”

Half an hour later, the companies were ready [193]. The fasces were drawn up, and we were allowed to go, divided into squads, to salute our colonel’s tomb. You will recall that to enter the ruins, we had to pass over a pile of rubble, through a breach in the surrounding wall, since the castle gate, near which Filippo Del Carretto had been buried, opened on the other side of the fortress.

The capitulation gave us the right to transport the hero’s body. Still, Captain Tibaldè had thought it best, given the uncertainty of the route to be taken and given the sad state of the surrounding town, to leave the sacred remains for a few days among the ruins of Cosseria, from where he could later remove them, in agreement with the deceased’s family. Therefore, the decision had been made to bury him, covering the ground with a pile of stones. Our comrades, with one of those delicate thoughts that come so naturally to soldiers on solemn occasions, had rushed to uproot some wild rose bushes, which could be seen covered and greening the rubble of the second battle. [194]surrounded, and they had transplanted them around that pile of stones. We wept like children before the tomb of the brave man.

“Come on!” said Captain Tibaldé, barely restraining himself. “The hour has come. Poor Filippo! Poor Cosseria! We must leave you, obey fate!”

Returning to the bundles of arms, we formed into two lines and took up our rifles. At noon sharp, Captain Tibaldè called for the drums to be struck and gave orders for the left flank and forward. We exited the trenches at the usual pace, taking the crest of the spur on the left, where a wide path ran for perhaps two hundred paces toward Monte della Guardia, and then, curving beneath the western flank of the fortress, descended between whitish tuff mounds, here and there dotted with sparse juniper trees and dried thyme bushes, to the Montecàla pass.

At the first bend, high up, was a French sentry post. An officer, having responded to their call, had come to remove the abatement blocking the passage. At Montecàla, along the road leading to the Plodio gorge, a regiment had taken up arms and formed up in formation. The drums were beating; [195]the tricolour flag was flying at the front of the regiment; the French soldiers, at the command given by a general, and immediately repeated in a thundering voice by the colonel and all the company officers, presented arms.

It was an unfortunate, yet solemn, moment for us when we had to cross the front of the French army, drawn up along the road from Montecàla to Marghero. At the head of the column were old General Provera and Captain Tibaldè; the companies from Monferrato, the Navy, and Susa followed; last came the Croats, poor people, sent so far from home by the whim of an emperor to fight in a war whose reasons they could not understand and whose enthusiasm they could not feel, but in which, nevertheless, they displayed rare intrepidity and admirable perseverance.

All of us, standing firm and upright, as if we wanted to steel ourselves against the blows of fate, passed with our rifles held straight, with a firm grip, looking at our enemies in that way, you know. And they, the old soldiers of Loano and Montenotte, with their rifles protruding, which seemed to form a hedge of steel before us, stared at us fixedly, half curious, half moved. Many [196]they had firecrackers in their eyes; almost all of them, at first in low voices, then gradually more boldly, greeted us with friendly words.

— You are the braves, Piémontais, you are the braves! Now, we’ve done the replay. —

I understand that it was a consolation for our self-esteem to be welcomed in this way. But, by God, even being rescued and being able to clear our way with bayonets drawn would have given us a thrill!

At that moment, we were thinking, with deep regret, of our poor companies, who had done their duty so heroically, and meanwhile, through General Colli’s fault, had to be taken prisoner of war. Augereau had indeed told us that morning: “Let your leaders win a battle, take prisoners, and the defenders of Cosseria will be exchanged for an equal number of ours.” But judging by the way things were proceeding, far from taking prisoners! We could already see the French army on the road to Turin.

It has been reported in some historical accounts that the enemy army’s command and those taken prisoner betrayed the defenders of Cosseria. [197]In France, despite the agreements made. All this was repeated in good faith by those who had not read the document and only knew that our grenadiers were granted the honours of war. The French betrayed no one; they kept their promises. It is not France’s fault that the Austrian generals gifted to Piedmont failed to obtain for us a smile of fortune, nor even enough prisoners to exchange for our brave comrades.

When we reached Marghero, in front of the Plodio pass, we were led to a field, where the soldiers laid down their weapons, which they were never to touch again. They were honourable weapons, and we abandoned them with tears in our eyes. In the presence of General Augereau, the names of the non-commissioned officers drawn by lot were read, and they promptly emerged from the ranks. There were nine of us, as I told you. Still, the Frenchman was generous and granted the weapons and freedom to five other Croatian non-commissioned officers, so that the two Austrian companies, whose strength was equal to that of the six Piedmontese, would also have an equal number of liberated men.

We embraced our unfortunate comrades who remained prisoners of war, and who, in the meantime, happier than we, were already smelling the smoke. [198]Some pots, placed on the fire in their honour in the nearby ditch; then we set off towards Plodio, where General Augereau gave us an escort company, to lead us to the village of Carcare.

It was down there, as I told you, the headquarters of the commander-in-chief, the victor of Montenotte, who had only been known in the world for two days. You will remember his proud but apt phrase: “My dynasty begins with Montenotte.” We, therefore, were to see the man at the dawn of his glory.

Carcare, an ancient village of Aleramic origins, that is to say, of the Del Carretto marquises, passed, along with Finale, into the hands of the Spanish, and then the Genoese. Nestled on both banks of the Bormida, in an open and pleasant location, lent light and air by the depression of the nearby Cadibona hill, it has a singular appearance, half Ligurian and half Piedmontese: Ligurian in the shape and plaster of the houses, most of which are colourful and ornate; Piedmontese in the tiled roofs. A transit point for the constant trade between the seaside and the Langhe, it already had a large number of inns, which we, however, neither had the time nor the inclination to visit. So I, one [199]of the defenders of Cosseria, I will go into the world beyond without having drunk, either in that mountain village or in Carcare, a glass of the wine of Cosseria, which everyone, in those valleys of our Apennines, praises as very tasty, although sour, and passable to that God.

Friends, let us drink this, which is from Gattinara, if the inscription does not lie. I remember, from reading it in the second rhetoric, that Teucer, fleeing Salamis, landed at the first shore, to take hold of the friendly amphora and, more or less, make a short speech to his companions. — “O brave ones, who have suffered so much with me, let us rest for a moment and drown our sad thoughts in a glass of wine; we will set sail again tomorrow.”

We, not tomorrow, but today, must go into the presence of Napoleon, that is, let’s not be anachronistic, of “Citizen General Buonaparte.” His first name emerged in 1802 when, at the Consulta of Lyon, he was awarded the title of President of the Italian Republic, and six months later, in Paris, that of First Consul for Life of the French Republic.

Forward, then, from the Plodio valley [200], it flows into the larger Bormida. Carcare is down there, at the bend in the river, with its reddish roofs. You pass close to the Piarist college and enter a small triangular square with a well in the centre. A two-story stately home forms opposite, the longest side of the triangle, painted yellow, with Baroque friezes and imitating marble. It is the home of Mr. Ferreri, and the tricolour flag, waving on the arch of the main door, indicates the headquarters of the Republican army.

[201]

Chapter XIII.

Ex ungue leonem.

We passed along the road through a multitude of Frenchmen. Soldiers, to be sure, are the same in every country in the world — that is, a little invading; but the French — and I’m not boasting, since I’ve fought several campaigns with them — outperform everyone else. As soon as they enter a village, they start poking around, trying to establish a foothold; an hour later, they’ve already made the acquaintance of all the inhabitants, emerging from doorways and alleys, appearing from windows and even rooftops; the vegetable garden and the chicken coop, the kitchen and the dining room no longer hold any secrets for them.

In Carcare, where they had been for twenty-four hours, they could already call themselves family. The village, after all, having been under the dominion of the [202]The Republic of Genoa, it had no Piedmontese feel at all, and, like all Ligurian towns in those years, it sided squarely with the Republican army, standard-bearer of the liberal ideas that were to make great strides even in the dominions of neighbouring Piedmont. All around the little square, shopkeepers had set out chairs, and officers and soldiers sat mingling with the citizens, chatting cheerfully, sharing the day’s news, and finally fraternising, to express the novelty of the matter with the novelty of the word.