After A Few
Vain Struggles With Fate, He Was Marched To Milan, Drilled And Trained;
The Next Year His Division Was Ordered To The Tyrol, Where The Young
Man, “Brought Up For The Church,” Instantly Deserted.
Discovered in his
native town, he was sent under circumstances of suitable indignity to
join his regiment at Venice, where a general act of grace, promulgated
on occasion of Napoleon’s short visit, preserved him from a platoon of
infantry.
His next move was to Spalato, in Dalmatia, where he marched
under General Marmont to Cattaro, the last retreat of the hardy and
warlike Montenegrins. At Budoa, a sea-port S.E. of Ragusa, having
consulted an Albanian “captain-merchant,” Giovanni Finati, and fifteen
other Italians—
[p.391] “including the sergeant’s wife,” swore fidelity to one another, and
deserted with all their arms and accoutrements. They passed into the
Albanese territory, and were hospitably treated as “soldiers, who had
deserted from the infidel army in Dalmatia,” by the Pasha, posted at
Antivari to keep check upon the French operations. At first they were
lodged in the Mosque, and the sergeant’s wife had been set apart from the
rest; but as they refused to apostatize they were made common slaves,
and worked at the quarries till their “backs were sore.” Under these
circumstances, the sergeant discovering and promulgating his discovery
that “the Mahometans believe as we do in a god; and upon examination that
we might find the differences from our mother church to be less than we
had imagined,”—all at once came the determination of professing to be
Mohammedans.
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