Vegetables Are Served Up
With The Umidi, But Plain Boiled, Leaving It Optional To You To Use
Melted Butter Or Oil With Them.
A salad is a constant concomitant of the
arrosto.
A desert or fruit concludes the repast. Wine is drank at
discretion. The wine of Lombardy is light and not ill flavored; it is far
weaker than any wine I know of, but it has an excellent quality, that of
facilitating digestion. A cup of strong coffee is generally made for you in
the morning, for which you pay three or four soldi (sous), and in giving
five or six soldi to the waiter, all your expenses are paid supposing you
are spesato, i.e., that the vetturino pays for your supper and bed; if
not, your charges are left to the conscience of the aubergiste, which in
Italy is in general of prodigious width. I therefore advise every traveller
who goes with a vetturino to be a spesato, otherwise he will have to pay
four or five times as much and not be a whit better regaled. The
vetturini generally pay from three to three and a half francs for the
supper and bed of their passengers. As the vetturini invariably make a
halt of an hour and half or two hours at mid-day in some town or village,
this halt enables you to take your dejeuner a la fourchette, which you
pay for yourself, unless you stipulate for the payment of that also with
the vetturino by paying something more, say one a half franc per diem for
that. In this part, and indeed in the whole of the north of Italy not a
female servant is to be seen at the inns and men make the beds. It is
otherwise, I understand, in Tuscany.
The whole appearance of the country from Asti to Alexandria presents an
immense plain extremely fertile, but the crops of corn being off the
ground, the landscape would not be pleasing to the eye, were it not
relieved by the frequency of mulberry trees and the vines hung in festoons
from tree to tree. The villages and farmhouses on this road are extremely
solid and well built. We arrived at Alexandria about twelve o'clock, and
after breakfast I hired a horse to visit the field of battle of Marengo,
which is in the neighbourhood of this city, Marengo itself being a village
five miles distant from Alexandria. Arrived on the plain, I was conducted
to the spot where the first Consul stood at the time that he perceived the
approach of Desaix's division. I figured to myself the first Consul on his
white charger, halting his army, then in some confusion, riding along the
line exposed to a heavy fire from the Austrians, who cannonaded the whole
length of the line; aides-de-camp and orderlies falling around him, himself
calm and collected, "spying 'vantage," and observing that the Austrian
deployment was too extended, and their centre thereby weakened, suddenly
profiting of this circumstance to order Desaix's division to advance and
lead the charge which decided the victory on that memorable day, which,
according to Mascheroni:
splende
Nell' abisso de' secoli, qual Sole.
The whole field of battle is an extensive plain, with but few trees, and to
use Campbell's lines:
every turf beneath the feet
Marks out a soldier's sepulchre.
The Column, erected to commemorate this glorious victory, has been thrown
down by order of the Austrian government - a poor piece of puerile spite,
but worthy of legitimacy. Alexandria is, or rather was, for the
fortifications no longer exist, more remarkable for being an important
military post than for the beauty of the city itself. There is, however, a
fine and spacious Place, which serves as a parade for the garrison, and
being planted with trees by the French when they held it, forms an
agreeable promenade. The fortifications were blown up by the Austrians
before the place was given over to the Sardinian authorities, a flagrant
breach of faith and contract, since by the treaty of 1814 they were bound
to give up all the fortified places that were restored or ceded to the King
of Sardinia in the same state in which they were found when the French
evacuated them, and the Austrians took possession provisorily. The French
regarding (and with reason) this fortress as the key of Lombardy always
kept the fortifications in good repair and well provided with cannon. But
the Austrian government, knowing itself to be unpopular in Italy and
trembling for the safety of her dominions, being always fearful that the
Piedmontese Government might one day be induced to favour an
insurrectionary or national movement in the north of Italy, determined,
finding that it could not keep the fortress for itself, which it strove
hard to do under divers pretexts, to render it of as little use as they
possibly could do to the King of Sardinia; so they blew up the
fortifications and carried off the cannon, leaving the King without a
single fortified place in the whole of his Italian dominions to defend
himself, in case of attack, against an Austrian invasion.
On the morning of the 15th August we passed thro' Tortona, now no longer a
fortress of consequence. All this country may be considered as classic
ground, immortalized by the campaigns of Napoleon, when commander in chief
of the army of the French Republic in Italy, a far greater and more
illustrious role than when he assumed the Imperial bauble and
condescended to mix with the vulgar herd of Kings.
We arrived at Voghera to breakfast and at Casteggio at night. The country
is much the same as that which we have already passed thro', being a plain,
with a rich alluvial soil, mulberry trees and a number of solidly built
stone farmhouses. The next morning at eleven o'clock we arrived at Piacenza
on the Po, and were detained a quarter of an hour at the Douane of Her
Majesty the Archduchess, as Maria Louisa, the present Duchess of Parma, is
stiled, we being now arrived in her dominions.
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