The storms of winter were still howling around the snow-clad summits of the Alps, and it was not thought possible that thus early in the season he would attempt the passage of so formidable a barrier. A dreadful tempest of wind and rain swept earth and sky when Napoleon gave the order to march. The troops, with their accustomed celerity, reached the banks of the Piave. The Austrians, astonished at the sudden apparition of the French in the midst of the elemental warfare, and unprepared to resist them, hastily retired some forty miles to the eastern banks of the Tagliamento. Napoleon closely followed the retreating foe. At nine o'clock in the morning of the 10th of March, the French army arrived upon the banks of the river. Here they found a wide stream, rippling over a gravelly bed, with difficulty fordable. The imperial troops, in most magnificent array, were drawn up upon an extended plain on the opposite shore. Parks of artillery were arranged to sweep with grape-shot the whole surface of the water. In long lines the infantry, with bristling bayonets and prepared to rain down upon their foes a storm of bullets, presented apparently an invincible front. Upon the two wings of this imposing army vast squadrons of cavalry awaited the moment, with restless steeds, when they might charge upon the foe, should he effect a landing.
The French army had been marching all night over miry roads, and through mountain defiles. With the gloom of the night the storm had passed away, and the cloudless sun of a warm spring morning dawned upon the valley, as the French troops arrived upon the banks of the river. Their clothes were torn, and drenched with rain, and soiled with mud. And yet it was an imposing array as forty thousand men, with plumes and banners and proud steeds, and the music of a hundred bands, marched down, in that bright sunshine, upon the verdant meadows which skirted the Tagliamento. But it was a fearful barrier which presented itself before them. The rapid river, the vast masses of the enemy in their strong intrenchments, the frowning batteries, loaded to the muzzle with grape-shot, to sweep the advancing ranks, the well fed war-horses in countless numbers, prancing for the charge, apparently presented an obstacle which no human energy could surmount.