A glance at the map will show your readers
how, at about twenty or thirty miles from the first-mentioned town, a
chain of hills, called the Colli Euganei, stretches itself from the last
spur of the Julian Alps, in the vicinity of Vicenza, gently sloping down
towards the sea. As this line affords good positions for contesting the
advance of an army crossing the Po at Lago Scuro, or at any other point
not far from it, it is to be supposed that the Austrians will make a
stand there, and I should not be surprised at all that Cialdini's first
battle, if accepted by the enemy, should take place within that
comparatively narrow ground which is within Montagnana, Este, Terradura,
Abano, and Padua. It is impossible to suppose that Cialdini's corps
d'armee, being so large, is destined to cross the Po only at one point of
the river below its course: it is extremely likely that part of it should
cross it at some point above, between Revere and Stellata, where the
river is in two or three instances only 450 metres wide.
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