I may state
here, en passant, that as many as six flags were taken from the enemy in
the first part of the day of Custozza, and were subsequently abandoned in
the retreat, while of the Italians only one was lost to a regiment for a
few minutes, when it was quickly retaken. This fact ought to be
sufficient by itself to establish the bravery with which the soldiers
fought on the 24th, and the bravery with which they will fight if, as
they ardently wish; a new occasion is given to them.
As long as I had only met troops, either marching or camping on the road,
all went well, but I soon found myself mixed with an interminable line of
cars and the like, forming the military and the civil train of the moving
army. Then it was that it needed as much patience to keep from jumping
out of one's carriage and from chastising the carrettieri, as they would
persist in not making room for one, and being as dumb to one's entreaties
as a stone. When you had finished with one you had to deal with another,
and you find them all as obstinate and as egotistical as they are from
one end of the world to the other, whether it be on the Casalmaggiore
road or in High Holborn.
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