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.  We drove to the Hotel di San Marco, which is close to the Piazza Grande, and alighted there.  On the Piazza stands the Hotel de Ville, and in front of it are two equestrian statues in bronze of the Princes Farnesi; the statues, however, of the riders appear much too small in proportion with the horses, and they resemble two little boys mounted on Lincolnshire carthorses.