Before the Pavia positions, Napoleon raised his hat to Marmont from afar in praise. "Your outstanding performance truly surprised me, August.
"I wasn't able to contact you, yet you accurately chose the best interception point on your own and dealt the enemy a fatal blow.
"I had been prepared to face a hard battle, but now, haha, we can sit down and have a cup of coffee."
Marmont looked somewhat guilty as he urged his horse forward. "I merely did what I should have done. Uh, actually, the enemy was utterly unable to withstand a single blow...
"By the way, I heard from the captured officers that you had successfully taken Milan?"
He was not being modest. In truth, his main force was still on the road to Milan.
Earlier, he had discovered that Leptai had suddenly retreated and guessed that the latter was going to reinforce Milan, so he had ordered his troops to pursue eastward.
But he also feared that Leptai was heading to Lodi to intercept colonel Bonaparte—if Napoleon's raiding force had moved relatively slowly, it was possible that they had not yet crossed the Po River.
Unable to set his mind at ease, he personally led 2,500 soldiers along the eastern bank of the Po River to reinforce Lodi.
Yet the moment he reached north of Pavia, he discovered that the Austrian Army was gathering there. At first, he thought he had fallen into an ambush, but he had never expected the enemy to collapse at the first touch.
Then Marmont's force of just over two thousand men spectacularly captured more than four thousand Austrian soldiers.
How could he have known that, upon seeing him, the Leptai Legion had concluded that the French main force from Milan had come to attack them?
This army had previously