A fortnight before the wedding, he had been appointed to command the Army of Italy: and after a honeymoon of two days at Paris, he left his bride to take up his new military duties. Clearly, then, there was some connection between this brilliant fortune and his espousal of Josephine. But the assertion that this command was the "dowry" offered by Barras to the somewhat reluctant bride is more piquant than correct. That the brilliance of Buonaparte's prospects finally dissipated her scruples may be frankly admitted. But the appointment to a command of a French army did not rest with Barras. He was only one of the five Directors who now decided the chief details of administration. His colleagues were Letourneur, Rewbell, La Réveillière-Lépeaux, and the great Carnot; and, as a matter of fact, it was the last-named who chiefly decided the appointment in question.
He had seen and pondered over the plan of campaign which Buonaparte had designed for the Army of Italy; and the vigour of the conception, the masterly appreciation of topographical details which it displayed, and the trenchant energy of its style had struck conviction to his strategic genius. Buonaparte owed his command, not to a backstairs intrigue, as was currently believed in the army, but rather to his own commanding powers. While serving with the Army of Italy in 1794, he had carefully studied the coast-line and the passes leading inland; and, according to the well-known savant, Volney, the young officer, shortly after his release from imprisonment, sketched out to him and to a Commissioner of the Convention the details of the very plan of campaign which was to carry him victoriously from the Genoese Riviera into the heart of Austria.[35] While describing this masterpiece of strategy, says Volney, Buonaparte spoke as if inspired. We can fancy the wasted form dilating with a sense of power, the thin sallow cheeks aglow with enthusiasm, the hawk-like eyes flashing at the sight of the helpless Imperial quarry, as he pointed out on the map of Piedmont and Lombardy the features which would favour a dashing invader and carry him to the very gates of Vienna. The splendours of the Imperial Court at the Tuileries seem tawdry and insipid when compared with the intellectual grandeur which lit up that humble lodging at Nice with the first rays that heralded the dawn of Italian liberation.
With the fuller knowledge which he had recently acquired, he now in January, 1796, elaborated this plan of campaign, so that it at once gained Carnot's admiration. The Directors forwarded it to General Schérer, who was in command of the Army of Italy, but promptly received the "brutal" reply that the man who had drafted the plan ought to come and carry it out. Long dissatisfied with Schérer's inactivity and constant complaints, the Directory now took him at his word, and replaced him by Buonaparte. Such is the truth about Buonaparte's appointment to the Army of Italy.
To Nice, then, the young general set out (March 21st) accompanied, or speedily followed, by his faithful friends, Marmont and Junot, as well as by other officers of whose energy he was assured, Berthier, Murat, and Duroc. How much had happened since the early summer of 1795, when he had barely the means to pay his way to Paris! A sure instinct had drawn him to that hot-bed of intrigues. He had played a desperate game, risking his commission in order that he might keep in close touch with the central authority. His reward for this almost superhuman confidence in his own powers was correspondingly great; and now, though he knew nothing of the handling of cavalry and infantry save from books, he determined to lead the Army of Italy to a series of conquests that would rival those of Cæsar. In presence of a will so stubborn and genius so fervid, what wonder that a friend prophesied that his halting-place would be either the throne or the scaffold?
* * * * *
CHAPTER V
THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN
(1796)
In the personality of Napoleon nothing is more remarkable than the combination of gifts which in most natures are mutually exclusive; his instincts were both political and military; his survey of a land took in not only the geographical environment but also the material welfare of the people. Facts, which his foes ignored, offered a firm fulcrum for the leverage of his will: and their political edifice or their military policy crumbled to ruin under an assault planned with consummate skill and pressed home with relentless force.
For the exercise of all these gifts what land was so fitted as the mosaic of States which was dignified with the name of Italy?
That land had long been the battle-ground of the Bourbons and the Hapsburgs; and their rivalries, aided by civic dissensions, had reduced the people that once had given laws to Europe into a condition of miserable weakness. Europe was once the battle-field of the Romans: Italy was now the battle-field of Europe. The Hapsburgs dominated the north, where they held the rich Duchy of Milan, along with the great stronghold of Mantua, and some scattered imperial fiefs. A scion of the House of Austria reigned at Florence over the prosperous Duchy of Tuscany. Modena and Lucca were under the general control of the Court of Vienna. The south of the peninsula, along with Sicily, was swayed by Ferdinand IV., a descendant of the Spanish Bourbons, who kept his people in a condition of mediæval ignorance and servitude; and this dynasty controlled the Duchy of Parma. The Papal States were also sunk in the torpor of the Middle Ages; but in the northern districts of Bologna and Ferrara, known as the "Legations," the inhabitants still remembered the time of their independence, and chafed under the irritating restraints of Papal rule. This was seen when the leaven of French revolutionary thought began to ferment in Italian towns. Two young men of Bologna were so enamoured of the new ideas, as to raise an Italian tricolour flag, green, white, and red, and summon their fellow-citizens to revolt against the rule of the Pope's legate (November, 1794). The revolt was crushed, and the chief offenders were hanged; but elsewhere the force of democracy made itself felt, especially among the more virile peoples of Northern Italy. Lombardy and Piedmont throbbed with suppressed excitement. Even when the King of Sardinia, Victor Amadeus III., was waging war against the French Republic, the men of Turin were with difficulty kept from revolt; and, as we have seen, the Austro-Sardinian alliance was powerless to recover Savoy and Nice from the soldiers of liberty or to guard the Italian Riviera from invasion.
In fact, Bonaparte—for he henceforth spelt his name thus—detected the political weakness of the Hapsburgs' position in Italy. Masters of eleven distinct peoples north of the Alps, how could they hope permanently to dominate a wholly alien people south of that great mountain barrier? The many failures of the old Ghibelline or Imperial party in face of any popular impulse which moved the Italian nature to its depths revealed the artificiality of their rule. Might not such an impulse be imparted by the French Revolution? And would not the hopes of national freedom and of emancipation from feudal imposts fire these peoples with zeal for the French cause? Evidently there were vast possibilities in a democratic propaganda. At the outset Bonaparte's racial sympathies were warmly aroused for the liberation of Italy; and though his judgment was to be warped by the promptings of ambition, he never lost sight of the welfare of the people whence he was descended. In his "Memoirs written at St. Helena" he summed up his convictions respecting the Peninsula in this statesmanlike utterance: "Italy, isolated within its natural limits, separated by the sea and by very high mountains from the rest of Europe, seems called to be a great and powerful nation…. Unity in manners, language, literature ought finally, in a future more or less remote, to unite its inhabitants under a single government…. Rome is beyond doubt the capital which the Italians will one day choose." A prophetic saying: it came from a man who, as conqueror and organizer, awakened that people from the torpor of centuries and breathed into it something of his own indomitable energy.
And then again, the Austrian possessions south of the Alps were difficult to hold for purely military reasons. They were separated from Vienna by difficult mountain ranges through which armies struggled with difficulty. True, Mantua was a formidable stronghold, but no fortress could make the Milanese other than a weak and straggling territory, the retention of which by the Court of Vienna was a defiance to the gospel of nature of which Rousseau was the herald and Bonaparte the militant exponent.
The Austro-Sardinian forces were now occupying the pass which separates the Apennines from the Maritime Alps north of the town of Savona. They were accordingly near the headwaters of the Bormida and the Tanaro, two of the chief affluents of the River Po: and roads following those river valleys led, the one north-east, in the direction of Milan, the other north-west towards Turin, the Sardinian capital. A wedge of mountainous country separated these roads as they diverged from the neighbourhood of Montenotte. Here obviously was the vulnerable point of the Austro-Sardinian position. Here therefore Bonaparte purposed to deliver his first strokes, foreseeing that, should he sever the allies, he would have in his favour every advantage both political and topographical.
All this was possible to a commander who could overcome the initial difficulties. But these difficulties were enormous. The position of the French Army of Italy in March, 1796, was precarious. Its detachments, echelonned near the coast from Savona to Loano, and thence to Nice, or inland to the Col di Tende, comprised in all 42,000 men, as against the Austro-Sardinian forces amounting to 52,000 men.[36] Moreover, the allies occupied strong positions on the northern slopes of the Maritime Alps and Apennines, and, holding the inner and therefore shorter curve, they could by a dextrous concentration have pushed their more widely scattered opponents on to the shore, where the republicans would have been harassed by the guns of the British cruisers. Finally, Bonaparte's troops were badly equipped, worse clad, and were not paid at all. On his arrival at Nice at the close of March, the young commander had to disband one battalion for mutinous conduct.[37] For a brief space it seemed doubtful how the army would receive this slim, delicate-looking youth, known hitherto only as a skilful artillerist at Toulon and in the streets of Paris. But he speedily gained the respect and confidence of the rank and file, not only by stern punishment of the mutineers, but by raising money from a local banker, so as to make good some of the long arrears of pay. Other grievances he rectified by prompt reorganization of the commissariat and kindred departments. But, above all, by his burning words he thrilled them: "Soldiers, you are half starved and half naked. The Government owes you much, but can do nothing for you. Your patience and courage are honourable to you, but they procure you neither advantage nor glory. I am about to lead you into the most fertile valleys of the world: there you will find flourishing cities and teeming provinces: there you will reap honour, glory, and riches. Soldiers of the Army of Italy, will you lack courage?" Two years previously so open a bid for the soldiers' allegiance would have conducted any French commander forthwith to the guillotine.
[Illustration: MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE CAMPAIGNS IN NORTH ITALY.]
But much had changed since the days of Robespierre's supremacy; Spartan austerity had vanished; and the former insane jealousy of individual pre-eminence was now favouring a startling reaction which was soon to install the one supremely able man as absolute master of France.
Bonaparte's conduct produced a deep impression alike on troops and officers. From Masséna his energy and his trenchant orders extorted admiration: and the tall swaggering Augereau shrank beneath the intellectual superiority of his gaze. Moreover, at the beginning of April the French received reinforcements which raised their total to 49,300 men, and gave them a superiority of force; for though the allies had 52,000, yet they were so widely scattered as to be inferior in any one district. Besides, the Austrian commander, Beaulieu, was seventy-one years of age, had only just been sent into Italy, with which land he was ill acquainted, and found one-third of his troops down with sickness.[38]
Bonaparte now began to concentrate his forces near Savona. Fortune favoured him even before the campaign commenced. The snows of winter, still lying on the mountains, though thawing on the southern slopes, helped to screen his movements from the enemy's outposts; and the French vanguard pushed along the coastline even as far as Voltri. This movement was designed to coerce the Senate of Genoa into payment of a fine for its acquiescence in the seizure of a French vessel by a British cruiser within its neutral roadstead; but it served to alarm Beaulieu, who, breaking up his cantonments, sent a strong column towards that city. At the time this circumstance greatly annoyed Bonaparte, who had hoped to catch the Imperialists dozing in their winter quarters. Yet it is certain that the hasty move of their left flank towards Voltri largely contributed to that brilliant opening of Bonaparte's campaign, which his admirers have generally regarded as due solely to his genius.[39] For, when Beaulieu had thrust his column into the broken coast district between Genoa and Voltri, he severed it dangerously far from his centre, which marched up the valley of the eastern branch of the Bormida to occupy the passes of the Apennines north of Savona. This, again, was by no means in close touch with the Sardinian allies encamped further to the west in and beyond Ceva. Beaulieu, writing at a later date to Colonel Graham, the English attaché at his headquarters, ascribed his first disasters to Argenteau, his lieutenant at Montenotte, who employed only a third of the forces placed under his command. But division of forces was characteristic of the Austrians in all their operations, and they now gave a fine opportunity to any enterprising opponent who should crush their weak and unsupported centre. In obedience to orders from Vienna, Beaulieu assumed the offensive; but he brought his chief force to bear on the French vanguard at Voltri, which he drove in with some loss. While he was occupying Voltri, the boom of cannon echoing across the mountains warned his outposts that the real campaign was opening in the broken country north of Savona.[40] There the weak Austrian centre had occupied a ridge or plateau above the village of Montenotte, through which ran the road leading to Alessandria and Milan. Argenteau's attack partly succeeded: but the stubborn bravery of a French detachment checked it before the redoubt which commanded the southern prolongation of the heights named Monte-Legino.[41]
Such was the position of affairs when Bonaparte hurried up. On the following day (April 12th), massing the French columns of attack under cover of an early morning mist, he moved them to their positions, so that the first struggling rays of sunlight revealed to the astonished Austrians the presence of an army ready to crush their front and turn their flanks. For a time the Imperialists struggled bravely against the superior forces in their front; but when Masséna pressed round their right wing, they gave way and beat a speedy retreat to save themselves from entire capture. Bonaparte took no active share in the battle: he was, very properly, intent on the wider problem of severing the Austrians from their allies, first by the turning movement of Masséna, and then by pouring other troops into the gap thus made. In this he entirely succeeded. The radical defects in the Austrian dispositions left them utterly unable to withstand the blows which he now showered upon them. The Sardinians were too far away on the west to help Argenteau in his hour of need: they were in and beyond Ceva, intent on covering the road to Turin: whereas, as Napoleon himself subsequently wrote, they should have been near enough to their allies to form one powerful army, which, at Dego or Montenotte, would have defended both Turin and Milan. "United, the two forces would have been superior to the French army: separated, they were lost."
The configuration of the ground favoured Bonaparte's plan of driving the Imperialists down the valley of the Bormida in a north-easterly direction; and the natural desire of a beaten general to fall back towards his base of supplies also impelled Beaulieu and Argenteau to retire towards Milan. But that would sever their connections with the Sardinians, whose base of supplies, Turin, lay in a north-westerly direction.
Bonaparte therefore hurled his forces at once against the Austrians and a Sardinian contingent at Millesimo, and defeated them, Augereau's division cutting off the retreat of twelve hundred of their men under Provera. Weakened by this second blow, the allies fell back on the intrenched village of Dego. Their position was of a strength proportionate to its strategic importance; for its loss would completely sever all connection between their two main armies save by devious routes many miles in their rear. They therefore clung desperately to the six mamelons and redoubts which barred the valley and dominated some of the neighbouring heights. Yet such was the superiority of the French in numbers that these positions were speedily turned by Masséna, whom Bonaparte again intrusted with the movement on the enemy's flank and rear. A strange event followed. The victors, while pillaging the country for the supplies which Bonaparte's sharpest orders failed to draw from the magazines and stores on the sea-coast, were attacked in the dead of night by five Austrian battalions that had been ordered up to support their countrymen at Dego. These, after straying among the mountains, found themselves among bands of the marauding French, whom they easily scattered, seizing Dego itself. Apprised of this mishap, Bonaparte hurried up more troops from the rear, and on the 15th recovered the prize which had so nearly been snatched from his grasp. Had Beaulieu at this time thrown all his forces on the French, he might have retrieved his first misfortunes: but foresight and energy were not to be found at the Austrian headquarters: the surprise at Dego was the work of a colonel; and for many years to come the incompetence of their aged commanders was to paralyze the fine fighting qualities of the "white-coats." In three conflicts they had been outmanoeuvred and outnumbered, and drew in their shattered columns to Acqui.
The French commander now led his columns westward against the Sardinians, who had fallen back on their fortified camp at Ceva, in the upper valley of the Tanaro. There they beat off one attack of the French. A check in front of a strongly intrenched position was serious. It might have led to a French disaster, had the Austrians been able to bring aid to their allies. Bonaparte even summoned a council of war to deliberate on the situation. As a rule, a council of war gives timid advice. This one strongly advised a second attack on the camp—a striking proof of the ardour which then nerved the republican generals. Not yet were they condottieri carving out fortunes by their swords: not yet were they the pampered minions of an autocrat, intent primarily on guarding the estates which his favour had bestowed. Timidity was rather the mark of their opponents. When the assault on the intrenchments of Ceva was about to be renewed, the Sardinian forces were discerned filing away westwards. Their general indulged the fond hope of holding the French at bay at several strong natural positions on his march. He was bitterly to rue his error. The French divisions of Sérurier and Dommartin closed in on him, drove him from Mondovi, and away towards Turin.
Bonaparte had now completely succeeded. Using to the full the advantage of his central position between the widely scattered detachments of his foes, he had struck vigorously at their natural point of junction, Montenotte, and by three subsequent successes—for the evacuation of Ceva can scarcely be called a French victory—had forced them further and further apart until Turin was almost within his power.
It now remained to push these military triumphs to their natural conclusion, and impose terms of peace on the House of Savoy, which was secretly desirous of peace. The Directors had ordered Bonaparte that he should seek to detach Sardinia from the Austrian alliance by holding out the prospect of a valuable compensation for the loss of Savoy and Nice in the fertile Milanese.[42] The prospect of this rich prize would, the Directors surmised, dissolve the Austro-Sardinian alliance, as soon as the allies had felt the full vigour of the French arms. Not that Bonaparte himself was to conduct these negotiations. He was to forward to the Directory all offers of submission. Nay, he was not empowered to grant on his own responsibility even an armistice. He was merely to push the foe hard, and feed his needy soldiers on the conquered territory. He was to be solely a general, never a negotiator.
The Directors herein showed keen jealousy or striking ignorance of military affairs. How could he keep the Austrians quiet while envoys passed between Turin and Paris? All the dictates of common sense required him to grant an armistice to the Court of Turin before the Austrians could recover from their recent disasters. But the King of Sardinia drew him from a perplexing situation by instructing Colli to make overtures for an armistice as preliminary to a peace. At once the French commander replied that such powers belonged to the Directory; but as for an armistice, it would only be possible if the Court of Turin placed in his hands three fortresses, Coni, Tortona, and Alessandria, besides guaranteeing the transit of French armies through Piedmont and the passage of the Po at Valenza. Then, with his unfailing belief in accomplished facts, Bonaparte pushed on his troops to Cherasco.
Near that town he received the Piedmontese envoys; and from the pen of one of them we have an account of the general's behaviour in his first essay in diplomacy. His demeanour was marked by that grave and frigid courtesy which was akin to Piedmontese customs. In reply to the suggestions of the envoys that some of the conditions were of little value to the French, he answered: "The Republic, in intrusting to me the command of an army, has credited me with possessing enough discernment to judge of what that army requires, without having recourse to the advice of my enemy." Apart, however, from this sarcasm, which was uttered in a hard and biting voice, his tone was coldly polite. He reserved his home thrust for the close of the conference. When it had dragged on till considerably after noon with no definite result, he looked at his watch and exclaimed: "Gentlemen, I warn you that a general attack is ordered for two o'clock, and that if I am not assured that Coni will be put in my hands before nightfall, the attack will not be postponed for one moment. It may happen to me to lose battles, but no one shall ever see me lose minutes either by over-confidence or by sloth." The terms of the armistice of Cherasco were forthwith signed (April 28th); they were substantially the same as those first offered by the victor. During the luncheon which followed, the envoys were still further impressed by his imperturbable confidence and trenchant phrases; as when he told them that the campaign was the exact counterpart of what he had planned in 1794; or described a council of war as a convenient device for covering cowardice or irresolution in the commander; or asserted that nothing could now stop him before the walls of Mantua.[43]
As a matter of fact, the French army was at that time so disorganized by rapine as scarcely to have withstood a combined and vigorous attack by Beaulieu and Colli. The republicans, long exposed to hunger and privations, were now revelling in the fertile plains of Piedmont. Large bands of marauders ranged the neighbouring country, and the regiments were often reduced to mere companies. From the grave risks of this situation Bonaparte was rescued by the timidity of the Court of Turin, which signed the armistice at Cherasco eighteen days after the commencement of the campaign. A fortnight later the preliminaries of peace were signed between France and the King of Sardinia, by which the latter yielded up his provinces of Savoy and Nice, and renounced the alliance with Austria. Great indignation was felt in the Imperialist camp at this news; and it was freely stated that the Piedmontese had let themselves be beaten in order to compass a peace that had been tacitly agreed upon in the month of January.[44]
Even before this auspicious event, Bonaparte's despatches to the Directors were couched in almost imperious terms, which showed that he felt himself the master of the situation. He advised them as to their policy towards Sardinia, pointing out that, as Victor Amadeus had yielded up three important fortresses, he was practically in the hands of the French: "If you do not accept peace with him, if your plan is to dethrone him, you must amuse him for a few decades[45] and must warn me: I then seize Valenza and march on Turin." In military affairs the young general showed that he would brook no interference from Paris. He requested the Directory to draft 15,000 men from Kellermann's Army of the Alps to reinforce him: "That will give me an army of 45,000 men, of which possibly I may send a part to Rome. If you continue your confidence and approve these plans, I am sure of success: Italy is yours." Somewhat later, the Directors proposed to grant the required reinforcements, but stipulated for the retention of part of the army in the Milanese under the command of Kellermann. Thereupon Bonaparte replied (May 14th) that, as the Austrians had been reinforced, it was highly impolitic to divide the command. Each general had his own way of making war. Kellermann, having more experience, would doubtless do it better: but both together would do it very badly.
Again the Directors had blundered. In seeking to subject Bonaparte to the same rules as had been imposed on all French generals since the treason of Dumouriez in 1793, they were doubtless consulting the vital interests of the Commonwealth. But, while striving to avert all possibilities of Cæsarism, they now sinned against that elementary principle of strategy which requires unity of design in military operations. Bonaparte's retort was unanswerable, and nothing more was heard of the luckless proposal.
Meanwhile the peace with the House of Savoy had thrown open the Milanese to Bonaparte's attack. Holding three Sardinian fortresses, he had an excellent base of operations; for the lands restored to the King of Sardinia were to remain subject to requisitions for the French army until the general peace. The Austrians, on the other hand, were weakened by the hostility of their Italian subjects, and, worst of all, they depended ultimately on reinforcements drawn from beyond the Alps by way of Mantua. In the rich plains of Lombardy they, however, had one advantage which was denied to them among the rocks of the Apennines. Their generals could display the tactical skill on which they prided themselves, and their splendid cavalry had some chance of emulating the former exploits of the Hungarian and Croatian horse. They therefore awaited the onset of the French, little dismayed by recent disasters, and animated by the belief that their antagonist, unversed in regular warfare, would at once lose in the plains the bubble reputation gained in ravines. But the country in the second part of this campaign was not less favourable to Bonaparte's peculiar gifts than that in which he had won his first laurels as commander. Amidst the Apennines, where only small bodies of men could be moved, a general inexperienced in the handling of cavalry and infantry could make his first essays in tactics with fair chances of success. Speed, energy, and the prompt seizure of a commanding central position were the prime requisites; the handling of vast masses of men was impossible. The plains of Lombardy facilitated larger movements; but even here the numerous broad swift streams fed by the Alpine snows, and the network of irrigating dykes, favoured the designs of a young and daring leader who saw how to use natural obstacles so as to baffle and ensnare his foes. Bonaparte was now to show that he excelled his enemies, not only in quickness of eye and vigour of intellect, but also in the minutiæ of tactics and in those larger strategic conceptions which decide the fate of nations. In the first place, having the superiority of force, he was able to attack. This is an advantage at all times: for the aggressor can generally mislead his adversary by a series of feints until the real blow can be delivered with crushing effect. Such has been the aim of all great leaders from the time of Epaminondas and Alexander, Hannibal and Cæsar, down to the age of Luxembourg, Marlborough, and Frederick the Great. Aggressive tactics were particularly suited to the French soldiery, always eager, active, and intelligent, and now endowed with boundless enthusiasm in their cause and in their leader.
Then again he was fully aware of the inherent vice of the Austrian situation. It was as if an unwieldy organism stretched a vulnerable limb across the huge barrier of the Alps, exposing it to the attack of a compacter body. It only remained for Bonaparte to turn against his foes the smaller geographical features on which they too implicitly relied. Beaulieu had retired beyond the Po and the Ticino, expecting that the attack on the Milanese would be delivered across the latter stream by the ordinary route, which crossed it at Pavia. Near that city the Austrians occupied a strong position with 26,000 men, while other detachments patrolled the banks of the Ticino further north, and those of the Po towards Valenza, only 5,000 men being sent towards Piacenza. Bonaparte, however, was not minded to take the ordinary route. He determined to march, not as yet on the north of the River Po, where snow-swollen streams coursed down from the Alps, but rather on the south side, where the Apennines throw off fewer streams and also of smaller volume. From the fortress of Tortona he could make a rush at Piacenza, cross the Po there, and thus gain the Milanese almost without a blow. To this end he had stipulated in the recent terms of peace that he might cross the Po at Valenza; and now, amusing his foes by feints on that side, he vigorously pushed his main columns along the southern bank of the Po, where they gathered up all the available boats. The vanguard, led by the impetuous Lannes, seized the ferry at Piacenza, before the Austrian horse appeared, and scattered a squadron or two which strove to drive them back into the river (May 7th).
Time was thus gained for a considerable number of French to cross the river in boats or by the ferry. Working under the eye of their leader, the French conquered all obstacles: a bridge of boats soon spanned the stream, and was defended by a tête de pont; and with forces about equal in number to Liptay's Austrians, the republicans advanced northwards, and, after a tough struggle, dislodged their foes from the village of Fombio. This success drove a solid wedge between Liptay and his commander-in-chief, who afterwards bitterly blamed him, first for retreating, and secondly for not reporting his retreat to headquarters.
It would appear, however, that Liptay had only 5,000 men (not the 8,000 which Napoleon and French historians have credited to him), that he was sent by Beaulieu to Piacenza too late to prevent the crossing by the French, and that at the close of the fight on the following day he was completely cut off from communicating with his superior. Beaulieu, with his main force, advanced on Fombio, stumbled on the French, where he looked to find Liptay, and after a confused fight succeeded in disengaging himself and withdrawing towards Lodi, where the high-road leading to Mantua crossed the River Adda. To that stream he directed his remaining forces to retire. He thereby left Milan uncovered (except for the garrison which held the citadel), and abandoned more than the half of Lombardy; but, from the military point of view, his retreat to the Adda was thoroughly sound. Yet here again a movement strategically correct was marred by tactical blunders. Had he concentrated all his forces at the nearest point of the Adda which the French could cross, namely Pizzighetone, he would have rendered any flank march of theirs to the northward extremely hazardous; but he had not yet sufficiently learned from his terrible teacher the need of concentration; and, having at least three passages to guard, he kept his forces too spread out to oppose a vigorous move against any one of them. Indeed, he despaired of holding the line of the Adda, and retired eastwards with a great part of his army.
Consequently, when Bonaparte, only three days after the seizure of Piacenza, threw his almost undivided force against the town of Lodi, his passage was disputed only by the rearguard, whose anxiety to cover the retreat of a belated detachment far exceeded their determination to defend the bridge over the Adda. This was a narrow structure, some eighty fathoms long, standing high above the swift but shallow river. Resolutely held by well-massed troops and cannon, it might have cost the French a severe struggle: but the Imperialists were badly handled: some were posted in and around the town which was between the river and the advancing French; and the weak walls of Lodi were soon escaladed by the impetuous republicans. The Austrian commander, Sebottendorf, now hastily ranged his men along the eastern bank of the river, so as to defend the bridge and prevent any passage of the river by boats or by a ford above the town. The Imperialists numbered only 9,627 men; they were discouraged by defeats and by the consciousness that no serious stand could be attempted before they reached the neighbourhood of Mantua; and their efforts to break down the bridge were now frustrated by the French, who, posted behind the walls of Lodi on the higher bank of the stream, swept their opponents' position with a searching artillery fire. Having shaken the constancy of his foes and refreshed his own infantry by a brief rest in Lodi, Bonaparte at 6 p.m. secretly formed a column of his choicest troops and hurled it against the bridge. A hot fire of grapeshot and musketry tore its front, and for a time the column bent before the iron hail. But, encouraged by the words of their young leader, generals, corporals, and grenadiers pressed home their charge. This time, aided by sharp-shooters who waded to islets in the river, the assailants cleared the bridge, bayoneted the Austrian cannoneers, attacked the first and second lines of supporting foot, and, when reinforced, compelled horse and foot to retreat towards Mantua.[46] Such was the affair of Lodi (May 10th). A legendary glamour hovers around all the details of this conflict and invests it with fictitious importance. Beaulieu's main force was far away, and there was no hope of entrapping anything more than the rear of his army. Moreover, if this were the object, why was not the flank move of the French cavalry above Lodi pushed home earlier in the fight? This, if supported by infantry, could have outflanked the enemy while the perilous rush was made against the bridge; and such a turning movement would probably have enveloped the Austrian force while it was being shattered in front. That is the view in which the strategist, Clausewitz, regards this encounter. Far different was the impression which it created among the soldiers and Frenchmen at large. They valued a commander more for bravery of the bull-dog type than for any powers of reasoning and subtle combination. These, it is true, Bonaparte had already shown. He now enchanted the soldiery by dealing a straight sharp blow. It had a magical effect on their minds. On the evening of that day the French soldiers, with antique republican camaraderie, saluted their commander as le petit caporal for his personal bravery in the fray, and this endearing phrase helped to immortalize the affair of the bridge of Lodi.[47] It shot a thrill of exultation through France. With pardonable exaggeration, men told how he charged at the head of the column, and, with Lannes, was the first to reach the opposite side; and later generations have figured him charging before his tall grenadiers—a feat that was actually performed by Lannes, Berthier, Masséna, Cervoni, and Dallemagne. It was all one. Bonaparte alone was the hero of the day. He reigned supreme in the hearts of the soldiers, and he saw the importance of this conquest. At St. Helena he confessed to Montholon that it was the victory of Lodi which fanned his ambition into a steady flame.
A desire of stimulating popular enthusiasm throughout Italy impelled the young victor to turn away from his real objective, the fortress of Mantua, to the political capital of Lombardy. The people of Milan hailed their French liberators with enthusiasm: they rained flowers on the bronzed soldiers of liberty, and pointed to their tattered uniforms and worn-out shoes as proofs of their triumphant energy: above all, they gazed with admiration, not unmixed with awe, at the thin pale features of the young commander, whose plain attire bespoke a Spartan activity, whose ardent gaze and decisive gestures proclaimed a born leader of men. Forthwith he arranged for the investment of the citadel where eighteen hundred Austrians held out: he then received the chief men of the city with easy Italian grace; and in the evening he gave a sumptuous ball, at which all the dignity, wealth, and beauty of the old Lombard capital shone resplendent. For a brief space all went well between the Lombards and their liberators. He received with flattering distinction the chief artists and men of letters, and also sought to quicken the activity of the University of Pavia. Political clubs and newspapers multiplied throughout Lombardy; and actors, authors, and editors joined in a pæan of courtly or fawning praise, to the new Scipio, Cæsar, Hannibal, and Jupiter.
There were other reasons why the Lombards should worship the young victor. Apart from the admiration which a gifted race ever feels for so fascinating a combination of youthful grace with intellectual power and martial prowess, they believed that this Italian hero would call the people to political activity, perchance even to national independence. For this their most ardent spirits had sighed, conspired, or fought during the eighty-three years of the Austrian occupation. Ever since the troublous times of Dante there had been prophetic souls who caught the vision of a new Italy, healed of her countless schisms, purified from her social degradations, and uniting the prowess of her ancient life with the gentler arts of the present for the perfection of her own powers and for the welfare of mankind. The gleam of this vision had shone forth even amidst the thunder claps of the French Revolution; and now that the storm had burst over the plains of Lombardy, ecstatic youths seemed to see the vision embodied in the person of Bonaparte himself. At the first news of the success at Lodi the national colours were donned as cockades, or waved defiance from balconies and steeples to the Austrian garrisons. All truly Italian hearts believed that the French victories heralded the dawn of political freedom not only for Lombardy, but for the whole peninsula.
Bonaparte's first actions increased these hopes. He abolished the Austrian machinery of government, excepting the Council of State, and approved the formation of provisional municipal councils and of a National Guard. At the same time, he wrote guardedly to the Directors at Paris, asking whether they proposed to organize Lombardy as a republic, as it was much more ripe for this form of government than Piedmont. Further than this he could not go; but at a later date he did much to redeem his first promises to the people of Northern Italy.
The fair prospect was soon overclouded by the financial measures urged on the young commander from Paris, measures which were disastrous to the Lombards and degrading to the liberators themselves. The Directors had recently bidden him to press hard on the Milanese, and levy large contributions in money, provisions, and objects of art, seeing that they did not intend to keep this country.[48] Bonaparte accordingly issued a proclamation (May 19th), imposing on Lombardy the sum of twenty million francs, remarking that it was a very light sum for so fertile a country. Only two days before he had in a letter to the Directors described it as exhausted by five years of war. As for the assertion that the army needed this sum, it may be compared with his private notification to the Directory, three days after his proclamation, that they might speedily count on six to eight millions of the Lombard contribution, as lying ready at their disposal, "it being over and above what the army requires." This is the first definite suggestion by Bonaparte of that system of bleeding conquered lands for the benefit of the French Exchequer, which enabled him speedily to gain power over the Directors. Thenceforth they began to connive at his diplomatic irregularities, and even to urge on his expeditions into wealthy districts, provided that the spoils went to Paris; while the conqueror, on his part, was able tacitly to assume that tone of authority with which the briber treats the bribed.[49]
The exaction of this large sum, and of various requisites for the army, as well as the "extraction" of works of art for the benefit of French museums, at once aroused the bitterest feelings. The loss of priceless treasures, such as the manuscript of Virgil which had belonged to Petrarch, and the masterpieces of Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, might perhaps have been borne: it concerned only the cultured few, and their effervescence was soon quelled by patrols of French cavalry. Far different was it with the peasants between Milan and Pavia. Drained by the white-coats, they now refused to be bled for the benefit of the blue-coats of France. They rushed to arms. The city of Pavia defied the attack of a French column until cannon battered in its gates. Then the republicans rushed in, massacred all the armed men for some hours, and glutted their lust and rapacity. By order of Bonaparte, the members of the municipal council were condemned to execution; but a delay occurred before this ferocious order was carried out, and it was subsequently mitigated. Two hundred hostages were, however, sent away into France as a guarantee for the good behaviour of the unfortunate city: whereupon the chief announced to the Directory that this would serve as a useful lesson to the peoples of Italy.
In one sense this was correct. It gave the Italians a true insight into French methods; and painful emotions thrilled the peoples of the peninsula when they realized at what a price their liberation was to be effected. Yet it is unfair to lay the chief blame on Bonaparte for the pillage of Lombardy. His actions were only a development of existing revolutionary customs; but never had these demoralizing measures been so thoroughly enforced as in the present system of liberation and blackmail. Lombardy was ransacked with an almost Vandal rapacity. Bonaparte desired little for himself. His aim ever was power rather than wealth. Riches he valued only as a means to political supremacy. But he took care to place the Directors and all his influential officers deeply in his debt. To the five soi-disant rulers of France he sent one hundred horses, the finest that could be found in Lombardy, to replace "the poor creatures which now draw your carriages";[50] to his officers his indulgence was passive, but usually effective. Marmont states that Bonaparte once reproached him for his scrupulousness in returning the whole of a certain sum which he had been commissioned to recover. "At that time," says Marmont, "we still retained a flower of delicacy on these subjects." This Alpine gentian was soon to fade in the heats of the plains. Some generals made large fortunes, eminently so Masséna, first in plunder as in the fray. And yet the commander, who was so lenient to his generals, filled his letters to the Directory with complaints about the cloud of French commissioners, dealers, and other civilian harpies who battened on the spoil of Lombardy. It seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that this indulgence towards the soldiers and severity towards civilians was the result of a fixed determination to link indissolubly to his fortunes the generals and rank and file. The contrast in his behaviour was often startling. Some of the civilians he imprisoned: others he desired to shoot; but as the hardiest robbers had generally made to themselves friends of the military mammon of unrighteousness, they escaped with a fine ridiculously out of proportion to their actual gains.[51]
The Dukes of Parma and Modena were also mulcted. The former of these, owing to his relationship with the Spanish Bourbons, with whom the Directory desired to remain on friendly terms, was subjected to the fine of merely two million francs and twenty masterpieces of art, these last to be selected by French commissioners from the galleries of the duchy; but the Duke of Modena, who had assisted the Austrian arms, purchased his pardon by an indemnity of ten million francs, and by the cession of twenty pictures, the chief artistic treasures of his States.[52] As Bonaparte naïvely stated to the Directors, the duke had no fortresses or guns; consequently these could not be demanded from him.
From this degrading work Bonaparte strove to wean his soldiers by recalling them to their nobler work of carrying on the enfranchisement of Italy. In a proclamation (May 20th) which even now stirs the blood like a trumpet call, he bade his soldiers remember that, though much had been done, a far greater task yet awaited them. Posterity must not reproach them for having found their Capua in Lombardy. Rome was to be freed: the Eternal City was to renew her youth and show again the virtues of her ancient worthies, Brutus and Scipio. Then France would give a glorious peace to Europe; then their fellow-citizens would say of each champion of liberty as he returned to his hearth: "He was of the Army of Italy." By such stirring words did he entwine with the love of liberty that passion for military glory which was destined to strangle the Republic.
Meanwhile the Austrians had retired behind the banks of the Mincio and the walls of its guardian fortress, Mantua. Their position was one of great strength. The river, which carries off the surplus waters of Lake Garda, joins the River Po after a course of some thirty miles. Along with the tongue-like cavity occupied by its parent lake, the river forms the chief inner barrier to all invaders of Italy. From the earliest times down to those of the two Napoleons, the banks of the Mincio have witnessed many of the contests which have decided the fortunes of the peninsula. On its lower course, where the river widens out into a semicircular lagoon flanked by marshes and backwaters, is the historic town of Mantua. For this position, if we may trust the picturesque lines of Mantua's noblest son,[53] the three earliest races of Northern Italy had striven; and when the power of imperial Rome was waning, the fierce Attila pitched his camp on the banks of the Mincio, and there received the pontiff Leo, whose prayers and dignity averted the threatening torrent of the Scythian horse.
It was by this stream, famed in war as in song, that the Imperialists now halted their shattered forces, awaiting reinforcements from Tyrol. These would pass down the valley of the Adige, and in the last part of their march would cross the lands of the Venetian Republic. For this action there was a long-established right of way, which did not involve a breach of the neutrality of Venice. But, as some of the Austrian troops had straggled on to the Venetian territory south of Brescia, the French commander had no hesitation in openly violating Venetian neutrality by the occupation of that town (May 26th). Augereau's division was also ordered to push on towards the west shore of Lake Garda, and there collect boats as if a crossing were intended. Seeing this, the Austrians seized the small Venetian fortress of Peschiera, which commands the exit of the Mincio from the lake, and Venetian neutrality was thenceforth wholly disregarded.
By adroit moves on the borders of the lake, Bonaparte now sought to make Beaulieu nervous about his communications with Tyrol through the river valley of the Adige; he completely succeeded: seeking to guard the important positions on that river between Rivoli and Roveredo, Beaulieu so weakened his forces on the Mincio, that at Borghetto and Valeggio he had only two battalions and ten squadrons of horse, or about two thousand men. Lannes' grenadiers, therefore, had little difficulty in forcing a passage on May 30th, whereupon Beaulieu withdrew to the upper Adige, highly satisfied with himself for having victualled the fortress of Mantua so that it could withstand a long siege. This was, practically, his sole achievement in the campaign. Outnumbered, outgeneralled, bankrupt in health as in reputation, he soon resigned his command, but not before he had given signs of "downright dotage."[54] He had, however, achieved immortality: his incapacity threw into brilliant relief the genius of his young antagonist, and therefore appreciably affected the fortunes of Italy and of Europe.
Bonaparte now despatched Masséna's division northwards, to coop up the Austrians in the narrow valley of the upper Adige, while other regiments began to close in on Mantua. The peculiarities of the ground favoured its investment. The semicircular lagoon which guards Mantua on the north, and the marshes on the south side, render an assault very difficult; but they also limit the range of ground over which sorties can be made, thereby lightening the work of the besiegers; and during part of the blockade Napoleon left fewer than five thousand men for this purpose. It was clear, however, that the reduction of Mantua would be a tedious undertaking, such as Bonaparte's daring and enterprising genius could ill brook, and that his cherished design of marching northwards to effect a junction with Moreau on the Danube was impossible. Having only 40,400 men with him at midsummer, he had barely enough to hold the line of the Adige, to blockade Mantua, and to keep open his communications with France.
At the command of the Directory he turned southward against feebler foes. The relations between the Papal States and the French Republic had been hostile since the assassination of the French envoy, Basseville, at Rome, in the early days of 1793; but the Pope, Pius VI., had confined himself to anathemas against the revolutionists and prayers for the success of the First Coalition.
This conduct now drew upon him a sharp blow. French troops crossed the Po and seized Bologna, whereupon the terrified cardinals signed an armistice with the republican commander, agreeing to close all their States to the English, and to admit a French garrison to the port of Ancona. The Pope also consented to yield up "one hundred pictures, busts, vases, or statues, as the French Commissioners shall determine, among which shall especially be included the bronze bust of Junius Brutus and the marble bust of Marcus Brutus, together with five hundred manuscripts." He was also constrained to pay 15,500,000 francs, besides animals and goods such as the French agents should requisition for their army, exclusive of the money and materials drawn from the districts of Bologna and Ferrara. The grand total, in money, and in kind, raised from the Papal States in this profitable raid, was reckoned by Bonaparte himself as 34,700,000 francs,[55] or about; £1,400,000—a liberal assessment for the life of a single envoy and the bruta fulmina of the Vatican.
Equally lucrative was a dash into Tuscany. As the Grand Duke of this fertile land had allowed English cruisers and merchants certain privileges at Leghorn, this was taken as a departure from the neutrality which he ostensibly maintained since the signature of a treaty of peace with France in 1795. A column of the republicans now swiftly approached Leghorn and seized much valuable property from British merchants. Yet the invaders failed to secure the richest of the hoped-for plunder; for about forty English merchantmen sheered off from shore as the troops neared the seaport, and an English frigate, swooping down, carried off two French vessels almost under the eyes of Bonaparte himself. This last outrage gave, it is true, a slight excuse for the levying of requisitions in Leghorn and its environs; yet, according to the memoir-writer, Miot de Melito, this unprincipled action must be attributed not to Bonaparte, but to the urgent needs of the French treasury and the personal greed of some of the Directors. Possibly also the French commissioners and agents, who levied blackmail or selected pictures, may have had some share in the shaping of the Directorial policy: at least, it is certain that some of them, notably Salicetti, amassed a large fortune from the plunder of Leghorn. In order to calm the resentment of the Grand Duke, Bonaparte paid a brief visit to Florence. He was received in respectful silence as he rode through the streets where his ancestors had schemed for the Ghibelline cause. By a deft mingling of courtesy and firmness the new conqueror imposed his will on the Government of Florence, and then sped northward to press on the siege of Mantua.
* * * * *
CHAPTER VI
THE FIGHTS FOR MANTUA
The circumstances which recalled Bonaparte to the banks of the Mincio were indeed serious. The Emperor Francis was determined at all costs to retain his hold on Italy by raising the siege of that fortress; and unless the French commander could speedily compass its fall, he had the prospect of fighting a greatly superior army while his rear was threatened by the garrison of Mantua. Austria was making unparalleled efforts to drive this presumptuous young general from a land which she regarded as her own political preserve. Military historians have always been puzzled to account for her persistent efforts in 1796-7 to re-conquer Lombardy. But, in truth, the reasons are diplomatic, not military, and need not be detailed here. Suffice it to say that, though the Hapsburg lands in Swabia were threatened by Moreau's Army of the Rhine, Francis determined at all costs to recover his Italian possessions.
To this end the Emperor now replaced the luckless Beaulieu by General Würmser, who had gained some reputation in the Rhenish campaigns; and, detaching 25,000 men from his northern armies to strengthen his army on the Adige, he bade him carry the double-headed eagle of Austria victoriously into the plains of Italy. Though too late to relieve the citadel of Milan, he was to strain every nerve to relieve Mantua; and, since the latest reports represented the French as widely dispersed for the plunder of Central Italy, the Emperor indulged the highest hopes of Würmser's success.[56]
Possibly this might have been attained had the Austrian Emperor and staff understood the absolute need of concentration in attacking a commander who had already demonstrated its supreme importance in warfare. Yet the difficulties of marching an army of 47,000 men through the narrow defile carved by the Adige through the Tyrolese Alps, and the wide extent of the French covering lines, led to the adoption of a plan which favoured rapidity at the expense of security. Würmser was to divide his forces for the difficult march southward from Tyrol into Italy. In defence of this arrangement much could be urged. To have cumbered the two roads, which run on either side of the Adige from Trient towards Mantua, with infantry, cavalry, artillery, and the countless camp-followers, animals, and wagons that follow an army, would have been fatal alike to speed of marching and to success in mountain warfare. Even in the campaign of 1866 the greatest commander of this generation carried out his maxim, "March in separate columns: unite for fighting." But Würmser and the Aulic Council[57] at Vienna neglected to insure that reunion for attack, on which von Moltke laid such stress in his Bohemian campaign. The Austrian forces in 1796 were divided by obstacles which could not quickly be crossed, namely, by Lake Garda and the lofty mountains which tower above the valley of the Adige. Assuredly the Imperialists were not nearly strong enough to run any risks. The official Austrian returns show that the total force assembled in Tyrol for the invasion of Italy amounted to 46,937 men, not to the 60,000 as pictured by the imagination of Thiers and other French historians. As Bonaparte had in Lombardy-Venetia fully 45,000 men (including 10,000 now engaged in the siege of Mantua), scattered along a front of fifty miles from Milan to Brescia and Legnago, the incursion of Würmser's force, if the French were held to their separate positions by diversions against their flanks, must have proved decisive. But the fault was committed of so far dividing the Austrians that nowhere could they deal a crushing blow. Quosdanovich with 17,600 men was to take the western side of Lake Garda, seize the French magazines at Brescia, and cut their communications with Milan and France: the main body under Würmser, 24,300 strong, was meanwhile to march in two columns on either bank of the Adige, drive the French from Rivoli and push on towards Mantua: and yet a third division, led by Davidovich from the district of Friuli on the east, received orders to march on Vicenza and Legnago, in order to distract the French from that side, and possibly relieve Mantua if the other two onsets failed.
Faulty as these dispositions were, they yet seriously disconcerted Bonaparte. He was at Montechiaro, a village situated on the road between Brescia and Mantua, when, on July 29th, he heard that the white-coats had driven in Masséna's vanguard above Rivoli on the Adige, were menacing other positions near Verona and Legnago, and were advancing on Brescia. As soon as the full extent of the peril was manifest, he sent off ten despatches to his generals, ordering a concentration of troops—these, of course, fighting so as to delay the pursuit—towards the southern end of Lake Garda. This wise step probably saved his isolated forces from disaster. It was at that point that the Austrians proposed to unite their two chief columns and crush the French detachments. But, by drawing in the divisions of Masséna and Augereau towards the Mincio, Bonaparte speedily assembled a formidable array, and held the central position between the eastern and western divisions of the Imperialists. He gave up the important defensive line of the Adige, it is true; but by promptly rallying on the Mincio, he occupied a base that was defended on the north by the small fortress of Peschiera and the waters of Lake Garda. Holding the bridges over the Mincio, he could strike at his assailants wherever they should attack; above all, he still covered the siege of Mantua. Such were his dispositions on July 29th and 30th. On the latter day he heard of the loss of Brescia, and the consequent cutting of his communications with Milan. Thereupon he promptly ordered Sérurier, who was besieging Mantua, to make a last vigorous effort to take that fortress, but also to assure his retreat westwards if fortune failed him. Later in the day he ordered him forthwith to send away his siege-train, throwing into the lake or burying whatever he could not save from the advancing Imperialists.
This apparently desperate step, which seemed to forebode the abandonment not only of the siege of Mantua, but of the whole of Lombardy, was in reality a masterstroke. Bonaparte had perceived the truth, which the campaigns of 1813 and 1870 were abundantly to illustrate—that the possession of fortresses, and consequently their siege by an invader, is of secondary importance when compared with a decisive victory gained in the open. When menaced by superior forces advancing towards the south of Lake Garda, he saw that he must sacrifice his siege works, even his siege-train, in order to gain for a few precious days that superiority in the field which the division of the Imperialist columns still left to him.
The dates of these occurrences deserve close scrutiny; for they suffice to refute some of the exorbitant claims made at a later time by General Augereau, that only his immovable firmness forced Bonaparte to fight and to change his dispositions of retreat into an attack which re-established everything. This extraordinary assertion, published by Augereau after he had deserted Napoleon in 1814, is accompanied by a detailed recital of the events of July 30th-August 5th, in which Bonaparte appears as the dazed and discouraged commander, surrounded by pusillanimous generals, and urged on to fight solely by the confidence of Augereau. That the forceful energy of this general had a great influence in restoring the morale of the French army in the confused and desperate movements which followed may freely be granted. But his claims to have been the main spring of the French movements in those anxious days deserve a brief examination. He asserts that Bonaparte, "devoured by anxieties," met him at Roverbella late in the evening of July 30th, and spoke of retiring beyond the River Po. The official correspondence disproves this assertion. Bonaparte had already given orders to Sérurier to retire beyond the Po with his artillery train; but this was obviously an attempt to save it from the advancing Austrians; and the commander had ordered the northern part of the French besieging force to join Augereau between Roverbella and Goito. Augereau further asserts that, after he had roused Bonaparte to the need of a dash to recover Brescia, the commander-in-chief remarked to Berthier, "In that case we must raise the siege of Mantua," which again he (Augereau) vigorously opposed. This second statement is creditable neither to Augereau's accuracy nor to his sagacity. The order for the raising of the siege had been issued, and it was entirely necessary for the concentration of French troops, on which Bonaparte now relied as his only hope against superior force. Had Bonaparte listened to Augereau's advice and persisted still in besieging Mantua, the scattered French forces must have been crushed in detail. Augereau's words are those of a mere fighter, not of a strategist; and the timidity which he ungenerously attributed to Bonaparte was nothing but the caution which a superior intellect saw to be a necessary prelude to a victorious move.
That the fighting honours of the ensuing days rightly belong to Augereau may be frankly conceded. With forces augmented by the northern part of the besiegers of Mantua, he moved rapidly westwards from the Mincio against Brescia, and rescued it from the vanguard of Quosdanovich (August 1st). On the previous day other Austrian detachments had also, after obstinate conflicts, been worsted near Salo and Lonato. Still, the position was one of great perplexity: for though Masséna's division from the Adige was now beginning to come into touch with Bonaparte's chief force, yet the fronts of Würmser's columns were menacing the French from that side, while the troops of Quosdanovich, hovering about Lonato and Salo, struggled desperately to stretch a guiding hand to their comrades on the Mincio.
Würmser was now discovering his error. Lured towards Mantua by false reports that the French were still covering the siege, he had marched due south when he ought to have rushed to the rescue of his hard-pressed lieutenant at Brescia. Entering Mantua, he enjoyed a brief spell of triumph, and sent to the Emperor Francis the news of the capture of 40 French cannon in the trenches, and of 139 more on the banks of the Po. But, while he was indulging the fond hope that the French were in full retreat from Italy, came the startling news that they had checked Quosdanovich at Brescia and Salo. Realizing his errors, and determining to retrieve them before all was lost, he at once pushed on his vanguard towards Castiglione, and easily gained that village and its castle from a French detachment commanded by General Valette.
The feeble defence of so important a position threw Bonaparte into one of those transports of fury which occasionally dethroned his better judgment. Meeting Valette at Montechiaro, he promptly degraded him to the ranks, refusing to listen to his plea of having received a written order to retire. A report of General Landrieux asserts that the rage of the commander-in-chief was so extreme as for the time even to impair his determination. The outlook was gloomy. The French seemed about to be hemmed in amidst the broken country between Castiglione, Brescia, and Salo. A sudden attack on the Austrians was obviously the only safe and honourable course. But no one knew precisely their numbers or their position. Uncertainty ever preyed on Bonaparte's ardent imagination. His was a mind that quailed not before visible dangers; but, with all its powers of decisive action, it retained so much of Corsican eeriness as to chafe at the unknown,[58] and to lose for the moment the faculty of forming a vigorous resolution. Like the python, which grips its native rock by the tail in order to gain its full constricting power, so Bonaparte ever needed a groundwork of fact for the due exercise of his mental force.
One of a group of generals, whom he had assembled about him near Montechiaro, proposed that they should ascend the hill which dominated the plain. Even from its ridge no Austrians were to be seen. Again the commander burst forth with petulant reproaches, and even talked of retiring to the Adda. Whereupon, if we may trust the "Memoirs" of General Landrieux, Augereau protested against retreat, and promised success for a vigorous charge. "I wash my hands of it, and I am going away," replied Bonaparte. "And who will command, if you go?" inquired Augereau. "You," retorted Bonaparte, as he left the astonished circle.
However this may be, the first attack on Castiglione was certainly left to this determined fighter; and the mingling of boldness and guile which he showed on the following day regained for the French not only the village, but also the castle, perched on a precipitous rock. Yet the report of Colonel Graham, who was then at Marshal Würmser's headquarters, somewhat dulls the lustre of Augereau's exploit; for the British officer asserts that the Austrian position had been taken up quite by haphazard, and that fewer than 15,000 white-coats were engaged in this first battle of Castiglione. Furthermore, the narratives of this mêlée written by Augereau himself and by two other generals, Landrieux and Verdier, who were disaffected towards Bonaparte, must naturally be received with much reserve. The effect of Augereau's indomitable energy in restoring confidence to the soldiers and victory to the French tricolour was, however, generously admitted by the Emperor Napoleon; for, at a later time when complaints were being made about Augereau, he generously exclaimed: "Ah, let us not forget that he saved us at Castiglione."[59]
While Augereau was recovering this important position, confused conflicts were raging a few miles further north at Lonato. Masséna at first was driven back by the onset of the Imperialists; but while they were endeavouring to envelop the French, Bonaparte arrived, and in conjunction with Masséna pushed on a central attack such as often wrested victory from the enemy. The white-coats retired in disorder, some towards Gavardo, others towards the lake, hotly followed by the French. In the pursuit towards Gavardo, Bonaparte's old friend, Junot, distinguished himself by his dashing valour. He wounded a colonel, slew six troopers, and, covered with wounds, was finally overthrown into a ditch. Such is Bonaparte's own account. It is gratifying to know that the wounds neither singly nor collectively were dangerous, and did not long repress Junot's activity. A tinge of romance seems, indeed, to have gilded many of these narratives; and a critical examination of the whole story of Lonato seems to suggest doubts whether the victory was as decisive as historians have often represented. If the Austrians were "thrown back on Lake Garda and Desenzano,"[60] it is difficult to see why the pursuers did not drive them into the lake. As a matter of fact, nearly all the beaten troops escaped to Gavardo, while others joined their comrades engaged in the blockade of Peschiera.
A strange incident serves to illustrate the hazards of war and the confusion of this part of the campaign. A detachment of the vanquished Austrian forces some 4,000 strong, unable to join their comrades at Gavardo or Peschiera, and yet unharmed by the victorious pursuers, wandered about on the hills, and on the next day chanced near Lonato to come upon a much smaller detachment of French. Though unaware of the full extent of their good fortune, the Imperialists boldly sent an envoy to summon the French commanding officer to surrender. When the bandage was taken from his eyes, he was abashed to find himself in the presence of Bonaparte, surrounded by the generals of his staff. The young commander's eyes flashed fire at the seeming insult, and in tones vibrating with well-simulated passion he threatened the envoy with condign punishment for daring to give such a message to the commander-in-chief at his headquarters in the midst of his army. Let him and his men forthwith lay down their arms. Dazed by the demand, and seeing only the victorious chief and not the smallness of his detachment, 4,000 Austrians surrendered to 1,200 French, or rather to the address and audacity of one master-mind.
Elated by this augury of further victory, the republicans prepared for the decisive blow. Würmser, though checked on August 3rd, had been so far reinforced from Mantua as still to indulge hopes of driving the French from Castiglione and cutting his way through to rescue Quosdanovich. He was, indeed, in honour bound to make the attempt; for the engagement had been made, with the usual futility that dogged the Austrian councils, to reunite their forces and fight the French on the 7th of August. These cast-iron plans were now adhered to in spite of their dislocation at the hands of Bonaparte and Augereau. Würmser's line stretched from near the village of Médole in a north-easterly direction across the high-road between Brescia and Mantua; while his right wing was posted in the hilly country around Solferino. In fact, his extreme right rested on the tower-crowned heights of Solferino, where the forces of Austria two generations later maintained so desperate a defence against the onset of Napoleon III. and his liberating army.
Owing to the non-arrival of Mezaros' corps marching from Legnago, Würmser mustered scarcely twenty-five thousand men on his long line; while the very opportune approach of part of Sérurier's division, under the lead of Fiorella, from the south, gave the French an advantage even in numbers. Moreover, Fiorella's advance on the south of Würmser's weaker flank, that near Médole, threatened to turn it and endanger the Austrian communications with Mantua. The Imperialists seem to have been unaware of this danger; and their bad scouting here as elsewhere was largely responsible for the issue of the day. Würmser's desire to stretch a helping hand to Quosdanovich near Lonato and his confidence in the strength of his own right wing betrayed him into a fatal imprudence. Sending out feelers after his hard-pressed colleague on the north, he dangerously prolonged his line, an error in which he was deftly encouraged by Bonaparte, who held back his own left wing. Meanwhile the French were rolling in the other extremity of the Austrian line. Marmont, dashing forward with the horse artillery, took the enemy's left wing in flank and silenced many of their pieces. Under cover of this attack, Fiorella's division was able to creep up within striking distance; and the French cavalry, swooping round the rear of this hard-pressed wing, nearly captured Würmser and his staff. A vigorous counterattack by the Austrian reserves, or an immediate wheeling round of the whole line, was needed to repulse this brilliant flank attack; but the Austrian reserves had been expended in the north of their line; and an attempt to change front, always a difficult operation, was crushed by a headlong charge of Masséna's and Augereau's divisions on their centre. Before these attacks the whole Austrian line gave way; and, according to Colonel Graham, nothing but this retreat, undertaken "without orders," saved the whole force from being cut off. The criticisms of our officer sufficiently reveal the cause of the disaster. The softness and incapacity of Würmser, the absence of a responsible second in command, the ignorance of the number and positions of the French, the determination to advance towards Castiglione and to wait thereabouts for Quosdanovich until a battle could be fought with combined forces on the 7th, the taking up a position almost by haphazard on the Castiglione-Médole line, and the failure to detect Fiorella's approach, present a series of defects and blunders which might have given away the victory to a third-rate opponent.[61]
The battle was by no means sanguinary: it was a series of manoeuvres rather than of prolonged conflicts. Hence its interest to all who by preference dwell on the intellectual problems of warfare rather than on the details of fighting. Bonaparte had previously shown that he could deal blows with telling effect. The ease and grace of his moves at the second battle of Castiglione now redeemed the reputation which his uncertain behaviour on the four preceding days had somewhat compromised.
A complete and authentic account of this week of confused fighting has never been written. The archives of Vienna have not as yet yielded up all their secrets; and the reputations of so many French officers were over-clouded by this prolonged mêlée as to render even the victors' accounts vague and inconsistent. The aim of historians everywhere to give a clear and vivid account, and the desire of Napoleonic enthusiasts to represent their hero as always thinking clearly and acting decisively, have fused trusty ores and worthless slag into an alloy which has passed for true metal. But no student of Napoleon's "Correspondence," of the "Memoirs" of Marmont, and of the recitals of Augereau, Dumas, Landrieux, Verdier, Despinois and others, can hope wholly to unravel the complications arising from the almost continuous conflicts that extended over a dozen leagues of hilly country. War is not always dramatic, however much the readers of campaigns may yearn after thrilling narratives. In regard to this third act of the Italian campaign, all that can safely be said is that Bonaparte's intuition to raise the siege of Mantua, in order that he might defeat in detail the relieving armies, bears the imprint of genius: but the execution of this difficult movement was unequal, even at times halting; and the French army was rescued from its difficulties only by the grand fighting qualities of the rank and file, and by the Austrian blunders, which outnumbered those of the republican generals.
Neither were the results of the Castiglione cycle of battles quite so brilliant as have been represented. Würmser and Quasdanovich lost in all 17,000 men, it is true: but the former had re-garrisoned and re-victualled Mantua, besides capturing all the French siege-train. Bonaparte's primary aim had been to reduce Mantua, so that he might be free to sweep through Tyrol, join hands with Moreau, and overpower the white-coats in Bavaria. The aim of the Aulic Council and Würmser had been to relieve Mantua and restore the Hapsburg rule over Lombardy. Neither side had succeeded. But the Austrians could at least point to some successes; and, above all, Mantua was in a better state of defence than when the French first approached its walls: and while Mantua was intact, Bonaparte was held to the valley of the Mincio, and could not deal those lightning blows on the Inn and the Danube which he ever regarded as the climax of the campaign. Viewed on its material side, his position was no better than it was before Würmser's incursion into the plains of Venetia.[62]
With true Hapsburg tenacity, Francis determined on further efforts for the relief of Mantua. Apart from the promptings of dynastic pride, his reasons for thus obstinately struggling against Alpine gorges, Italian sentiment, and Bonaparte's genius, are wellnigh inscrutable; and military writers have generally condemned this waste of resources on the Brenta, which, if hurled against the French on the Rhine, would have compelled the withdrawal of Bonaparte from Italy for the defence of Lorraine. But the pride of the Emperor Francis brooked no surrender of his Italian possessions, and again Würmser was spurred on from Vienna to another invasion of Venetia. It would be tedious to give an account of Würmser's second attempt, which belongs rather to the domain of political fatuity than that of military history. Colonel Graham states that the Austrian rank and file laughed at their generals, and bitterly complained that they were being led to the shambles, while the officers almost openly exclaimed: "We must make peace, for we don't know how to make war." This was again apparent. Bonaparte forestalled their attack. Their divided forces fell an easy prey to Masséna, who at Bassano cut Würmser's force to pieces and sent the débris flying down the valley of the Brenta. Losing most of their artillery, and separated in two chief bands, the Imperialists seemed doomed to surrender: but Würmser, doubling on his pursuers, made a dash westwards, finally cutting his way to Mantua. There again he vainly endeavoured to make a stand. He was driven from his positions in front of St. Georges and La Favorita, and was shut up in the town itself. This addition to the numbers of the garrison was no increase to its strength; for the fortress, though well provisioned for an ordinary garrison, could not support a prolonged blockade, and the fevers of the early autumn soon began to decimate troops worn out by forced marches and unable to endure the miasma ascending from the marshes of the Mincio.