Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume II

The position of the French army had repeatedly varied since October 1795, after the skirmish at Cairo. At that time the extreme left of the line, which extended from south to north, rested upon the Col d'Argentine, and communicated with the higher Alps – the centre was on the Col di Tende and Mount Bertrand – the left occupied the heights of Saint Bertrand, Saint Jacques, and other ridges running in the same direction, which terminated on the Mediterranean shore, near Finale.

The Austrians, strongly reinforced, attacked this line, and carried the heights of Mont Saint Jacques; and Kellermann, after a vain attempt to regain that point of his position, retreated to the line of defence more westward, which rests on Borghetto. Kellermann, an active and good brigade officer, but without sufficient talent to act as commander-in-chief, was superseded, and Scherer was placed in command of the army of Italy. He risked a battle with the Austrians near Loana, in which the talents of Massena and Augereau were conspicuous; and by the victory which ensued, the French regained the line of Saint Jacques and Finale, which Kellermann had been forced to abandon; so that in a general point of view, the relative position of the two opposed armies was not very different from that in which they had been left by Buonaparte.93

THE POPE

But though Scherer had been thus far victorious, he was not the person to whom the Directory desired to intrust the daring plan of assuming the offensive on a grand scale upon the Alpine frontier, and, by carrying their arms into Italy, compelling the Austrians to defend themselves in that quarter, and to diminish the gigantic efforts which that power had hitherto continued with varied success, but unabated vigour, upon the Rhine. The rulers of France had a farther object in this bold scheme. They desired to intimidate, or annihilate and dethrone the Pope. He was odious to them as head of the Church, because the attachment of the French clergy to the Roman See, and the points of conscience which rested upon that dependence, had occasioned the recusancy of the priests, especially of those who were most esteemed by the people, to take the constitutional oath. To the Pope, and his claims of supremacy, were therefore laid the charge of the great civil war in La Vendée, and the general disaffection of the Catholics in the south of France.

But this was not the only cause of the animosity entertained by the Directory against the head of the Catholic Church. They had, three years before, sustained an actual injury from the See of Rome, which was yet unavenged. The people of Rome were extremely provoked that the French residing there, and particularly the young artists, had displayed the three-coloured cockade, and were proposing to exhibit the scutcheon containing the emblems of the Republic, over the door of the French consul. The Pope, through his minister, had intimated his desire that this should not be attempted, as he had not acknowledged the Republic as a legitimate government. The French, however, pursued their purpose; and the consequence was, that a popular commotion arose, which the papal troops did not greatly exert themselves to suppress. The carriage of the French envoy, or chargé des affaires, named Basseville, was attacked in the streets, and chased home; his house was broken into by the mob, and he himself, unarmed and unresisting, was cruelly assassinated. The French Government considered this very naturally as a gross insult, and were the more desirous of avenging it, that by doing so they would approach nearer to the dignified conduct of the Roman Republic, which, in good or evil, seems always to have been their model. The affair happened in 1793, but was not forgotten in 1796.94

The original idea entertained by the French Government for prosecuting their resentment, had been by a proposed landing at Civita Vecchia with an army of ten thousand men, marching to Rome, and exacting from the pontiff complete atonement for the murder of Basseville. But as the English fleet rode unopposed in the Mediterranean, it became a matter of very doubtful success to transport such a body of troops to Civita Vecchia by sea, not to mention the chance that, even if safely landed, they would have found themselves in the centre of Italy, cut off from supplies and succours, assaulted on all hands, and most probably blockaded by the British fleet. Buonaparte, who was consulted, recommended that the north of Italy should be first conquered, in order that Rome might be with safety approached and chastised; and this scheme, though in appearance scarce a less bold measure, was a much safer one than the Directory had at first inclined to, since Buonaparte would only approach Rome in the event of his being able to preserve his communications with Lombardy and Tuscany, which he must conquer in the first place.95

The plan of crossing the Alps and marching into Italy, suited in every respect the ambitious and self-confident character of the general to whom it was now intrusted. It gave him a separate and independent authority, and the power of acting on his own judgment and responsibility; for his countryman Salicetti, the deputy who accompanied him as a commissioner of the Government, was not probably much disposed to intrude his opinions. He had been Buonaparte's patron, and was still his friend.96 The young general's mind was made up to the alternative of conquest or ruin, as may be judged from his words to a friend at taking leave of him. "In three months," he said, "I will be either at Milan or at Paris;" intimating at once his desperate resolution to succeed, and his sense that the disappointment of all his prospects must be the consequence of a failure.

On the 27th of March Buonaparte reached Nice. The picture of the army which General Scherer97 laid before him, was even worse than he had formed any idea of. The supply of bread was very uncertain; distributions of meat had long ceased; and for means of conveyance there were only mules, and not above five hundred of these could be reckoned upon.

The headquarters had never been removed from Nice, since the commencement of the war: they were instantly ordered to be transferred to Albenga. On the march thither, along the rugged and precipitous shore of the Mediterranean, the staff, broken with the rear and baggage of the army, were exposed to the cannonade of Nelson's squadron; but the young commander-in-chief would not allow the columns to halt, for the purpose either of avoiding or of returning it.98 On the 3d of April, the army reached port Maunie, near Oneglia, and on the 4th arrived at Albenga; where, with the view of animating his followers to ambitious hopes, he addressed the army of Italy to the following purpose: – "Soldiers, you are hungry and naked. – The Republic owes you much, but she has not the means to acquit herself of her debts. The patience with which you support your hardships among these barren rocks is admirable, but it cannot procure you glory. I am come to lead you into the most fertile plains that the sun beholds – Rich provinces, opulent towns, all shall be at your disposal – Soldiers, with such a prospect before you, can you fail in courage and constancy?" This was showing the deer to the hound when the leash is about to be slipped.

The Austro-Sardinian army, to which Buonaparte was opposed, was commanded by Beaulieu, an Austrian general of great experience and some talent, but no less than seventy-five years old; accustomed all his life to the ancient rules of tactics, and unlikely to suspect, anticipate, or frustrate, those plans, formed by a genius so fertile as that of Napoleon.

Buonaparte's plan for entering Italy differed from that of former conquerors and invaders, who had approached that fine country by penetrating or surmounting at some point or other her Alpine barriers. This inventive warrior resolved to attain the same object, by turning round the southern extremity of the Alpine range, keeping as close as possible to the shores of the Mediterranean, and passing through the Genoese territory by the narrow pass called the Boccheta leading around the extremity of the mountains, and betwixt these and the sea. Thus he proposed to penetrate into Italy, by the lowest level which the surface of the country presented, which must be of course where the range of the Alps unites with that of the Apennines. The point of junction where these two immense ranges of mountains touch upon each other, is at the heights of Mount Saint Jacques, above Genoa, where the Alps, running north-westward, ascend to Mont Blanc, their highest peak, and the Apennines, running to the south-east, gradually elevate themselves to Monte Velino, the tallest mountain of the range.

To attain his object of turning the Alps in the manner proposed, it was necessary that Buonaparte should totally change the situation of his army; those occupying a defensive line, running north and south, being to assume an offensive position, extending east and west. Speaking of an army as of a battalion, he was to form into column upon the right of the line which he had hitherto occupied. This was an extremely delicate operation, to be undertaken in presence of an active enemy, his superior in numbers; nor was he permitted to execute it uninterrupted.

No sooner did Beaulieu learn that the French general was concentrating his forces, and about to change his position, than he hastened to preserve Genoa, without possession of which, or at least of the adjacent territory, Buonaparte's scheme of advance could scarce have been accomplished. The Austrian divided his army into three bodies. Colli, at the head of a Sardinian division, he stationed on the extreme right at Ceva; his centre division, under D'Argenteau, having its head at Sasiello, had directions to march on a mountain called Montenotte, with two villages of the same name, near to which was a strong position at a place called Montelegino, which the French had occupied in order to cover their flank during their march towards the east. At the head of his left wing, Beaulieu himself moved from Novi upon Voltri, a small town within ten miles of Genoa, for the protection of that ancient city, whose independence and neutrality were like to be held in little reverence. Thus it appears, that while the French were endeavouring to penetrate into Italy by an advance from Sardinia by the way of Genoa, their line of march was threatened by three armies of Austro-Sardinians, descending from the skirts of the Alps, and menacing to attack their flank. But though a skilful disposition, Beaulieu's had, from the very mountainous character of the country, the great disadvantage of wanting connexion between the three separate divisions; neither, if needful, could they be easily united on any point desired, while the lower line, on which the French moved, permitted constant communication and co-operation.

BATTLE OF MONTENOTTE

On the 10th of April, D'Argenteau, with the central division of the Austro-Sardinian army, marched on Montenotte, while Beaulieu on the left attacked the van of the French army, which had come as far as Voltri. General Cervoni, commanding the French division which sustained the attack of Beaulieu, was compelled to fall back on the main body of his countrymen; and had the assault of D'Argenteau been equally animated, or equally successful, the fame of Buonaparte might have been stifled in the birth. But Colonel Rampon, a French officer, who commanded the redoubts near Montelegino, stopped the progress of D'Argenteau by the most determined resistance. At the head of not more than fifteen hundred men, whom he inspired with his own courage, and caused to swear either to maintain their post or die there,99 he continued to defend the redoubts, during the whole of the 11th, until D'Argenteau, whose conduct was afterwards greatly blamed for not making more determined efforts to carry them, drew off his forces for the evening, intending to renew the attack next morning.

But, on the morning of the 12th, the Austrian general found himself surrounded with enemies. Cervoni, who retreated before Beaulieu, had united himself with La Harpe, and both advancing northward during the night of the 11th, established themselves in the rear of the redoubts of Montelegino, which Rampon had so gallantly defended. This was not all. The divisions of Augereau and Massena had marched, by different routes, on the flank and on the rear of D'Argenteau's column; so that next morning, instead of renewing his attack on the redoubts, the Austrian general was obliged to extricate himself by a disastrous retreat, leaving behind him colours and cannon, a thousand slain, and two thousand prisoners.100

Such was the battle of Montenotte, the first of Buonaparte's victories; eminently displaying that truth and mathematical certainty of combination,101 which enabled him on many more memorable occasions, even when his forces were inferior in numbers, and apparently disunited in position, suddenly to concentrate them and defeat his enemy, by overpowering him on the very point where he thought himself strongest. He had accumulated a superior force on the Austrian centre, and destroyed it, while Colli, on the right, and Beaulieu himself, on the left, each at the head of numerous forces, did not even hear of the action till it was fought and won.102

In consequence of the success at Montenotte, and the close pursuit of the defeated Austrians, the French obtained possession of Cairo, which placed them on that side of the Alps which slopes towards Lombardy, and where the streams from these mountains run to join the Po.

Beaulieu had advanced to Voltri, while the French withdrew to unite themselves in the attack upon D'Argenteau. He had now to retreat northward with all haste to Dego, in the valley of the river Bormida, in order to resume communication with the right wing of his army, consisting chiefly of Sardinians, from which he was now nearly separated by the defeat of the centre. General Colli, by a corresponding movement on the right, occupied Millesimo, a small town about nine miles from Dego, with which he resumed and maintained communication by a brigade stationed on the heights of Biastro. From the strength of this position, though his forces were scarce sufficiently concentrated, Beaulieu hoped to maintain his ground till he should receive supplies from Lombardy, and recover the consequences of the defeat at Montenotte. But the antagonist whom he had in front had no purpose of permitting him such respite.

BATTLE OF MILLESIMO

Determined upon a general attack on all points of the Austrian position, the French army advanced in three bodies upon a space of four leagues in extent. Augereau, at the head of the division which had not fought at Montenotte, advanced on the left against Millesimo; the centre, under Massena, directed themselves upon Dego, by the vale of the Bormida; the right wing, commanded by La Harpe, proceeded by the heights of Cairo, for the purpose of turning Beaulieu's left flank. Augereau, whose division had not engaged at the battle of Montenotte, was the first who came in contact with the enemy. He attacked General Colli on the 13th April. His troops, emulous of the honour acquired by their companions, behaved with great bravery, rushed upon the outposts of the Sardinian army at Millesimo, forced, and retained possession of the gorge by which it was defended, and thus separated from the Sardinian army a body of about two thousand men, under the Austrian General Provera, who occupied a detached eminence called Cossaria, which covered the extreme left of General Colli's position. But the Austrian showed the most obstinate courage. Although surrounded by the enemy, he threw himself into the ruinous castle of Cossaria, which crowned the eminence, and showed a disposition to maintain the place to the last; the rather that, as he could see from the turrets of his stronghold the Sardinian troops, from whom he had been separated, preparing to fight on the ensuing day, he might reasonably hope to be disengaged.103

Buonaparte in person came up; and seeing the necessity of dislodging the enemy from this strong post, ordered three successive attacks to be made on the castle. Joubert, at the head of one of the attacking columns, had actually, with six or seven others, made his way into the outworks, when he was struck down by a wound in the head. General Banel, and Adjutant-general Quénin fell, each at the head of the column which he commanded; and Buonaparte was compelled to leave the obstinate Provera in possession of the castle for the night. The morning of the 14th brought a different scene. Contenting himself with blockading the castle of Cossaria, Buonaparte now gave battle to General Colli, who made every effort to relieve it. These attempts were all in vain. He was defeated and cut off from Beaulieu; he retired as well as he could upon Ceva, leaving to his fate the brave General Provera, who was compelled to surrender at discretion.

ACTION OF DEGO

On the same day, Massena, with the centre, attacked the heights of Biastro, being the point of communication betwixt Beaulieu and Colli, while La Harpe, having crossed the Bormida, where the stream came up to the soldiers' middle, attacked in front and in flank the village of Dego, where the Austrian commander-in-chief was stationed. The first attack was completely successful, – the heights of Biastro were carried, and the Piedmontese routed. The assault of Dego was not less so, although after a harder struggle. Beaulieu was compelled to retreat, and was entirely separated from the Sardinians, who had hitherto acted in combination with him. The defenders of Italy now retreated in different directions, Colli moving westward towards Ceva, while Beaulieu, closely pursued through a difficult country, retired upon D'Aqui.104

Even the morning after the victory, it was nearly wrested out of the hands of the conquerors. A fresh division of Austrians, who had evacuated Voltri later than the others, and were approaching to form a junction with their general, found the enemy in possession of Beaulieu's position. They arrived at Dego like men who had been led astray, and were no doubt surprised at finding it in the hands of the French. Yet they did not hesitate to assume the offensive, and by a brisk attack drove out the enemy, and replaced the Austrian eagles in the village. Great alarm was occasioned by this sudden apparition; for no one among the French could conceive the meaning of an alarm beginning on the opposite quarter to that on which the enemy had retreated, and without its being announced from the outposts towards D'Aqui.

Buonaparte hastily marched on the village. The Austrians repelled two attacks; at the third, General Lanusse, afterwards killed in Egypt, put his hat upon the point of his sword, and advancing to the charge, penetrated into the place. Lannes also, afterwards Duke of Montebello, distinguished himself on the same occasion by courage and military skill, and was recommended by Buonaparte to the Directory for promotion. In this battle of Dego, more commonly called of Millesimo, the Austro-Sardinian army lost five or six thousand men, thirty pieces of cannon, with a great quantity of baggage. Besides, the Austrians were divided from the Sardinians; and the two generals began to show, not only that their forces were disunited, but that they themselves were acting upon separate motives; the Sardinians desiring to protect Turin, whereas the movements of Beaulieu seemed still directed to prevent the French from entering the Milanese territory.105

Leaving a sufficient force on the Bormida to keep in check Beaulieu, Buonaparte now turned his strength against Colli, who, overpowered, and without hopes of succour, abandoned his line of defence near Ceva, and retreated to the line of the Tanaro.

Napoleon, in the meantime, fixed his head-quarters at Ceva, and enjoyed from the heights of Montezemoto, the splendid view of the fertile fields of Piedmont stretching in boundless perspective beneath his feet, watered by the Po, the Tanaro, and a thousand other streams which descend from the Alps. Before the eyes of the delighted army of victors lay this rich expanse like a promised land; behind them was the wilderness they had passed; – not indeed, a desert of barren sand, similar to that in which the Israelites wandered, but a huge tract of rocks and inaccessible mountains, crested with ice and snow, seeming by nature designed as the barrier and rampart of the blessed regions which stretched eastward beneath them. We can sympathize with the self-congratulation of the general who had surmounted such tremendous obstacles in a way so unusual. He said to the officers around him, as they gazed upon this magnificent scene, "Hannibal took the Alps by storm. We have succeeded as well by taming their flank."106

The dispirited army of Colli was attacked at Mondovi during his retreat, by two corps of Buonaparte's army, from two different points, commanded by Massena and Serrurier. The last general, the Sardinian repulsed with loss; but when he found Massena, in the meantime, was turning the left of his line, and that he was thus pressed on both flanks, his situation became almost desperate.107 The cavalry of the Piedmontese made an effort to renew the combat. For a time they overpowered and drove back those of the French; and General Stengel, who commanded the latter, was slain in attempting to get them into order.108 But the desperate valour of Murat, unrivalled perhaps in the heady charge of cavalry combat, renewed the fortune of the field; and the horse, as well as the infantry of Colli's army, were compelled to a disastrous retreat. The defeat was decisive; and the Sardinians, after the loss of the best of their troops, their cannon, baggage, and appointments, and being now totally divided from their Austrian allies, and liable to be overpowered by the united forces of the French army, had no longer hopes of effectually covering Turin. Buonaparte, pursuing his victory, took possession of Cherasco, within ten leagues of the Piedmontese capital.109

Thus Fortune, in the course of a campaign of scarce a month, placed her favourite in full possession of the desired road to Italy by command of the mountain-passes, which had been invaded and conquered with so much military skill. He had gained three battles over forces far superior to his own; inflicted on the enemy a loss of twenty-five thousand men in killed, wounded, and prisoners; taken eighty pieces of cannon, and twenty-one stand of colours;110 reduced to inaction the Austrian army; almost annihilated that of Sardinia; and stood in full communication with France upon the eastern side of the Alps, with Italy lying open before him, as if to invite his invasion. But it was not even with such laurels, and with facilities which now presented themselves for the accomplishment of new and more important victories upon a larger scale, and with more magnificent results, that the career of Buonaparte's earliest campaign was to be closed. The head of the royal house of Savoy, if not one of the most powerful, still one of the most distinguished in Europe, was to have the melancholy experience, that he had encountered with the Man of Destiny, as he was afterwards proudly called, who, for a time, had power, in the emphatic phrase of Scripture, "to bind kings with chains, and nobles with fetters of iron."

The shattered relics of the Sardinian army had fallen back, or rather fled, to within two leagues of Turin, without hope of being again able to make an effectual stand. The Sovereign of Sardinia, Savoy, and Piedmont, had no means of preserving his capital, nay, his existence on the continent, excepting by an almost total submission to the will of the victor. Let it be remembered, that Victor Amadeus the Third was the descendant of a race of heroes, who, from the peculiar situation of their territories, as constituting a neutral ground of great strength betwixt France and the Italian possessions of Austria, had often been called on to play a part in the general affairs of Europe, of importance far superior to that which their condition as a second-rate power could otherwise have demanded. In general, they had compensated their inferiority of force by an ability and gallantry which did them the highest credit, both as generals and as politicians; and now Piedmont was at the feet, in her turn, of an enemy weaker in numbers than her own. Besides the reflections on the past fame of his country, the present humiliating situation of the King was rendered more mortifying by the state of his family connexions. Victor Amadeus was the father-in-law of Monsieur (Louis XVIII.,) and of the Comte d'Artois, (afterwards Charles X.) He had received his sons-in-law at his court at Turin, had afforded them an opportunity of assembling around them their forces, consisting of the emigrant noblesse, and had strained all the power he possessed, and in many instances successfully, to withstand both the artifices and the arms of the French Republicans. And now, so born, so connected, and with such principles, he was condemned to sue for peace, on any terms which might be dictated, from a General of France, aged twenty-six years, who, a few months before, was desirous of an appointment in the artillery service of the Grand Signior.