to pass the line which had been drawn for me.”
Lavalette says of his first interview with him: “He looked weak, but his regard was so firm and so fixed that I felt myself turning pale when he spoke to me.” Augereau goes to see him at Albenga, full of contempt for this favorite of Barras who has never known an action, determined on insubordination. Bonaparte comes out, little, thin, round-shouldered, and gives Augereau, a giant among the generals, his orders. The big man backs out in a kind of terror. “He frightened me,” he tells Masséna. “His first glance crushed me.”
He quelled insubordination in the ranks by quick, severe punishment, but it was not long that he had insubordination. The army asked nothing but to act, and immediately they saw that they were to move. He had reached his post on March 22d; nineteen days later operations began.
The theatre of action was along that portion of the maritime Alps which runs parallel with the sea. Bonaparte held the coast and the mountains; and north, in the foot-hills, stretched from the Tende to Genoa, were the Austrians and their Sardinian allies. If the French were fully ten thousand inferior in number, their position was the stronger, for the enemy was scattered in a hilly country where it was difficult to unite their divisions.
As Bonaparte faced his enemy, it was with a youthful zest and anticipation which explains much of what follows. “The two armies are in motion,” he wrote Josephine, “each trying to outwit the other. The more skilful will succeed. I am much pleased with Beaulieu. He manœuvres very well, and is superior to his predecessor. I shall beat him, I hope, out of his boots.”
The first step in the campaign was a skilful stratagem. He spread rumors which made Beaulieu suspect that he intended marching on Genoa, and he threw out his lines in that direction. The Austrian took the feint as a genuine movement, and marched his left to the sea to cut off the French advance. But Bonaparte was not marching to Genoa, and, rapidly collecting his forces, he fell on the Austrian army at Montenotte on April 12th, and defeated it. The right and left of the allies were divided, and the centre broken.
By a series of clever feints, Bonaparte prevented the various divisions of the enemy from reënforcing each other, and forced them separately to battle. At Millesimo, on the 14th, he defeated one section; on the same day, at Dego, another; the next morning, near Dego, another. The Austrians were now driven back, but their Sardinian allies were still at Ceva. To them Bonaparte now turned, and, driving them from their camp, defeated them at Mondovi on the 22d.
It was phenomenal in Italy. In ten days the “rag heroes,” at whom they had been mocking for three years, had defeated two well-fed armies ten thousand stronger than themselves, and might at any moment march on Turin. The Sardinians sued for peace.
The victory was as bewildering to the French as it was terrifying to the enemy, and Napoleon used it to stir his army to new conquests.
“Soldiers!” he said, “in fifteen days you have gained six victories, taken twenty-one stands of colors, fifty-five pieces of cannon, and several fortresses, and conquered the richest part of Piedmont. You have made fifteen hundred prisoners, and killed or wounded ten thousand men.
“Hitherto, however, you have been fighting for barren rocks, made memorable by your valor, but useless to the nation. Your exploits now equal those of the conquering armies of Holland and the Rhine. You were utterly destitute, and have supplied all your wants. You have gained battles without cannons, passed rivers without bridges, performed forced marches without shoes, bivouacked without brandy, and often without bread. None but republican phalanxes—soldiers of liberty—could have borne what you have endured. For this you have the thanks of your country.
“The two armies which lately attacked you in full confidence, now fly before you in consternation.... But, soldiers, it must not be concealed that you have done nothing, since there remains aught to do. Neither Turin nor Milan is ours.... The greatest difficulties are no doubt surmounted; but you have still battles to fight, towns to take, rivers to cross....”
Not less clever in diplomacy than in battle, Bonaparte, on his own responsibility, concluded an armistice with the Sardinians, which left him only the Austrians to fight, and at once set out to follow Beaulieu, who had fled beyond the Po.
As adroitly as he had made Beaulieu believe, three weeks before, that he was going to march on Genoa, he now deceives him as to the point where he proposes to cross the Po, leading him to believe it is at Valenza. When certain that Beaulieu had his eye on that point, Bonaparte marched rapidly down the river, and crossed at Placentia. If an unforeseen delay had not occurred in the passage, he would have been on the Austrian rear. As it was, Beaulieu took alarm, and withdrew the body of his army, after a slight resistance to the French advance, across the Adda, leaving but twelve thousand men at Lodi.
Bonaparte was jubilant. “We have crossed the Po,” he wrote the directory. “The second campaign has commenced. Beaulieu is disconcerted; he miscalculates, and continually falls into the snares I set for him. Perhaps he wishes to give battle, for he has both audacity and energy, but not genius.... Another victory, and we shall be masters of Italy.”
Determined to leave no enemies behind him, Bonaparte now marched against the twelve thousand men at Lodi. The town, lying on the right bank of the Adda, was guarded by a small force of Austrians; but the mass of the enemy was on the left bank, at the end of a bridge some three hundred and fifty feet in length, and commanded by a score or more of cannon.
Rushing into the town on May 10th the French drove out the guarding force, and arrived at the bridge before the Austrians had time to destroy it. The French grenadiers pressed forward in a solid mass, but, when half way over, the cannon at the opposite end poured such a storm of shot at them that the column wavered and fell back. Several generals in the ranks, Bonaparte at their head, rushed to the front of the force. The presence of the officers was enough to inspire the soldiers, and they swept across the bridge with such impetuosity that the Austrian line on the opposite bank allowed its batteries to be taken, and in a few moments was in retreat. “Of all the actions in which the soldiers under my command have been engaged,” wrote Bonaparte to the Directory, “none has equalled the tremendous passage of the bridge at Lodi. If we have lost but few soldiers, it was merely owing to the promptitude of our attacks and the effect produced on the enemy by the formidable fire from our invincible army. Were I to name all the officers who distinguished themselves in this affair, I should be obliged to enumerate every carabinier of the advanced guard, and almost every officer belonging to the staff.”
The Austrians now withdrew beyond the Mincio, and on the 15th of May the French entered Milan. The populace greeted their conquerors as liberators, and for several days the army rejoiced in comforts which it had not known for years. While it was being fêted, Bonaparte was instituting the Lombard Republic, and trying to conciliate or outwit, as the case demanded, the nobles and clergy outraged at the introduction of French ideas. It was not until the end of May that Lombardy was in a situation to permit Bonaparte to follow the Austrians.
After Lodi, Beaulieu had led his army to the Mincio. As usual, his force was divided, the right being near Lake Garda, the left at Mantua, the centre about halfway between, at Valeggio. It was at this latter point that Bonaparte decided to attack them. Feigning to march on their right, he waited until his opponent had fallen into his trap, and then sprang on the weakened centre, broke it to pieces, and drove all but twelve thousand men, escaped to Mantua, into the Tyrol. In fifty days he had swept all but a remnant of the Austrians away from Italy. Two weeks later, having taken a strong position on the Adige, he began the siege of Mantua.
The French were victorious, but their position was precarious. Austria was preparing a new army. Between the victors and France lay a number of feeble Italian governments whose friendship could not be depended upon. The populace of these states favored the French, for they brought promises of liberal government, of equality
