Let us now turn to the campaigns of Napoleon. In his first campaign in Italy, 1796, the general was directed "to seize the forts of Savona, compel the senate to furnish him with pecuniary supplies, and to surrender the keys of Gavi, a fortress perched on the rocky height commanding the pass of the Bocchetta." Setting out from Savona, he crossed the mountains at a weak point between the Alps and the Apennines, and succeeded in piercing the enemy's line of defence. The king of Sardinia, jealous of Austrian influence, had refused to permit the Austrian army to garrison his line of fortifications. Napoleon, profiting by his victorious attitude, the mutual jealousy of Austria and Sardinia, and the intrigues of his diplomatists, soon gained possession of these important works. "These Sardinian fortresses," he wrote to the Directory, "at once put the Republicans in possession of the keys of the Peninsula." Basing himself on Coni, Mondovi, Ceva, Gavi, and Alessandria, with Tortosa as his dépôt of magazines, he advanced against Lombardy. Now basing himself on the Adda and Po, with the fortress of Pizzighettone as the dépôt of his magazines, he advanced upon the line of the Adige. Pechiera became his next dépôt, and he now had four fortresses in echelon between him and his first dépôt of magazines; and, after the fall of Mantua, basing himself on the Po, he advanced against the States of the Church, making Ferrara and then Ancona, his places of dépôt.
From the solid basis of the fortresses of Piedmont and Lombardy, "he was enabled to turn his undivided attention to the destruction of the Austrians, and thus commence, with some security, that great career of conquest which he already meditated in the imperial dominions." In this campaign of 1797, after scouring his base, he fortified Palma-Nuova, Osapo, &c., repaired the old fortifications of Klagenfurth, and, as he advanced, established, to use his own words, "a good point d'appui at every five or six marches."
Afterwards, when the Austrians had nearly wrested Italy from the weak grasp of Napoleon's successors, the French saved their army in the fortress of Genoa and behind the line of the Var, which had been fortified with care in 1794-5. Numerous attempts were made to force this line, the advanced post of Fort Montauban being several times assaulted by numerous forces. But the Austrian columns recoiled from its murderous fire of grape and musketry, which swept off great numbers at every discharge. Again the assault was renewed with a vast superiority of numbers, and again "the brave men who headed the column almost perished at the foot of the intrenchment; and, after sustaining a heavy loss, they were compelled to abandon the enterprise."
While the forces on the Var thus stayed the waves of Austrian success, Massena, in the fortifications of Genoa, sustained a blockade of sixty, and a siege of forty days, against an army five times as large as his own; and when forced to yield to the stern demands of famine, he almost dictated to the enemy the terms of the treaty. These two defences held in check the élite of the Austrian forces, while the French reserve crossed the Alps, seized the important points of the country, and cut off the Austrian line of retreat. "But even after the victory of Marengo," says Napoleon, "I did not consider the whole of Italy reconquered, until all the fortified places between me and the Mincio should be occupied by my troops. I gave Melas permission to return to Mantua, on condition of his surrendering all these fortresses."
He now directed Chasseloup de Laubat and his engineers to repair and remodel the fortifications of Verona, Legnano, Pechiera, Mantua, the line of the Adda, Milan, Alessandria,[[5]] Roco d'Aufo, Genoa, and several smaller works; thus forming a quadruple line of defence against Austrian aggression in Italy. These works were of great service to the French in 1805, enabling Massena with fifty thousand men to hold in check the Archduke Charles with more than ninety thousand, while Napoleon's grand army, starting from the solid base of the Rhine, traversed Germany and seized upon the capital of Austria.
More than twenty millions of money were appropriated for this place alone.
The neglect of the Prussians to place their country in a state of military defence, previous to declaring war against Napoleon in 1806, had a most disastrous influence upon the campaign. Napoleon, on the other hand, occupied and secured all the important military positions which he had captured in the preceding campaign. "The Prussians," said he, "made no preparations for putting into a state of defence the fortifications on their first line, not even those within a few marches of our cantonments. While I was piling up bastion upon bastion at Kehl, Cassel, and Wesel, they did not plant a single palisade at Magdeburg, nor put in battery a single cannon at Spandau." The works on the three great lines of the Oder, the Elbe, and the Weser, had they been properly repaired, garrisoned, and defended, were sufficient to have held in check the French, even after the great victory of Jena, till the newly-organized forces, acting in concert with the Russian army, could re-establish the Prussian monarchy in its ancient greatness. Profiting by the neglect of the Prussians, Napoleon seized upon the great defensive works of the country, which, to his great joy, were readily surrendered into his hands by the old and inefficient generals who commanded them; and French garrisons were almost immediately established in the fortresses of Stettin, Custrin, Glogau, Magdeburg, Spandau, Hameln, Nieubourg, &c. "Spandau," said he in the 19th Bulletin, "is an inestimable acquisition. In our hands it could sustain two months of operations. But such was the general confusion, that the Prussians had not even armed its batteries." The possession of these fortifications inclined the scale at Eylau. All the historians of the war notice their influence on the campaigns of Friedland and Tilsit.
These Prussian fortresses were retained by Napoleon at the treaty of Tilsit. The campaign of 1809 proved the wisdom of this policy, as they effectually prevented Prussia from joining Austria in rekindling the flames of war. And again in 1813, these works might have produced a decided influence on the campaign, had not the political perfidy of Austria, and the treason of the French generals, prevented Napoleon from profiting by the advantages of his position.