The History of Napoleon Buonaparte

by J. G. Lockhart

At this time France had four armies on her frontiers: that of the North, under Brune, watched the partisans of the House of Orange in Holland, and guarded those coasts against any new invasion from England; the defeat of the Duke of York had enabled the government to reduce its strength considerably. The second was the army of the Danube, under Jourdan, which, after the defeat at Stockach, had been obliged to repass the Rhine. The third, under Massena, styled the army of Helvetia, had been compelled in the preceding campaign to evacuate great part of Switzerland; but, gaining the battle of Zurich against the Russians, now re-occupied the whole of that republic. The fourth was that broken remnant which still called itself the "army of Italy." After the disastrous conflict of Genola it had rallied in disorder on the Apennine and the heights of Genoa, where the spirit of the troops was already so much injured, that whole battalions deserted en masse, and retired behind the Var. Their distress, in truth, was extreme; for they had lost all means of communication with the valley of the Po, and the English fleet effectually blockaded the whole coasts both of Provence and Liguria; so that, pent up among barren rocks, they suffered the hardships and privations of a beleaguered garrison.

The Chief Consul sent Massena to assume the command of the "army of Italy"; and issued, on that occasion, a general order, which had a magical effect on the minds of the soldiery, Massena was highly esteemed among them; and after his arrival at Genoa, the deserters flocked back rapidly to their standards. At the same time Buonaparte ordered Moreau to assume the command of the two corps of the Danube and Helvetia, and consolidate them into one great "army of the Rhine." Lastly, the rendezvous of the "army of reserve" was appointed for Dijon: a central position from which either Messena or Moreau might, as circumstances demanded, be supported and reinforced; but which Napoleon really designed to serve for a cloak to his main purpose. For he had already, in concert with Carnot, sketched the plan of that which is generally considered as at once the most daring and the most masterly of all the campaigns of the war; and which, in so far as the execution depended on himself, turned out also the most dazzlingly successful.

In placing Moreau at the head of the army of the Rhine, full 150,000 strong, and out of all comparison the best disciplined as well as largest force of the Republic, Buonaparte exhibited a noble superiority to all feelings of personal jealousy. That general's reputation approached the most nearly to his own, but his talents justified this reputation, and the Chief Consul thought of nothing but the best means of accomplishing the purposes of the joint campaign. Moreau, in the sequel, was severely censured by his master for the manner in which he executed the charge entrusted to him. His orders were to march at once upon Ulm, at the risk of placing the great Austrian army under Kray between him and France; but he was also commanded to detach 15,000 of his troops for the separate service of passing into Italy by the defiles of St. Gothard; and given to understand that it must be his business to prevent Kray, at all hazards, from opening a communication with Italy by way of the Tyrol. Under such circumstances, it is not wonderful that a general, who had a master, should have proceeded more cautiously than suited the gigantic aspirations of the unfettered Napoleon. Moreau, however, it must be admitted, had always the reputation of a prudent rather than a daring commander. The details of his campaign against Kray must be sought elsewhere. A variety of engagements took place with a variety of fortune. Moreau, his enemies allow, commenced his operations by crossing the Rhine in the end of April; and, on the 15th of July, had his headquarters at Augsburg, and was in condition either to reinforce the French in Italy, or to march into the heart of the Austrian states, when the success of Buonaparte's own expedition rendered either movement unnecessary.

The Chief Consul had resolved upon conducting, in person, one of the most adventurous enterprises recorded in the history of war. The formation of the army of reserve at Dijon was a mere deceit. A numerous staff, indeed, assembled in that town; and the preparation of the munitions of war proceeded there as elsewhere with the utmost energy: but the troops collected at Dijon were few; and—it being universally circulated and believed, that they were the force meant to re-establish the once glorious army of Italy, by marching to the headquarters of Massena at Genoa,—the Austrians received the accounts of their numbers and appearance, not only with indifference but with derision. Buonaparte, meanwhile, had spent three months in recruiting his armies throughout the interior of France; and the troops, by means of which it was his purpose to change the face of affairs beyond the Alps, were already marching by different routes, each detachment in total ignorance of the other's destination, upon the territory of Switzerland. To that quarter Buonaparte had already sent forward Berthier, the most confidential of his military friends, and other officers of the highest skill, with orders to reconnoitre the various passes in the great Alpine chain, and make every other preparation for the movement, of which they alone were, as yet, in the secret.

The statesmen who ventured, even after Brumaire, to oppose the investiture of Buonaparte with the whole power of the state, had, at first (as we have seen) attempted to confine him to the military department; or so arrange it that his orders, as to civil affairs, should, at least, not be absolute. Failing in this, they then proposed that the Chief Consul should be incapable of heading an army in the field, without abdicating previously his magistracy; and to their surprise, Napoleon at once acceded to a proposition which, it had been expected, would rouse his indignation. It now turned out how much the saving clause in question was worth. The Chief Consul could not, indeed, be general-in-chief of an army; but he could appoint whom he pleased to that post; and there was no law against his being present, in his own person, as a spectator of the campaign. It signified little that a Berthier should write himself commander, when a Napoleon was known to be in the camp.

It was now time that the great project should be realised. The situation of the "army of Italy" was become most critical. After a variety of petty engagements, its general saw his left wing (under Suchet) wholly cut off from his main body; and, while Suchet was forced to retire behind the Var, where his troops had the utmost difficulty in presenting any serious opposition to the Austrians, Massena had been compelled to throw himself with the remainder into Genoa. In that city he was speedily blockaded by the Austrian general Ott; while the imperial commander-in-chief, Melas, advanced with 30,000 upon Nice—of which place he took possession on the 11th of May. The Austrians, having shut up Massena, and well knowing the feebleness of Suchet's division, were in a delirium of joy. The gates of France appeared, at length, to be open before them; and it was not such an army of reserve as had excited the merriment of their spies at Dijon that could hope to withstand them in their long-meditated march on Provence—where Pichegru, as they supposed, was prepared to assume the command of a numerous body of royalist insurgents, as soon as he should receive intelligence of their entrance into France. But they were soon to hear news of another complexion from whence they least expected it—from behind them.

The Chief Consul remained in Paris until he received Berthier's decisive despatch from Geneva—it was in these words: "I wish to see you here. There are orders to be given by which three armies may act in concert, and you alone can give them in the lines. Measures decided on in Paris are too late." He instantly quitted the capital; and, on the 7th of May appeared at Dijon, where he reviewed, in great form, some 7000 or 8000 raw and half-clad troops, and committed them to the care of Brune. The spies of Austria reaped new satisfaction from this consular review: meanwhile Napoleon had halted but two hours at Dijon; and, travelling all night, arrived the next day, at Geneva. Here he was met by Marescot, who had been employed in exploring the wild passes of the Great St. Bernard, and received from him an appalling picture of the difficulties of marching an army by that route into Italy. "Is it possible to pass?" said Napoleon, cutting the engineer's narrative short. "The thing is barely possible," answered Marescot. "Very well," said the Chief Consul, "en avant—let us proceed."

While the Austrians were thinking only of the frontier where Suchet commanded an enfeebled and dispirited division,—destined, as they doubted not, to be reinforced by the army, such as it was, of Dijon,—the Chief Consul had resolved to penetrate into Italy, as Hannibal had done of old, through all the dangers and difficulties of the great Alps themselves. The march on the Var and Genoa might have been executed with comparative ease, and might, in all likelihood, have led to victory; but mere victory would not suffice. It was urgently necessary that the name of Buonaparte should be surrounded with some blaze of almost supernatural renown; and his plan for purchasing this splendour was to rush down from the Alps, at whatever hazard, upon the rear of Melas, cut off all his communications with Austria, and then force him to a conflict, in which, Massena and Suchet being on the other side of him, reverse must needs be ruin.

For the treble purpose of more easily collecting a sufficient stock of provisions for the march, of making its accomplishment more rapid, and of perplexing the enemy on its termination, Napoleon determined that his army should pass in four divisions, by as many separate routes. The left wing, under Moncey, consisting of 15,000 detached from the army of Moreau, was ordered to debouch by the way of St. Gothard. The corps of Thureau, 5000 strong, took the direction of Mount Cenis: that of Chabran, of similar strength, moved by the Little St. Bernard. Of the main body, consisting of 35,000, the Chief Consul himself took care; and he reserved for them the gigantic task of surmounting, with the artillery, the huge barriers of the Great St. Bernard. Thus along the Alpine Chain—from the sources of the Rhine and the Rhone to Isere and Durance—about 60,000 men, in all, prepared for the adventure. It must be added, if we would form a fair conception of the enterprise, that Napoleon well knew not one-third of these men had ever seen a shot fired in earnest.

The difficulties encountered by Moncey, Thureau, and Chabran will be sufficiently understood from the narrative of Buonaparte's own march. From the 15th to the 18th of May all his columns were put in motion; Lannes, with the advanced guard, clearing the way before them; the general, Berthier, and the Chief Consul himself superintending the rear guard, which, as having with it the artillery, was the object of highest importance. At St. Pierre all semblance of a road disappeared. Thenceforth an army, horse and foot, laden with all the munitions of a campaign, a park of forty field-pieces included, were to be urged up and along airy ridges of rock and eternal snow, where the goatherd, the hunter of the chamois, and the outlaw-smuggler are alone accustomed to venture; amidst precipices where to slip a foot is death; beneath glaciers from which the percussion of a musket-shot is often sufficient to hurl an avalanche; across bottomless chasms caked over with frost or snow-drift; and breathing