Paul concluded an alliance with Turkey which had been disturbed by an Egyptian invasion, also with England, Austria, and the kingdom of Naples. Thus, by the double aggression of Bonaparte against Malta and Egypt, Russia and Turkey were led, contrary to all traditions, to make common cause. Paul pledged himself to unite his fleet with the Turkish and English squadron, and to furnish one body of troops for a descent on Holland, another for the conquest of the Ionian Isles, and a grand auxiliary army for the campaigns in Italy and Switzerland.
In the autumn of 1798 a Turkish-Russian fleet captured the French garrisons in the Ionian Isles. The king of Naples invaded the territory of the Roman Republic, but Championnet brought the Neapolitan troops back on to their own ground, and after making a triumphal entry into Naples proclaimed the Parthenopean Republic.
THE CAMPAIGNS OF KORSAKOV AND SUVAROV (1798-1799)
[1798-1799 A.D.]
The Russian army in Switzerland was placed under the command of Rimski-Korsakov, that of Holland under the orders of Hermann; while Austria, at the suggestion of England, requested that the victor of Fokshani and of the Rimnik should receive the command of the Austro-Russian army. Flattered by this mark of deference, Paul I recalled Suvarov from exile in his village. “Suvarov has no need of laurels,” wrote the czar, “but the country has need of Suvarov.”[c]
A few days after the battle of Magnano, Suvarov arrived on the Mincio with the first division of his forces, twenty thousand strong, and took the command of all the allied troops in Italy. The jealousy of the Austrian generals was naturally excited and they called a council of war, in order to examine his plans. The members of the council, beginning at the youngest, proposed their several schemes. Suvarov quietly heard them all, and when they had done, took a slate, drew two lines, and said, “Here, gentleman, are the French, and here the Russians; the latter will march against the former and beat them.” So saying, he rubbed out the French line, and added, “This is all my plan; the council is concluded.”
Suvarov kept his word, and in less than three months swept the French entirely out of Lombardy and Piedmont. Thrusting himself between the three French armies of Switzerland, northern Italy, and the Parthenopean Republic, it was his purpose, in concert with the archduke Charles of Austria, to penetrate into France on its most defenceless side, by the Vosges and the Jura, the same quarter on which the great invasion of 1814 was afterwards effected. The campaign opened on the 25th of April, on the steep banks of the Adda, behind which Moreau had posted his diminished force of twenty-eight thousand men in three divisions. The passage was forced with immense loss to the French, who were compelled to abandon Milan, which Suvarov entered in triumph on the 29th.
After a week’s delay, during which all the principal places of Lombardy surrendered to the allies, Suvarov followed Moreau’s retreat, and endeavoured to dislodge him from his advantageous position on the Po. Not succeeding in this attempt as rapidly as suited his impetuous habits, the Russian general suddenly changed his purpose, and advanced against Turin, whilst Moreau at the same moment had resolved to retire to Turin and the crests of the Apennines, in order to preserve his communications with France. On the 27th of May, Vukassovitch, who commanded the advance guard of the Russians, surprised Turin, and forced the French to take refuge in the citadel, leaving in the hands of the victors nearly three hundred pieces of artillery, sixty thousand muskets, and an enormous quantity of ammunition and military stores. Moreau’s army, thus deprived of all its resources, was saved from destruction only by the extraordinary ability of its commander, who led it safely towards Genoa by a mountain path, which was rendered practicable for artillery, in four days. With the exception of a few fortresses, nothing now remained to the French of all Napoleon’s conquests in northern Italy; they had been lost in less time than it had taken to make them.
[1799 A.D.]
Exulting in the brilliant success of his arms, Paul bestowed another surname, Italienski, or the Italian, on his victorious general, and ordered by an express ukase that Suvarov should be universally regarded as the greatest commander that had ever appeared. Meanwhile the results of his skill and vigour were neutralised by the selfish policy of the Austrian court, which had become by the Treaty of Campo Formio, and the acquisition of Venice, in some degree an actual accomplice with the aggressors against whom it was in arms. Suvarov was compelled to submit to the dictation of the emperor Francis I, and deeply disgusted he declared that he was no longer of any use in Italy, and that he desired nothing so ardently as to be recalled.