When Masséna entered Trent on the morning of the 5th of September, Napoleon became aware that the force in his front was a mere detachment, and news soon came in that Wurmser was in the Val Sugana about Primolano and Bassano. at Bassano. This move he supposed to be intended to cover Trieste, being influenced by his own hopes of advancing in that direction, and underestimating the importance, to the Austrians, of preserving Mantua. He therefore informed the Directory that he could not proceed with the Tirol scheme, and spent one more day in driving Davidovich well away from Trent. Then, leaving Vaubois to watch him, Napoleon marched Augereau and Masséna, with a rapidity he scarcely ever surpassed, into the Val Sugana. Wurmser’s rearguard was attacked and defeated again and again, and Wurmser himself felt compelled to stand and fight, in the hope of checking the pursuit before going forward into the plains. Half his army had already reached Montebello on the Verona road, and with the rear half he posted himself at Bassano, where on the 8th he was attacked and defeated with heavy losses. Then began a strategic pursuit or general chase, and in this the mobility of the French should have finished the work so well begun by their tactics.
But Napoleon directed the pursuers so as to cut off Wurmser from Trieste, not from Mantua. Masséna followed up the Austrians to Vicenza, while Augereau hurried towards Padua, and it was not until late on the 9th that Bonaparte realized that his opponent was heading for Mantua via Legnago. On the 10th Masséna crossed the Adige at Ronco, while Augereau from Padua reached Montagnara. Sahuguet from Mantua and Kilmaine from Verona joined forces at Castellaro on the 11th, with orders to interpose between Wurmser and the fortress. Wurmser meantime had halted for a day at Legnago, to restore order, and had then resumed his march. It was almost too late, for in the evening, after having to push aside the head of Masséna’s column at Cerea, he had only reached Nogara, some miles short of Castellaro, and close upon his rear was Augereau, who reached Legnago that night. On the 12th, eluding Sahuguet by a detour to the southward, he reached Mantua, with all the columns of the French, weary as most of them were, in hot pursuit. After an attempt to keep the open field, defeated in a general action on the 15th, the relieving force was merged in the garrison, now some 28,000 in all. So ended the episode of Bassano, the most brilliant feature of which as usual was the marching power of the French infantry. This time it sufficed to redeem even strategical misconceptions and misdirections. Between the 5th and the 11th, besides fighting three actions, Masséna had marched 100 m. and Augereau 114.
Feldzeugmeister Alvintzi was now appointed to command a new army of relief. This time the mere distribution of the troops imposed a concentric advance of separate columns, for practically the whole of the fresh forces available were in Carniola, the Military Frontier, &c., while Davidovich was still in Tirol. Alvintzi’s intention was to assemble his new army (29,000) in Friuli, and to move on Bassano, which was to be occupied on the 4th of November. Meantime Davidovich (18,000) was to capture Trent, and the two columns were to connect by the Val Sugana. All being well, Alvintzi and Davidovich, still separate, were then to converge on the Adige between Verona and Legnago. Wurmser was to co-operate by vigorous sorties. At this time Napoleon’s protective system was as follows: Kilmaine (9000) investing Mantua, Vaubois (10,000) at Trent, and Masséna (9000) at Bassano and Treviso, Augereau (9000) and Macquard (3000) at Verona and Villafranca constituting, for the first time in these operations, important mobile reserves. Hearing of Alvintzi’s approach in good time, he meant first to drive back Davidovich, then with Augereau, Masséna, Macquard and 3000 of Vaubois’s force to fall upon Alvintzi, who, he calculated, would at this stage have reached Bassano, and finally to send back a large force through the Val Sugana to attack Davidovich. This plan practically failed.
Instead of advancing, Vaubois was driven steadily backward. By the 6th, Davidovich had fought his way almost to Roveredo, and Alvintzi had reached Bassano and was there successfully repelling the attacks of Masséna and Caldiero. Augereau. That night Napoleon drew back to Vicenza. On the 7th Davidovich drove in Vaubois to Corona and Rivoli, and Alvintzi came within 5 m. of Vicenza. Napoleon watched carefully for an opportunity to strike out, and on the 8th massed his troops closely around the central point of Verona. On the 9th, to give himself air, he ordered Masséna to join Vaubois, and to drive back Davidovich at all costs. But before this order was executed, reports came in to the effect that Davidovich had suspended his advance. The 10th and 11th were spent by both sides in relative inaction, the French waiting on events and opportunities, the Austrians resting after their prolonged exertions. Then, on the afternoon of the 11th, being informed that Alvintzi was approaching, Napoleon decided to attack him. On the 12th the advanced guard of Alvintzi’s army was furiously assailed in the position of Caldiero. But the troops in rear came up rapidly, and by 4 P.M. the French were defeated all along the line and in retreat on Verona. Napoleon’s situation was now indeed precarious. He was on “interior lines,” it is true, but he had neither the force nor the space necessary for the delivery of rapid radial blows. Alvintzi was in superior numbers, as the battle of Caldiero had proved, and at any moment Davidovich, who had twice Vaubois’s force, might advance to the attack of Rivoli. The reserves had proved insufficient, and Kilmaine had to be called up from Mantua, which was thus for the third time freed from the blockaders. Again the alternatives were retreat, in whatever order was possible to Republican armies, and beating the nearest enemy at any sacrifice. Napoleon chose the latter, though it was not until the evening of the 14th that he actually issued the fateful order.
The Austrians, too, had selected the 15th as the date of their final advance on Verona, Davidovich from the north, Alvintzi via Zevio from the south. But Napoleon was no longer there; leaving Vaubois to hold Davidovich as best he might, and posting only 3000 men in Verona, he had collected the rest of his small army between Albaro and Ronco. His plan seems to have been to cross the Adige well in rear of the Austrians, to march north on to the Verona-Vicenza highway, and there, supplying himself from their convoys, to fight to the last. On the 15th he had written to the Directory, “The weakness and the exhaustion of the army causes me to fear the worst. We are perhaps on the eve of losing Italy.” In this extremity of danger the troops passed the Adige in three columns near Ronco and Albaredo, and marched forward along the dikes, with deep marshes and pools on either hand. If Napoleon’s intention was to reach the dry open ground of S. Bonifacio in rear of the Austrians, it was not realized, for the Austrian army, instead of being at the gates of Verona, was still between Caldiero and S. Bonifacio, heading, as we know, for Zevio. Thus Alvintzi was able, easily and swiftly, to wheel to the south.
The battle of Arcola almost defies description. The first day passed in a series of resultless encounters between the heads of the columns as they met on the dikes. In the evening Bonaparte withdrew over the Adige, expecting Arcola. at every moment to be summoned to Vaubois’s aid. But Davidovich remained inactive, and on the 16th the French again crossed the river. Masséna from Ronco advanced on Porcile, driving the Austrians along the causeway thither, but on the side of Arcola, Alvintzi had deployed a considerable part of his forces on the edge of the marshes, within musket shot of the causeway by which Bonaparte and Augereau had to pass, along the Austrian front, to reach the bridge of Arcola. In these circumstances the second day’s battle was more murderous and no more decisive than the first, and again the French retreated to Ronco. But Davidovich again stood still, and with incredible obstinacy Bonaparte ordered a third assault for the 17th, using indeed more tactical expedients than before, but calculating chiefly on the fighting powers of his men and on the exhaustion of the enemy. Masséna again advanced on Porcile, Robert’s brigade on Arcola, but the rest, under Augereau, were to pass the Alpone near its confluence with the Adige, and joining various small bodies which passed the main stream lower down, to storm forward on dry ground to Arcola. The Austrians, however, themselves advanced from Arcola, overwhelmed Robert’s brigade on the causeway and almost reached Ronco. This was perhaps the crisis of the battle, for Augereau’s force was now on the other side of the stream, and Masséna, with his back to the new danger, was approaching Porcile. But the fire of a deployed regiment stopped the head of the Austrian column; Masséna, turning about, cut into its flank on the dike; and Augereau, gathering force, was approaching Arcola from the south. The bridge and the village were evacuated soon afterwards, and Masséna and Augereau began to extend in the plain beyond. But the Austrians still sullenly resisted. It was at this moment that Bonaparte secured victory by a mere ruse, but a ruse which would have been unprofitable and ridiculous had it not been based on his fine sense of the moral conditions. Both sides were nearly fought out, and he sent a few trumpeters to the rear of the Austrian army to sound the charge. They did so, and in a few minutes the Austrians were streaming back to S. Bonifacio. This ended the drama of Arcola, which more than any other episode of these wars, perhaps of any wars in modern history, centres on the personality of the hero. It is said that the French fought without spirit on the first day, and yet on the second and third Bonaparte had so thoroughly imbued them with his own will to conquer that in the end they prevailed over an enemy nearly twice their own strength.
The climax was reached just in time, for on the 17th Vaubois was completely defeated at Rivoli and withdrew to Peschiera, leaving the Verona and Mantua roads completely open to Davidovich. But on the 19th Napoleon turned upon him, and combining the forces of Vaubois, Masséna and Augereau against him, drove him back to Trent. Meantime Alvintzi returned from Vicenza to San Bonifacio and Caldiero (November 21st), and Bonaparte at once stopped the pursuit of Davidovich. On the return of the French main body to Verona, Alvintzi finally withdrew, Wurmser, who had emerged from Mantua on the 23rd, was driven in again, and this epilogue of the great struggle came to a feeble end because neither side was now capable of prolonging the crisis.
Alvintzi renewed his advance in January 1797 with all the forces that could be assembled for a last attempt to save Mantua. At this time 8000 men under Sérurier blockaded Mantua, Masséna (9000) was at Verona, Joubert (Vaubois’s successor) at Rivoli with 10,000, Augereau at Legnago with 9000. In reserve were Rey’s division (4000) between Brescia and Montechiaro, and Victor’s brigade at Goito and Castelnuovo. On the other side, Alvintzi had 9000 men under Provera at Padua, 6000 under Bayalič at Bassano, and he himself with 28,000 men stood in the Tirol about Trent. This time he intended to make his principal effort on the Rivoli side. Provera was to capture Legnago on the 9th of January, and Bayalič Verona on the 12th, while the main army was to deliver its blow against the Rivoli position on the 13th.
The first marches of this scheme were duly carried out, and several days elapsed before Napoleon was able to discern the direction of the real attack. Augereau fell back, skirmishing a little, as Provera’s and Bayalič’s advance Rivoli. developed. On the 11th, when the latter was nearing Verona, Alvintzi’s leading troops appeared in front of the Rivoli position. On the 12th Bayalič with a weak force (he had sent reinforcements to Alvintzi by the Val Pantena) made an unsuccessful attack on Verona, Provera, farther south, remaining inactive. On the 13th Napoleon, still in doubt, launched Masséna’s division against Bayalič, who was driven back to San Bonifacio; but at the same time definite news came from Joubert that Alvintzi’s main army was in front of La Corona. From this point begins the decisive, though by no means the most intense or dramatic, struggle of the campaign. Once he felt sure of the situation Napoleon acted promptly. Joubert was ordered to hold on to Rivoli at all costs. Rey was brought up by a forced march to Castelnuovo, where Victor joined him, and ahead of them both Masséna was hurried on to Rivoli. Napoleon himself joined Joubert on the night of the 13th. There he saw the watch-fires of the enemy in a semicircle around him, for Alvintzi, thinking that he had only to deal with one division, had begun a widespread enveloping attack. The horns of this attack were as yet so far distant that Napoleon, instead of extending on an equal front, only spread out a few regiments to gain an hour or two and to keep the ground for Masséna and Rey, and on the morning of January 14th, with 10,000 men in hand against 26,000, he fell upon the central columns of the enemy as they advanced up the steep broken slopes of the foreground. The fighting was severe, but Bonaparte had the advantage. Masséna arrived at 9 A.M., and a little later the column of Quasdanovich, which had moved along the Adige and was now attempting to gain a foothold on the plateau in rear of Joubert, was crushed by the converging fire of Joubert’s right brigade and by Masséna’s guns, their rout being completed by the charge of a handful of cavalry under Lasalle. The right horn of Alvintzi’s attack, when at last it swung in upon Napoleon’s rear, was caught between Masséna and the advancing troops of Rey and annihilated, and even before this the dispirited Austrians were in full retreat. A last alarm, caused by the appearance of a French infantry regiment in their rear (this had crossed the lake in boats from Salo), completed their demoralization, and though less than 2000 had been killed and wounded, some 12,000 Austrian prisoners were left in the hands of the victors. Rivoli was indeed a moral triumph. After the ordeal of Arcola, the victory of the French was a foregone conclusion at each point of contact. Napoleon hesitated, or rather refrained from striking, so long as his information was incomplete, but he knew now from experience that his covering detachment, if well led, could not only hold its own without assistance until it had gained the necessary information, but could still give the rest of the army time to act upon it. Then, when the centre of gravity had been ascertained, the French divisions hurried thither, caught the enemy in the act of manœuvring and broke them up. And if that confidence in success which made all this possible needs a special illustration, it may be found in Napoleon’s sending Murat’s regiment over the lake to place a mere two thousand bayonets across the line of retreat of a whole army. Alvintzi’s manœuvre was faulty neither strategically in the first instance nor tactically as regards the project of enveloping Joubert on the 14th. It failed because Joubert and his men were better soldiers than his own, and because a French division could move twice as fast as an Austrian, and from these two factors a new form of war was evolved, the essence of which was that, for a given time and in a given area, a small force of the French should engage and hold a much larger force of the enemy.
The remaining operations can be very briefly summarized. Provera, still advancing on Mantua, joined hands there with Wurmser, and for a time held Sérurier at a disadvantage. But hearing of this, Napoleon sent back Masséna from the field of Rivoli, and that general, with Augereau and Sérurier, not only forced Wurmser to retire again into the fortress, but compelled Provera to lay down his arms. On the 2nd of February 1797, after a long and honourable defence, Mantua, and with it what was left of Wurmser’s army, surrendered.