Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "French Literature" to "Frost, William" / Volume 11, Slice 2

by Various

At the beginning of May the First Consul learned of the serious plight of the Army of Italy. Masséna with his right wing was shut up in Genoa, Suchet with the left wing driven back to the Var. Meanwhile Moreau had won Napoleon’s plan of campaign. a preliminary victory at Stokach, and the Army of Reserve had begun its movement to Geneva. With these data the plan of campaign took a clear shape at last—Masséna to resist as long as possible; Suchet to resume the offensive, if he could do so, towards Turin; the Army of Reserve to pass the Alps and to debouch into Piedmont by Aosta; the Army of the Rhine to send a strong force into Italy by the St Gothard. The First Consul left Paris on the 6th of May. Berthier went forward to Geneva, and still farther on the route magazines were established at Villeneuve and St-Pierre. Gradually, and with immense efforts, the leading troops of the long column[16] were passed over the St Bernard, drawing their artillery on sledges, on the 15th and succeeding days. Driving away small posts of the Austrian army, the advance guard entered Aosta on the 16th and Châtillon on the 18th and the alarm was given. Melas, committed as he was to his Riviera campaign, began to look to his right rear, but he was far from suspecting the seriousness of his opponent’s purpose.

Infinitely more dangerous for the French than the small detachment that Melas opposed to them, or even the actual crossing of the pass, was the unexpected stopping power of the little fort of Bard. The advanced guard Bard. of the French appeared before it on the 19th, and after three wasted days the infantry managed to find a difficult mountain by-way and to pass round the obstacle. Ivrea was occupied on the 23rd, and Napoleon hoped to assemble the whole army there by the 27th. But except for a few guns that with infinite precautions were smuggled one by one through the streets of Bard, the whole of the artillery, as well as a detachment (under Chabran) to besiege the fort, had to be left behind. Bard surrendered on the 2nd of June, having delayed the infantry of the French army for four days and the artillery for a fortnight.

The military situation in the last week of May, as it presented itself to the First Consul at Ivrea, was this. The Army of Italy under Masséna was closely besieged in Genoa, where provisions were running short, and the population so hostile that the French general placed his field artillery to sweep the streets. But Masséna was no ordinary general, and the First Consul knew that while Masséna lived the garrison would resist to the last extremity. Suchet was defending Nice and the Var by vigorous minor operations. The Army of Reserve, the centre of which had reached at Ivrea the edge of the Italian plains, consisted of four weak army corps under Victor, Duhesme, Lannes and Murat. There were still to be added to this small army of 34,000 effectives, Turreau’s division, which had passed over the Mont Cenis and was now in the valley of the Dora Riparia, Moncey’s corps of the Army of the Rhine, which had at last been extorted from Moreau and was due to pass the St Gothard before the end of May, Chabran’s division left to besiege Bard, and a small force under Béthencourt, which was to cross the Simplon and to descend by Arona (this place proved in the event a second Bard and immobilized Béthencourt until after the decisive battle). Thus it was only the simplest part of Napoleon’s task to concentrate half of his army at Ivrea, and he had yet to bring in the rest. The problem was to reconcile the necessity for time, which he wanted to ensure the maximum force being brought over the Alps, with the necessity for haste, in view of the impending fall of Genoa and the probability that once this conquest was achieved, Melas would bring back his 100,000 men into the Milanese to deal with the Army of Reserve. As early as the 14th of May he had informed Moncey that from Ivrea the Army of Reserve would move on Milan. On the 25th of May, in response to Berthier’s request for guidance, the First Consul ordered Lannes (advanced guard) to push out on the Turin road, “in order to deceive the enemy and to obtain news of Turreau,” and Duhesme’s and Murat’s corps to proceed along the Milan road. On the 27th, after Lannes had on the 26th defeated an Austrian column near Chivasso, the main body was already advancing on Vercelli.

Very few of Napoleon’s acts of generalship have been more criticized than this resolution to march on Milan, which abandoned Genoa to its fate and gave Melas a week’s leisure to assemble his scattered forces. The account of his motives The march to Milan. he dictated at St Helena (Nap. Correspondence, v. 30, pp. 375-377), in itself an unconvincing appeal to the rules of strategy as laid down by the theorists—which rules his own practice throughout transcended—gives, when closely examined, some at least of the necessary clues. He says in effect that by advancing directly on Turin he would have “risked a battle against equal forces without an assured line of retreat, Bard being still uncaptured.” It is indeed strange to find Napoleon shrinking before equal forces of the enemy, even if we admit without comment that it was more difficult to pass Bard the second time than the first. The only incentive to go towards Turin was the chance of partial victories over the disconnected Austrian corps that would be met in that direction, and this he deliberately set aside. Having done so, for reasons that will appear in the sequel, he could only defend it by saying in effect that he might have been defeated—which was true, but not the Napoleonic principle of war. Of the alternatives, one was to hasten to Genoa; this in Napoleon’s eyes would have been playing the enemy’s game, for they would have concentrated at Alessandria, facing west “in their natural position.” It is equally obvious that thus the enemy would have played his game, supposing that this was to relieve Genoa, and the implication is that it was not. The third course, which Napoleon took, and in this memorandum defended, gave his army the enemy’s depots at Milan, of which it unquestionably stood in sore need, and the reinforcement of Moncey’s 15,000 men from the Rhine, while at the same time Moncey’s route offered an “assured line of retreat” by the Simplon[17] and the St Gothard. He would in fact make for himself there a “natural position” without forfeiting the advantage of being in Melas’s rear. Once possessed of Milan, Napoleon says, he could have engaged Melas with a light heart and with confidence in the greatest possible results of a victory, whether the Austrians sought to force their way back to the east by the right or the left bank of the Po, and he adds that if the French passed on and concentrated south of the Po there would be no danger to the Milan-St Gothard line of retreat, as this was secured by the rivers Ticino and Sesia. In this last, as we shall see, he is shielding an undeniable mistake, but considering for the moment only the movement to Milan, we are justified in assuming that his object was not the relief of Genoa, but the most thorough defeat of Melas’s field army, to which end, putting all sentiment aside, he treated the hard-pressed Masséna as a “containing force” to keep Melas occupied during the strategical deployment of the Army of Reserve. In the beginning he had told Masséna that he would “disengage” him, even if he had to go as far east as Trent to find a way into Italy. From the first, then, no direct relief was intended, and when, on hearing bad news from the Riviera, he altered his route to the more westerly passes, it was probably because he felt that Masséna’s containing power was almost exhausted, and that the passage and reassembly of the Reserve Army must be brought about in the minimum time and by the shortest way. But the object was still the defeat of Melas, and for this, as the Austrians possessed an enormous numerical superiority, the assembly of all forces, including Moncey’s, was indispensable. One essential condition of this was that the points of passage used should be out of reach of the enemy. The more westerly the passes chosen, the more dangerous was the whole operation—in fact the Mont Cenis column never reached him at all—and though his expressed objections to the St Bernard line seem, as we have said, to be written after the event, to disarm his critics, there is no doubt that at the time he disliked it. It was a pis aller forced upon him by Moreau’s delay and Masséna’s extremity, and from the moment at which he arrived at Milan he did, as a fact, abandon it altogether in favour of the St Gothard. Lastly, so strongly was he impressed with the necessity of completing the deployment of all his forces, that though he found the Austrians on the Turin side much scattered and could justifiably expect a series of rapid partial victories, Napoleon let them go, and devoted his whole energy to creating for himself a “natural” position about Milan. If he sinned, at any rate he sinned handsomely, and except that he went to Milan by Vercelli instead of by Lausanne and Domodossola[18] (on the safe side of the mountains), his march is logistically beyond cavil.

Napoleon’s immediate purpose, then, was to reassemble the Army of Reserve in a zone of manœuvre about Milan. This was carried out in the first days of June. Lannes at Chivasso stood ready to ward off a flank attack until the main army had filed past on the Vercelli road, then leaving a small force to combine with Turreau (whose column had not been able to advance into the plain) in demonstrations towards Turin, he moved off, still acting as right flank guard to the army, in the direction of Pavia. The main body meanwhile, headed by Murat, advanced on Milan by way of Vercelli and Magenta, forcing the passage of the Ticino on the 31st of May at Turbigo and Buffalora. On the same day the other divisions closed up to the Ticino,[19] and faithful to his principles Napoleon had an examination made of the little fortress of Novara, intending to occupy it as a place du moment to help in securing his zone of manœuvre. On the morning of the 2nd of June Murat occupied Milan, and in the evening of the same day the headquarters entered the great city, the Austrian detachment under Vukassovich (the flying right wing of Melas’s general cordon system in Piedmont) retiring to the Adda. Duhesme’s corps forced that river at Lodi, and pressed on with orders to organize Crema and if possible Orzinovi as temporary fortresses. Lechi’s Italians were sent towards Bergamo and Brescia. Lannes meantime had passed Vercelli, and on the evening of the 2nd his cavalry reached Pavia, where, as at Milan, immense stores of food, equipment and warlike stores were seized.

Napoleon was now safe in his “natural” position, and barred one of the two main lines of retreat open to the Austrians. But his ambitions went further, and he intended to cross the Po and to establish himself on the other likewise, thus establishing across the plain a complete barrage between Melas and Mantua. Here his end outranged his means, as we shall see. But he gave himself every chance that rapidity could afford him, and the moment that some sort of a “zone of manœuvre” had been secured between the Ticino and the Oglio, he pushed on his main body—or rather what was left after the protective system had been provided for—to the Po. He would not wait even for his guns, which had at last emerged from the Bard defile and were ordered to come to Milan by a safe and circuitous route along the foot of the Alps.

At this point the action of the enemy began to make itself felt. Melas had not gained the successes that he had expected in Piedmont and on the Riviera, thanks to Masséna’s obstinacy and to Suchet’s brilliant defence of the Var. Melas’s movements. These operations had led him very far afield, and the protection of his over-long line of communications had caused him to weaken his large army by throwing off many detachments to watch the Alpine valleys on his right rear. One of these successfully opposed Turreau in the valley of the Dora Riparia, but another had been severely handled by Lannes at Chivasso, and a third (Vukassovich) found itself, as we know, directly in the path of the French as they moved from Ivrea to Milan, and was driven far to the eastward. He was further handicapped by the necessity of supporting Ott before Genoa and Elsnitz on the Var, and hearing of Lannes’s bold advance on Chivasso and of the presence of a French column with artillery (Turreau) west of Turin, he assumed that the latter represented the main body of the Army of Reserve—in so far indeed as he believed in the existence of that army at all.[20] Next, when Lannes moved away towards Pavia, Melas thought for a moment that fate had delivered his enemy into his hands, and began to collect such troops as were at hand at Turin with a view to cutting off the retreat of the French on Ivrea while Vukassovich held them in front. It was only when news came of Moncey’s arrival in Italy and of Vukassovich’s fighting retreat on Brescia that the magnitude and purpose of the French column that had penetrated by Ivrea became evident. Melas promptly decided to give up his western enterprises, and to concentrate at Alessandria, preparatory to breaking his way through the network of small columns—as the disseminated Army of Reserve still appeared to be—which threatened to bar his retreat. But orders circulated so slowly that he had to wait in Turin till the 8th of June for Elsnitz, whose retreat was, moreover, sharply followed up and made exceedingly costly by the enterprising Suchet. Ott, too, in spite of orders to give up the siege of Genoa at once and to march with all speed to hold the Alessandria-Piacenza road, waited two days to secure the prize, and agreed (June 4) to allow Masséna’s army to go free and to join Suchet. And lastly, the cavalry of O’Reilly, sent on ahead from Alessandria to the Stradella defile, reached that point only to encounter the French. The barrage was complete, and it remained for Melas to break it with the mass that he was assembling, with all these misfortunes and delays, about Alessandria. His chances of doing so were anything but desperate.

On the 5th of June Murat, with his own corps and part of Duhesme’s, had moved on Piacenza, and stormed the bridge-head there. Duhesme with one of his divisions pushed out on Crema and Orzinovi and also towards Pizzighetone. Moncey’s leading regiments approached Milan, and Berthier thereupon sent on Victor’s corps to support Murat and Lannes. Meantime the half abandoned line of operations, Ivrea-Vercelli, was briskly attacked by the Austrians, who had still detachments on the side of Turin, waiting for Elsnitz to rejoin, and the French artillery train was once more checked. On the 6th Lannes from Pavia, crossing the Po at San Cipriano, encountered and defeated a large force, (O’Reilly’s column), and barred the Alessandria-Parma main road. Opposite Piacenza Murat had to spend the day in gathering material for his passage, as the pontoon bridge had been cut by the retreating garrison of the bridge-head. On the eastern border of the “zone of manœuvre” Duhesme’s various columns moved out towards Brescia and Cremona, pushing back Vukassovich. Meantime the last divisions of the Army of Reserve (two of Moncey’s excepted) were hurried towards Lannes’s point of passage, as Murat had not yet secured Piacenza. On the 7th, while Duhesme continued to push back Vukassovich and seized Cremona, Murat at last captured Piacenza, finding there immense magazines. Meantime the army, division by division, passed over, slowly owing to a sudden flood, near Belgiojoso, and Lannes’s advanced guard was ordered to open communication with Murat along the main road Stradella-Piacenza. “Moments are precious” said the First Consul. He was aware that Elsnitz was retreating before Suchet, that Melas had left Turin for Alessandria, and that heavy forces of the enemy were at or east of Tortona. He knew, too, that Murat had been engaged with certain regiments recently before Genoa and (wrongly) assumed O’Reilly’s column, beaten by Lannes at San Cipriano, to have come from the same quarter. Whether this meant the deliverance or the surrender of Genoa he did not yet know, but it was certain that Masséna’s holding action was over, and that Melas was gathering up his forces to recover his communications. Hence Napoleon’s great object was concentration. “Twenty thousand men at Stradella,” in his own words, was the goal of his efforts, and with the accomplishment of this purpose the campaign enters on a new phase.

On the 8th of June, Lannes’s corps was across, Victor following as quickly as the flood would allow. Murat was at Piacenza, but the road between Lannes and Murat was not known to be clear, and the First Consul made the establishment of the Napoleon’s dispositions. connexion, and the construction of a third point of passage midway between the other two, the principal objects of the day’s work. The army now being disseminated between the Alps, the Apennines, the Ticino and the Chiese, it was of vital importance to connect up the various parts into a well-balanced system. But the Napoleon of 1800 solved the problem that lay at the root of his strategy, “concentrate, but be vulnerable nowhere,” in a way that compares unfavourably indeed with the methods of the Napoleon of 1806. Duhesme was still absent at Cremona. Lechi was far away in the Brescia country, Béthencourt detained at Arona. Moncey with about 15,000 men had to cover an area of 40 m. square around Milan, which constituted the original zone of manœuvre, and if Melas chose to break through the flimsy cordon of outposts on this side (the risk of which was the motive for detaching Moncey at all) instead of at the Stradella, it would take Moncey two days to concentrate his force on any battlefield within the area named, and even then he would be outnumbered by two to one. As for the main body at the Stradella, its position was wisely chosen, for the ground was too cramped for the deployment of the superior force that Melas might bring up, but the strategy that set before itself as an object 20,000 men at the decisive point out of 50,000 available, is, to say the least, imperfect. The most serious feature in all this was the injudicious order to Lannes to send forward his advanced guard, and to attack whatever enemy he met with on the road to Voghera. The First Consul, in fact, calculated that Melas could not assemble 20,000 men at Alessandria before the 12th of June, and he told Lannes that if he met the Austrians towards Voghera, they could not be more than 10,000 strong. A later order betrays some anxiety as to the exactitude of these assumptions, warns Lannes not to let himself be surprised, indicates his line of retreat, and, instead of ordering him to advance on Voghera, authorizes him to attack any corps that presented itself at Stradella. But all this came too late. Acting on the earlier order Lannes fought the battle of Montebello on the 9th. This Montebello. was a very severe running fight, beginning east of Casteggio and ending at Montebello, in which the French drove the Austrians from several successive positions, and which culminated in a savage fight at close quarters about Montebello itself. The singular feature of the battle is the disproportion between the losses on either side—French, 500 out of 12,000 engaged; Austrians, 2100 killed and wounded and 2100 prisoners out of 14,000. These figures are most conclusive evidence of the intensity of the French military spirit in those days. One of the two divisions (Watrin’s) was indeed a veteran organization, but the other, Chambarlhac’s, was formed of young troops and was the same that, in the march to Dijon, had congratulated itself that only 5% of its men had deserted. On the other side the soldiers fought for “the honour of their arms”—not even with the courage of despair, for they were ignorant of the “strategic barrage” set in front of them by Napoleon, and the loss of their communications had not as yet lessened their daily rations by an ounce.

Meanwhile, Napoleon had issued orders for the main body to stand fast, and for the detachments to take up their definitive covering positions. Duhesme’s corps was directed, from its eastern foray, to Piacenza, to join the main body. Moncey was to provide for the defence of the Ticino line, Lechi to form a “flying camp” in the region of Orzinovi-Brescia and Cremona, and another mixed brigade was to control the Austrians in Pizzighetone and in the citadel of Piacenza. On the other side of the Po, between Piacenza and Montebello, was the main body (Lannes, Murat and part of Victor’s and Duhesme’s corps), and a flank guard was stationed near Pavia, with orders to keep on the right of the army as it advanced (this is the first and only hint of any intention to go westward) and to fall back fighting should Melas come on by the left bank. One division was to be always a day’s march behind the army on the right bank, and a flotilla was to ascend the Po, to facilitate the speedy reinforcement of the flank guard. Farther to the north was a small column on the road Milan-Vercelli. All the protective troops, except the division of the main body detailed as an eventual support for the flank guard, was to be found by Moncey’s corps (which had besides to watch the Austrians in the citadel of Milan) and Chabran’s and Lechi’s weak commands. On this same day Bonaparte tells the Minister of War, Carnot, that Moncey has only brought half the expected reinforcements and that half of these are unreliable. As to the result of the impending contest Napoleon counts greatly upon the union of 18,000 men under Masséna and Suchet to crush Melas against the “strategic barrage” of the Army of Reserve, by one or other bank of the Po, and he seems equally confident of the result in either case. If Genoa had held out three days more, he says, it would have been easy to count the number of Melas’s men who escaped. The exact significance of this last notion is difficult to establish, and all that could be written about it would be merely conjectural. But it is interesting to note that, without admitting it, Napoleon felt that his “barrage” might not stand before the flood. The details of the orders of the 9th to the main body (written before the news of Montebello arrived at headquarters) tend to the closest possible concentration of the main body towards Casteggio, in view of a decisive battle on the 12th or 13th.