Where the opposition of Nature to Napoleon's march appeared to cease, that of man commenced. A body of Austrians at Chatillon were overpowered and defeated by Lannes; but the strong fortress of Bard offered more serious opposition. This little citadel is situated upon an almost perpendicular rock, rising out of the river Dorea, at a place where the valley of Aosta is rendered so very narrow by the approach of two mountains to each other, that the fort and walled town of Bard entirely close up the entrance. This formidable obstacle threatened for the moment to shut up the French in a valley, where their means of subsistence must have been speedily exhausted. General Lannes made a desperate effort to carry the fort by assault; but the advanced guard of the attacking party were destroyed by stones, musketry and hand-grenades, and the attempt was relinquished.
Buonaparte in person went now to reconnoitre, and for that purpose ascended a huge rock called Albaredo, being a precipice on the side of one of the mountains which form the pass, from the summit of which he could look down into the town, and into the fortress. He detected a possibility of taking the town by storm, though he judged the fort was too strong to be obtained by a coup-de-main. The town was accordingly carried by escalade; but the French who obtained possession of it had little cover from the artillery of the fort, which fired furiously on the houses where they endeavoured to shelter themselves, and which the Austrians might have entirely demolished but for respect to the inhabitants. Meanwhile, Buonaparte availed himself of the diversion to convey a great part of his army in single files, horse as well as foot, by a precarious path formed by the pioneers over the tremendous Albaredo, and so down on the other side, in this manner avoiding the cannon of fort Bard.[544]
Still a most important difficulty remained. It was impossible, at least without great loss of time, to carry the French artillery over the Albaredo, while, without artillery, it was impossible to move against the Austrians, and every hope of the campaign must be given up.
In the meantime, the astonished commandant of the fort, to whom the apparition of this large army was like enchantment, despatched messenger after messenger to warn Melas, then opposed to Suchet, on the Var, that a French army of 30,000 men and upwards, descending from the Alps by ways hitherto deemed impracticable for military movements, had occupied the valley of Aosta, and were endeavouring to debouche by a path of steps cut in the Albaredo. But he pledged himself to his commander-in-chief, that not a single gun or ammunition-waggon should pass through the town; and as it was impossible to drag these along the Albaredo, he concluded, that, being without his artillery, Buonaparte would not venture to descend into the plain.
But, while the commandant of Bard thus argued, he was mistaken in his premises, though right in his inference. The artillery of the French army had already passed through the town of Bard, and under the guns of the citadel, without being discovered to have done so. This important manœuvre was accomplished by previously laying the street with dung and earth, over which the pieces of cannon, concealed under straw and branches of trees, were dragged by men in profound silence. The garrison, though they did not suspect what was going on, fired nevertheless upon some vague suspicion, and killed and wounded artillerymen in sufficient number to show it would have been impossible to pass under a severe and sustained discharge from the ramparts.[545] It seems singular that the commandant had kept up no intelligence with the town. Any signal previously agreed upon—a light shown in a window, for example—would have detected such a stratagem.
A division of conscripts, under General Chabran, was left to reduce fort Bard, which continued to hold out, until, at the expense of great labour, batteries were established on the top of the Albaredo, by which it was commanded, and a heavy gun placed on the steeple of the church, when it was compelled to surrender. It is not fruitless to observe, that the resistance of this small place, which had been overlooked or undervalued in the plan of the campaign, was very near rendering the march over Mont St. Bernard worse than useless, and might have occasioned the destruction of all the chief consul's army.[546] So little are even the most distinguished generals able to calculate with certainty upon all the chances of war.
From this dangerous pass, the vanguard of Buonaparte now advanced down the valley to Ivrea, where Lannes carried the town by storm, and a second time combated and defeated the Austrian division which had defended it, when reinforced and situated on a strong position at Romano. The roads to Turin and Milan were now alike open to Buonaparte—he had only to decide which he chose to take. Meanwhile, he made a halt of four days at Ivrea, to refresh the troops after their fatigues, and to prepare them for future enterprises.[547]
During this space, the other columns of his army were advancing to form a junction with that of the main body, according to the plan of the campaign. Thurreau, who had passed the Alps by the route of Mont Cenis, had taken the forts of Susa and La Brunette. On the other hand, the large corps detached by Carnot from Moreau's army, were advancing by Mont St. Gothard and the Simplon, to support the operations of the first consul, of whose army they were to form the left wing. But ere we prosecute the account of Buonaparte's movements during this momentous campaign, it is necessary to trace the previous operations of Melas, and the situation in which that Austrian general now found himself.
OPERATIONS OF MELAS.
It has been already stated, that, at the commencement of this campaign of 1800, the Austrians entertained the highest hopes that their Italian army, having taken Genoa and Nice, might penetrate into Provence by crossing the frontier at the Var, and perhaps make themselves masters of Toulon and Marseilles. To realize these hopes, Melas, having left in Piedmont a sufficient force, as he deemed it, to guard the passes of the Alps, had advanced towards Genoa, which Massena prepared to cover and defend. A number of severe and desperate actions took place between these generals; but being a war of posts, and fought in a very mountainous and difficult country, it was impossible by any skill of combination to ensure on any occasion more than partial success, since co-operation of movements upon a great and extensive scale was prohibited by the character of the ground. There was much hard fighting, however, in which, though more of the Austrians were slain, yet the loss was most severely felt by the French, whose numbers were inferior.