A very simple stratagem disconcerted this fair display of resistance. After a distant cannonade, and some skirmishing, the French army drew off, as if despairing to force their passage, moved to the rear, and took up apparently their bivouac for the night. The Archduke was deceived. He imagined that the French, who had marched all the preceding night, were fatigued, and he also withdrew from the bank of the river to his camp. But two hours afterwards, when all seemed profoundly quiet, the French army suddenly got under arms, and, forming in two lines, marched rapidly to the side of the river, ere the astonished Austrians were able to make the same dispositions as formerly for defence. Arrived on the margin, the first line instantly broke up into columns, which, throwing themselves boldly into the stream, protected on the flanks by the cavalry, passed through and attained the opposite bank.[266] They were repeatedly charged by the Austrian cavalry, but it was too late—they had gotten their footing, and kept it. The Archduke attempted to turn their flank, but was prevented by the second line of the French, and by their reserve of cavalry. He was compelled to retreat, leaving prisoners and cannon in the hands of the enemy. Such was the first disastrous meeting between the Archduke Charles and his future relative.[267]
March 16.
The Austrian prince had the farther misfortune to learn, that Massena had, at the first sound of the cannonade, pushed across the Tagliamento, higher up than his line of defence, and destroying what troops he found before him, had occupied the passes of the Julian Alps at the sources of that river, and thus interposed himself between the imperial right wing and the nearest communication with Vienna. Sensible of the importance of this obstacle, the Archduke hastened, if possible, to remove it. He brought up a fine column of grenadiers from the Rhine, which had just arrived at Klagenfurt, in his rear, and joining them to other troops, attacked Massena with the utmost fury, venturing his own person like a private soldier, and once or twice narrowly escaping being made prisoner. It was in vain—all in vain. He charged successively and repeatedly, even with the reserve of the grenadiers, but no exertion could change the fortune of the day.[268]
March 19.
Still the Archduke hoped to derive assistance from the natural or artificial defences of the strong country through which he was thus retreating, and in doing so was involuntarily introducing Buonaparte, after he should have surmounted the border frontier into the most fertile provinces of his brother's empire. The Lisonzo, usually a deep and furious torrent, closed in by a chain of impassable mountains, seemed to oppose an insurmountable barrier to his daring pursuers. But nature, as well as events, fought against the Austrians. The stream, reduced by frost, was fordable in several places. The river thus passed, the town of Gradisca, which had been covered with field-works to protect the line of the Lisonzo, was surprised and carried by storm, and its garrison of two thousand five hundred men made prisoners, by the divisions of Bernadotte and Serrurier.
Pushed in every direction, the Austrians sustained every day additional and more severe losses. The strong fort of Chiusa-Veneta was occupied by Massena, who continued his active and indefatigable operations on the right of the retreating army. This success caused the envelopement, and dispersion or surrender, of a whole division of Austrians, five thousand of whom remained prisoners, while their baggage, cannon, colours, and all that constituted them an army, fell into the hands of the French. Four generals were made prisoners on this occasion; and many of the mountaineers of Carniola and Croatia, who had joined the Austrian army from their natural love of war, seeing that success appeared to have abandoned the imperial cause, became despondent, broke up their corps, and retired as stragglers to their villages.
TRIESTE AND FIUME.
Buonaparte availed himself of their loss of courage, and had recourse to proclamations, a species of arms which he valued himself as much upon using to advantage, as he did upon his military fame. He assured them that the French did not come into their country to innovate on their rights, religious customs, and manners. He exhorted them not to meddle in a war with which they had no concern, but encouraged them to afford assistance and furnish supplies to the French army, in payment of which he proposed to assign the public taxes which they had been in the habit of paying to the Emperor.[269] His proposal seems to have reconciled the Carinthians to the presence of the French, or, more properly speaking, they submitted to the military exactions which they had no means of resisting.[270] In the meanwhile, the French took possession of Trieste and Fiume, the only seaports belonging to Austria, where they seized much English merchandise, which was always a welcome prize, and of the quicksilver mines of Idria, where they found a valuable deposit of that mineral.
Napoleon repaired the fortifications of Klagenfurt, and converted it into a respectable place of arms, where he established his headquarters. In a space of scarce twenty days, he had defeated the Austrians in ten combats, in the course of which Prince Charles had lost at least one-fourth of his army. The French had surmounted the southern chain of the Julian Alps; the northern line could, it was supposed, offer no obstacle sufficient to stop their irresistible general; and the Archduke, the pride and hope of the Austrian armies, had retired behind the river Mehur, and seemed to be totally without the means of covering Vienna.
There were, however, circumstances less favourable to the French, which require to be stated. When the campaign commenced, the French general Joubert was posted with his division in the gorge of the Tyrol above Trent, upon the same river Levisa, the line of which had been lost and won during the preceding winter. He was opposed by the Austrian generals Kerpen and Laudon, who, besides some regular regiments, had collected around them a number of the Tyrolese militia, who among their own mountains were at least equally formidable. They remained watching each other during the earlier part of the campaign; but the gaining of the battle of the Tagliamento was the signal for Joubert to commence the offensive. His directions were to push his way through the Tyrol to Brixen, at which place Napoleon expected he might hear news of the advance of the French armies from the Rhine, to co-operate in the march upon Vienna. But the Directory, fearing perhaps to trust nearly the whole force of the Republic in the hands of a general so successful and so ambitious as Napoleon, had not fulfilled their promises in this respect. The army of Moreau had not as yet crossed the Rhine.