Accordingly she demanded from Pitt a subsidy of two and a half million dollars, and ordered Suvoroff with sixty thousand troops to the assistance of Austria. Just then, in September, 1796, Gustavus IV, of Sweden, was at St. Petersburg for his betrothal with the Empress's granddaughter Alexandra. He required as a matter of course that she should adopt his faith. This was contemptuously refused and the preparations for the festival went forward to completion as if nothing had occurred. At the appointed hour for the ceremonial, the groom did not and would not appear. Consternation gave way to a sense of outrage, but the "Kinglet," as the great courtiers styled him, stood firm. The Empress was beside herself, her health gave way, and she died in less than two months, on November seventeenth. The dangerous imbecile, her son Paul I, reigned in her stead. Weird figure that he was, he at least renounced his mother's policy of conquest and countermanded her orders to Suvoroff, recalling him and his army. Austria was at bay, but she was undaunted.
Once more Alvinczy, despairing of success, but obedient to his orders, made ready to move down the Adige from Trent. Great zeal had been shown in Austria. The Vienna volunteer battalions abandoned the work of home protection for which they had enlisted, and, with a banner embroidered by the Empress's own hand, joined the active forces. The Tyrolese, in defiance of the atrocious proclamation in which Bonaparte, claiming to be their conqueror, had threatened death to any one taking up arms against France, flocked again to the support of their Emperor. By a recurrence to the old fatal plan, Alvinczy was to attack the main French army; his colleague Provera was to follow the Brenta into the lower reaches of the Adige, where he could effect a crossing, and relieve Mantua. He was likewise to deceive the enemy by making a parade of greater strength than he really had, and thus draw away Bonaparte's main army toward Legnago on the lower Adige. A messenger was despatched to Wurmser with letters over the Emperor's own signature, ordering him, if Provera should fail, to desert Mantua, retreat into the Romagna, and under his own command unite the garrison and the papal troops. This order never reached its destination, for its bearer was intercepted, and was compelled by the use of an emetic to render up the despatches which he had swallowed.
On January seventh, 1797, Bonaparte gave orders to strengthen the communications along his line, massing two thousand men at Bologna in order to repress certain hostile demonstrations lately made in behalf of the Pope. On the following day an Austrian division which had been lying at Padua made a short attack on Augereau's division, and on the ninth drove it into Porto Legnago, the extreme right of the French line. This could mean nothing else than a renewal of hostilities by Austria, although it was impossible to tell where the main attack would be made. On the eleventh Bonaparte was at Bologna, concluding an advantageous treaty with Tuscany; in order to be ready for any event, he started the same evening, hastened across the Adige with his troops, and pressed on to Verona.
On the twelfth, at six in the morning, the enemy attacked Masséna's advance-guard at St. Michel, a suburb of that city. They were repulsed with loss. Early on the same day Joubert, who had been stationed with a corps of observation farther up in the old and tried position at the foot of Monte Baldo, became aware of hostile movements, and occupied Rivoli. During the day the two Austrian columns tried to turn his position by seizing his outpost at Corona, but they were repulsed. On the thirteenth he became aware that the main body of the Austrians was before him, and that their intention was to surround him by the left. Accordingly he informed Bonaparte, abandoned Corona, and made ready to retreat from Rivoli. That evening Provera threw a pontoon bridge across the Adige at Anghiari, below Legnago, and crossed with a portion of his army. Next day he started for Mantua, but was so harassed by Guieu and Augereau that the move was ineffectual, and he got no farther than Nogara.
The heights of Rivoli command the movements of any force passing out of the Alps through the valley of the Adige. They are abrupt on all sides but one, where from the greatest elevation the chapel of St. Mark overlooked a winding road, steep, but available for cavalry and artillery. Rising from the general level of the tableland, this hillock is in itself a kind of natural citadel. Late on the thirteenth, Joubert, in reply to the message he had sent, received orders to fortify the plateau, and to hold it at all hazards; for Bonaparte now divined that the main attack was to be made there in order to divert all opposition from Provera, and that if it were successful the two Austrian armies would meet at Mantua. By ten that evening the reports brought in from Joubert and by scouts left this conclusion no longer doubtful. That very night, therefore, being in perfect readiness for either event, Bonaparte moved toward Rivoli with a force numbering about twenty thousand. It was composed of every available French soldier between Desenzano and Verona, including Masséna's division.[68] By strenuous exertions they reached the heights of Rivoli about two in the morning of the fourteenth. Alvinczy, ignorant of what had happened, was waiting for daylight in order to carry out his original design of inclosing and capturing the comparatively small force of Joubert and the strong place which it had been set to hold, a spot long since recognized by Northern peoples as the key to the portal of Italy. Bonaparte, on his arrival, perceived in the moonlight five divisions encamped in a semicircle below; their bivouac fires made clear that they were separated from one another by considerable distances. He knew then that his instinct had been correct, that this was the main army, and that the decisive battle would be fought next day. The following hours were spent in disposing his forces to meet the attack in any form it might take. Not a man was wasted, but the region was occupied with pickets, outposts, and reserves so ingeniously stationed that the study of that field, and of Bonaparte's disposition of his forces, has become a classic example in military science.
The gorge by which the Adige breaks through the lowest foot-hills of the Alps to enter the lowlands has been famous since dim antiquity. The Romans considered it the entrance to Cimmeria; it was sung in German myths as the Berner Klause, the majestic gateway from their inclement clime into the land of the stranger, that warm, bright land for the luxurious and orderly life of which their hearts were ever yearning. Around its precipices and isolated, frowning bastions song and fable had clustered, and the effect of mystery was enhanced by the awful grandeur of the scene. Overlooking all stands Monte Baldo, frowning with its dark precipices on the cold summits of the German highland, smiling with its sunny slopes on the blue waters of Lake Garda and the fertile valley of the Po. In the change of strategy incident to the introduction of gunpowder the spot of greatest resistance was no longer in the gorge, but at its mouth, where Rivoli on one side, and Ceraino on the other, command respectively the gentle slopes which fall eastward and westward toward the plains. The Alps were indeed looking down on the "Little Corporal," who, having flanked their defenses at one end, was now about to force their center, and later to pass by their eastward end into the hereditary dominions of the German emperors on the Danube.
At early dawn began the conflict which was to settle the fate of Mantua. The first fierce contest was between the Austrian left and the French right at St. Mark; but it quickly spread along the whole line as far as Caprino. For some time the Austrians had the advantage, and the result was in suspense, since the French left, at Caprino, yielded for an instant before the onslaught of the main Austrian army made in accordance with Alvinczy's first plan, and, as he supposed, upon an inferior force by one vastly superior in numbers. Berthier, who by his calm courage was fast rising high in his commander's favor, came to the rescue, and Masséna, following with a judgment which has inseparably linked his name with that famous spot, finally restored order to the French ranks. Every successive charge of the Austrians was repulsed with a violence which threw their right and center back toward Monte Baldo in ever growing confusion. The battle waged for nearly three hours before Alvinczy understood that it was not Joubert's division, but Bonaparte's army, which was before him. A fifth Austrian column then pressed forward from the bank of the Adige to scale the height of Rivoli, and Joubert, whose left at St. Mark was hard beset, could not check the movement. For an instant he left the road unprotected. The Austrians charged up the hill and seized the commanding position; but simultaneously there rushed from the opposite side three French battalions, clambering up to retrieve the loss. The nervous activity of the latter brought them quickly to the top, where at once they were reinforced by a portion of the cavalry reserve, and the storming columns were thrown back in disorder. At that instant appeared in Bonaparte's rear an Austrian corps which had been destined to take the French at Rivoli in their rear. Had it arrived sooner, the position would, as the French declared, have been lost to them. As it was, instead of making an attack, the Austrians had to await one. Bonaparte directed a falling artillery fire against them, and threw them back toward Lake Garda. He thus gained time to re-form his own ranks and enabled Masséna to hold in check still another of the Austrian columns, which was striving to outflank him on his left. Thereupon the French reserve under Rey, coming in from the westward, cut the turning column entirely off, and compelled it to surrender. The rest of Alvinczy's force being already in full retreat, this ended the worst defeat and most complete rout which the Austrian arms had so far sustained. Such was the utter demoralization of the flying and disintegrated columns that a young French officer named Réné, who was in command of fifty men at a hamlet on Lake Garda, successfully imitated Bonaparte's ruse at Lonato, and displayed such an imposing confidence to a flying troop of fifteen hundred Austrians that they surrendered to what appeared to be a force superior to their own. Next morning at dawn, Murat, who had marched all night to gain the point, appeared on the slopes of Monte Baldo above Corona, and united with Joubert to drive the Austrians from their last foothold. The pursuit was continued as far as Trent. Thirteen thousand prisoners were captured in those two days.
Enlarged Plan of
Lake of Garda
and Adjacent Country.