The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Vol. 2 (of 4)

by William Milligan Sloane

At this juncture, about five in the afternoon, Desaix appeared at the head of his hurrying line. In an instant Bonaparte had despatched riders in every direction, who were instructed to declare that "the French line is forming again." The discouraged men who were still in the ranks took fresh courage, many stragglers were gathered in, and the line was really formed once more. Marmont even collected a battery of eighteen guns, and Kellermann, with the brigade of dragoons which had so long covered Victor's left flank, suddenly reappeared in good condition on Desaix's right. In a moment all was changed. Desaix and Kellermann threw themselves with fury on the head and left of the main Austrian column. The first half was soon in confusion; six thousand men laid down their arms. The second half was demoralized, and took to flight. Their officers rallied the flying lines with difficulty, but sufficiently to hold a bridge over the Bormida until Ott had joined the retreat and safely passed. Before dark a portion of Melas's army, about twenty thousand of the thirty he had collected at Alessandria, were all behind the stream, and the French were again in full possession of Marengo. But the gallant Desaix had perished in the moment of victory. "Of all the generals of the Revolution," said Napoleon to Gourgaud, "I only know Hoche and Desaix who could have gone further." Of the latter he said, during the voyage to St. Helena, that he was the best general he had ever known.

There were, however, two others he might have recalled. It is true that among all the purely French generals of the republic and the Directory, the name of Hoche, so prematurely cut off by death, stands highest. But there was another of similar renown: second only to his is that of Kléber. The latter, recognizing the desperate situation of the French colony in Egypt, early in the year 1800 concluded with Sir Sidney Smith, at El Arish, a treaty for honorable withdrawal. But there was delay in accepting it at London, and no preparations to fulfil the terms were made. In the interval Kléber, alarmed by the gathering force of Turkish troops, turned on the Turkish pasha—who now stood at Heliopolis with seventy thousand men—with the sadly diminished army of twelve thousand French, and on March twentieth, 1800, in the most amazing fight ever seen by an Egyptian sun, swept the horde out of existence. It was his admirable administration during the ensuing months which, together with the achievements of its scholars, gave all the luster to the ill-starred expedition which was ever shed upon it. On the very day on which, at Marengo, Desaix received in his heart the fatal ball, Kléber fell a victim to the dagger of a Mohammedan fanatic. The French humiliation in Egypt was completed a year later by the surrender of his successor, Menou. Moreau, therefore, was now the solitary able survivor of Revolutionary traditions in warfare.

MARENGO 14 June 1800.

A distance of about three and a half miles separates the field of the morning battle at Marengo from the field of the evening battle near San Giuliano; the Austrians retreated across the Bormida to Alessandria; the French bivouacked near Marengo.

Exactly a month after the passage of the St. Bernard had begun, the Austrians opened negotiations, and their general agreed to evacuate all northern Italy, with its strong places, as far as the river Mincio. The only Italian lands to be left in Austrian occupation were Tuscany and Ancona. The strategical lesson which Bonaparte drew from the victory at Marengo is often repeated by writers on military science; namely, that the art of war is the art of combinations. His detractors claim the honors of the day for Desaix and Kellermann. The judgment of posterity must be that of his contemporary critics. To plan is already to manœuver; but in war, as elsewhere, to will is one thing, to do is another. A successful battle disorganizes an opposing army, but successful strategy entirely destroys its power. When will and deed accompany each other the result is conclusive. The victory at Marengo was such a decision. Bonaparte the army commander lost it; Bonaparte the general-in-chief won it, exactly as it was. But even if Desaix had not appeared, success would have been gained elsewhere. The road to Stradella was open, the French connections were unbroken. Although such later explanations have little value, Napoleon was probably right when he said to Gourgaud: The French army was in an abnormal position with its rear toward Mantua and Austria. Its only line of retreat was by the left bank of the Po, and to leave that line of communication without defense was not permissible. In an ordinary position all the detachments should be drawn in for battle. Here this was impossible without losing all the advantage of the campaign. Had we been defeated, this fault would have been no reproach, though properly enough the loss of the battle would have been attributed to it; in that case the strength of the positions held by the troops would have been manifest, since to it the army would have owed its safety, together with the chance to await reinforcements from Switzerland and France, and to reassemble at Mentz, for thus we could have maintained ourselves on the left bank of the Po, while Melas could hope only to withdraw to Mantua and take his normal position. This was Napoleon's commentary at the close of his life: likewise he had declared, as Antommarchi asserts, that he would have crossed the Po on one of his five bridges covered by his batteries, would have combined his first division with those he had left behind, and then would have attacked and destroyed each successive Austrian corps as it crossed the stream in pursuit. In any case Marengo was the pattern of an offensive campaign organized, not to win battles and spare the lives of soldiers, but to destroy an enemy. In a just cause this policy is great and humane; in an unjust cause any warfare is butchery. To assert, as many do, that Marengo was superb, but unpatriotic, is simply to renounce the cause in which it was fought. As to the strategy of the campaign, the final judgment must be that of Napoleon himself: To be a good general you must know mathematics; that serves in a thousand circumstances to clarify your ideas. Perhaps I owe my success to my mathematical ideas: a general should never make pictures, this is the worst of all. Because a partizan has captured a position, you need not think the whole army was there; my great talent, my chief distinction, is to see clear in everything, it is even the style of my eloquence to see beneath all its appearances the root of the question. It is the perpendicular, shorter than the oblique. The great art of battle is during the action to change the line of operations: my own idea, entirely new. That made me the victor at Marengo: the enemy moved against my line of operations to cut it; I had changed it and he then found himself cut off.

Throughout his absence from Paris, Bonaparte's mind was almost as much absorbed in home as in foreign affairs. His correspondence, packed as it is with details, gives only a faint idea of the multiplicity of his cares in regard to his family, the army, and the nation. The capital was full of conspiracies, machinations, complots, and intrigues: it could not be otherwise, and he felt it. There were the British and the Chouans combining to rekindle the flames of civil war, and rid the earth of the man who would not restore the Bourbons. The Institute was embroiled over the restoration of the Fructidorians it had expelled. There was Fouché to be cajoled and bribed with promises, if only the police would repress the cabals forming everywhere like mushrooms. There were Bernadotte and all the touchy generals, aspirants to power, who must be flattered and soothed. There were the newspapers to be inspired and fed by a carefully organized news bureau. There was Josephine clamoring for money, and his brothers to be appeased. There were the consuls to be guided and the wheels of government to be kept oiled. All these matters received his attention.

But in spite of such comprehensive care, things went wrong. On June nineteenth Cadoudal wrote to Grenville that everything was arranged, insurrection would break out in the west and south: the royalists were certain of success if only the sixty men selected should remove the "personage" from the scene. Fouché warned his chief that the baser radicals, a group composed of red Jacobins and disgruntled half-pay soldiery, had despatched an agent to dog his footsteps. The purpose may be imagined. Royalists and anarchists considered the First Consul vermin. Talleyrand was carrying water on both shoulders: the insiders of the administration styled him and Sieyès with their adherents the Orleanist party, scheming to put some member of that line on an ineffectual throne as a creature of the other monarchies. Lucien and the Bonaparte family began to discuss heredity and talk of a succession in the Consulate as in a kingdom. They gathered many adherents: Orleanists and Bonapartists alike counted on the possibility of the First Consul's death, either by assassination or in battle, on the still higher probability of his defeat. Death and defeat they considered were for him synonymous, all the plotters of every sort and condition forming plans to share in the contingent legacy of his overthrow. Victory alone could save the First Consul and his personal rule: to conquer in Italy was to reign supreme in France. The plain folk seem never to have doubted for a moment, and their instinct was true.