XLII. The Piedmontese showed by no means the staunch- CHAP. ness of the Austrians. They abandoned Ceva, and the French came up with them at Mondovi, to complete their rout. The victors were in high exultation. Buonaparte had shown them from Montezemolo, a little beyond Millesimo, the rich plains of Piedmont, the promised land of Italy. Hannibal, he said, may have forced his way through the Alps, we have done as much by turning them. Arrived at Cherasco, within ten leagues of Turin, Buonaparte found the plenipotentiaries of the Sardinian court empowered to make every sacrifice. An armistice was concluded (28th of April) and the final conditions of peace referred to Paris, the fortresses of Ceva, Tortona and Alexandria being in the meantime placed in French hands. Buonaparte, or Bonaparte as he henceforth called himself, well deserved the immense credit which he obtained from this series of victories, fought with few soldiers perhaps, yet decisive in their results. The French generals of division, Augereau and Massena, showed as much heroism as their commander did skill. And yet there was no miracle in their first achievements. The Austrians, who fought also most gallantly, were inferior to the French in number. And if Beaulieu allowed them to be irreparably so, it was that he counted on the support which the Piedmontese ought to have given his right. But the armies of that effete monarchy gave no serious support and made not even a decent resistance. Their inaction and retreat left the Austrian general no resource but to withdraw behind the Lombard rivers. On the 7th of May the French passed the Po at Piacenza whilst Beaulieu expected them at Valenza. After a show of resistance at Fombio, he proposed defending the passage of the Adda. Instead of breaking the bridge over the river at Lodi, Beaulieu thought it sufficient to enfilade it with a battery, whilst to support this battery, the Austrian grenadiers were posted too far CHAP. behind. The French generals Lannes, Berthier, Massena were thus enabled to carry the bridge at the head of their grenadiers, receiving the first discharge that killed 200 men and bayoneting the Austrian artillerymen ere they could be succoured. The crossing of the Adda gave Lombardy to the French, as Napoleon wrote, and the Austrians retired behind the Mincio. The French commander entered Milan in triumph. The Duke of Parma thought fit to make his submission. Bonaparte made him pay down two millions, and surrender twenty of his best pictures for the Louvre. He at the same time pressed the Government in Paris for reinforcements, promising if he had them, not only to repel the Austrians, but march on Rome and Naples. The Directory took him at his word, and proposed sending him to the South of Italy with one army, whilst Kellerman should continue the conquest of North Italy with the other. Bonaparte replied by an offer of resignation. The majority of the Directors too were for not concluding the treaty with the King of Piedmont, which left the arms of the French general free. Its conclusion was only due to the efforts of Carnot.* The month of June was spent by the French in awing and reducing the southern and central states of Italy. Tuscany had long since negotiated with the Republic; and Napoleon now visited it, hoping, yet failing to surprise the English vessels at Leghorn. Augereau occupied Bologna. Naples itself felt compelled to conclude an armistice and withdraw its troops from the Austrian army. On first entering the territories of the Venetian republic Bonaparte had announced by a proclamation his wish to remain in amity with its government. He strongly advised later that its system should be changed, and some modifications made in its ultra-aristocratic form. The proposal was scouted. Gourgaud. Carnot's Memoirs by his son. XLII. The Venetian government displayed its sympathies for CHAP. Austria, and the language of the French became that of hostility and menace. * The fate of Italy was not yet decided. Wurmser was coming to replace Beaulieu at the head of a army chiefly drawn from that commanded in Germany by the Archduke Charles; 30,000 men had at the same time been despatched from Moreau's army to reinforce Bonaparte.† The latter calculated his force at but 56,000 men in June, whilst the Austrians, he said, had been reinforced to the number of 67,000. ‡ This avalanche came down the Tyrol on both sides of the Lake of Garda, towards the end of July, when Bonaparte wrote, § "This is our unfortunate position. The enemy has pierced our lines on three points. He is master of Rivoli and the Corona. Salo has been abandoned. The Austrians have taken Brescia and the Ponte San Marco, cutting off our communications with Milan and Verona." He in consequence immediately ordered the abandonment of the siege of Mantua, with the guns in position, and bade the baggage to be directed back upon Milan. With a force so slightly outnumbering that of the French, it was a hazardous plan which Wurmser adopted, of sending one portion of his army by the left of the Lake of Garda to capture Salo and Brescia, whilst with the other he descended the course of the Adige, driving Massena from Rivoli. His object was to unite the two divisions on the Mincio, and in this he might have succeeded, had not the Austrian commander marched to relieve and revictual Mantua, in the siege of which he supposed the French still engaged. Taking advantage of his absence, Bonaparte on the 31st marched westward from the Mincio to repel the division * Zschokke's Untergang. † Carnot. Napoleon Correspondence. XLII. CHAP. under Quasdanowitsch that had captured Salo and Brescia. This was fully accomplished on the 31st of July, the French marching all that night to Brescia, and driving Quasdanowitsch back into the gorges of the Tyrol. On the 2nd Bonaparte marched back from Brescia and found that in his absence the division which he had left to guard the Mincio, and had ordered at least not to retrograde beyond Castiglione, had been driven in, that the Austrians already occupied Lonato, and were extending between it and the lake to form a junction with Quasdanowitsch. They were not more than 30,000, Wurmser himself being still at Mantua, the French somewhat inferior. But in extending their right towards Salo, the Austrian commander weakened his position at Lonato, which Bonaparte immediately attacked on the 3rd. He drove in their centre, one portion of the Austrians withdrawing to the Mincio; the rest cut off from the main army, were after a time obliged to surrender, to the number of 3,000 with a score of guns.* On the day after the battle one of these divisions came suddenly upon the French commander-in-chief, as he was engaged hurrying up his rearward troops to Castiglione. They called on the small corps to surrender. Bonaparte, surrounded by his staff, ordered the Austrian officer to be brought before him and affirming that he was there with his whole army, demanded in turn the instant surrender of the Austrians; these could not believe that the commander-in-chief would be there without his army, and surrendered in consequence-several thousands to a handful. The battle of Castiglione, fought upon the 5th against Wurmser's force, brought back from Mantua, and rallying those which had retreated from Lonato, bore considerable resemblance to the battle fought at Solferino in our time. Napoleon's Mémoires, Gourgaud. Correspondence. Las Casas, Mémorial de Ste. Hélène. Joubert's despatch and Augereau's account in Pièces Justificatives of the Mémoires de Massena par Koch. XLII. Both began on the same plain. Napoleon despatched CHAP. Serrurier the night before to fall upon the Austrians' left wing. Massena fell upon their right. "Augereau," writes Napoleon in his correspondence, "attacked the centre of the enemy which leaned upon the tower of Solferino, and driving it in decided the victory."* According to Napoleon, these five days' fighting cost the Austrians 8,000 in killed and wounded, from 12,000 to 15,000 prisoners, and 70 guns. They cost the French, he says, 7,000 men. By the 7th of August the French had recovered all their old positions. Wurmser, indeed, did not give up his cause as lost. He had retreated into the Tyrol, but still held Roveredo and Trent with the remainder of his beaten army, swelled by a reinforcement, according to the French, of 20,000 men. Bonaparte followed him up the Tyrol and fought with him the battle of Roveredo on the 4th of September, the French penetrating into that town along with the Austrians. Wurmser, though beaten, directed his march not back into Germany, but sideways towards Bassano, from whence he projected to return upon Verona whilst the French commander was still in the Tyrol. It was a bold but unfortunate idea. Followed closely by Bonaparte, beaten at Bassano as well as before Verona, he was nearly surrounded, but succeeded in escaping into Mantua with the mere relics of his army. Whilst the genius of Bonaparte thus drove the Austrians from the plains of Lombardy, the efforts of his brother generals at the head of far superior armies could make no impression upon the Imperialists in Germany. Yet it was the desire and interest of the Directory that the young general should not monopolise victory. The French armies under Moreau and Jourdan on the upper and lower Rhine numbered 150,000 men. The Arch * The victory of Solferino in our day, and the capture of its tower by the French, were chiefly owing to the defection of an Hungarian |