It is impossible to estimate the enormous sums of money which he exacted for the conduct of a war that he chose to say was carried on to emancipate Italy. The soldiers of his army were well clad, well fed, and well equipped from the day of their entry into Milan; the arrears of their pay were not only settled, but they were given license to prey on the country until a point was reached which seemed to jeopardize success, when common pillage was promptly stopped by the severest examples. The treasury of the Directory was not filled as were those of the conquering officers, but it was no longer empty. In short, France reached the apex of her revolutionary greatness; and as she was now the foremost power on the Continent, the shaky monarchies in neighboring lands were forced to consider again questions which in 1795 they had hoped were settled. As Bonaparte foresaw, the destinies of Europe had indeed hung on the fate of Italy.

Europe had grown accustomed to military surprises in the few preceding years. The armies of the French republic, fired by devotion to their principles and their nation, had accomplished marvels. But nothing in the least foreshadowing this had been wrought even by them. Then, as now, curiosity was inflamed, and the most careful study was expended in analyzing the process by which such miracles had been performed. The investigators and their readers were so overpowered by the spectacle and its results that they were prevented by a sort of awe-stricken credulity from recognizing the truth; and even yet the notion of a supernatural influence fighting on Bonaparte's side has not entirely disappeared. But the facts as we know them reveal cleverness dealing with incapacity, energy such as had not yet been seen fighting with languor, an embodied principle of great vitality warring with a lifeless, vanishing system. The consequences were startling, but logical; the details sound like a romance from the land of Eblis.



CHAPTER XXVII.

The Conquest of Piedmont and the Milanese[67].

[Footnote 67: The latest important authorities on this campaign and its results are, in addition to those already given, Sargent: Napoleon Bonaparte's First Campaign. Sorel: Bonaparte et Hoche en 1797. Bonaparte et le Directoire, Vol. V of his large work. Colin: Etudes sur la Campagne de 1796 en Italie. Fabry: Histoire de l'armee d'Italie, 1796-1797. Bouvier: Bonaparte en Italie, 1796. Graham's Despatches, edited by Rose, in English Historical Review, Vol. XIV. Tivaroni: Storia del risorgimento italiano. The Dropmore Papers. Of primary value are Napoleon's "Correspondance," official edition, and the unofficial edited by Beauvais. Hueffer: Ungedruckte Briefe Napoleon's in the Archiv fuer Oest. Geschichte, Vol. XLIX. Of value are also the memoirs of Marmont, Massena, and Desgenettes, of Landrieux in Revue du Cercle Militaire, 1887. Yorck von Wartenberg: Napoleon als Feldherr, almost supersedes the older authority of Clausewitz, Jomini, Ruestow, and Lossau. There are also Malachowski: Entwickelung der leitenden Gedanken zur ersten Campagne Bonaparte's, and Delbrueck: Unterschied der Strategie Friederich's des Grossen und Napoleon's.]

The Armies of Austria and Sardinia — Montenotte and Millesimo — Mondovi and Cherasco — Consequences of the Campaign — The Plains of Lombardy — The Crossing of the Po — Advance Toward Milan — Lodi — Retreat of the Austrians — Moral Effects of Lodi.

[Sidenote: 1796.]

Victor Amadeus of Sardinia was not unaccustomed to the loss of territory in the north, because from immemorial times his house had relinquished picturesque but unfruitful lands beyond the Alps to gain fertile fields below them. It was a hard blow, to be sure, that Savoy, which gave name to his family, and Nice, with its beautiful and commanding site, should have been lost to his crown. But so far, in every general European convulsion, some substantial morsels had fallen to the lot of his predecessors, who had looked on Italy "as an artichoke to be eaten leaf by leaf"; and it was probable that a slice of Lombardy would be his own prize at the next pacification. He had spent his reign in strengthening his army, and as the foremost military power in Italy his young and vigorous people, with the help of Austria, were defending the passes into their territory. The road from their capital to Savona on the sea wound by Ceva and Millesimo over the main ridge of the Apennines, at the summit of which it was joined by the highway through Dego and Cairo leading southwestward from Milan through Alessandria. The Piedmontese, under Colli, were guarding the approach to their own capital; the Austrians, under Beaulieu, that to Milan. Collectively their numbers were somewhat greater than those of the French; but the two armies were separated.

Beaulieu began operations on April tenth by ordering an attack on the French division of Laharpe, which had been thrown forward to Voltri. The Austrians under Argenteau were to fall on its rear from Montenotte, a village to the north of Savona, with the idea of driving that wing of Bonaparte's army back along the shore road, on which it was hoped they would fall under the fire of Nelson's guns. Laharpe, however, retreated to Savona in perfect safety, for the English fleet was not near. Thereupon Bonaparte, suddenly revealing the new formation of his army in the north and south line, assumed the offensive. Argenteau, having been held temporarily in check by the desperate resistance of a handful of French soldiers under Colonel Rampon, was surprised and overwhelmed at Montenotte on the twelfth by a force much larger than his own. Next day Massena and Augereau drove back toward Dego an Austrian division which had reached Millesimo on its way to join Colli; and on the fifteenth, at that place, Bonaparte himself destroyed the remnant of Argenteau's corps. On the sixteenth Beaulieu abandoned the mountains to make a stand at Acqui in the plain. Thus the whole Austrian force was not only driven back, but was entirely separated from the Piedmontese.

Bonaparte had a foolish plan in his pocket, which had been furnished by the Directory in a temporary reversion to official tradition, ordering him to advance into Lombardy, leaving behind the hostile Piedmontese on his left, and the uncertain Genoese on his right. He disregarded it, apparently without hesitation, and throwing his force northwestward toward Ceva, where the Piedmontese were posted, terrified them into a retreat. They were overtaken, however, at Mondovi on April twenty-second, and utterly routed, losing not only their best troops, but their field-pieces and baggage-train. Three days later Bonaparte pushed onward and occupied Cherasco, which was distant from Turin, the Piedmontese capital, but twenty-five miles by a short, easy, and now open road. On the twenty-seventh the Sardinians, isolated in a mountain amphitheater, and with no prospect of relief from their discomfited ally, made overtures for an armistice preliminary to peace. These were readily accepted by Bonaparte; and although he had no authorization from the government to perform such functions, he was defiantly careless of instructions in this as in every subsequent step he took. The negotiation was conducted with courtesy and firmness, on the basis of military honor, much to the surprise of the Piedmontese, who had expected to deal with a savage Jacobin. There was not even a word in Bonaparte's talk which recalled the republican severity; as has been noted, the word virtue did not pass his lips, his language was that of chivalry. He stipulated in kindly phrase for the surrender of Coni and Tortona, the famous "keys of the Alps," with other strongholds of minor importance, demanding also the right to cross and recross Piedmontese territory at will. The paper was completed and signed on the twenty-eighth. The troublesome question of civil authority to make a treaty was evaded by calling the arrangement a military convention. It was none the less binding by reason of its name. Indeed the idea was steadily expanded into a new policy, for just as pillage and rapine were ruthlessly repressed by the victorious commander, all agreements were made temporarily on a military basis, including those for indemnities. Salicetti was the commissioner of the Directory and there was no friction between him and Bonaparte. Both profited by a partnership in which opportunities for personal ventures were frequent, while the military chest was well supplied and remittances to Paris were kept just large enough to save the face and quiet the clamors of the Directory. Victor Amadeus being checkmated, Bonaparte was free to deal with Beaulieu.



This short campaign was in some respects insignificant, especially when compared as to numbers and results with what was to follow. But the names of Montenotte, Millesimo, Dego, Mondovi, and Cherasco were ever dear to Bonaparte, and stand in a high place on his greatest monument. The King of Sardinia was the father-in-law of Louis XVIII, and his court had been a nest of plotting French emigrants. When his agents reached Paris they were received with coarse resentment by the Directory and bullied into an alliance, though they had been instructed to make only a peace. Their sovereign was humiliated to the limit of possibility. The loss of his fortress robbed him of his power. By the terms of the treaty he was to banish the French royalists from his lands. Stripped thus of both force and prestige, he did not long survive the disgrace, and died, leaving to Charles Emmanuel, his son, no real dominion but that over the island of Sardinia. The contrast between the ferocious bluster of the Directory and the generous simplicity of a great conqueror was not lost on the Italians nor on the moderate French. For them as for Bonaparte, a military and political aspirant in his first independence, everything, absolutely everything, was at stake in those earliest engagements; on the event hung not merely his career, but their release. In pleasant succession the spring days passed like a transformation scene. Success was in the air, not the success of accident, but the resultant of forethought and careful combination. The generals, infected by their leader's spirit, vied with each other in daring and gallantry. For happy desperation Rampon's famous stand remains unsurpassed in the annals of war.

From the heights of Ceva the leader of conquering and now devoted soldiers could show to them and their equally enthusiastic officers the gateway into the fertile and well-watered land whither he had promised to lead them, the historic fields of Lombardy. Nothing comparable to that inexhaustible storehouse of nature can be found in France, generous as is her soil. Walled in on the north and west by the majestic masses of the Alps, and to the south by the smaller but still mighty bastions of the Apennines, these plains owe to the mountains not only their fertility and prosperity, but their very existence. Numberless rills which rise amid the icy summits of the great chain, or the lower peaks of the minor one, combine into ever growing streams of pleasant waters which finally unite in the sluggish but impressive Po. Melting snows and torrential rains fill these watercourses with the rich detritus of the hills which renews from year to year the soil it originally created. A genial climate and a grateful soil return to the industrious inhabitants an ample reward for their labors. In the fiercest heats of summer the passing traveler, if he pauses, will hear the soft sounds of slow-running waters in the irrigation sluices which on every side supply any lack of rain. Wheat, barley, and rice, maize, fruit, and wine, are but a few of the staples. Great farmsteads, with barns whose mighty lofts and groaning mows attest the importance of Lombard agriculture, are grouped into the hamlets which abound at the shortest intervals. And to the vision of one who sees them first from a mountain-top through the dim haze of a sunny day, towns and cities seem strewn as if they were grain from the hand of a sower. The measure of bewilderment is full when memory recalls that this garden of Italy has been the prize for which from remotest antiquity the nations of Europe have fought, and that the record of the ages is indelibly written in the walls and ornaments of the myriad structures—theaters, palaces, and churches—which lie so quietly below. Surely the dullest sansculotte in Bonaparte's army must have been aroused to new sensations by the sight. What rosy visions took shape in the mind of their leader we can only imagine.

Piedmont having submitted, the promised descent into these rich plains was not an instant deferred. "Hannibal," said the commanding general to his staff, "took the Alps by storm. We have turned their flank." He paused only to announce his feats to the Directory in modest phrase, and to recommend for preferment those who, like Lannes and Lanusse, had earned distinction. The former was just Bonaparte's age but destitute of solid education, owing to the poverty of his parents. He enlisted in 1792 and in 1795 was already a colonel, owing to his extraordinary inborn courage and capacity. Through the hatred of a Convention legate he was degraded from his rank after the peace of Basel and entered Bonaparte's army as a volunteer. Thereafter his promotion was fast and regular until he became the general's close friend and steadfast supporter. Lanusse was only twenty-four but had been chief of battalion for four years, and now entered upon a brilliant though short career which ended by his death in 1801 at Aboukir. The advance of Bonaparte's army began on May thirtieth. Neither Genoa, Tuscany, nor Venice was to be given time for arming; Beaulieu must be met while his men were still dispirited, and before the arrival of reinforcements: for a great army of thirty thousand men was immediately to be despatched under Wurmser to maintain the power of Austria in Italy. Beaulieu was a typical Austrian general, seventy-one years old, but still hale, a stickler for precedent, and looking to experience as his only guide. Relying on the principles of strategy as he had learned them, he had taken up what he considered a strong position for the defense of Milan, his line stretching northeasterly beyond the Ticino from Valenza, the spot where rumors, diligently spread by Bonaparte, declared that the French would attempt to force a passage. Confirmed in his own judgment by those reports, the old and wary Austrian commander stood brave and expectant, while the young and daring adventurer opposed to him marched swiftly by on the right bank fifty miles onward to Piacenza. There he made his crossing on May seventh in common ferry-boats and by a pontoon bridge. No resistance was made by the few Austrian cavalry who had been sent out merely to reconnoiter the line. The enemy were outwitted and virtually outflanked, being now in the greatest danger. Beaulieu had barely time to break camp and march in hot haste northeasterly to Lodi, where, behind the swift current of the Adda, he made a final stand for the defense of Milan, the seat of Austrian government. In fact, his movements were so hurried that the advance-guards of both armies met by accident at Fombio on May eighth, where a sharp engagement resulted in a victory for the French. Laharpe, who had shown his usual courage in this fight, was killed a few hours later, through a mistake of his own soldiers, in a night melee with the pickets of a second Austrian corps. On the ninth the dukes of Parma and of Piacenza both made their submission in treaties dictated by the French commander, and simultaneously the reigning archduke quitted Milan. Next day the pursuing army was at Lodi.

Bonaparte wrote to the Directory that he had expected the passage of the Po would prove the most bold and difficult manoeuver of the campaign. But it was no sooner accomplished than he again showed a perfect mastery of his art by so manoeuvering as to avoid an engagement while the great river was still immediately in his rear. He was then summoned to meet a third emergency of equal consequence. The Adda is fordable in some places at certain times, but not easily; and at Lodi a wooden bridge about two hundred yards in length then occupied the site of the later solid structure of masonry and iron. The approach to this bridge Beaulieu had seized and fortified. Northwestward was Milan; to the east lay the almost impregnable fortress of Mantua. Beaten at Lodi, the Austrians might still retreat, and make a stand under the walls of either town with some hope of victory: it was Bonaparte's intention so to disorganize his enemy's army that neither would be possible. Accordingly on May tenth the French forces were concentrated for the advance. They started immediately and marched so swiftly that they overtook the Austrian rear-guard before it could withdraw behind the old Gothic walls of the town, and close the gates. Driving them onward, the French fought as they marched. A decisive conflict cleared the streets; and after a stubborn resistance the brave defenders retreated over the bridge to the eastern bank of what was now their last rampart, the river. With cool and desperate courage, Sebottendorf, whose Austrians numbered less than ten thousand men, then brought into action his artillery, and swept the wooden roadway.

In a short time the bridge would no doubt have been in flames; it was uncertain whether the shifting and gravelly bottom of the stream above or below would either yield a ford or permit a crossing by any other means. Under Bonaparte's personal supervision, and therefore with miraculous speed, the French batteries were placed and began an answering thunder. In an access of personal zeal, the commander even threw himself for an instant into the whirling hail of shot and bullets, in order the better to aim two guns which in the hurry had been misdirected. Under this terrible fire and counterfire it was impossible for the Austrians to apply a torch to any portion of the structure. Behind the French guns were three thousand grenadiers waiting for a signal. Soon the crisis came. A troop of Bonaparte's cavalry had found the nearest ford a few hundred yards above the bridge, and were seen, amid the smoke, struggling to cross, though without avail, and turn the right flank of the Austrian infantry, which had been posted a safe distance behind the artillery on the opposite shore. Quick as thought, in the very nick of opportunity, the general issued his command, and the grenadiers dashed for the bridge. Eye-witnesses declared that the fire of the Austrian artillery was now redoubled, while from houses on the opposite side soldiers hitherto concealed poured volley after volley of musket-balls upon the advancing column. For one single fateful moment it faltered. Berthier and Massena, with others equally devoted, rushed to its head, and rallied the lines. In a few moments the deed was accomplished, the bridge was won, the batteries were silenced, and the enemy was in full retreat.

Scattered, stunned, and terrified, the disheartened Austrians felt that no human power could prevail against such a foe. Beaulieu could make no further stand behind the Adda; but, retreating beyond the Oglio to the Mincio, a parallel tributary of the Po, he violated Venetian neutrality by seizing Peschiera, where that stream flows out of Lake Garda, and spread his line behind the river from the Venetian town on the north as far as Mantua, the farthest southern outpost of Austria, thus thwarting one, and that not the least important, of Bonaparte's plans. As to the Italians, they seemed bereft of sense, and for the most part yielded dumbly to what was required. There were occasional outbursts of enthusiasm by Italian Jacobins, and in the confusion of warfare they wreaked a sneaking vengeance on their conservative compatriots by extortion and terrorizing. The population was confused between the woe of actual loss and the joy of emancipation from old tyrannies. Suspicious and adroit, yet slow and self-indulgent, the common folk concluded that the grievous burden of the hour would be lightened by magnanimity and held a waiting attitude.

The moral effect of the action at Lodi was incalculable. Bonaparte's reputation as a strategist had already been established, but his personal courage had never been tested. The actual battle-field is something quite different from the great theater of war, and men wondered whether he had the same mastery of the former as of the latter. Hitherto he had been untried either as to his tactics or his intrepidity. In both respects Lodi elevated him literally to the stars. No doubt the risk he took was awful, and the loss of life terrible. Critics, too, have pointed out safer ways which they believe would have led to the same result; be that as it may, in no other way could the same dramatic effect have been produced. France went wild with joy. The peoples of Italy bowed before the prodigy which thus both paralyzed and fascinated them all. Austria was dispirited, and her armies were awe-stricken. When, five days later, on May fifteenth, amid silent but friendly throngs of wondering men, Bonaparte entered Milan, not as the conqueror but as the liberator of Lombardy, at the head of his veteran columns, there was already about his brows a mild effulgence of supernatural light, which presaged to the growing band of his followers the full glory in which he was later to shine on the imagination of millions. It was after Lodi that his adoring soldiers gave him the name of "Little Corporal," by which they ever after knew him. He himself confessed that after Lodi some conception of his high destiny arose in his mind for the first time.



CHAPTER XXVIII.

An Insubordinate Conqueror and Diplomatist.

Bonaparte's Assertion of Independence — Helplessness of the Directory — Threats and Proclamations — The General and His Officers — Bonaparte's Comprehensive Genius — The Devotion of France — Uneasiness in Italy — The Position of the Austrians — Bonaparte's Strategy — His Conception of the Problem in Italy — Justification of His Foresight — Modena, Parma, and the Papacy — The French Radicals and the Pope — Bonaparte's Policy — His Ambition.

[Sidenote: 1796.]

When the news of the successes in Piedmont reached Paris, public festivals were decreed and celebrated; but the democratic spirit of the directors could brook neither the contemptuous disregard of their plan which Bonaparte had shown, nor his arrogant assumption of diplomatic plenipotence. Knowing how thoroughly their doctrine had permeated Piedmont, they had intended to make it a republic. It was exasperating, therefore, that through Bonaparte's meddling they found themselves still compelled to carry on negotiations with a monarchy. The treaty with the King of Sardinia was ungraciously dictated and signed by them on May fifteenth, but previous to the act they determined to clip the wings of their dangerous falcon. This they thought to accomplish by assigning Kellermann to share with Bonaparte the command of the victorious army, and by confirming Salicetti as their diplomatic plenipotentiary to accompany it. The news reached the conqueror at Lodi on the eve of his triumphant entry into Milan. "As things now are," he promptly replied to the Directory, "you must have a general who possesses your entire confidence. If I must refer every step to government commissioners, if they have the right to change my movements, to withdraw or send troops, expect nothing good hereafter." To Carnot he wrote at the same time: "I believe one bad general to be worth two good ones.... War is like government, a matter of tact.... I do not wish to be hampered. I have begun with some glory; I wish to continue worthy of you." Aware probably that his own republican virtue could not long withstand the temptations opening before him, he began the latter missive, as if to excuse himself and anticipate possible accusations: "I swear I have nothing in view but the country. You will always find me on the straight road. I owe to the republic the sacrifice of all my own notions. If people seek to set me wrong in your esteem, my answer is in my heart and in my conscience." It is of course needless to add that the Directory yielded, not only as to the unity of command, but also in the fatal and vital matter of intrusting all diplomatic negotiations to his hands.

In taking this last step the executive virtually surrendered its identity. Such, however, was the exultation of the Parisian populace and of the soldiery, that the degradation or even the forced resignation of the conquering dictator would have at once assured the fall of the directors. They could not even protest when, soon after, there came from Bonaparte a despatch announcing that the articles of "the glorious peace which you have concluded with the King of Sardinia" had reached "us," and significantly adding in a later paragraph that the troops were content, having received half their pay in coin. Voices in Paris declared that for such language the writer should be shot. Perhaps those who put the worst interpretation on the apparently harmless words were correct in their instinct. In reality the Directory had been wholly dependent on the army since the previous October; and while such an offensive insinuation of the fact would be, if intentional, most unpalatable, yet those who had profited by the fact dared not resent a remote reference to it.

The farce was continued for some time longer, Bonaparte playing his part with singular ability. He sent to Kellermann, in Savoy, without the form of transmitting it through government channels, a subsidy of one million two hundred thousand francs. As long as he was unhampered, his despatches to Paris were soldierly and straightforward, although after the passage of the Po they began to be somewhat bombastic, and to abound in his old-fashioned, curious, and sometimes incorrect classical or literary allusions. But if he were crossed in the least, if reinforcements did not arrive, or if there were any sign of independence in Paris, they became petulant, talking of ill-health, threatening resignation, and requesting that numbers of men be sent out to replace him in the multiform functions which in his single person he was performing. Of course these tirades often failed of immediate effect, but at least no effort was made to put an effective check on the writer's career. Read a century later in a cold and critical light, Bonaparte's proclamations of the same period seem stilted, jerky, and theatrical. In them, however, there may still be found a sort of interstitial sentimentality, and in an age of romantic devotion to ideals the quality of vague suggestiveness passed for genuine coin. Whatever else was lacking in those compositions, they had the one supreme merit of accomplishing their end, for they roused the French soldiers to frenzied enthusiasm.

In fact, if the Directory stood on the army, the army belonged henceforth to Bonaparte. On the very day that Milan was entered, Marmont heard from his leader's lips the memorable words, "Fortune is a woman; the more she does for me, the more I shall exact from her.... In our day no one has conceived anything great; it falls to me to give the example." This is the language that soldiers like to hear from their leader, and it was no doubt repeated throughout the army. "From this moment," wrote the same chronicler, a few months later, "the chief part of the pay and salaries was in coin. This led to a great change in the situation of the officers, and to a certain extent in their habits." Bonaparte was incorruptible. Salicetti announced one day that the brother of the Duke of Modena was waiting outside with four chests containing a million of francs in gold, and urged the general, as a friend and compatriot, to accept them. "Thank you," was the calm and significant answer, "I shall not put myself in the hands of the Duke of Modena for such a sum." But similar propositions were made by the commander-in-chief to his subordinates, and they with less prudence fell into the trap, taking all they could lay hands upon and thus becoming the bond-slaves of their virtuous leader. There were stories at the time that some of the generals, not daring to send their ill-gotten money to France, and having no opportunity for investing it elsewhere, actually carried hundreds of thousands of francs in their baggage. This prostitution of his subordinates was part of a system. Twenty million francs was approximately the sum total of all contributions announced to the Directory, and in their destitution it seemed enormous. They also accepted with pleasure a hundred of the finest horses in Lombardy to replace, as Bonaparte wrote on sending his present, the ordinary ones which drew their carriages. Was this paltry four million dollars the whole of what was derived from the sequestrations of princely domains and the secularization of ecclesiastical estates? By no means. The army chest, of which none knew the contents but Bonaparte, was as inexhaustible as the widow's cruse. At the opening of the campaign in Piedmont, empty wagons had been ostentatiously displayed as representing the military funds at the commander's disposal: these same vehicles now groaned under a weight of treasure, and were kept in a safe obscurity. Well might he say, as he did in June to Miot, that the commissioners of the Directory would soon leave and not be replaced, since they counted for nothing in his policy.

With the entry into Milan, therefore, begins a new epoch in the remarkable development we are seeking to outline. The military genius of him who had been the Corsican patriot and the Jacobin republican had finally asserted dominion over all his other qualities. In the inconsistency of human nature, those former characters now and then showed themselves as still existent, but they were henceforth subordinate. The conquered Milanese was by a magical touch provided with a provisional government, ready, after the tardy assent of the Directory, to be changed into the Transpadane Republic and put under French protection. Every detail of administration, every official and his functions, came under Bonaparte's direction. He knew the land and its resources, the people and their capacities, the mutual relations of the surrounding states, and the idiosyncrasies of their rulers. Such laborious analysis as his despatches display, such grasp both of outline and detail, such absence of confusion and clearness of vision, such lack of hesitance and such definition of plan, seem to prove that either a hero or a demon is again on earth. All the capacity this man had hitherto shown, great as it was, sinks into insignificance when compared with the Olympian powers he now displays, and will continue to display for years to come. His sinews are iron, his nerves are steel, his eyes need no sleep, and his brain no rest. What a captured Hungarian veteran said of him at Lodi is as true of his political activity as of his military restlessness: "He knows nothing of the regular rules of war: he is sometimes on our front, sometimes on the flank, sometimes in the rear. There is no supporting such a gross violation of rules." His senses and his reason were indeed untrammeled by human limitations; they worked on front, rear, and flank, often simultaneously, and always without confusion.

Was it astonishing that the French nation, just recovering from a debauch of irreligion and anarchy, should begin insensibly to yield to the charms of a wooer so seductive? For some time past the soldiers, as the Milan newspapers declared, had been a pack of tatterdemalions ever flying before the arms of his Majesty the Emperor; now they were victors, led by a second Caesar or Alexander, clothed, fed, and paid at the cost of the conquered. To ardent French republicans, and to the peoples of Italy, this phenomenal personage proclaimed that he had come to break the chains of captives, while almost in the same hour he wrote to the Directory that he was levying twenty million francs on the country, which, though exhausted by five years of war, was then the richest in the civilized world. Nor was the self-esteem of France and the Parisian passion for adornment forgotten. There began a course of plunder, if not in a direction at least in a measure hitherto unknown to the modern world—the plunder of scientific specimens, of manuscripts, of pictures, statues, and other works of art. It is difficult to fix the responsibility for this policy, which by the overwhelming majority of learned and intelligent Frenchmen was considered right, morally and legally. Nothing so flattered the national pride as the assemblage in Paris of art treasures from all nations, nothing so humiliated it as their dispersion at the behest of the conquering Allies. In the previous year a few art works had been taken from Holland and Belgium, and formal orders were given again and again by the Directory for stripping the Pope's galleries; but there is a persistent belief, founded, no doubt, in an inherent probability, that the whole comprehensive scheme of art spoliation had been suggested in the first place by Bonaparte, and prearranged between himself and the executive before his departure. At any rate, he asked and easily obtained from the government a commission of scholars and experts to scour the Italian cities; and soon untold treasures of art, letters, and science began to pour into the galleries, cabinets, and libraries of Paris. A few brave voices among the artists of the capital protested against the desecration; the nation at large was tipsy with delight, and would not listen. Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo, Correggio, Giorgione, and Paul Veronese, with all the lesser masters, were stowed in the holds of frigates and despatched by way of Toulon toward the new Rome; while Monge and Berthollet ransacked the scientific collections of Milan and Parma for their rarest specimens. Science, in fact, was to flourish on the banks of the Seine as never before or elsewhere; and the great investigators of Italy, forgetful of their native land, were to find a new citizenship in the world of knowledge at the capital of European liberties. Words like these, addressed to the astronomer Oriani, indicate that on Bonaparte's mind had dawned the notion of a universal federated state, to which national republics would be subordinate.

No scene in the history of warfare was more theatrical than the entry of the French into Milan. The pageant was arranged on the lines of a Roman triumph and the distances so calculated that Bonaparte was the one impressive figure. With his lean face and sharp Greek profile, his long, lank, unpowdered locks, his simple uniform, and awkward seat in the saddle, he looked like a new human type, neither angel nor devil but an inscrutable apparition from another sphere. To officers and men the voluptuous city extended wide its arms, and the shabby soldiery were incongruous figures where their entertainers were elegant and fastidious beyond what the guests had dreamed. With stern impartiality the liberator repressed all excess in his army, but immediately the question of contributions, billeting, indemnity, and fiscal organization was taken up, settled, and the necessary measures inaugurated. The rich began to hide their possessions and the burghers to cry out. Ere long there was opposition, first sullen, then active, especially in the suburban villages where the French were fiercely attacked. One of these, Binasco, was burned and sacked as an example to the rest and to the city. Order was restored and the inexorable process of seizures went on. Pavia bade defiance; the officials were threatened with death, many leading citizens were taken as hostages, and the place was pillaged for three days. "Such a lesson would set the people of Italy right." They did not need a second example, it was true, but the price of "liberation" was fearful.

Italian rebellion having been subdued, the French nation roused to enthusiasm, independent funds provided, and the Directory put in its place, Bonaparte was free to unfold and consummate his further plans. Before him was the territory of Venice, a state once vigorous and terrible, but now, as far as the country populations were concerned, an enfeebled and gentle ruler. With quick decision a French corps of observation was sent to seize Brescia and watch the Tyrolean passes. It was, of course, to the advantage of Austria that Venetian neutrality should not be violated, except by her own troops. But the French, having made a bold beginning of formal defiance, were quick to go further. Beaulieu had not hesitated on false pretenses to seize Peschiera, another Venetian town, which, by its situation at the outlet of Lake Garda, was of the utmost strategic value. He now stood confronting his pursuers on a strong line established, without reference to territorial boundaries, behind the whole course of the Mincio. Such was the situation to the north and east of the French army. Southeastward, on the swampy banks of the same river, near its junction with the Po, was Mantua. This city, which even under ordinary circumstances was an almost impregnable fortress, had been strengthened by an extraordinary garrison, while the surrounding lowlands were artificially inundated as a supreme measure of safety.

Bonaparte intended to hurl Beaulieu back, and seize the line of the Adige, far stronger than that of the Mincio for repelling an Austrian invasion from the north. What to him was the neutrality of a weak government, and what were the precepts of international law with no force behind it but a moral one? Austria, according to treaty, had the right to move her troops over two great military roads within Venetian jurisdiction, and her defeated armies had just used one of them for retreat. The victorious commander could scarcely be expected to pause in his pursuit for lack of a few lines of writing on a piece of stamped paper. Accordingly, by a simple feint, the Austrians were led to believe that his object was the seizure of Peschiera and the passes above Lake Garda; consequently, defying international law and violating their treaties, they massed themselves at that place to meet his attack. Then with a swift, forced march the French were concentrated not on the enemy's strong right, but on his weak center at Borghetto. Bonaparte's cavalry, hitherto badly mounted and timid, but now reorganized, were thrown forward for their easy task. Under Murat's command they dashed through, and, encouraged by their own brilliant successes, were thenceforward famous for efficiency. Bonaparte, with the main army, then hurried past Mantua as it lay behind its bulwarks of swamp-fever, and the Austrian force was cut in two. The right wing fled to the mountains; the left was virtually in a trap. Without any declaration of war against Venice, the French immediately occupied Verona, and Legnago a few days later; Peschiera was fortified, and Pizzighettone occupied as Brescia had been, while contributions of every sort were levied more ruthlessly even than on the Milanese. The mastery of these new positions isolated Mantua more completely than a formal investment would have done; but it was, nevertheless, considered wise to leave no loophole, and a few weeks later an army of eight thousand Frenchmen sat down in force before its gates.

It was certain that within a short time a powerful Austrian force would pour out from the Alpine passes to the north. Further advance into Venetian lands would therefore be ruin for the French. There was nothing left but the slow hours of a siege, for Mantua had become the decisive point. In the heats of summer this interval might well have been devoted to ease; but it was almost the busiest period of Bonaparte's life. According to the Directory's rejected plan for a division of command in Italy, the mission assigned to Kellermann had been to organize republics in Piedmont and in the Milanese, and then to defend the Tyrolean passes against an Austrian advance from the north. Bonaparte was to have moved southward along the shore to revolutionize Genoa, Tuscany, the Papal States, and Naples successively. The whole idea having been scornfully rejected by Bonaparte, the Directory had been forced by the brilliant successes of their general not merely to condone his disobedience, but actually to approve his policy. He now had the opportunity of justifying his foresight. Understanding, as the government did not, that Austria was their only redoubtable foe by land, the real bulwark of the whole Italian system, he had first shattered her power, at least for the time. The prop having been removed, the structure was toppling, and during this interval of waiting, it fell. His opportunity was made, his resolution ripe.

In front, Venice was at his mercy; behind him, guerrilla bands of so-called Barbets, formed in Genoese territory and equipped by disaffected fugitives, were threatening the lately conquered gateway from France where the Ligurian Alps and the Apennines meet. Bonaparte's first step was to impose a new arrangement upon the submissive Piedmont, whereby, to make assurance doubly sure, Alessandria was added to the list of fortresses in French hands; then, as his second measure, Murat and Lannes appeared before Genoa at the head of an armed force, with instructions first to seize and shoot the many offenders who had taken refuge in her territory after the risings in Lombardy, and then to threaten the Senate with further retaliatory measures, and command the instant dismissal of the imperial Austrian plenipotentiary. From Paris came orders to drive the English fleet out of the harbor of Leghorn, where, in spite of the treaty between Tuscany and France, there still were hostile arsenals and ships. It was done. Naples did not wait to see her territories invaded, but sued for mercy and was humbled, being forced to withdraw her navy from that of the coalition, and her cavalry from the Austrian army. For the moment the city of Rome was left in peace. The strength of papal dominion lay in Bologna, and the other legations beyond the Apennines, comprising many of the finest districts in Italy; and there a master-stroke was to be made.

On the throne of Modena was an Austrian archduke: his government was remorselessly shattered and virtually destroyed, the ransom being fixed at the ruinous sum of ten million francs with twenty of the best pictures in the principality. But on that of Parma was a Spanish prince with whose house France had made one treaty and hoped to make a much better one. The duke, therefore, was graciously allowed to purchase an armistice by an enormous but yet possible contribution of two million francs in money, together with provisions and horses in quantity. The famous St. Jerome of Correggio was among the twenty paintings seized in Modena. The archduke repeatedly offered to ransom it for one million francs, the amount at which its value was estimated, but his request was not granted. Next came Bologna and its surrounding territory. Such had been the tyranny of ecclesiastical control that the subjects of the Pope in that most ancient and famous seat of learning welcomed the French with unfeigned joy; and the fairest portion of the Papal States passed by its own desire from under the old yoke. The successor of St. Peter was glad to ransom his capital by a payment nominally of twenty-one million francs. In reality he had to surrender far more; for his galleries, like those of Modena, were stripped of their gems, while the funds seized in government offices, and levied in irregular ways, raised the total value forwarded to Paris to nearly double the nominal contribution. All this, Bonaparte explained, was but a beginning, the idleness of summer heats. "This armistice," he wrote to Paris on June twenty-first, 1796, "being concluded with the dog-star rather than with the papal army, my opinion is that you should be in no haste to make peace, so that in September, if all goes well in Germany and northern Italy, we can take possession of Rome."



In fact, this ingenious man was really practising moderation, as both he and the terrified Italians, considering their relative situations, understood it. Whatever had been the original arrangement with the directors, there was nothing they did not now expect and demand from Italy; they wrote requiring, in addition to all that had hitherto been mentioned, plunder of every kind from Leghorn; masts, cordage, and ship supplies from Genoa; horses, provisions, and forage from Milan; and contributions of jewels and precious stones from the reigning princes. As for the papal power, the French radicals would gladly have destroyed it. They had not forgotten that Basseville, a diplomatic agent of the republic, had been killed in the streets of Rome, and that no reparation had been made either by the punishment of the assassin or otherwise. The Pope, they declared, had been the real author of the terrible civil war fomented by the unyielding clergy, and waged with such fury in France. Moreover, the whole sentimental and philosophical movement of the century in France and elsewhere considered the ecclesiastical centralization and hierarchical tyranny of the papacy as a dangerous survival of absolutism.

But Bonaparte was wise in his generation. The contributions he levied throughout Italy were terrible; but they were such as she could bear, and still recuperate for further service in the same direction. The liberalism of Italy was, moreover, not the radicalism of France; and a submissive papacy was of incalculably greater value both there and elsewhere in Europe than an irreconcilable and fugitive one. The Pope, too, though weakened and humiliated as a temporal prince, was spared for further usefulness to his conqueror as a spiritual dignitary. Beyond all this was the enormous moral influence of a temperate and apparently impersonal policy. Bonaparte, though personally and by nature a passionate and wilful man, felt bound, as the representative of a great movement, to exercise self-restraint, taking pains to live simply, dress plainly, almost shabbily, and continuing by calm calculation to refuse the enormous bribes which began and continued to be offered to him personally by the rulers of Italy. His generals and the fiscal agents of the nation were all in his power, because it was by his connivance that they had grown enormously rich, he himself remaining comparatively poor, and for his station almost destitute. The army was his devoted servant; Italy and the world should see how different was his moderation from the rapacity of the republic and its tools, vandals like the commissioners Gareau and Salicetti.

Such was the "leisure" of one who to all outward appearance was but a man, and a very ordinary one. In the medals struck to commemorate this first portion of the Italian campaign, he is still the same slim youth, with lanky hair, that he was on his arrival in Paris the year previous. It was observed, however, that the old indifferent manner was somewhat emphasized, and consequently artificial; that the gaze was at least as direct and the eye as penetrating as ever; and that there was, half intentionally, half unconsciously, disseminated all about an atmosphere of peremptory command—but that was all. The incarnation of ambition was long since complete; its attendant imperious manner was suffered to develop but slowly. In Bonaparte was perceptible, as Victor Hugo says, the shadowy outline of Napoleon.



CHAPTER XXIX.

Bassano and Arcola.

The Austrian System — The Austrian Strategy — Castiglione — French Gains — Bassano — The French in the Tyrol — The French Defeated in Germany — Bonaparte and Alvinczy — Austrian Successes — Caldiero — First Battle of Arcola — Second Battle of Arcola.

[Sidenote: 1796.]

Meantime the end of July had come. The Emperor Francis had decided. At the risk of defeat on the Rhine he must retain his Italian possessions and prestige. He was still the Roman emperor, inheritor of an immemorial dignity, overlord of the fairest lands in the peninsula. Wurmser, considered by Austria her greatest general, had therefore been recalled to Vienna from the west, and sent at the head of twenty-five thousand fresh troops to collect the columns of Beaulieu's army, which was scattered in the Tyrol. This done, he was to assume the chief command, and advance to the relief of Mantua. The first part of his task was successfully completed, and already, according to the direction of the Aulic Council of the empire, and in pursuance of the same hitherto universal but vicious system of cabinet campaigning which Bonaparte had just repudiated, he was moving down from the Alps in three columns with a total force of about forty-seven thousand men. There were about fifteen thousand in the garrison of Mantua. Bonaparte was much weaker, having only forty-two thousand, and of these some eight thousand were occupied in the siege of that place. Wurmser was a master of the old school, working like an automaton under the hand of his government, and commanding according to well-worn precept his well-equipped battalions, every soldier of which was a recruit so costly that destructive battles were made as infrequent as possible, because to fight many meant financial ruin. In consequence, like all the best generals of his class, he made war as far as possible a series of manoeuvers. Opposed to him was an emancipated genius with neither directors nor public council to hamper him. In the tradition of the Revolution, as in the mind of Frederick the Great, war was no game, but a bloody decision, and the quicker the conclusion was tried the better. The national conscription, under the hands of Dubois de Crance, had secured men in unlimited numbers at the least expense; while Carnot's organization had made possible the quick handling of troops in large mass by simplifying the machinery. Bonaparte was about to show what could be done in the way of using the weapon which had been put into his hands.

The possession of Mantua was decisive of Italian destiny, for its holder could command a kind of overlordship in every little Italian state. If Bonaparte should take and keep it, Austria would be virtually banished from Italy, and her prestige destroyed. She must, therefore, relieve it, or lose not only her power in the peninsula, but her rank in Europe. To this end, and according to the established rules of strategy, the Austrians advanced from the mountains in three divisions against the French line, which stretched from Brescia past Peschiera, at the head of the Mincio, and through Verona to Legnago on the Adige. Two of these armies were to march respectively down the east and west banks of Lake Garda, and, flanking the inferior forces of the French on both sides, surround and capture them. The other division was on the Adige in front of Verona, ready to relieve Mantua. Between that river and the lake rises the stately mass of Monte Baldo, abrupt on its eastern, more gentle on its western slope. This latter, as affording some space for manoeuvers, was really the key to the passage. Such was the first onset of the Austrians down this line that the French outposts at Lonato and Rivoli were driven in, and for a time it seemed as if there would be a general rout. But the French stood firm, and checked any further advance. For a day Bonaparte and Wurmser stood confronting each other. In the mean time, however, the left Austrian column was pouring down toward Verona, while the right, under Quasdanowich, had already captured Brescia, seized the highway to Milan, and cut off the French retreat. This move in Wurmser's plan was so far entirely successful, and for a moment it seemed as if the sequel would be equally so. The situation of his opponents was desperate.

In this crisis occurred the first of those curious scenes which recur at intervals in Bonaparte's life. Some, and those eye-witnesses, have attributed them to genuine panic. His first measure was to despatch flying adjutants, ten in number, to concentrate his scattered forces at the critical point, south of Lake Garda. His genius decided that victory on the field was far more fruitful than the holding in check of a garrison. Accordingly he ordered Serurier to raise the siege of Mantua, and his siege-guns to be spiked and withdrawn. The division thus rendered available he at once despatched for field operations toward Brescia. But its numbers were so few as scarcely to relieve the situation. Accordingly a council of war was summoned to decide whether the army should stand and fight, or retreat for further concentration. The commander-in-chief was apparently much excited, and according to Augereau's account advised the latter course. The enemy being between the French and the Adda, no other line was open but that southward through the low country, over the Po; and to follow that implied something akin to a disorderly rout. Nevertheless, all the generals were in favor of this suggestion except one, the fiery hotspur who tells the tale, who disdained the notion of retreat on any line, and flung out of the room in scorn. Bonaparte walked the floor until late in the small hours; finally he appeared to have accepted Augereau's advice, and gave orders for battle. But the opening movements were badly executed. Bonaparte seemed to feel that the omens were unfavorable, and again the generals were summoned. Augereau opened the meeting with a theatrical and declamatory but earnest speech, encouraging his comrades and urging the expediency of a battle. This time it was Bonaparte who fled, apparently in despair, leaving the chief command, and with it the responsibility, to the daring Augereau, by whose enthusiasm, as he no doubt saw, the other generals had been affected. The hazardous enterprise succeeded, and on the very plan already adopted. Augereau gave the orders, and with swift concentration every available man was hurled against the Austrian column under Quasdanowich at Lonato. This much may be true; casting aside Augereau's inconsistencies and braggadocio, it is possible but unlikely.

The result was an easy victory, the enemy was driven back to a safe distance, and Brescia was evacuated on August fourth, the defeated columns retreating behind Lake Garda to join Wurmser on the other side. Like the regular return of the pendulum, the French moved back again, and confronted the Austrian center that very night, but now with every company in line and Bonaparte at their head. A portion of the enemy, about twenty-five thousand in number, had reached Lonato, hastening to the support of Quasdanowich. Wurmser had lost a day before Mantua. A second time the hurrying French engaged their foe almost on the same field. A second time they were easily victorious. In fact, so terrible was this second defeat that the scattered bands of Austrians wandered aimlessly about in ignorance of their way. One of them, four thousand strong, reaching Lonato, found it almost abandoned by the French, Bonaparte and his staff with but twelve hundred men being left behind. A herald, blindfolded, as was then the custom, was at once despatched to summon the French commander to surrender to the superior Austrian force. The available remnant of the victorious army quickly gathered, and the messenger was introduced in the midst of them. As the bandage was taken from his eyes, dazzled by the light falling on hundreds of brilliant uniforms, the imperious voice of his great enemy was heard commanding him to return and say to his leader that it was a personal insult to speak of surrender to the French army, and that it was he who must immediately yield himself and his division. The bold scheme was successful, and to the ten thousand previously killed, wounded, and captured by the conquerors four thousand prisoners were added. Next morning Wurmser advanced, and with his right resting on Lake Garda offered battle. The decisive fight occurred in the center of his long, weak line at Castiglione, where some fifteen thousand Austrians had happened to make a stand, without orders and so without assurance of support. Again the French position was so weak as apparently to throw Bonaparte into a panic, and again, according to the memoirs of General Landrieux, Augereau's fire and dash prevailed to have the battle joined, while Bonaparte withdrew in a sulky pet. Whatever the truth, the attack was made. Before evening the sharp struggle was over. This affair of August fifth was always referred to by Napoleon as the true battle of Castiglione. Two days later Wurmser, who had fondly hoped that Mantua was his and the French in full retreat, brought up a straggling line of twenty-five thousand men. These were easily routed by Bonaparte in a series of clever manoeuvers on the seventh and without much bloodshed. That night saw the utter rout of Wurmser and the Austrians in full retreat towards the Tyrol. Had the great risk of these few days been determined against the French, who would have been to blame but the madcap Augereau? As things turned out, whose was the glory but Bonaparte's? This panic, at least, appears to have been carefully calculated and cleverly feigned. A week later the French lines were again closed before Mantua, which, though not invested, was at least blockaded. The fortress had been revictualed and regarrisoned, while the besiegers had been compelled to destroy their own train to prevent its capture by the enemy. But France was mistress of the Mincio and the Adige, with a total loss of about ten thousand men; while Austria had lost about twenty thousand, and was standing by a forlorn hope. Both armies were exhausted, as yet the great stake was not won. If Austrian warfare was utterly discredited, the irregular, disjointed, uncertain French warfare of the past week had not enhanced French glory.

In the shortest possible period new troops were under way both from Vienna and from Paris. With those from the Austrian capital came positive instructions to Wurmser that in any case he should again advance toward Mantua. In obedience to this command of the Emperor, a division of the army, twenty thousand strong, under Davidowich, was left in the Austrian Tyrol at Roveredo, near Trent, to stop the advance of the French, who, with their reinforcements, were pressing forward through the pass as if to join Moreau, who had successfully advanced and would be in Munich. The main Austrian army, under Wurmser, moved over into the valley of the Brenta, and pushed on toward Mantua. If he should decide to turn westward against the French, the reserve could descend the valley of the Adige to his assistance. But Bonaparte did not intend either to pass by and leave open the way southward, or to be shut up in the valleys of the Tyrol. With a quick surge, Davidowich was first defeated at Roveredo, and then driven far behind Trent into the higher valleys. The victor delayed only to issue a proclamation giving autonomy to the Tyrolese, under French protection; but the ungrateful peasantry preferred the autonomy they already enjoyed, and fortified their precipitous passes for resistance. Turning quickly into the Brenta valley, Bonaparte, by a forced march of two days, overtook Wurmser's advance-guard unawares at Primolano, and captured it; the next day, September eighth, Massena cut in two and completely defeated the main army at Bassano. Part of those who escaped retreated into Friuli, toward Vienna. There was nothing left for the men under Wurmser's personal command but to throw themselves, if possible, into Mantua. With these, some sixteen thousand men in all, the veteran general forced a way, by a series of most brilliant movements, past the flank of the blockading French lines, where he made a gallant stand first at St. Georges and then at Favorita. But he was driven from both positions and forced to find a refuge in the famous fortress.

The lightning-like rapidity of these operations completed the demoralization of the Austrian troops. The fortified defiles and cliffs of the Tyrol fell before the French attacks as easily as their breastworks in the plains. Wurmser had twenty-six thousand men in Mantua; but from fear and fever half of them were in the hospitals.

Meanwhile, disaster had overtaken the French arms in the North. Jourdan had crossed the Rhine at Duesseldorf, as Moreau had at Kehl. They had each about seventy-five thousand men, while the army of the Austrian archduke Charles had been reduced by Wurmser's departure for Italy to a number far less. According to the plan of the Directory, these two French armies were to advance on parallel lines south of the neutral zone through Germany, and to join Bonaparte across the Tyrol for the advance to Vienna. Moreau defeated the Austrians, and reached Munich without a check. Wuertemberg and Baden made peace with the French republic on its own terms, and Saxony, recalling its forces from the coalition, declared itself neutral, as Prussia had done. But Jourdan, having seized Wuerzburg and won the battle of Altenkirchen, was met on his way to Ratisbon and Neumarkt, and thoroughly beaten, by the same young Archduke Charles, who had acquired experience and learned wisdom in his defeat by Moreau. Both French armies were thus thrown back upon the Rhine, and there could be no further hope of carrying out the original plan. In this way the attention of the world was concentrated on the victorious Army of Italy and its young commander, whose importance was further enhanced by the fulfilment of his own prophecy that the fate of Europe hung on the decision of his campaign in Italy.

This was not an empty boast. The stubborn determination of Francis to reconquer Italy had given new courage to the conservatives of central and southern Italy, who did not conceal their resolve nor their preparations to annihilate French power and influence within the borders of Modena, Rome, and Naples. Bonaparte was thus enabled to take another momentous step in emancipating himself from the Directory. So far he had asserted and confirmed his military and diplomatic independence: he now boldly assumed political supremacy. Though at times he expressed a low opinion of the Italians, yet he recognized their higher qualities. In Modena, Reggio, Bologna, and Ferrara were thousands who understood the significance of the dawning epoch. To these he paid visits and to their leaders he gave, during the short interval at his command, hearty approbation for their resistance to the reactionaries. Forestalling the Directory, he declared Modena and Reggio to be under French protection. This daring procedure assured his ascendancy with all Italian liberals and rendered sure and certain the prosecution of his campaign to the bitter end. Bologna and Ferrara, having surrendered to French protection on June twenty-third, were soon in open revolt against the papal influences which were reviving: and even in distant Naples the liberals took heart once more.

The glory of the imperial arms having been brilliantly vindicated in the north, the government at Vienna naturally thought it not impossible to relieve Mantua, and restore Austrian prestige in the south. Every effort was to be made. The Tyrolese sharp-shooters were called out, large numbers of raw recruits were gathered in Illyria and Croatia, while a few veterans were taken from the forces of the Archduke Charles. When these were collected, Quasdanowich found himself in Friuli with upward of thirty-five thousand men, while Davidowich in the Tyrol had eighteen thousand. The chief command of both armies was assigned to Alvinczy, an experienced but aged general, one of the same stock as that to which Wurmser belonged. About October first, the two forces moved simultaneously, one down the Adige, the other down the Piave, to unite before Vicenza, and proceed to the relief of Mantua. For the fourth time Bonaparte was to fight the same battle, on the same field, for the same object, with the same inferiority of numbers. His situation, however was a trifle better than it had been, for several veteran battalions which were no longer needed in Vendee had arrived from the Army of the West; his own soldiers were also well equipped and enthusiastic. He wrote to the Directory, on October first, that he had thirty thousand effectives; but he probably had more, for it is scarcely possible that, as he said, eighteen thousand were in the hospitals. The populations around and behind him were, moreover, losing faith in Austria, and growing well disposed toward France. Many of his garrisons were, therefore, called in; and deducting eight thousand men destined for the siege of Mantua, he still had an army of nearly forty thousand men wherewith to meet the Austrians. There was, of course, some disaffection among his generals. Augereau was vainglorious and bitter, Massena felt that he had not received his due meed of praise for Bassano, and both had sympathizers even in the ranks. This was inevitable, considering Bonaparte's policy and system, and somewhat interfered with the efficiency of his work.

While the balance was thus on the whole in favor of the French, yet this fourth division of the campaign opened with disaster to them. In order to prevent the union of his enemy's two armies, Bonaparte ordered Vaubois, who had been left above Trent to guard the French conquests in the Tyrol, to attack Davidowich. The result was a rout, and Vaubois was compelled to abandon one strong position after another,—first Trent, then Roveredo,—until finally he felt able to make a stand on the right bank of the Adige at Rivoli, which commands the southern slopes of Monte Baldo. The other bank was in Austrian hands, and Davidowich could have debouched safely into the plain. This result was largely due to the clever mountain warfare of the Tyrolese militia. Meantime Massena had moved from Bassano up the Piave to observe Alvinczy. Augereau was at Verona. On November fourth, Alvinczy advanced and occupied Bassano, compelling Massena to retreat before his superior force. Bonaparte, determined not to permit a junction of the two Austrian armies, moved with Augereau's division to reinforce Massena and drive Alvinczy back into the valley of the Piave. Augereau fought all day on the sixth at Bassano, Massena at Citadella. This first encounter was indecisive; but news of Vaubois's defeat having arrived, the French thought it best to retreat on the following day. There was not now a single obstacle to the union of the two Austrian armies; and on November ninth, Alvinczy started for Verona, where the French had halted on the eighth. It looked as if Bonaparte would be attacked on both flanks at once, and thus overwhelmed.

Verona lies on both banks of the river Adige, which is spanned by several bridges; but the heart of the town is on the right. The remains of Vaubois's army having been rallied at Rivoli, some miles further up on that bank, Bonaparte made all possible use of the stream as a natural fortification, and concentrated the remainder of his forces on the same side. Alvinczy came up and occupied Caldiero, situated on a gentle rise of the other shore to the south of east; but the French division at Rivoli, which, by Bonaparte's drastic methods, had been thoroughly shamed, and was now thirsty for revenge, held Davidowich in check. He had remained some distance farther back to the north, where it was expected he would cross and come down on the left bank. To prevent this a fierce onslaught was made against Alvinczy's position on November twelfth, by Massena's corps. It was entirely unsuccessful, and the French were repulsed with the serious loss of three thousand men. Bonaparte's position was now even more critical than it had been at Castiglione; he had to contend with two new Austrian armies, one on each flank, and Wurmser with a third stood ready to sally out of Mantua in his rear. If there should be even partial cooeperation between the Austrian leaders, he must retreat. But he felt sure there would be no cooeperation whatsoever. From the force in Verona and that before Mantua twenty thousand men were gathered to descend the course of the Adige into the swampy lands about Ronco, where a crossing was to be made and Alvinczy caught, if possible, at Villanova, on his left flank. This turning manoeuver, though highly dangerous, was fairly successful, and is considered by critics among the finest in this or any other of Bonaparte's campaigns. Amid these swamps, ditches, and dikes the methodical Austrians, aiming to carry strong positions by one fierce onset, were brought into the greatest disadvantage before the new tactics of swift movement in open columns, which were difficult to assail. By a feint of retreat to the westward the French army had left Verona without attracting attention, but by a swift countermarch it reached Ronco on the morning of November fifteenth, crossed in safety, and turned back to flank the Austrian position.

The first stand of the enemy was made at Arcola, where a short, narrow bridge connects the high dikes which regulate the sluggish stream of the little river Alpon, a tributary of the Adige on its left bank. This bridge was defended by two battalions of Croatian recruits, whose commander, Colonel Brigido, had placed a pair of field-pieces so as to enfilade it. The French had been advancing in three columns by as many causeways, the central one of which led to the bridge. The first attempt to cross was repulsed by the deadly fire which the Croats poured in from their sheltered position. Augereau, with his picked corps, fared no better in a second charge led by himself bearing the standard; and, in a third disastrous rush, Bonaparte, who had caught up the standard and planted it on the bridge with his own hand, was himself swept back into a quagmire, where he would have perished but for a fourth return of the grenadiers, who drove back the pursuing Austrians, and pulled their commander from the swamp. Fired by his undaunted courage, the gallant lines were formed once more. At that moment another French corps passed over lower down by pontoons, and the Austrians becoming disorganized, in spite of the large reinforcements which had come up under Alvinczy, the last charge on the bridge was successful. With the capture of Arcola the French turned their enemy's rear, and cut off not only his artillery, but his reserves in the valley of the Brenta. The advantage, however, was completely destroyed by the masterly retreat of Alvinczy from his position at Caldiero, effected by other causeways and another bridge further north, which the French had not been able to secure in time.

Bonaparte quickly withdrew to Ronco, and recrossed the Adige to meet an attack which he supposed Davidowich, having possibly forced Vaubois's position, would then certainly make. But that general was still in his old place, and gave no signs of activity. This movement misled Alvinczy, who, thinking the French had started from Mantua, returned by way of Arcola to pursue them. Again the French commander led his forces across the Adige into the swampy lowlands. His enemy had not forgotten the desperate fight at the bridge, and was timid; and besides, in his close formation, he was on such ground no match for the open ranks of the French. Retiring without any real resistance as far as Arcola, the Austrians made their stand a second time in that red-walled burg. Bonaparte could not well afford another direct attack, with its attendant losses, and strove to turn the position by fording the Alpon where it flows into the Adige. He failed, and withdrew once more to Ronco, the second day remaining indecisive. On the morning of the seventeenth, however, with undiminished fertility of resource, a new plan was adopted and successfully carried out. One of the pontoons on the Adige sank, and a body of Austrians charged the small division stationed on the left bank to guard it, in the hope of destroying the remainder of the bridge. They were repulsed and driven back toward the marshes with which they meant to cover their flank. The garrisons of both Arcola and Porcil, a neighboring hamlet, were seriously weakened by the detention of this force. Two French divisions were promptly despatched to make use of that advantage, while at the same time an ambuscade was laid among the pollard willows which lined the ditches beyond the retreating Austrians. At an opportune moment the ambuscade unmasked, and by a terrible fire drove three thousand of the Croatian recruits into the marsh, where most of them were drowned or shot. Advancing then beyond the Alpon by a bridge built during the previous night, Bonaparte gave battle on the high ground to an enemy whose numbers were now, as he calculated, reduced to a comparative equality with his own. The Austrians made a vigorous resistance; but such was their credulity as to anything their enemy might do, that a simple stratagem of the French made them believe that their left was turned by a division, when in reality but twenty-five men had been sent to ride around behind the swamps and blow their bugles. Being simultaneously attacked on the front of the same wing by Augereau, they drew off at last in good order toward Montebello. Thence Alvinczy slowly retreated into the valley of the Brenta. The French returned to Verona. Davidowich, ignorant of all that had occurred, now finally dislodged Vaubois; but, finding before him Massena with his division where he had expected Alvinczy and a great Austrian army, he discreetly withdrew into the Tyrol. It was not until November twenty-third, long after the departure of both his colleagues, that Wurmser made a brilliant but of course ineffectual sally from Mantua. The French were so exhausted, and the Austrians so decimated and scattered, that by tacit consent hostilities were intermitted for nearly two months.



CHAPTER XXX.

Bonaparte's Imperious Spirit.

Bonaparte's Transformation — Military Genius — Powers and Principles — Theory and Conduct — Political Activity — Purposes for Italy — Private Correspondence — Treatment of the Italian Powers — Antagonism to the Directory — The Task Before Him — Masked Dictator.

[Sidenote: 1796.]

During the two months between the middle of November, 1796, and the middle of January, 1797, there was a marked change in Bonaparte's character and conduct. After Arcola he appeared as a man very different from the novice he had been before Montenotte. Twice his fortunes had hung by a single hair, having been rescued by the desperate bravery of Rampon and his soldiers at Monte Legino, and again by Augereau's daring at Lonato; twice he had barely escaped being a prisoner, once at Valeggio, once at Lonato; twice his life had been spared in the heat of battle as if by a miracle, once at Lodi, once again at Arcola. These facts had apparently left a deep impression on his mind, for they were turned to the best account in making good a new step in social advancement. So far he had been as adventurous as the greatest daredevil among the subalterns, staking his life in every new venture; hereafter he seemed to appreciate his own value, and to calculate not only the imperiling of his life, but the intimacy of his conversation, with nice adaptation to some great result. Gradually and informally a kind of body-guard was organized, which, as the idea grew familiar, was skilfully developed into a picked corps, the best officers and finest soldiers being made to feel honored in its membership. The constant attendance of such men necessarily secluded the general-in-chief from those colleagues who had hitherto been familiar comrades. Something in the nature of formal etiquette once established, it was easy to extend its rules and confirm them. The generals were thus separated further and further from their superior, and before the new year they had insensibly adopted habits of address which displayed a high outward respect, and virtually terminated all comradeship with one who had so recently been merely the first among equals. Bonaparte's innate tendency to command was under such circumstances hardened into a habit of imperious dictation. In view of what had been accomplished, it would have been impossible, even for the most stubborn democrat, to check the process. Not one of Bonaparte's principles had failed to secure triumphant vindication.

In later years Napoleon himself believed, and subsequent criticism has confirmed his opinion, that the Italian campaign, taken as a whole, was his greatest. The revolution of any public system, social, political, or military, is always a gigantic task. It was nothing less than this which Bonaparte had wrought, not in one, but in all three spheres, during the summer and autumn of 1796. The changes, like those of most revolutions, were changes of emphasis and degree in the application of principles already divined. "Divide and conquer" was an old maxim; it was a novelty to see it applied in warfare and politics as Bonaparte applied it in Italy. It has been remarked that the essential difference between Napoleon and Frederick the Great was that the latter had not ten thousand men a month to kill. The notion that war should be short and terrible had, indeed, been clear to the great Prussian; Carnot and the times afforded the opportunity for its conclusive demonstration by the genius of the greater Corsican. Concentration of besiegers to breach the walls of a town was nothing new; but the triumphant application of the same principle to an opposing line of troops, though well known to Julius Caesar, had been forgotten, and its revival was Napoleon's masterpiece. The martinets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had so exaggerated the formalities of war that the relation of armies to the fighting-ground had been little studied and well-nigh forgotten; the use of the map and the compass, the study of reliefs and profiles in topography, produced in Bonaparte's hands results that seemed to duller minds nothing short of miraculous. One of these was to oppose the old-school rigid formation of troops by any formation more or less open and irregular according to circumstances, but always the kind best suited to the character of the seat of war. The first two days at Arcola were the triumphant vindication of this concept. Finally, there was a fascination for the French soldiers in the primitive savagery of their general, which, though partly concealed, and somewhat held in by training, nevertheless was willing that the spoils of their conquest should be devoted to making the victorious contestants opulent; which scorned the limitations of human powers in himself and them, and thus accomplished feats of strength and stratagem which gratified to satiety that love for the uncommon, the ideal, and the great which is inherent in the spirit of their nation. In the successful combination and evolution of all these elements there was a grandeur which Bonaparte and every soldier of his army appreciated at its full value.

The military side of Bonaparte's genius is ordinarily considered the strongest. Judged by what is easily visible in the way of immediate consequences and permanent results, this appears to be true; and yet it was only one of many sides. Next in importance, if not equal to it, was his activity in politics and diplomacy. It is easy to call names, to stigmatize the peoples of Italy, all the nations even of western Europe, as corrupt and enervated, to laugh at their politics as antiquated, and to brand their rulers as incapable fools. An ordinary man can, by the assistance of the knowledge, education, and insight acquired by the experience of his race through an additional century, turn and show how commonplace was the person who toppled over such an old rotten structure. This is the method of Napoleon's detractors, except when, in addition, they first magnify his wickedness, and then further distort the proportion by viewing his fine powers through the other end of the glass. We all know how easy great things are when once they have been accomplished, how simple the key to a mystery when once it has been revealed. Morally considered, Bonaparte was a child of nature, born to a mean estate, buffeted by a cruel and remorseless society, driven in youth to every shift for self-preservation, compelled to fight an unregenerate world with its own weapons. He had not been changed in the flash of a gun. Elevation to reputation and power did not diminish the duplicity of his character; on the contrary, it possibly intensified it. Certainly the fierce light which began to beat upon him brought it into greater prominence. Truth, honor, unselfishness are theoretically the virtues of all philosophy; practically they are the virtues of Christian men in Christian society. Where should the scion of a Corsican stock, ignorant of moral or religious sentiment, thrown into the atmosphere and surroundings of the French Revolution, learn to practise them?

Such considerations are indispensable in the observation of Bonaparte's progress as a politician. His first settlement with the various peoples of central Italy was, as he had declared, only provisional. The uncertain status created by it was momentarily not unwelcome to the Directory. Their policy was to destroy existing institutions, and leave order to evolve itself from the chaos as best it could. Doctrinaires as they were, they meant to destroy absolute monarchy in Italy, as everywhere else, if possible, and then to stop, leaving the liberated peoples to their own devices. Some fondly believed that out of anarchy would arise, in accordance with "the law of nature," a pure democracy; while others had the same faith that the result would be constitutional monarchy. Moreover, things appear simpler in the perspective of distance than they do near at hand. The sincerity of Bonaparte's republicanism was like the sincerity of his conduct—an affair of time and place, a consistency with conditions and not with abstractions. He knew the Italian mob, and faithfully described it in his letters as dull, ignorant, and unreliable, without preparation or fitness for self-government. He was willing to establish the forms of constitutional administration; but in spite of hearty support from many disciples of the Revolution, he found those forms likely, if not certain, to crumble under their own weight, and was convinced that the real sovereignty must for years to come reside in a strong protectorate of some kind. It appeared to him a necessity of war that these peoples should relieve the destitution of the French treasury and army, a necessity of circumstances that France should be restored to vigor and health by laying tribute on their treasures of art and science, as on those of all the world, and a necessity of political science that artificial boundaries should be destroyed, as they had been in France, to produce the homogeneity of condition essential to national or administrative unity.

The Italians themselves understood neither the policy of the French executive nor that of their conqueror. The transitional position in which the latter had left them produced great uneasiness. The terrified local authorities asked nothing better than to be left as they were, with a view to profiting by the event, whatever it might be. After every Austrian success there were numerous local revolts, which the French garrison commanders suppressed with severity. Provisional governments soon come to the end of their usefulness, and the enemies of France began to take advantage of the disorder in order to undo what had been done. The English, for example, had seized Porto Ferrajo in place of Leghorn; the Pope had gone further, and, in spite of the armistice, was assembling an army for the recovery of Bologna, Ferrara, and his other lost legations. Thus it happened that in the intervals of the most laborious military operations, a political activity, both comprehensive and feverish, kept pace in Bonaparte's mind with that which was needed to regulate his campaigning.

At the very outset there was developed an antagonism between the notions of the Directory and Bonaparte's interests. The latter observed all the forms of consulting his superiors, but acted without the slightest reference to their instructions, often even before they could receive his despatches. Both he and they knew the weakness of the French government, and the inherent absurdity of the situation. The story of French conquest in Italy might be told exactly as if the invading general were acting solely on his own responsibility. In his proclamations to the Italians was one language; in his letters to the executive, another; in a few confidential family communications, still another; in his own heart, the same old idea of using each day as it came to advance his own fortunes. As far as he had any love of country, it was expended on France, and what we may call his principles were conceptions derived from the Revolution; but somehow the best interests of France and the safety of revolutionary doctrine were every day more involved in the pacification of Italy, in the humiliation of Austria, and in the supremacy of the army. There was only one man who could secure all three; could give consistency to the flaccid and visionary policy of the Directory; could repress the frightful robberies of its civil agents in Italy; could with any show of reason humble Italy with one hand, and then with the other rouse her to wholesome energy; could enrich and glorify France while crushing out, as no royal dynasty had ever been able to do, the haughty rivalry of the Hapsburgs.

These purposes made Bonaparte the most gentle and conciliatory of men in some directions; in others they developed and hardened his imperiousness. His correspondence mirrors both his mildness and his arbitrariness. His letters to the Directory abound in praise of his officers and men, accompanied by demands for the promotion of those who had performed distinguished services. Writing to General Clarke on November nineteenth, 1796, from Verona, he says, in words full of pathos: "Your nephew Elliot was killed on the battle-field of Arcola. This youth had made himself familiar with arms; several times he had marched at the head of columns; he would one day have been an estimable officer. He died with glory, in the face of the foe; he did not suffer for a moment. What reasonable man would not envy such a death? Who is he that in the vicissitudes of life would not agree to leave in such a way a world so often worthy of contempt? What one of us has not a hundred times regretted that he could not thus be withdrawn from the powerful effects of calumny, of envy, and of all the hateful passions that seem almost entirely to control human conduct?" Perhaps these few words to the widow of one of his late officers are even finer: "Muiron died at my side on the late battle-field of Arcola. You have lost a husband that was dear to you; I, a friend to whom I have long been attached: but the country loses more than us both in the death of an officer distinguished no less by his talents than by his rare courage. If I can be of service in anything to you or his child, I pray you count altogether upon me." That was all; but it was enough. With the ripening of character, and under the responsibilities of life, an individual style had come at last. It is martial and terse almost to affectation, defying translation, and perfectly reflecting the character of its writer.

But the hours when the general-in-chief was war-worn, weary, tender, and subject to human regrets like other men, were not those which he revealed to the world. He was peremptory, and sometimes even peevish, with the French executive after he had them in his hand; with Italy he assumed a parental role, meting out chastisement and reward as best suited his purpose. A definite treaty of peace had been made with Sardinia, and that power, though weak and maimed, was going its own way. The Transpadane Republic, which he had begun to organize as soon as he entered Milan, was carefully cherished and guided in its artificial existence; but the people, whether or not they were fit, had no chance to exercise any real independence under the shadow of such a power. It was, moreover, not the power of France; for, by special order of Bonaparte, the civil agents of the Directory were subordinated to the military commanders, ostensibly because the former were so rapacious. Lombardy in this way became his very own. Rome had made the armistice of Bologna merely to gain time, and in the hope of eventual disaster to French arms. A pretext for the resumption of hostilities was easily found by her in a foolish command, issued from Paris, that the Pope should at length recognize as regular those of the clergy who had sworn allegiance to the successive constitutions adopted under the republic, and withdraw all his proclamations against those who had observed their oaths and conformed. The Pontiff, relying on the final success of Austria, had virtually broken off negotiations. Bonaparte informed the French agent in Rome that he must do anything to gain time, anything to deceive the "old fox"; in a favorable moment he expected to pounce upon Rome, and avenge the national honor. During the interval Naples also had become refractory; refusing a tribute demanded by the Directory, she was not only collecting soldiers, like the Pope, but actually had some regiments in marching order. Venice, asserting her neutrality, was growing more and more bitter at the constant violations of her territory. Mantua was still a defiant fortress, and in this crisis nothing was left but to revive French credit where the peoples were best disposed and their old rulers weakest.

Accordingly, Bonaparte went through the form of consulting the Directory as to a plan of procedure, and then, without waiting for an answer from them, and without the consent of those most deeply interested, broke the armistice with Modena on the pretext that five hundred thousand francs of ransom money were yet unpaid, and drove the duke from his throne. This duchy was the nucleus about which was to be constituted the Cispadane Republic: in conjunction with its inhabitants, those of Reggio, Bologna, and Ferrara were invited to form a free government under that name. There had at least been a pretext for erecting the Milanese into the Transpadane Republic—that of driving an invader from its soil. This time there was no pretext of that kind, and the Directory opposed so bold an act regarding these lands, being uneasy about public opinion in regard to it. They hoped the war would soon be ended, and were verging to the opinion that their armies must before long leave the Italians to their own devices. The conduct of their general pointed, however, in the opposite direction; he forced the native liberals of the district to take the necessary steps toward organizing the new state so rapidly that the Directory found itself compelled to yield. It is possible, but not likely, that, as has been charged, Bonaparte really intended to bring about what actually happened, the continued dependence on the French republic of a lot of artificial governments. The uninterrupted meddling of France in the affairs of the Italians destroyed in the end all her influence, and made them hate her dominion, which masqueraded as liberalism, even more than they had hated the open but mild tyranny of those royal scions of foreign stocks recently dismissed from their thrones. During these months there is in Bonaparte's correspondence a somewhat theatrical iteration of devotion to France and republican principles, but his first care was for his army and the success of his campaign. He behaved as any general solicitous for the strength of his positions on foreign soil would have done, his ruses taking the form of constantly repeating the political shibboleths then used in France. Soon afterward Naples made her peace; an insurrection in Corsica against English rule enabled France to seize that island once more; and Genoa entered into a formal alliance with the Directory.