The Campaigns of Napoleon

by David G Chandler

  Once he had restored some semblance of order to the army, Würmser set out to accomplish his mission, which was to fight his way through to relieve Mantua and thereafter drive the French from North Italy. His army slowly advanced in three separate corps, one down each side of Lake Garda, and a third further away to the east down the Brenta valley. On July 29 the head of his central column, moving down the Adige, made contact with Massena’s outposts, driving them back and compelling the French general to retreat beyond the River Mincio, abandoning Verona. “I have never seen,” he wrote, “the Austrians fight with such a rage; they were all drunk with brandy.” Fortunately for the French, Quasdanovitch, moving down the west shore of Lake Garda, made slightly slower progress, but nevertheless he captured Salo before being checked by Augereau at Brescia on August 1. The situation became sufficiently grave for Bonaparte to order the concentration of every available man to reinforce the crumbling northern front and the abandonment of the siege of Mantua, even though this move would leave the garrison free to leave their defenses and possibly operate against his rear. Not surprisingly, Bonaparte was despondent for a time, and even hesitant. On July 30 he wrote: “Perhaps we shall recover ourselves … but I must take serious measures for a defeat.” And the next day: “The enemy have broken through our line in three places…. He is master of Corona and Rivoli, both important positions; Massena and Joubert have been forced to give ground before superior forces; Sauret has abandoned Salo … you can see that our communications with Milan and Verona are cut.”18 Headquarters were forced to evacuate Brescia, and the military hospitals were moved back to Cremona.

  The next six days were filled with crises; the chief danger was that Würmser and Quasdanovitch would succeed in linking their forces south of Lake Garda, an event that would afford the Austrians a commanding numerical superiority. However, Würmser was not able to make the most of his initial advantage, for although he planned to crush the French between his converging forces, he failed to coordinate the activities of his two pincers and became obsessed with the need to relieve Mantua, which he erroneously believed to be on the point of surrender. Consequently Bonaparte was given just sufficient time to make the greatest possible use of his central position and narrowly defeat each wing of the Austrian army in turn. After a series of preliminary operations he turned his main attention against Quasdanovitch’s 18,000 on August 3. There followed the so-called Battle of First Lonato which was, in fact, a series of bitterly contested actions in which Massena fought off Quasdanovitch while Augereau covered himself with glory against Würmser’s advance guard near Castiglione. The Austrian commander in chief had wasted three vital days in the neighborhood of Valeggio, from July 30 to August 2, making sure that the siege of Mantua had indeed been raised, and this delay gave Bonaparte time to maneuver Augereau’s division into a position covering Massena’s rear while the latter fought it out with Quasdanovitch. Consequently, when Würmser at last attempted to march to the support of his subordinate on the 3rd, he found Augereau across his path, and, although the Austrians fought extremely fiercely, as Graham testifies, their advance was halted. In later years Napoleon never forgot Augereau’s behavior on this occasion; the Emperor would round on the marshal’s many detractors and exclaim: “Ah! but remember what he did for us at Castiglione.”19 The passage of time also convinced Augereau that he was the savior of the whole campaign. Always a braggart, he recorded a fanciful tale in 1814 of how he, alone of all the generals, braced his young commander’s shaken nerve, and persuaded him to fight it out at Lonato and Castiglione when everybody else wished to retreat south of the Po. This was a gross exaggeration of the part he played, but there is no doubt that his staunch fight heartened the army and gave Bonaparte time to repulse the westernmost Austrian column.

  Quasdanovitch safely repulsed with the loss of a complete division, Bonaparte could turn all his attention against Würmser. A classic Napoleonic battle followed. After much marching, Massena was brought up on Augereau’s left, and Sérurier’s troops were directed to advance from Marcaria (where they had already fought off an attempt by 4,000 men from Mantua to join Würmser’s main body), and fall on the left flank and rear of the enemy. Würmser, meanwhile, halted his troops to wait for Quasdanovitch to join him. So it was that on August 5 the three French divisions (totaling 30,000 men) fell on Würmser’s static army, 25,000 strong, at Castiglione. Attacked frontally by Massena’s and Augereau’s troops, and finding Sérurier advancing on his left rear, the Austrian general was compelled to retreat to the east toward Valeggio, but the French were too exhausted to pursue effectively.* Berthier described the weariness of the general staff: “For eight days we have been on horseback; our horses are dead with fatigue, and we are worn out physically but quite fresh mentally.”20 Many officers fell sick and retired to hospital, while Sérurier, suffering from a fever since 1st August, was compelled to return to France for a cure. As might be expected, the condition of the rank and file was far worse.

  After his defeat at Castiglione, Würmser made only a brief stand at Peschiera before continuing his retreat. The French recaptured Verona on August 7, and the Austrian general was compelled to abandon his plan to hold the line of the Mincio. After sending two fresh brigades into Mantua, evacuating a proportion of the garrison’s sick, and pouring supplies of food into the fortress, Würmser crossed the Adige and made for Trent up the east bank of the river after successfully negotiating the narrow defile near Ala under fire. A few days later Mantua was again under French blockade.

  Thus Bonaparte staved off a series of crises and repulsed the first Austrian attempt to recapture the Lombard Plain. The effort had cost the French at least 6,000 killed and wounded besides the loss of 4,000 prisoners, but the Austrians suffered as many as 16,700 casualties over the same period.

  Würmser, however, was by no means in despair; he had prevented the fall of Mantua by his timely offensive, had restocked and reinforced the garrison, and had given the French a severe shaking without suffering a catastrophic defeat. Hard fighting and harder marching—Augereau’s division for instance covered 50 miles in 36 hours at the height of the crisis, and Bonaparte is reputed to have ridden five horses to death in three days—enabled the Army of Italy to ward off disaster, but the closeness of the affair revealed serious weaknesses in the French defensive arrangements besides involving the abandonment of the siege of Mantua and the loss of the siege train. Nevertheless, the true measure of Bonaparte’s ability as a general is shown by the fact that he managed to concentrate a superior force against each enemy wing in turn. The Napoleonic method of campaign and battle was rapidly evolving.

  The stirring events just described were also having their effect on the German front. The long-delayed French offensive had at last opened in July, and for the first three weeks of August fortune favored the arms of Moreau and Jourdan. In the case of the Sambre-et-Meuse, the period of success was shortlived, and by the 23rd Jourdan was in retreat. Moreau’s Army of the Rhine-et-Moselle, however, won considerable victories at Neresheim and Fried-burg on August 11 and 24, and by early September Moreau was on the Danube in spite of the Archduke Charles’ success at Amburg and Warzburg. Doubtless the diversion of Würmser and his men to North Italy in June had played a part in securing the French these initial successes, and after Castiglione it appeared to the Directory that the next stage of their master plan could be launched. This, it will be remembered, envisaged a joint offensive by Moreau and Bonaparte against Austria, and the Army of Italy was soon receiving directions from Paris to pursue Würmser’s shaken legions over the Alps into the Tyrol.

  Although this operation formed part of his original plan, Bonaparte was no longer wholly convinced of its practicability. In the first place, it was clear that the scheme would involve the closest cooperation with Moreau, but Carnot had made no provision for a secret code which would enable the two commanders to communicate fully with one another. Secondly, the Army of Italy was in desperate need of rest and re-equipment. Massena wrote to his
general on September 1, pointing out the poor condition of his men: “The soldiers suffer cruelly; at least two thirds of my division want coats, vests, breeches, shirts etc., and are absolutely barefoot.” But the most powerful objections were seasonal and strategical. The original plan had envisaged an advance over the Alps in May, after the destruction of Beaulieu’s army, but the situation at the end of August bore no relation to these suppositions. For one thing, it was autumn and not spring; for another, Würmser still controlled a well-disciplined if shaken army capable of contesting the French advance, and, above all, Mantua remained uncaptured in the rear with its large garrison still untamed. Nevertheless, in spite of his misgivings, Bonaparte set out to comply with the Directory’s instructions and issued the necessary orders. Sahuguet was to remain besieging Mantua with 10,000 men, while General Kilmaine with a further 3,000 guarded Verona and the lower Adige against the possibility of an attack from the direction of Trieste, the great Austrian arsenal on the shore of the Adriatic. The rest of the army, reinforced to a total of some 33,000 men, led by Vaubois, Massena and Augereau, was to advance on Trent, and later press on to a junction with Moreau near the River Lech, sweeping Würmser before them.

  By this time part of Würmser’s army, between 19-20,000 strong, was preparing to launch a new onslaught down the valley of the River Brenta, running from Trent to the Adriatic. The Austrian commander in chief had drawn up an imaginative plan to foil the French intentions. He was under strict orders from Vienna to reattempt the relief of Mantua and secondly to divert Bonaparte from the Tyrol, and in any case Würmser had no desire to find himself trapped between Moreau and Bonaparte. To avert this possibility Würmser decided to advance on Mantua by way of the Brenta, using Trieste as his forward base, and leaving Davidovitch with 25,000 men to defend Trent and the Tyrol. The general shrewdly calculated that Bonaparte would never ignore such a threat to his rear and communications, for in due course the French army might find itself bottled up between Davidovitch and Würmser in the Adige valley. To avoid this danger, and to prevent a second relief of Mantua, Bonaparte would have to retreat the way he had come—down the Adige—to mass his army in support of Sahuguet’s division, or so it appeared to the Austrian strategists.

  Consequently the Army of Italy found its advance up the Adige challenged by only Davidovitch, 14,000 of whose troops sustained a severe drubbing at the hands of Vaubois and Massena at Roveredo on 4th September, and next day the French occupied Trent. Only then did Bonaparte receive final confirmation of Würmser’s advance down the Brenta. He realized that a further advance into the Tyrol was out of the question for the present, but his solution to the new strategic problem was wholly unexpected and extremely bold. Far from retiring down the Adige with his whole army, Bonaparte ordered Vaubois to block the gorges north of Trent with 10,000 men, while the remaining 22,000 troops set off in full pursuit of Würmser down the same pass that the Austrians were using. This was an extremely risky course to pursue, for during the operation the Army of Italy would be wholly dependent on what supplies it could seize locally, and even a temporary check on the Brenta might lead to starvation in the midst of the Alps. On the other hand, Bonaparte calculated that Würmser would never dare to advance on the Adige and Mantua if the main French army severed his communications with Trieste. This would compel the Austrians either to fight a major battle or retire to the Adriatic, and in either eventuality the siege of Mantua would be able to continue without interruption.

  On September 6, the pursuit began. The following day, Augereau’s division stormed the defile of Primolano in the face of a complete Austrian division, and by nightfall, the Army of Italy had reached Cismona, after covering almost sixty miles in two days. Würmser was not unnaturally dumbfounded by this phenomenal rate of advance by a hungry and determined enemy in his rear, so completely unexpected, and consequently ordered two divisions of his force to halt at Bassano and face about to fight a delaying action against the French as they debouched out of the Alpine passes, and at the same time recalled Meszaros’ division, which had been sent ahead to seize Verona. In this way, Bonaparte was offered the opportunity of a battle far from Mantua; the gamble of his bold manoeuvre sur les derrières appeared to have paid off.

  The next morning, September 8, Bonaparte hurled his two divisions at the Austrian position close by Bassano. The Austrians were unable to withstand the fury of the onslaught, once again led by Colonel Lannes, the hero of the day, which burst through the Austrian lines and stormed on into the town of Bassano. Murat’s cavalry pursued the fleeing remnants, and by the close of the battle the French had taken almost 4,000 prisoners, 35 guns, five colors and two pontoon trains. Würmser’s beaten battalions were split into two parts, the remnants of one division fleeing toward the Frioul, the rest—a bare 3,500 men—with Würmser himself continuing on toward the Adige. This detachment subsequently met Meszaros moving up to their assistance, and this raised Würmser’s effective force to 16,000 men.

  Most unexpectedly, Würmser then continued to head for the Adige and Mantua (Bonaparte had anticipated that he would make for Trieste), and the Army of Italy was called upon to make yet a further effort to get ahead of the Austrians and block their path. This would not have been necessary had Kilmaine succeeded in holding the crossings of the Adige, but in his anxiety to hold Verona against Meszaros, he had earlier withdrawn some of the garrisons, including that at Legnano. Sahuguet had agreed to replace the men from the Mantua lines, but these troops did not appear in time. This mistake gave Würmser an unopposed passage over the Adige on the 10th, and if he was to be caught before reaching Mantua, a very rapid French advance was needed. Massena’s men covered 100 miles in six days, and Augereau’s division as many as 114, each general being involved in three sharp engagements with Austrian detachments during the same period. But these noble efforts proved of no avail. Massena’s advance guard clashed with Würmser near Castellero, but received the worst of the encounter, and the Austrian force fought its way through the weak resistance of Sahuguet’s outposts and entered Mantua on September 12. This reinforcement raised the city’s effective garrison to at least 23,000 men, and Würmser was still full of fight. On the 15th, the doughty old warrior launched a heavy attack against the French-held suburb of St. George and the village of La Favorita. However, by this time Massena’s men were close enough to support Sahuguet’s division, and after heavy fighting the Austrians were driven back within Mantua’s defenses.

  Thus ended Count Würmser’s second attempt to relieve Mantua. Although he had managed to elude Bonaparte’s clutches after the disaster of Bassano, the old warrior was at last safely caged. His arrival in Mantua was to prove a very mixed blessing for the garrison in the following months. The new mouths rapidly depleted the dwindling food supplies, and within a short period of time the whole garrison was living off horse flesh, while as many as 150 men a day were dying of disease and malnutrition by the New Year. Shortly afterward Bonaparte’s new aide-de-camp, a gentleman of Polish extraction named Joseph Sulkowski, entered the city under a flag of truce to arrange a cartel for the exchange of prisoners. His impressions reveal something of the state of the garrison: “Of the hundred officers I could see there were at least sixty sick, and as they were not aware that I understood German I listened freely to their conversation, which closely resembled that of the invalids of the Hotel Dieu.”21*

  Consequently, Bonaparte had reason for satisfaction with the general trend of events. Although he had been compelled to abandon the attempted union with Moreau, whose retreat from the Danube commenced on September 19, and had failed to destroy Würmser after Bassano, the record of French successes remained imposing enough. The way in which Bonaparte had reacted to an unanticipated major move on the part of the enemy reveals his flexibility of mind, while the fine quality of his army was proved yet again by the sustained marches on short rations which played so large a part in the conduct of the campaign. In his zeal to relieve Mantua, the Austrian commander in chief had ended up by i
ncarcerating himself within its walls, and the third full siege of the great fortress was about to begin.

  For a fuller description of the battle of Castiglione, see Part Three, p. 191. Sérurier’s division was in fact commanded by Fiorella on August 5.

  The Hotel Dieu was a hospital for military pensioners in Paris.

  9

  CALDIERO AND ARCOLA

  A new lull descended on the theater, but it was clear that it would be but shortlived. On the German front, Moreau’s army fell steadily back before the Archduke Charles, and, in spite of the French victory at Biberach on 2nd October, the end of the month found the Army of the Rhine-et-Moselle back on the west bank of the Rhine. Relieved of pressure on the major front, the Aulic Council could again concentrate all its attention on the Italian situation and divert more men for the relief of Mantua.

  The situation of the Army of Italy was still far from enviable. In spite of repeated appeals for help, reinforcements were slow appearing, and by the end of October the French numbered only 41,400 men; of these 9,000 were permanently stationed around Mantua, and perhaps as many as 14,000 were incapacitated by sickness. It was true that Bonaparte had compelled Würmser to shelter within the walls of the great fortress, but the French were equally tied to a continued prosecution of the siege. With unknown numbers of Austrians massing in the Tyrol preparing to reopen their offensive, Bonaparte could not ignore for an instant the garrison of 23,000 situated in his rear, even though as many as 10,000 of them were already crippled with sickness. Whether they liked it or not, the French faced two widely separated but dangerous enemies and had no option but to continue a strategic defensive.