This was a heavy responsibility for Joubert; only Lusignan’s column of the six Austrian divisions had been destroyed, and d’Alvintzi still controlled close to 20,000 men. The second phase of the battle of Rivoli was fought on the 15th, and Joubert fully justified the confidence placed in him. At its close, the three central Austrian columns fled for La Corona, but were forestalled by Murat and Vial who seized the gorges and took many prisoners. “I have followed exactly your arrangements for the attack of the Corona,” wrote Joubert to Bonaparte that evening; “the success has been beyond all hopes; three guns, 4,000 or 5,000 prisoners, and d’Alvintzi himself precipitated down the rocks and flying like a skirmisher up the Adige without any soldiers, such is a summary of this affair.”36 The total Austrian losses over the two days’ fighting numbered 14,000 men, including 11,000 prisoners. The survivors retreated in disorder up the Adige, and the last great Austrian offensive was practically over.
There only remained Provera and the starved garrison of Mantua to contend with. Bonaparte and Massena were too late to prevent Provera’s 9,000 men crossing the Adige and making for the city. The Austrian general deftly evaded Augereau’s attempt to intercept his march, losing 2,000 men in the process, but the remainder of his force came within sight of Mantua on the 15th. There, however, they found the approaches to the city firmly blocked; Sérurier’s troops held La Favorita and Fort St. Georges, thus cutting both roads. On the 16th Würmser launched a last sortie from the town in an attempt to reach Provera, but this, too, was held back, and in the afternoon Bonaparte came up in the Austrian rear. Provera was left with no option but to surrender with 6,000 men at La Favorita.
In five days’ fighting and marching, “Bonaparte had reduced the Austrian army of 48,000 men to a mere 13,000 fugitives. This had been achieved only by the superb endurance and courage of the French infantry. Massena’s division, for instance, had fought an action at Verona on the 13 th, marched all night to reach Rivoli early on the 14th, fought all day against d’Alvintzi, been put back on the road that evening, marched all night and all the 15th for Mantua, and finished their exertions with a skirmish at La Favorita on the 16th. Thus the men fought three combats and covered 54 miles in 120 hours. It was an astonishing performance, and the divisional commander certainly deserved his later title of Duke of Rivoli. His only possible rival for the honor was Joubert, but that brilliant officer was not destined to survive long enough to share in the titles distributed under the Empire.
The destruction of d’Alvintzi and Provera meant the fall of Würmser’s Mantua. Without hope of relief, the old warrior held out until the end of the month, but on February 2, 1797, the great fortress finally passed into French hands. Of the garrison of 30,000 men, only 16,000 were fit enough to march out into captivity. Bonaparte justly delegated the honor of receiving the capitulation to Sérurier, and as a chivalrous gesture in recognition of Würmser’s gallantry permitted him to leave the city a free man with an escort and all the honors of war.
The fall of Mantua practically completed the French conquest of North Italy. The Austrian armies had finally been driven back onto the Alps, and Bonaparte was free to consolidate and expand his achievement. The same day that Sérurier was receiving Würmser’s surrender, his commander in chief was heading for papal territory. Leaving Joubert with 10,000 men to hold Trent, Bonaparte swept into the Romagna with 9,000 men, and compelled the Holy Father to accept the Treaty of Tolentino, thereby providing the Directory with 30 million francs for the further prosecution of the war against Austria. For in spite of the disaster of Rivoli and the loss of Mantua, the Austrian Government refused to come to terms with the French Government, and set about creating yet another army under their best general, the Archduke Charles. Italy might be safely in French hands, but the war had still to be won.
11
ADVANCE TO LEOBEN
The French army was not sufficiently strong after the fall of Mantua to push on for Vienna, possessing only 55,000 men, but in the month that followed the Directory at last recognized the truth of the military situation and made a radical change to their master plan for the conduct of the war. Hitherto the Italian front had been accorded little priority in reinforcements, but the comparison between General Bonaparte’s successes and the defeats suffered by his senior colleagues on the major German front could no longer be ignored. In consequence, the war-weary French Government reversed the priorities. Bonaparte was to be reinforced to a strength of 80,000 men by the transfer of the divisions of Bernadotte and Delmas, and henceforward his operations were to be considered the major French effort, designed to ease pressure on the Rhine and in due course to win a favorable peace with Vienna.
Typically, however, Bonaparte had no intention of delaying his offensive until the arrival of the full reinforcements. He knew that the Archduke Charles had collected at least 50,000 troops in the Frioul and the Tyrol. In late February these forces were still widely scattered, but every week that passed would afford the Imperial commander the opportunity to improve his dispositions and gather more men. A rapid blow was clearly indicated, and the French commander selected an attack toward Vienna through the Frioul. Bonaparte was by no means contemptuous of the abilities of his opponent, and his plan of campaign reflects considerable caution. No less than one third of the 60,000 available French troops were to guard the Tyrol under Joubert’s command along the River Aviso. Bonaparte calculated that if an unexpected Austrian offensive should be launched down this old route, Joubert would be able to make a fighting retreat of at least ten days’ duration to Castel Nuovo, and this would enable Bonaparte to abandon his line of advance along the Frioul and place his force on the enemy’s rear at Trent by a forced march up the Brenta valley. This, of course, was only the emergency plan. If all went well, the two prongs of the French offensive, Bonaparte and Joubert, would advance along their respective axis and eventually meet in the valley of the River Drave for the final drive on Vienna.
Preliminary operations were opened in the last week of February, when the divisions of Massena, Guieu (Augereau’s replacement), Bernadotte and Sérurier crossed over the River Brenta and drove back the weak Austrian covering forces to Primolano, which fell on March 1. This success opened up the route to Trent, and completed Bonaparte’s precautionary measures. Ahead of the Army of Italy towered the precipitous defiles of the main Alpine chain, but the main offensive had to be delayed for a week to allow the snow to clear from some of the vital passes; it was only on the 10th that the main advance was recommenced.
Bonaparte knew from intelligence sources that the Archduke Charles had concentrated his main body of troops between the towns of Spilimbergo and San Vito and calculated that the Austrian commander intended to make a fighting retreat, luring the French into the midst of the inhospitable Alps. The Imperial army could choose between four lines of retreat. The first was the valley of the Tagliamento; the second led up the river Isonzo to the great pass of Tarvis; the third stretched between Laybach and Klagenfurt and, the last along the river Mur from Marburg to Bruck through Gratz. In the weeks that followed, Bonaparte set himself to close each of these valleys in turn.
The first stage of the French march lay through Sacile to Valvasone; 32,000 men marched along the main road to Vienna, while Massena with 11,000 more remained in the foothills of the Alps to guard the left flank and prevent any attempt by Charles to make a dash for the Tyrol. On the 14th, Massena defeated a small force led by Lusignan near Serraville, and the following day found the advance guard of the main body in Sacile after a sharp skirmish. The first large barrier, the river Tagliamento, had almost been reached. On March 16, Guieu and Bernadotte stormed over the river under cover of a heavy artillery bombardment, taking the Austrians by surprise and capturing 6 guns and 500 men. The Imperial army fell back on Udine, and Bonaparte had successfully penetrated the first enemy line.
The French gave the Archduke no rest, but pursued him to the line of the Isonzo while Massena advanced on Tarvis. Charles despatched three divis
ions to assist Lusignan hold the gorge dominating the town, but they arrived too late, and shortly found themselves caught between two fires as Bonaparte moved against their rear. Many of the rank and file eluded capture by fleeing into the mountains, but 32 cannon, 400 wagons and 5,000 prisoners fell into French hands. Meanwhile, Bernadotte was in pursuit of the section of the Imperial army retiring on Laybach, and General Dugua seized the great arsenal of Trieste with a small force of cavalry. Thus the Austrians were forced to abandon their second set of communications, but Bonaparte was already growing anxious about the length of his own communications. To render these safe, he established a new center of operations, intended to serve as a base for his next moves, at Palma Nova.
During this period Joubert was achieving considerable successes in the Tyrol, advancing as far as Botzen, and Bonaparte knew that it was time to launch his third attack. The target was now Klagenfurt, and to secure his main body’s left flank from the possibility of attack by an Austrian force moving from Innsbruck down the Brenner Pass, Bonaparte ordered Joubert to occupy Brixen athwart the main road. On March 29, the main army entered Klagenfurt with three divisions, those of Massena, Guieu and Chabot (who had taken over Sérurier’s command owing to his renewed sickness), and Bonaparte was in a position to open communications with Joubert down the Drave and Puster valleys. But at Klagenfurt the French impetus was exhausted. With large detachments at Brixen and on the Isonzo guarding each flank, and Victor with a further force far away in the Romagna, Bonaparte no longer had sufficient forces to continue the drive on Vienna. To free some of his outlying forces to join up again with the main body, the young general took the bold decision of abandoning all his communications and set up a new center of operations at Klagenfurt. Joubert, Bernadotte and Victor all received orders to concentrate on the new center, only 1,500 men under Friant being left to guard Trieste.
However, now a further difficulty arose. The success of the drive on Vienna depended on a concentric advance from Italy and the Rhine by Bonaparte and Moreau acting in concert, but the latter showed no sign of taking the offensive. This left Bonaparte in an unenviable quandary. He was not strong enough to advance on Vienna alone, but if he halted at Klagenfurt, or withdrew, the campaign was lost. As day followed day without any further move by the Army of Italy, Austrian morale steadily rose.
Where arms alone could not achieve his purpose, Bonaparte turned to diplomacy. On March 31 he addressed an appeal to the Archduke Charles calling for a suspension of hostilities, hoping thereby to win a short delay which would give Moreau time to take the offensive. To give the impression that he was speaking from strength, the Army of Italy daringly pushed ahead and on April 7 occupied Leoben. The advance guard reached the Semmering Pass, catching a glimpse of the spires and towers of Vienna 75 miles away to the north. The same day, the Austrians agreed to a five-day suspension of hostilities.
This, however, did not solve the problem more than temporarily; indeed the situation soon became steadily worse. Moreau still delayed his offensive, while the Tyroleans and the Venetians took the opportunity offered by the progressive withdrawals of Joubert and Bernadotte to stage risings. Bonaparte again had recourse to diplomacy. On the 13th, he secured a further extension of the armistice for five more days, and on his own authority, without waiting for the arrival of General Clarke, the Directory’s official plenipotentiary, he proposed on the 16th the basis for a full set of formal negotiations. As the Imperial court hesitated, the tension rose. If April 18 arrived without news of a French move on the Rhine or a favorable response from the Schönbrunn, Bonaparte’s weakness would be revealed and the gamble lost. On the very last day, the Austrians gave way. Aware that Hoche and Moreau were on the point of crossing the Rhine, the Imperial ministers advised the Emperor to sign the Preliminaries of Leoben. Certain of the terms were subsequently modified in the Peace of Campo Formio signed on October 17, 1797, but Bonaparte’s original suggestions were largely adopted. In due course the Emperor agreed to cede Belgium to France, admit her occupation of the left bank of the Rhine and the Ionian islands, and recognize the new Cisalpine Republic formed by uniting Milan, Bologna and Modena. In return, the French undertook to hand over the Republic of Venice, Istria, Dalmatia and the Frioul to Austria, thus leaving the Schönbrunn a foothold in Italy—practically a guarantee of future war.
The agreement of Leoben formed a fitting climax and termination to the hard-fought and extended Italian Campaign of 1796-97. With a few pauses, operations had continued for more than twelve months, and the strain on all concerned is shown by the high rate of disabling illness which afflicted the French senior officers as well as the rank and file. The fighting had nearly always been severe, for the regular Austrian army was a doughty opponent for all its outdated doctrines, and the greater number of its generals were far from being nonentities. The French citizen-soldiery might laugh at the “walking muskets” of the Imperial armies, but it took every particle of their famed élan and intelligence to overcome their opponents, and all the budding genius of Napoleon Bonaparte to out-think and out-maneuver their generals.
12
THE MEASURE OF SUCCESS
The lessons and military significance of the First Italian Campaign are of the greatest importance to any understanding of Napoleon’s career as a soldier. He was experimenting for the first time with the ideas he had already formulated concerning the right handling of armies in the field. Apart from the Toulon episode and the short campaign along the Ligurian coast in 1794, he had little previous personal experience of active, large-scale warfare. To a very considerable extent his brilliance of imagination and phenomenal reasoning powers proved sufficient to remedy this deficiency, but as might be expected, the youthful General Bonaparte made a considerable number of errors in this, his first essay at independent leadership.
He was very fortunate in two circumstances. First, he was not called upon to create a new army from nothing, but inherited from Schérer a potentially good weapon, despite its obvious deficiencies in food and equipment and shortcomings in morale when he first took over the command; moreover, his divisional commanders, Massena, Augereau and Sérurier, were all experienced soldiers with creditable records, and this fact underlies almost all of General Bonaparte’s early achievements. In the second place, he was decidedly fortunate in the opponents he was called upon to face while he was finding his feet. During the first phase of the campaign, he met only Beaulieu, Colli and Argenteau, all soldiers of very indifferent quality; later he was fighting the considerably abler Würmser and d’Alvintzi, but although these generals proved to be of tougher mettle than their immediate predecessors, they were not really the most distinguished or redoubtable commanders in the Austrian service. As a result, the fledgling Bonaparte was able to profit from the grave mistakes they all committed in their turn, and at the same time survive the worst consequences of his own errors.
It is both interesting and instructive to compare Bonaparte’s early qualities and shortcomings with those of his opponents. If we must concede that he broke several of the so-called Principles of War at different stages of the campaign, there is no doubt that his adversaries were guilty of far more serious aberrations. In Bonaparte’s defense it can be pleaded that he was learning the trade; but it is impossible to explain his enemies’ failures except in terms of professional incompetence and an over-rigid adherence to the military ideas of a bygone age.
No military campaign can be effectively undertaken unless the overall aim behind the operations is clearly selected and firmly adhered to. There is little to criticize in Bonaparte’s initial objective in April 1796; through sheer necessity the stark alternatives facing the Army of Italy were simply “reach Lombardy or starve,” and by means of splitting Beaulieu from Colli and concentrating his full attentions thereafter against the latter, Bonaparte successfully carried out this mission of military survival. However, over the succeeding nine months, there are strong indications that the youthful general failed to live up to his early sh
owing of single-mindedness. In later years he was always insistent that the main aims of any war must be to destroy the enemy’s field armies together with his will to offer further resistance. In both these particulars he failed in this campaign. He never actually destroyed an Austrian army in spite of the fact that he won close to a dozen engagements, ranging from the small-scale affairs of Montenotte and Lodi to the vaster battles of Castiglione, Arcola and Rivoli. This was not by any means wholly his own fault; the French Government was exceptionally remiss in the inadequacy of the reinforcements it made available for the Army of Italy before the spring of 1797, and this fact compelled Bonaparte to spend much of the year on the strategic defensive, resorting to ever more desperate expedients to hold the line against the repeated Austrian attacks by Count Würmser and d’Alvintzi, ineptly managed though these were.
Nevertheless, he can definitely be criticized on two counts. First, in his eagerness to capture the great fortress of Mantua, he allowed his meager resources to be split between two conflicting objectives: the defeating of the enemy in the field and the reduction of the garrison by siege. It can be argued that Bonaparte deliberately utilized Mantua as a magnet to attract Austrian armies from the Rhine. But the fact that he was compelled to raise the siege twice, and was hard put to survive the Austrian onslaughts, would seem to show how narrow was the margin of safety, and this supports the criticism that he was to some extent guilty of wavering between two alternative courses of action. In the last resort, however, he clearly grasped that field operations must be accorded priority. Secondly, it is difficult to explain away his summary abandonment of the Directory’s orders to join with General Moreau in the Tyrol for a joint advance toward Vienna in the Autumn of 1796. When he turned away down the Bretna valley in pursuit of the Austrian army he was undoubtedly disobeying his instructions and also complying with the wildest hopes of the Aulic Council and General Würmser himself. Mantua, in fact, proved almost as fatal a lure to Bonaparte as it did to the Austrian generals, and it was only after its fall in February 1797 that the Army of Italy reverted to the original strategy and set off for Vienna. Even then, Bonaparte failed to break the enemy’s will to resist; the Armistice of Leoben and the subsequent Peace of Campo Formio really represent little more than a truce, and in 1800 the whole task of conquering North Italy had to be begun again.
The Campaigns of Napoleon Page 19
