The Campaigns of Napoleon

by David G Chandler

  As the weeks passed, French preparations continued; 100,000 pairs of boots and 40,000 uniforms were collected at Dijon, and two million rations of biscuit amassed at Lucerne and Zurich. On April 2, General Berthier was formally appointed general-in-chief of the Army of the Reserve, regretfully exchanging the bureaucratic comforts of the Ministry of War (taken over once more by the veteran Carnot, newly returned from voluntary exile in Germany) for the rigors of service in the field. Further administrative changes of considerable significance were also taking place. All the major field forces were ordered to adopt the corps d’armée system. There was little immediately new in this, for certain revolutionary generals had been experimenting with the system for a considerable period, but this was the first instance of its wholesale application. Each French army corps contained elements of all arms, and was capable of fighting a battle against long odds on its own for a certain time. Each corps and divisional commander was provided with a staff, including, at least in the larger units, representatives from general headquarters performing a liaison role. One other reform, directly instigated by Bonaparte, also deserves mention. For the first time it was decreed that the drivers of the artillery should be serving soldiers and not contracted civilians. Taken in conjunction, these and other changes, large and small, resulted in improved military efficiency and increased combat power.

  The results of the growing centralization of supreme authority in the person of the First Consul were already showing decisive results in the field of organization; it was also of the greatest importance where strategic planning of the general conduct of the war was concerned. For the first time, Bonaparte was in a position to give full expression to his strategic gifts. He could direct “the type of war which each army should undertake … giving to each part its role,” thus ensuring the best possible use of the resources at the State’s disposal. In the months ahead, however, the realities of his power were to be rather less impressive than their outward appearances, but this notwithstanding, Bonaparte was henceforward the Generalissimo with power to coordinate the French war effort to its maximum advantage.

  Since Massena’s triumph at Second Zurich, the military initiative had largely returned to the French. Long before the final breakdown of the peace negotiations, Bonaparte was formulating contingency plans designed to encompass the military defeat of Austria and the recovery of all the French territorial losses of 1799. Should it prove necessary, his intention was to seek a quick, decisive victory by means of a strategic offensive; he was determined to avoid a repetition of the long series of operations of the type he had undertaken in Italy four years earlier. In 1800, the German and Italian fronts were to be more closely coordinated than ever before, and maximum use made of the invaluable central position afforded by Switzerland. Victory was to be won by bold concentric moves designed to take the enemy in the rear, forcing him to accept battle or capitulation.

  The French armies were confronted by two large Austrian armies; General Kray with more than 100,000 men was known to be in the Black Forest and Upper Danube area, and General Melas was thought to be commanding slightly smaller forces in North Italy. The destruction of these forces and the capture of Vienna were the ultimate French objectives. The first plan for the Campaign of 1800 was formulated during the previous December. In this, Bonaparte determined to make Germany the principal theater of war. This was a logical step, as Germany contained the largest enemy army and presented the quickest road of approach to Vienna once the Rhine and Black Forest obstacles had been overcome. “The possession of Switzerland gave us an opportunity to take in reverse the enemy’s lines of operations in both Italy and Swabia. My first thought was to leave the Army of Massena on the defensive in the Appenines, and to move those of the Reserve and of the Rhine into the valley of the Danube. The Constitution of the Year VIII did not allow a Consul to command the army in person, and so my intention was to give the command of the Reserve to a lieutenant and leave the main army to Moreau; but in following the headquarters of the latter, I could direct the operations of both. I wished Moreau to cross at Schaffhausen, take Kray in the rear, and drive him into the angle of the Rhine and the Main, cutting him off from Vienna; in a word, effecting against the Austrian general’s left the same operation which, five years after, I effected against the right of Mack at Donauworth; we might afterwards have marched without obstacle against Austria to reconquer Italy at Vienna.”12

  Some commentators have challenged the authenticity of Baron Jomini’s latter-day explanation of Napoleon’s original intentions, claiming that from the first Italy was the real destination of the Army of the Reserve. One extract from the Correspondance in particular would appear to bear this view out; the Army of the Reserve was “to go to the assistance of the Army of Germany—if that should be necessary—then later debouch through Switzerland onto the Po to take the Austrian army in the rear.”13 At first reading, this would certainly seem to imply priority on the Italian front, but it seems more probable that the phrasing of this sentence was intended to convey a tactful implication that the Reserve would not interfere unduly with Moreau’s conduct of the major operations except in case of dire emergency.

  Be that as it may, a mass of instructions was forwarded to Moreau, minutely regulating the execution of the plan. The bulk of his 120,000 men were to be divided into four corps d’ armée, two containing 20,000 men apiece (1st and 3rd), the others 30,000 (2nd and 4th). After the success of the initial operations—that is to say, the holding of Kray’s extended forces by a feint attack against the Black Forest by a single corps while the rest of the army swept into the Austrian rear via Schaffhausen to seize his depots at Stockach, Engen, Moesskirch and Biberach—Moreau was expected to detach General Lecourbe’s Reserve 4th Corps of 30,000 men to hold Switzerland, link the German and Italian fronts and cooperate with the Army of the Reserve in any subsequent operations. Massena, meanwhile, was to hold Melas’ attention in the region of Genoa. This plan is certainly Napoleonic in conception. “The construction of four bridges simultaneously at so high a point [on the Rhine] as Schaffhausen would enable the entire French army to cross in 24 hours; arriving at Stockach, the enemy’s left would be turned, and the army would be in a position to take all the Austrian forces stationed along the right bank of the Rhine in the rear amidst the defiles of the Black Forest; within six or seven days of the campaign’s opening, the army would be before Ulm. The Austrian survivors would be flung back into Bohemia.”14 This done, the French could advance to seize the passes through the Tyrolean and Carnic Alps and thus sever Melas’ lines of communication; if necessary, the Army of Reserve could then move into Italy to consummate a complete victory on both fronts, and the Austrian Government would have no option but to concede defeat and accept a peace dictated by the First Consul.

  As events turned out, however, this brilliant and masterful plan was destined to be stillborn. The responsibility for this lies almost entirely at the door of General Moreau. This officer, for all his coolness and ability, was far too cautious by training and temperament to attempt such a sweeping, and in his view foolhardy, series of operations. An element of personal rivalry undoubtedly added weight to his objections. The older man did not relish taking orders from a Corsican opportunist. “It was impossible to overcome the obstinacy of Moreau, who wished to play some brilliant part on his own account. He at first refused to command under me, if I came to his army; and he afterwards objected to my plans, pretending that the passage of Schaffhausen was dangerous.” Moreau objected that it was not practicable to maneuver and feed his army in so restricted a space, and after knocking out the central idea of Bonaparte’s strategy, coolly went on to suggest that he should “follow the routes of earlier campaigns” and cross the Rhine at four widely separated points. In this way he substituted a broad front policy with some emphasis on the right (two corps were still to cross at Schaffhausen) for the First Consul’s conception of a more concentrated thrust over the Rhine salient. It is revealing that Bonaparte allowed Mor
eau to get away with this insubordination; if anything the tone of the consular letters became even more flattering. On March 16 Bonaparte rather unctuously wrote, “I would gladly exchange my consular purple for a brigadier’s epaulette under your command.” According to Jomini, in later years Napoleon was more open about his reasons for not summarily removing Moreau from his command: “I was not yet sufficiently firm in my position to come to an open rupture with a man who had numerous partisans in the army, and who only lacked the energy to attempt to put himself in my place. It was necessary to negotiate with him as a separate power, as indeed, at that time, he really was.”15 However, a flash of his true resentment showed through in an interview with General Desolles, the recalcitrant Moreau’s chief of staff. “I shall carry out this plan, which he fails to understand, in another part of the theater of war. What he does not dare to do on the Rhine, I shall do over the Alps.”16 A measure of revenge would be achieved in 1803.

  In a matter of two weeks a new plan had been devised in full detail, making Italy the principal theater of war and relegating Moreau to a secondary role. In many ways the alternative scheme was less satisfactory, and is by no means typical of the usual Napoleonic “direct” method, but it illustrates the flexibility of Bonaparte’s genius. The new orders of March 25 no longer put the onus of winning the war on the shoulders of the Rhine armament—“the finest army which France had seen for a long time.” Moreau was directed to launch a subsidiary offensive between April 10th and 20th with the object of pushing Kray back toward Ulm and thus covering the communications of the Army of the Reserve running through the Swiss passes. During these preliminary operations, the Army of the Reserve would initially cover Moreau’s movements with three divisions, moved up from Dijon to Geneva—within equal striking distance of Schaffhausen or the St. Gotthard Pass—and in a similar fashion the army’s remaining 30,000 men would move toward Zurich during the last days of April. Once Moreau had driven General Kray back a distance of ten days’ march and severed the Austrian communications running to Milan through the Grisons by way of Lake Constance, half the Army of the Reserve would make for Italy, using either the St. Gotthard or Simplon, leaving the holding of Switzerland to the remainder, while the more experienced troops of General Lecourbe, detached from the Rhine Army, would advance by rapid marches to join Bonaparte in the Po Valley. The distance from Zurich to Bergamo was 192 miles, or, optimistically, 12 days’ march. Once Lecourbe had covered this distance, the French could be in a position to fall on Melas’ communications in considerable force and catch him between two fires: Massena to his front, the reserve to the rear.

  Some criticisms of this plan of campaign are as follows. It was unlikely that the destruction of Melas would be sufficient in itself to bring the war to a satisfactory conclusion, for the Po Valley was far removed from Vienna and the Alps would provide a protective curtain as in 1797; it was also unlikely that Moreau would decisively defeat Kray on the Danube, and as a result the length of the war was almost certain to be prolonged. Other disadvantages of the plan were that the new campaign involved the use of two different lines of operations, whereas the earlier scheme required only a single axis; that the Austrian army selected for destruction was not the enemy’s main force; and, finally, that the success of the scheme largely depended on the full cooperation of Moreau in detaching Lecourbe’s troops at the critical moment. Nevertheless, the new plan was realistic, boldly conceived and held the prospect of eventual success even if it lacked some of the éclat or blitzkrieg of Bonaparte’s original conception. Even Moreau had to accord his grudging approval. Bonaparte, seeing the war as a whole, was determined to smash through the Austrian center by way of Switzerland—using the “central position” of the Reserve to effect the defeat of one of the two main Austrian armies. It was the tactical plan of Castiglione newly applied to the strategical level.

  26

  THE PASSAGE OF THE ALPS

  The conduct of any war has always been subject to the unexpected, and the Campaign of 1800 proved no exception. To the surprise of the French general staff, and to Bonaparte’s considerable consternation, the Austrians seized the initiative by launching an unanticipated major offensive against Massena in North Italy before any of the French armies had completed their preparations. It will be remembered that this had also happened in April 1796, but on the second occasion the French were taken even more by surprise. The Aulic Council, like Bonaparte, had decided to make their major effort in the Italian theater, similarly relegating the German theater to a supporting role. For this purpose General Melas was rapidly reinforced to 97,000 men, and by early May he had at his disposal 14,000 cavalry and 86,000 foot, with the prospect of a further 20,000 men to be provided by the King of Naples and a force of 10,000 British troops from Minorca. The Council, ignoring the possible capabilities of the French army around Dijon, instructed Melas to clear Massena from the Appenines, capture Genoa, cross over the River Var and finally lay siege to Toulon with the assistance of the Royal Navy. Besides underestimating the Army of the Reserve, the Austrian strategists again ignored the need to neutralize Switzerland, and made the error of tackling an objective so far away from Paris. Kray was only to undertake operations with his 120,000 men on the Rhine after the success of his brother commander. Undoubtedly the Austrian plan was governed by Vienna’s desire to capture the last French footholds in Italy and London’s wish to wipe out the memory of the humiliating reverse of 1793 by reoccupying the greatest naval arsenal of France, but it was also ‘the only theater in which Allied cooperation could be made a reality and where the superiority of the Royal Navy could be brought directly to bear on the conduct of land operations.

  The opening of Melas’ offensive was crowned with considerable success. On April 5, the Austrians unexpectedly advanced against the extreme French left wing and drove back several detachments from the environs of Mount Cenis. Although the Army of Italy managed to regain some territory in this area, General Melas’ main attack on April 6, in three columns toward Savona, again took the French by surprise, and revealed the dreadful inadequacy of their dispositions. Massena had divided his command into two main parts. The three divisions of the right wing (under the command of Soult) were strung out in an extended cordon line from Cadibona to Torriglia; Massena himself, together with headquarters and the slender army reserve, being stationed in the great city of Genoa. The 12,000 men of the left wing, commanded by General Suchet, were under orders to hold a line from Finale to Mount Cenis. Taken together this meant that 36,000 men were attempting to hold a line more than 50 leagues in length, including 70 miles of Ligurian coastline which were beset by the Austrians from the landward, and Lord Keith’s battle fleet from the seaward. After deducting the garrisons of Genoa, Gavi and Novi, Massena was left with a little over 15,000 men for active employment as a field force. The task facing him was clearly daunting; the equipment and morale of his army left much to be desired, and its overextension was as much due to the need to keep the men fed as to the strategical requirements of attracting all of Melas’ attention, for Massena had been shamelessly swindled by the commissaries and merchants of Marseilles on taking up his command. Everything was already in short supply and the food depots of Genoa dangerously low, when the Austrian offensive came out of the blue. In a very short time General Melas had achieved his first objective, the severance of Massena and Soult from Suchet, and following the capture of Savona by the Austrians, Massena found himself beaten back into Genoa with some 18,000 men while Suchet was simultaneously forced back to the River Var and thence to the Roya. By the third week in April, General Ott had clamped a tight siege round Genoa with 24,000 men while the Royal Navy blockaded the city from the sea, and General Elsnitz, with 18,000 men, was preparing an assault over the Var. A great deal depended on the length of time Massena could hold out; his possession of Genoa was all that stood seriously in the way of General Melas’ intended invasion of France; a premature collapse of resistance there would ruin Bonaparte’s plans for the Army
of the Reserve. Once again, as in 1799 after First Zurich, Massena was left holding the breach for France, and an epic siege was in the making.

  The Campaign of 1800 in northern Italy

  Unaware of the turn events had taken in Italy, on April 9 Bonaparte sent detailed orders to Massena which clearly reveal his intentions at this time. “The Army of the Rhine will be the first to enter operations sometime between the 11th and the 22nd April. It will be divided into two sections … one under General Moreau … the other under General Lecourbe, forming the right wing of the Army of the Rhine. His initial task will be to occupy Switzerland so as to safeguard the right flank of the corps invading Swabia … [and thereafter] … Lecourbe and his men will come under the orders of Berthier and will cross the St. Bernard into Italy. Simultaneously, part of the Army of the Reserve will occupy the Valais and also cross into Italy by way of the Simplon or St. Gotthard Pass while the rest of the army takes over Switzerland…. At the exact moment that Berthier enters Italy, CitizenGeneral, your movements must be coordinated with ours—your object being to draw the foe against you, forcing him to divide his forces…. You will exaggerate the number of your men, announcing the imminent arrival of large reinforcements from the interior and by similar methods draw the enemy away from the true points of attack.”17 As will be seen, Massena was to carry out much of this role despite adverse circumstances.