The French Directory, meanwhile, had begun to entertain certain not unnatural suspicions as to the ultimate designs of their young general, whose success and fame had already reached so astonishing a height. They determined to check, if they could, the career of an ambition which they apprehended might outgrow their control. Buonaparte was ordered to take half his army, and lead it against the Pope and the King of Naples, and leave the other half to terminate the contest with Beaulieu, under the orders of Kellerman. But he acted on this occasion with the decision which these Directors in vain desired to emulate. He answered by resigning his command. "One half of the army of Italy," said he, "cannot suffice to finish the matter with the Austrian. It is only by keeping my force entire that I have been able to gain so many battles and to be now in Milan. You had better have one bad general than two good ones." The Directory durst not persist in displacing the chief whose name was considered as the pledge of victory. Napoleon resumed the undivided command, to which now, for the last time, his right had been questioned.
Another unlooked-for occurrence delayed, for a few days longer, the march upon Mantua. The heavy exactions of the French, and even more perhaps the wanton contempt with which they treated the churches and the clergy, had produced or fostered the indignation of a large part of the population throughout Lombardy. Reports of new Austrian levies being poured down the pa.s.ses of the Tyrol were spread and believed. Popular insurrections against the conqueror took place in various districts: at least 30,000 were in arms. At Pavia the insurgents were entirely triumphant; they had seized the town, and compelled the French garrison to surrender.
This flame, had it been suffered to spread, threatened immeasurable evil to the French cause. Lannes instantly marched to Benasco, stormed the place, plundered and burnt it, and put the inhabitants to the sword without mercy. The general in person appeared before Pavia; blew the gates open; easily scattered the townspeople; and caused the leaders to be executed, as if they had committed a crime in endeavouring to rescue their country from the arm of a foreign invader. Everywhere the same ferocious system was acted on. The insurgent commanders were tried by courts-martial, and shot without ceremony. At Lugo, where a French squadron of horse had been gallantly and disastrously defeated, the whole of the male inhabitants were ma.s.sacred. These b.l.o.o.d.y examples quelled the insurrections; but they fixed the first dark and indelible stain on the name of Napoleon Buonaparte.
The spirit of the Austrian and Catholic parties in Lombardy thus crushed, the French advanced on the Mincio. The general made such disposition of his troops, that Beaulieu doubted not he meant to pa.s.s that river, if he could, at Peschiera. Meantime he had been preparing to repeat the scene of Placenza;--and actually, on the 30th of May, forced the pa.s.sage of the Mincio, not at Peschiera, but further down at Borghetto. The Austrian garrison at Borghetto in vain destroyed one arch of the bridge. Buonaparte supplied the breach with planks; and his men, flushed with so many victories, charged with a fury not to be resisted.
Beaulieu was obliged to abandon the Mincio, as he had before the Adda and the Po, and to take up the new line of the Adige.
Meanwhile an occurrence, which may be called accidental, had nearly done more than repay the Austrians for all their reverses. The left of their line, stationed still further down the Mincio,--at Puzzuolo, no sooner learned from the cannonade that the French were at Borghetto, than they hastened to ascend the stream, with the view of a.s.sisting the defence of their friends. They came too late for this; the commander at Borghetto had retreated before they arrived. They, however, came unexpectedly; and, such was the chance, reached Valleggio after the French army had pursued the Austrians through it and onwards--and, at the moment when Buonaparte and a few friends, considering the work of the day to be over, and this village as altogether in the rear of both armies, were about to sit down to dinner in security. Sebetendorff, who commanded the Puzzuolo division, came rapidly, little guessing what a prize was near him, into the village. The French general"s attendants had barely time to shut the gates of the inn, and alarm their chief by the cry "To arms." Buonaparte threw himself on horseback, and galloping out by a back pa.s.sage, effected the narrowest of escapes from the most urgent of dangers. Sebetendorff was soon a.s.saulted by a French column, and retreated, after Beaulieu"s example, on the line of the Adige.
Buonaparte, profiting by the perilous adventure of Valleggio, inst.i.tuted a small corps of picked men, called _Guides_, to watch continually over his personal safety. Such was the germ from which sprung the famous Imperial Guard of Napoleon.
The Austrian had, in effect, abandoned for the time the open country of Italy. He now lay on the frontier, between the vast tract of rich provinces which Napoleon had conquered, and the Tyrol. The citadel of Milan, indeed, still held out; but the force there was not great, and, cooped up on every side, could not be expected to resist much longer.
Mantua, which possessed prodigious natural advantages, and into which the retreating general had flung a garrison of full 15,000 men, was, in truth, the last and only Italian possession of the imperial crown, which, as it seemed, there might still be a possibility of saving.
Beaulieu anxiously waited the approach of new troops from Germany, to attempt the relief of this great city; and his antagonist, eager to antic.i.p.ate the efforts of the imperial government, sat down immediately before it.
Mantua lies on an island, being cut off on all sides from the main land by the branches of the Mincio, and approachable only by five narrow causeways, of which three were defended by strong and regular fortresses or entrenched camps, the other two by gates, drawbridges, and batteries.
Situated amidst stagnant waters and mora.s.ses, its air is pestilential, especially to strangers. The garrison were prepared to maintain the position with their usual bravery; and it remained to be seen whether the French general possessed any new system of attack, capable of abridging the usual operations of the siege, as effectually as he had already done by those of the march and the battle. His commencement was alarming: of the five causeways, by sudden and overwhelming a.s.saults, he obtained four; and the garrison were cut off from the main land, except only at the fifth causeway, the strongest of them all, named, from a palace near it, _La Favorita_. It seemed necessary, however, in order that this blockade might be complete, that the Venetian territory, lying immediately beyond Mantua, should be occupied by the French. The power of this ancient government was no longer such as to inspire much respect, and Buonaparte resolved that the claim of neutrality should form no obstacle to his measures. The French Directory had already most ungenerously trampled on the dignity of Venice, by demanding that she should no longer afford a retreat to the ill.u.s.trious exile, the Count of Provence, eldest surviving brother of Louis XVI.[9] That unfortunate prince had, accordingly, though most reluctantly, been desired to quit the Venetian states, and had already pa.s.sed to the Rhine, where his gallant cousin, the Prince of Conde, had long been at the head of a small and devoted army composed of the expatriated gentry of France.
Buonaparte, however, chose to treat the reluctance with which Venice had been driven to this violation of her hospitality, as a new injury to his government: he argued that a power who had harboured in friendship, and unwillingly expelled, the _Pretender_ to the French monarchy, had lost all t.i.tle to forbearance on the part of the Revolutionary forces. This was a gross and ungenerous insult, and it was a gratuitous one; for he had a far better argument behind. The imperial general had, as we have seen, neglected the reclamations of the Doge, when it suited his purpose to occupy Peschiera. "You are too weak," said Buonaparte, when the Venetian envoy reached his headquarters, "to enforce neutrality on hostile nations such as France and Austria. Beaulieu did not respect your territory when his interest bade him violate it; nor shall I hesitate to occupy whatever falls within the line of the Adige." In effect, garrisons were placed forthwith in Verona, and all the strong places of that domain. The tricolor flag now waved at the mouth of the Tyrolese pa.s.ses; and Napoleon, leaving Serrurier to blockade Mantua, returned to Milan, where he had important business to arrange.
The King of Naples, utterly confounded by the successes of the French, was now anxious to procure peace, almost on whatever terms, with the apparently irresistible Republic. Nor did it, for the moment, suit Buonaparte"s views to contemn his advances. A peace with this prince would withdraw some valuable divisions from the army of Beaulieu; and the distance of the Neapolitan territory was such, that the French had no means of carrying the war thither with advantage, so long as Austria retained the power of sending new forces into Italy by the way of the Tyrol. He concluded an armistice accordingly, which was soon followed by a formal peace, with the King of the Two Sicilies; and the Neapolitan troops, who had recently behaved with eminent gallantry, abandoning the Austrian general, began their march to the south of Italy.
This transaction placed another of Napoleon"s destined victims entirely within his grasp. With no friend behind him, the Pope saw himself at the mercy of the invader; and in terror prepared to submit. Buonaparte occupied immediately his legations of Bologna and Ferrara, making prisoners in the latter of these towns four hundred of the papal troops, and a cardinal, under whose orders they were. The churchman militant was dismissed on parole; but, being recalled to headquarters, answered that his master, the Pope, had given him a dispensation to break his promise.
This exercise of the old dispensing power excited the merriment of the conquerors. The Vatican, meanwhile, perceived that no time was to be lost. The Spanish resident at the Roman court was despatched to Milan; and the terms on which the holy father was to obtain a brief respite were at length arranged. Buonaparte demanded and obtained a million sterling, a hundred of the finest pictures and statues in the papal gallery, a large supply of military stores, and the cession of Ancona, Ferrara, and Bologna, with their respective domains.
He next turned his attention to the grand duke of Tuscany,--a prince who had not only not taken any part in the war against the Republic, but had been the very first of the European rulers to recognise its establishment, and had kept on terms of friendship with all its successive authorities. Buonaparte, however, in pursuance of his system, resolved that the brother of the emperor should pay for his presumed inclinations. For the present, the Florentine museum and the grand duke"s treasury were spared; but Leghorn, the seaport of Tuscany and great feeder of its wealth, was seized without ceremony; the English goods in that town were confiscated to the ruin of the merchants; and a great number of English vessels in the harbour made a narrow escape. The grand duke, in place of resenting these injuries, was obliged to receive Buonaparte with all the appearances of cordiality at Florence; and the spoiler repaid his courtesy by telling him, rubbing his hands with glee, during the princely entertainment provided for him, "I have just received letters from Milan; the citadel has fallen;--your brother has no longer a foot of land in Lombardy." "It is a sad case," said Napoleon himself long afterwards--speaking of these scenes of exaction and insolence,--"it is a sad case when the dwarf comes into the embrace of the giant; he is like enough to be suffocated--but "tis the giant"s nature to squeeze hard."
In the meantime the general did not neglect the great and darling plan of the French government, of thoroughly revolutionising the North of Italy, and establishing there a group of Republics modelled after their own likeness, and prepared to act as subservient allies in their mighty contest with the European monarchies. The peculiar circ.u.mstances of Northern Italy, as a land of ancient fame and high spirit, long split into fragments, and ruled, for the most part, by governors of German origin, presented many facilities for the realisation of this design; and Buonaparte was urged constantly by his government at Paris, and by a powerful party in Lombardy, to hasten its execution. He, however, had by this time learned to think of many idols of the Directory with about as little reverence as they bestowed on the shrines of Catholicism; in his opinion more was to be gained by temporising with both the governments and the people of Italy, than by any hasty measures of the kind recommended. He saw well the deep disgust which his exactions had excited. "You cannot," said he, "at one and the same moment rob people and persuade them you are their friends." He fancied, moreover, that the Pope and other nerveless rulers of the land might be converted into at least as convenient ministers of French exaction, as any new establishments he could raise in their room. Finally he perceived that whenever the Directory were to arrange seriously the terms of a settlement with the great monarchy of Austria, their best method would be to restore Lombardy, and thereby purchase the continued possession of the more conveniently situated territories of Belgium and the Luxembourg. The general, therefore, temporised; content, in the meantime, with draining the exchequers of the governments, and cajoling from day to day the population. The Directory were with difficulty persuaded to let him follow his own course; but he now despised their remonstrances, and they had been taught effectually to dread his strength.
Napoleon, it is clear enough, had no intention to grant these Italian governments anything but a respite; nor is it to be doubted that their disposition to take part with Austria remained as it had been before they entered into these treaties with France. That the purpose of deceit was mutual, affords, however, no plea of justification--least of all to the stronger party. "It will be well," says Sir Walter Scott, "with the world, when falsehood and finesse are as thoroughly exploded in international communication as they are among individuals in civilised countries."
[Footnote 9: The same who became afterwards Louis XVIII. of France.]
CHAPTER VI
Wurmser supersedes Beaulieu--Jourdan and Moreau march into Germany, and are forced to retreat again--The Austrians advance from the Tyrol--Battle of Lonato--Escape of Napoleon--Battle near Castiglione--Wurmser retreats on Trent, and is recruited--Battle of Roveredo--Battle of Primolano--Battle of Ba.s.sano--Battle of St.
George--Wurmser shut up in Mantua.
The general was now recalled to the war. The cabinet of Vienna, apt to be slow, but sure to be persevering, had at last resolved upon sending efficient aid to the Italian frontier. Beulieu had been too often unfortunate to be trusted longer: Wurmser, who enjoyed a reputation of the highest cla.s.s, was sent to replace him: 300,000 men were drafted from the armies on the Rhine to accompany the new general; and he carried orders to strengthen himself further, on his march, by whatever recruits he could raise among the warlike and loyal population of the Tyrol.
The consequences of thus weakening the Austrian force on the Rhine were, for the moment, on that scene of the contest, inauspicious. The French, in two separate bodies, forced the pa.s.sage of the Rhine--under Jourdan and Moreau; before whom the imperial generals, Wartensleben and the Archduke Charles, were compelled to retire. But the skill of the Archduke ere long enabled him to effect a junction with the columns of Wartensleben; and thus to fall upon Jourdan with a great superiority of numbers, and give him a signal defeat. The loss of the French in the field was great, and the bitter hostility of the German peasantry made their retreat a b.l.o.o.d.y one. Moreau, on the other hand, learning how Jourdan was discomfited, found himself compelled to give up the plan of pursuing his march further into Germany, and executed that famous retreat through the Black Forest which has made his name as splendid as any victory in the field could have done. But this reverse, however alleviated by the honours of Moreau"s achievement, was attended with appearances of the most perilous kind. The genius of Carnot had devised a great scheme of operations, of which one half was thus at once cut short. He had meant Moreau and Jourdan, coalescing beyond the Rhine, to march upon the Tyrol; while Buonaparte should advance from the scene of his Italian conquests, join his brother generals on that frontier, and then march in union with them to dictate a peace before the gates of Vienna. All hope of this junction of forces was now at an end for this campaign. The French saw themselves compelled to resume the defensive on the western frontier of Germany; and the army of Italy had to await the overwhelming war which seemed ready to pour down upon Lombardy from the pa.s.ses of the Tyrol.
Wurmser, when he fixed his headquarters at Trent, mustered in all 80,000; while Buonaparte had but 30,000, to hold a wide country, in which abhorrence of the French cause was now prevalent, to keep up the blockade of Mantua, and to oppose this fearful odds of numbers in the field. He was now, moreover, to act on the defensive, while his adversary a.s.sumed the more inspiriting character of invader. He awaited the result with calmness.
Wurmser might have learned from the successes of Buonaparte the advantages of compact movement; yet he was unwise enough to divide his great force into three separate columns, and to place one of these upon a line of march which entirely separated it from the support of the others. He himself, with his centre, came down on the left bank of the Lago di Guarda, with Mantua before him as his mark: his left wing, under Melas, was to descend the Adige, and drive the French from Verona; while the right wing, under Quasdonowich, were ordered to keep down the valley of the Chiese, in the direction of Brescia, and so to cut off the retreat of Buonaparte upon the Milanese;--in other words, to interpose the waters of the Lago di Guarda between themselves and the march of their friends--a blunder not likely to escape the eagle eye of Napoleon.
He immediately determined to march against Quasdonowich, and fight him where he could not be supported by the other two columns. This could not be done without abandoning for the time the blockade of Mantua; but it was not for Buonaparte to hesitate about purchasing a great ultimate advantage by a present sacrifice, however disagreeable. The guns were buried in the trenches during the night of the 31st July, and the French quitted the place with a precipitation which the advancing Austrians considered as the result of terror.
Napoleon meanwhile rushed against Quasdonowich, who had already come near the bottom of the Lake of Guarda. At Salo, close by the lake, and, further from it, at Lonato, two divisions of the Austrian column were attacked and overwhelmed. Augereau and Ma.s.sena, leaving merely rear-guards at Borghetto and Peschiera, now marched also upon Brescia.
The whole force of Quasdonowich must inevitably have been ruined by these combinations, had he stood his ground; but by this time the celerity of Napoleon had overawed him, and he was already in full retreat upon his old quarters in the Tyrol. Augereau and Ma.s.sena, therefore, countermarched their columns, and returned towards the Mincio. They found that Wurmser had forced their rear-guards from their posts: that of Ma.s.sena, under Pigeon, had retired in good order to Lonato; that of Augereau, under Vallette, had retreated in confusion, abandoning Castiglione to the Austrians.
Flushed with these successes, old Wurmser now resolved to throw his whole force upon the French, and resume at the point of the bayonet his communication with the scattered column of Quasdonowich. He was so fortunate as to defeat the gallant Pigeon at Lonato, and to occupy that town. But this great new success was fatal to him. In the exultation of victory he extended his line too much towards the right; and this over-anxiety to open the communication with Quasdonowich had the effect of so weakening his centre, that Ma.s.sena, boldly and skilfully seizing the opportunity, poured two strong columns on Lonato, and regained the position; whereon the Austrian, perceiving that his army was cut in two, was thrown into utter confusion. Some of his troops, marching to the right, were met by those of the French, who had already defeated Quasdonowich in that quarter, and obliged to surrender: the most retreated in great disorder. At Castiglione alone a brave stand was made. But Augereau, burning to wipe out the disgrace of Vallette,[10]
forced the position, though at a severe loss. Such was the battle of Lonato. Thenceforth nothing could surpa.s.s the discomfiture and disarray of the Austrians. They fled in all directions upon the Mincio, where Wurmser himself, meanwhile, had been employed in revictualling Mantua.
A mere accident had once more almost saved the Imperialist. One of the many defeated divisions of the army, wandering about in anxiety to find some means of reaching the Mincio, came suddenly on Lonato, the scene of the late battle, at a moment when Napoleon was there with only his staff and guards about him. He knew not that any considerable body of the enemy remained together in the neighbourhood; and, but for his presence of mind, must have been their prisoner. The Austrian had not the skill to profit by what fortune threw in his way; the other was able to turn even a blunder into an advantage. The officer sent to demand the surrender of the town was brought blindfolded, as is the custom, to his headquarters; Buonaparte, by a secret sign, caused his whole staff to draw up around him, and when the bandage was removed from the messenger"s eyes, saluted him thus: "What means this insolence? Do you beard the French general in the middle of his army?" The German recognised the person of Napoleon, and retreated stammering and blushing. He a.s.sured his commander that Lonato was occupied by the French in numbers that made resistance impossible. Four thousand men laid down their arms; and then discovered that, if they had used them, nothing could have prevented Napoleon from being their prize.
Wurmser collected together the whole of his remaining force, and advanced to meet the conqueror. He, meanwhile, had himself determined on the a.s.sault, and was hastening to the encounter. They met between Lonato and Castiglione. Wurmser was totally defeated, and narrowly escaped being a prisoner; nor did he without great difficulty regain Trent and Roveredo, those frontier positions from which his n.o.ble army had so recently descended with all the confidence of conquerors. In this disastrous campaign the Austrians lost 40,000: Buonaparte probably understated his own loss at 7000. During the seven days which the campaign occupied he never took off his boots, nor slept except by starts. The exertions which so rapidly achieved this signal triumph were such as to demand some repose; yet Napoleon did not pause until he saw Mantua once more completely invested. The reinforcement and revictualling of that garrison were all that Wurmser could show, in requital of his lost artillery, stores, and 40,000 men.
During this brief campaign the aversion with which the ecclesiastics of Italy regarded the French manifested itself in various quarters. At Pavia, Ferrara, and elsewhere, insurrections had broken out, and the spirit was spreading rapidly at the moment when the report of Napoleon"s new victory came to re-awaken terror and paralyse revolt. The conqueror judged it best to accept for the present the resubmission, however forced, of a party too powerful to be put down by examples. The Cardinal Mattei, Archbishop of Ferrara, being brought into his presence, uttered the single word _peccavi_: the victor was contented with ordering him a penance of seven days" fasting and prayer in a monastery: but he had no intention to forget these occurrences whenever another day of reckoning with the Pope should come.
While he was occupied with restoring quiet in the country, Austria, ever constant in adversity, hastened to place 20,000 fresh troops under the orders of Wurmser; and the brave veteran, whose heart nothing could chill, prepared himself to make one effort more to relieve Mantua, and drive the French out of Lombardy. His army was now, as before, greatly the superior in numbers; and though the bearing of his troops was more modest, their gallantry remained unimpaired. Once more the old general divided his army; and once more he was destined to see it shattered in detail.
He marched from Trent towards Mantua, through the defiles of the Brenta, at the head of 30,000; leaving 20,000 under Davidowich at Roveredo, to cover the Tyrol. Buonaparte instantly detected the error of his opponent. He suffered him to advance unmolested as far as Ba.s.sano, and the moment he was there, and consequently completely separated from Davidowich and his rear, drew together a strong force, and darted on Roveredo, by marches such as seemed credible only after they had been accomplished.
The battle of Roveredo (Sept. 4) is one of Napoleon"s most ill.u.s.trious days. The enemy had a strongly entrenched camp in front of the town; and behind it, in case of misfortune, Calliano, with its castle seated on a precipice over the Adige, where that river flows between enormous rocks and mountains, appeared to offer an impregnable retreat. Nothing could withstand the ardour of the French. The Austrians, though they defended the entrenched camp with their usual obstinacy, were forced to give way by the impetuosity of Dubois and his hussars. Dubois fell, mortally wounded, in the moment of his glory: he waved his sabre, cheering his men onwards with his last breath. "I die," said he, "for the Republic;--only let me hear, ere life leaves me, that the victory is ours." The French horse, thus animated, pursued the Germans, who were driven, unable to rally, through and beyond the town. Even the gigantic defences of Calliano proved of no avail. Height after height was carried at the point of the bayonet; 7000 prisoners and fifteen cannon remained with the conquerors. The Austrians fled to Levisa, which guards one of the chief defiles of the Tyrolese Alps, and were there beaten again.
Vaubois occupied this important position with the gallant division who had forced it. Ma.s.sena fixed himself in Wurmser"s late headquarters at Trent; and Napoleon, having thus totally cut off the field-marshal"s communication with Germany, proceeded to issue proclamations calling on the inhabitants of the Tyrol to receive the French as friends, and seize the opportunity of freeing themselves for ever from the dominion of Austria. He put forth an edict declaring that the sovereignty of the district was henceforth in the French Republic, and inviting the people themselves to arrange, according to their pleasure, its interior government.
The French general made a grievous mistake when he supposed that the Tyrolese were divided in their attachment to the Imperial government, because he had found the Italian subjects of that crown to be so. The Tyrol, one of the most ancient of the Austrian possessions, had also been one of the best governed; the people enjoyed all the liberty they wished under a paternal administration. They received with scornful coldness the flattering exhortations of one in whom they saw only a cunning and rapacious enemy; and Buonaparte was soon satisfied that it would cost more time than was then at his disposal to republicanise those gallant mountaineers. They, in truth, began to arm themselves, and waited but the signal to rise everywhere upon the invaders.
Wurmser heard with dismay the utter ruin of Davidowich; and doubted not that Napoleon would now march onwards into Germany, and joining Jourdan and Moreau, whose advance he had heard of, and misguessed to have been successful, endeavour to realise the great scheme of Carnot--that of attacking Vienna itself. The old general saw no chance of converting what remained to him of his army to good purpose, but by abiding in Lombardy, where he thought he might easily excite the people in his emperor"s favour, overwhelm the slender garrisons left by Buonaparte, and so cut off, at all events, the French retreat through Italy, in case they should meet with any disaster in the Tyrol or in Germany. Napoleon had intelligence which Wurmser wanted. Wurmser himself was his mark; and he returned from Trent to Primolano where the Imperialist"s vanguard lay, by a forced march of not less than sixty miles performed in two days. The surprise with which this descent was received may be imagined.
The Austrian van was destroyed in a twinkling. The French, pushing everything before them, halted that night at Cismone--where Napoleon was glad to have half a private soldier"s ration of bread for his supper.
Next day he reached Ba.s.sano where the aged Marshal once more expected the fatal rencounter. The battle of Ba.s.sano (Sept. 8) was a fatal repet.i.tion of those that had gone before it. Six thousand men laid down their arms. Quasdonowich, with one division of 4000, escaped to Friuli; while Wurmser himself, retreating to Vicenza, there collected with difficulty a remnant of 16,000 beaten and discomfited soldiers. His situation was most unhappy; his communication with Austria wholly cut off--his artillery and baggage all lost--the flower of his army no more.
Nothing seemed to remain but to throw himself into Mantua, and there hold out to the last extremity, in the hope, however remote, of some succours from Vienna; and such was the resolution of this often outwitted but never dispirited veteran.
In order to execute his purpose, it was necessary to force a pa.s.sage somewhere on the Adige; and the Austrian, especially as he had lost all his pontoons, would have had great difficulty in doing so, but for a mistake on the part of the French commander at Legnago, who, conceiving the attempt was to be made at Verona, marched to reinforce the corps stationed there, and thus left his proper position unguarded. Wurmser, taking advantage of this, pa.s.sed with his army at Legnago, and after a series of b.l.o.o.d.y skirmishes, in which fortune divided her favours pretty equally, was at length enabled to throw himself into Mantua. Napoleon made another narrow escape, in one of these skirmishes, at Arcola. He was surrounded for a moment, and had just galloped off, when Wurmser coming up and learning that the prize was so near, gave particular directions to bring him in alive!
Buonaparte, after making himself master of some scattered corps which had not been successful in keeping up with Wurmser, re-appeared once more before Mantua. The battle of St. George--so called from one of the suburbs of the city--was fought on the 13th of September, and after prodigious slaughter, the French remained in possession of all the causeways; so that the blockade of the city and fortress was henceforth complete. The garrison, when Wurmser shut himself up, amounted to 26,000. Before October was far advanced the pestilential air of the place, and the scarcity and badness of provisions, had filled his hospitals, and left him hardly half the number in fighting condition.
The misery of the besieged town was extreme; and if Austria meant to rescue Wurmser, there was no time to be lost.
[Footnote 10: Vallette was cashiered. Augereau was afterwards created Duke of Castiglione, in memory of this exploit.]
CHAPTER VII
Affairs of Corsica--Alvinzi a.s.sumes the Command of the Austrians on the Italian frontier--The three Battles of Arcola--Retreat of Alvinzi--Battle of Rivoli--Battle of La Favorita--Surrender of Mantua--Victor marches on Ancona--Despair of the Pope--Treaty of Tollentino.
The French party in Corsica had not contemplated without pride and exultation the triumphs of their countryman. His seizure of Leghorn, by cutting off the supplies from England, greatly distressed the opposite party in the island, and an expedition of Corsican exiles, which he now despatched from Tuscany, was successful in finally reconquering the country. To Napoleon this acquisition was due; nor were the Directory insensible to its value. He, meanwhile, had heavier business on his hands.
The Austrian council well knew that Mantua was in excellent keeping; and being now relieved on the Rhenish frontier, by the failure of Jourdan and Moreau"s attempts, were able to form once more a powerful armament on that of Italy. The supreme command was given to Marshal Alvinzi, a veteran of high reputation. He, having made extensive levies in Illyria, appeared at Friuli; while Davidowich, with the remnant of Quasdonowich"s army, amply recruited among the bold peasantry of the Tyrol, and with fresh drafts from the Rhine, took ground above Trent. The marshal had in all 60,000 men under his orders. Buonaparte had received only twelve new battalions, to replace all the losses of those terrible campaigns, in which three imperial armies had already been annihilated. The enemy"s superiority of numbers was once more such, that nothing but the most masterly combinations on the part of the French general could have prevented them from sweeping everything before them in the plains of Lombardy.
Buonaparte heard in the beginning of October that Alvinzi"s columns were in motion: he had placed Vaubois to guard Trent, and Ma.s.sena at Ba.s.sano to check the march of the field-marshal: but neither of these generals was able to hold his ground. The troops of Vaubois were driven from that position of Calliano, the strength of which has been already mentioned, under circ.u.mstances which Napoleon considered disgraceful to the character of the French soldiery. Ma.s.sena avoided battle; but such was the overwhelming superiority of Alvinzi, that he was forced to abandon the position of Ba.s.sano. Napoleon himself hurried forward to sustain Ma.s.sena; and a severe rencontre, in which either side claimed the victory, took place at Vicenza. The French, however, retreated, and Buonaparte fixed his headquarters at Verona. The whole country between the Brenta and the Adige was in the enemy"s hands; while the still strong and determined garrison of Mantua in Napoleon"s rear, rendering it indispensable for him to divide his forces, made his position eminently critical.
His first care was to visit the discomfited troops of Vaubois. "You have displeased me," said he, "you have suffered yourselves to be driven from positions where a handful of determined men might have bid an army defiance. You are no longer French soldiers! You belong not to the army of Italy." At these words, tears streamed down the rugged cheeks of the grenadiers. "Place us but once more in the van," cried they, "and you shall judge whether we do not belong to the army of Italy." The general dropped his angry tone; and in the rest of the campaign no troops more distinguished themselves than these.