In one area, however, French revolutionary institutions never had much hope of prevailing in Italy, and that was in their efforts to reduce the powers of the Roman Catholic Church. Italians opposed Napoleon’s religious reforms passionately, and in what is called the epoca francese in Italian history, Napoleon’s Church reforms were hated as much as the introduction of his administrative culture was admired.45 His attempted bullying of the Vatican began early. In October 1796 Napoleon warned Pius VI not to oppose the Cispadane Republic, let alone attack the French once the Austrians returned. He ominously informed the Pope that ‘to destroy the temporal power of the Pope, the will alone is wanting,’ but in peacetime ‘everything may be arranged’. He then warned him that if he declared war it would mean ‘the ruin and death of the madmen who would oppose the Republican phalanxes’.46 With the Directory unable to spare the 25,000 troop reinforcements he needed so desperately after Jourdan and Moreau’s defeats in Germany – barely 3,000 arrived for the coming campaign – Napoleon had to buy time. As he told Cacault in Rome: ‘The game really is for us to throw the ball from one to the other, so as to deceive that old fox.’47
In early November the Austrians were ready for their third attempt to relieve Mantua, using a strategic plan that could have been thought up only by a committee, in this case the Aulic Council in Vienna. The Hungarian veteran General József Alvinczi and his 28,000 men were to drive the French back from Rivoli to Mantua, while General Giovanni di Provera was to advance with 9,000 men from Brenta to Legnago as a diversion, and 10,000 men at Bassano would try to prevent Napoleon from concentrating his forces. To have 19,000 men essentially taking part in diversionary attacks, with only 28,000 in the main force, showed that the Council had not learned the lessons of the previous six months. Napoleon later said that the sixty-one-year-old Alvinczi, who had fought in Bavaria, Holland and Turkey in his long career, was the best general he had fought thus far, which was why he never said anything either positive or negative about him in his bulletins (by contrast he praised Beaulieu, Wurmser and Archduke Charles whom he didn’t rate). He also showed great respect to General Provera in his proclamations and Orders of the Day because he thought him the worst of the lot and hoped he wouldn’t be dismissed.
Napoleon now had 41,400 men. He positioned them as far back as possible to give him maximum warning of where and when the Austrians were coming. In addition he had 2,700 men garrisoning Brescia, Peschiera and Verona, and the 40th Demi-Brigade of 2,500 men were en route from France. Alvinczi crossed the Piave on November 2. He instructed Quasdanovich and Provera to make their way to Vicenza, Quasdanovich via Bassano, and Provera via Treviso. The Austrian advance had begun.
Much to his chagrin, Masséna had to obey Napoleon’s orders to fall back on Vicenza without a fight. He had followed Augereau in coming to appreciate Napoleon as a leader and soldier, but he was also jealous of his own reputation as one of France’s best generals and proud of his nickname ‘the darling child of victory’. He didn’t like being ordered to retreat, even before larger forces. On November 5 Napoleon brought Augereau up to Montebello and, seeing the Austrian vanguards crossing the Brenta river well in front of their columns, decided to attack them the next day. Meanwhile Masséna hit Provera’s column at Fontaniva, driving them back onto some islands in the river but not completely across it.
On November 6, Augereau attacked Quasdanovich’s force as it emerged from Bassano, but despite hard fighting he failed to push it back over the Brenta. The village of Nove changed hands several times over the course of the day and Napoleon, now outnumbered by 28,000 to 19,500, had to withdraw. There are several ways to ascribe victory: number of casualties, retention of the battlefield, stymying of the enemy’s plans among them. Whichever way the battle of Bassano is viewed it was Napoleon’s first defeat, albeit not a serious one.
Falling back to Vicenza, Napoleon received news of Vaubois’ defeat at Davidovich’s hands over five days of skirmishes in the villages of Cembra and Calliano. Over 40 per cent of his force had been killed or were wounded or missing. Augereau was immediately ordered back to the Adige, south of Verona, Masséna to Verona itself, and General Barthélemy Joubert – a lawyer’s son who had run away from home at fifteen to join the artillery – was told to send a brigade from Mantua to Rivoli to help Vaubois rally there. Napoleon then harangued Vaubois’ men: ‘Soldiers of the 39th and 85th Infantry, you are no longer fit to belong to the French Army. You have shown neither discipline nor courage; you have allowed the enemy to dislodge you from a position where a handful of brave men could have stopped an army. The chief-of-staff will cause to be inscribed upon your flags: “These men are no longer of the Army of Italy”.’48 With his acute sense for what would energize and what demoralize a unit, Napoleon correctly gauged that this public shaming would ensure that both demi-brigades would fight harder and with more determination over the next few days than ever before.
Austrian inactivity after the victory at Bassano allowed Napoleon to regroup. By the 12th he held Verona with 2,500 men and the banks of the Adige river with 6,000, while the disgraced Vaubois contained Davidovich at Rivoli and Kilmaine continued besieging Mantua. This left Masséna with 13,000 men on the right flank and Augereau with 5,000 on the left to attack Alvinczi at Caldiero, a village 10 miles east of Verona. With rain pouring straight into their faces, they showed none of the usual dash of the Army of Italy. The wind blew gunpowder away, their shoes slipped in the mud and their attacks throughout the morning gained only a little ground on the right, which they had to concede once Austrian reinforcements arrived at 3 p.m. About 1,000 were killed or wounded on both sides. Although he naturally claimed it as a victory, it was telling that when Napoleon had medals struck to commemorate Montenotte, Millesimo and Castiglione that year, he didn’t order one for Caldiero.
On November 13 both armies rested. Napoleon used the time to write a despairing letter to the Directory from Verona, effectively blaming them for his predicament:
Perhaps we are on the verge of losing Italy. None of the relief I was waiting for has arrived … I am doing my duty, the army is doing its duty. My soul is in tatters, but my conscience is at peace … The weather continues to be bad; the entire army is excessively tired and without boots … The wounded are the elite of the army; all our superior officers, all our best generals are hors de combat. Everyone who comes to me is so inept and doesn’t even have a soldier’s confidence! … We have been abandoned to the depths of Italy … Perhaps my hour … has come. I no longer dare expose myself as my death would discourage the troops.49
It was true that Sérurier and Sauret were wounded, and Lannes, Murat and young Kellermann were ill in hospital, but he had plenty of other fine generals serving under him. He certainly ended on a note so upbeat as to belie everything else he had written: ‘In a few days, we will try one last effort. If Fortune smiles upon us, Mantua will be taken, and with it, Italy.’
Napoleon had devised a bold plan: to get behind Alvinczi at Villanova and force him to fight for his line of retreat in country so flooded with rice fields that his larger numbers would count for little. Eschewing the easier crossing of the Adige at Albaredo, where Austrian cavalry could give the alarm, he chose to cross at Ronco, where a pontoon bridge had been built for the previous campaign; it had been dismantled but was stored safely nearby. On the night of November 14, Masséna left Verona by the west to fool Austrian spies in the city, but then turned south-east to join Augereau on the road there.
The causeways in that part of Italy were (and still are) remarkable, with very steep sides and standing well above the marshes, so the French approach and the building of the pontoon bridge went entirely unnoticed by the Austrian pickets. The 51st Line crossed in boats to secure the bridgehead at daybreak and the bridge was finished by seven o’clock the next morning. Where the road forked on the other side of the river, Augereau went off to the right alongside a dyke to the town of Arcole, intending to cross over the Alpone stream and march north towards Villanova,
to attack Alvinczi’s artillery park. Meanwhile, Masséna went to the left towards Porcile to try to turn Alvinczi’s left flank from behind. Augereau advanced with General Louis-André Bon’s 5th Légère into the gloom, but soon found himself under fire all along the road running alongside the Alpone stream from two battalions of Croats and two guns protecting Alvinczi’s left-rear. Arcole was strongly held – loopholed and barricaded – and repulsed the first attack, as well as a second from the 4th Line directed by Augereau himself. Attackers had to slide down the steep banks to seek shelter from the fire. Meanwhile Masséna met another Croat battalion and an Austrian regiment under Provera halfway to Porcile and drove them back, thus securing the left of the bridgehead. Fighting in the Lombardy plains was different from the mountains, and afforded the Austrian cavalry more opportunity, but here the swift streams and networks of dykes worked in favour of a young commander with a feeling for tactical detail but far fewer cavalry.
Although Alvinczi was quickly informed of the French move, he assumed because of the marshlands that it was merely a light force effecting a diversion. When his patrols found Verona quiet, he sent them to see what was happening to his left, where Provera’s 3,000 troops had been beaten by Masséna. Another 3,000 had marched swiftly to Arcole, arriving just after noon. They placed two howitzers to bring the causeway under a plunging fire, where Lannes, having only just rejoined the army from hospital in Milan, was wounded again.
Napoleon arrived at the bridge at Arcole just as Augereau’s attempt to capture it had been beaten off. He ordered another attack, which stalled under heavy fire. Augereau then seized a flag and walked out fifteen paces in front of his skirmishers, saying, ‘Grenadiers, come and seek your colour.’ At that point Napoleon, surrounded by his aides-de-camp and bodyguard, grasped another flag and led the charge himself, haranguing the troops about their heroism at Lodi. For all his statements to the Directory two days earlier about not exposing himself to danger, he certainly did at Arcole. Yet it failed – the men displayed ‘extraordinary cowardice’ according to Sulkowski – and they didn’t rush the body-strewn bridge, although his aide-de-camp Colonel Muiron and others were killed on it at Napoleon’s side. During an Austrian counter-attack, Napoleon had to be bundled back into the marshy ground behind the bridge and was saved only by a charge of grenadiers. He was a brave man, but there was only so much anyone could do in the face of concentrated fire being directed by a stalwart Austrian resistance, which would continue for two more days. Visiting the bridge today, one can see how Napoleon could have been pushed down into the large drainage ditch just adjacent to it, which for all the indignity probably have saved his life.
Once it became clear that the bridge would not be taken, Napoleon ordered Masséna and Augereau to return south of the Adige, leaving campfires burning at Arcole to suggest that the French were still there. He needed to be ready to move against Davidovich if Vaubois retreated any further at Rivoli. From the church tower of the small village of Ronco, the French could see Alvinczi marching back to Villanova and deploying east of the Alpone. The bridge at Arcole wouldn’t be captured for another two days, by Augereau and Masséna, who returned there on the 17th, and Napoleon wasn’t present when it fell. Although French losses were significant – 1,200 were killed, including 8 generals, and 2,300 were wounded, against Austria’s 600 killed and 1,600 wounded – Arcole was ultimately a French victory, as they emerged with 4,000 captured Austrians and 11 cannon. ‘It took good luck to defeat Alvinczi,’ Napoleon later admitted.50
As winter closed in and the fighting season ended with Mantua still under siege, the Austrians would make a fourth attempt to relieve the city. The campaign had cost Austria nearly 18,000 casualties, and the French over 19,000. The French were now short of everything – officers, shoes, medicine and pay. Some were so hungry that there was a mutiny in the 33rd Line, where three companies had to be imprisoned and two ringleaders shot. As soon as the fighting ceased Napoleon dismissed Vaubois and promoted Joubert to command the division covering Rivoli.
Napoleon’s report to Carnot of November 19 was far more optimistic than his previous one. ‘The destinies of Italy are beginning to become clear,’ he wrote. ‘I hope, before ten days are up, to be writing to you from headquarters based in Mantua. Never has a battlefield been more fought over than that of Arcole. I have almost no generals left; their devotion and courage know no equal.’ He ended by saying that he intended to march on ‘obstinate’ Rome as soon as Mantua capitulated.51 When in late November the Directory sent General Henri Clarke, Napoleon’s former boss at the Topographical Bureau, to Vienna to explore the possibilities of peace, Napoleon persuaded him that, as Mantua was about to fall, he shouldn’t sacrifice the Cispadane Republic in the negotiations.52 ‘He is a spy whom the Directory have set upon me,’ Napoleon supposedly told Miot, ‘he is a man of no talent – only conceited.’53 This was hardly Napoleon’s considered view, because he was to raise the highly competent Clarke, whom he later made the Duc de Feltre, to be his private secretary, then war minister and, by 1812, one of the most powerful men in France. ‘Send me 30,000 men and I will march on Trieste,’ Napoleon told the Directory, ‘carry the war into the Emperor’s lands, revolutionize Hungary, and go to Vienna. You will then have a right to expect millions, and a good peace.’54
‘I arrive at Milan,’ Napoleon told Josephine on 27 November, who was still holidaying with Hippolyte Charles in Genoa, ‘I rush to your apartment; I have left everything to see you, to press you in my arms … You were not there: you run from town to town after the fêtes; you leave as I am about to arrive; you do not concern yourself about your dear Napoleon anymore … The whole world is only too happy if it can please you, and your husband alone is very, very unhappy. Bonaparte.’55 The next day he wrote again, saying: ‘When I require of you a love equal to mine I do wrong; how should one weigh lace in the scales against gold?’56 Yet Josephine was good at allaying Napoleon’s suspicions. Antoine Lavalette, a relative by marriage who had taken the late Muiron’s place as one of Napoleon’s eight aides-de-camp, recalled how in Milan: ‘Madame Bonaparte used to take her husband upon her lap after breakfast, and hold him fast for a few minutes.’57 Apart from anything else, it was an indication of how light he was in those days. An equally charming vignette from this period can be glimpsed in Napoleon’s letter to Jérôme de Lalande, the director of the Paris Observatory, to whom he mused: ‘To spend the night between a pretty woman and a fine sky, and spend the day recording observations and making calculations, seems to me to be happiness on earth.’58
Less happy was the letter sent by Battaglia, the chief officer of neutral Venice, who had written in December to complain of the behaviour of French troops on Venetian soil. Napoleon indignantly denied that any women had been raped by French troops, asking, ‘Does the Republic of Venice really want to declare itself so openly against us?’59 Battaglia immediately backed down and Napoleon’s reply two days later was calmer, promising ‘to punish in exemplary fashion any soldiers who stray from the regulations of severe discipline’.
Recognizing that after the fall of Livorno they could no longer defend Corsica from the French, the British under the brilliant thirty-eight-year-old Commodore Horatio Nelson had conducted a model evacuation of the island in October. Paoli and his supporters left with them. Napoleon sent Miot de Melito and Saliceti to organize the French departments that would be set up there once the British left. The same day he wrote to Battaglia, he also wrote to Joseph, who went with Melito, to say that he wanted the Casa Bonaparte to be made ‘clean and habitable. It needs to be put back to how it was’, that is, before it was ransacked by the Paolists four years before.60 His years fighting the French bureaucracy over the pépinière would not be entirely wasted.
Between September and December 1796, nearly 9,000 people died of disease and starvation in Mantua. Of the 18,500 soldiers garrisoned inside the city only 9,800 were now fit for duty. The last rations were due to run out on January 17. The next Austrian attack mu
st therefore come soon, and Napoleon’s main concern was to get his army ready for it. He sent forty letters to Berthier from Milan over the course of eighteen days in December, and begged the Directory for more reinforcements. ‘The enemy is withdrawing his troops from the Rhine to send them to Italy. Do the same, help us,’ he wrote on the 28th. ‘We are only asking for more men.’61 In the same letter he said he had captured an Austrian spy who had carried a letter for Emperor Francis in a cylinder in his stomach. ‘If they have diarrhoea,’ Napoleon added helpfully, ‘they make sure to take the little cylinder, soak it in liqueur and swallow it again. The cylinder is dipped in Spanish wax mixed with vinegar.’
There was no aspect of Napoleon’s soldiers’ lives and welfare that didn’t concern him. When he discovered that some of Joubert’s men weren’t presenting themselves to their quartermasters on pay-day, he wanted to be told why, suspecting a swindle of some kind. ‘The more I delve, in my leisure moments, into the incurable sores of the administration of the Army of Italy,’ he wrote to the Directory on January 6, 1797, ‘the more I’m convinced of the necessity of applying a prompt and fool-proof remedy.’ Claiming that ‘the principal actresses of Italy are all being kept by French army contractors’, and that ‘luxury and embezzlement are at their height’, he repeated his request ‘to have any administrator of the army shot’.62 (The Directory were too sensible, or keen on self-preservation, to give a general the arbitrary power of life and death over other Frenchmen.) Napoleon did not hesitate to use the powers he did hold ruthlessly when he could. On January 7 he ordered General Jean-Baptiste Rusca to have the chiefs of a rebellion in Modena shot, and the house of its leader, the Duke of Modena’s confessor, destroyed. A pyramid was erected on the rubble with a sign reading: ‘The punishment of a raving priest who abused his ministry and preached revolt and murder.’63*
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