The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Ida Minerva Tarbell

he wrote the Directory. “The prestige of our forces is being lost. A policy which will give you friends among the princes as well as among the people, is necessary. Diminish your enemies. The influence of Rome is beyond calculation. It was a great mistake to quarrel with that power. Had I been consulted I should have delayed negotiations as I did with Genoa and Venice. Whenever your general in Italy is not the centre of everything, you will run great risks. This language is not that of ambition; I have only too many honors, and my health is so impaired that I think I shall be forced to demand a successor. I can no longer get on horseback. My courage alone remains, and that is not sufficient in a position like this.”

      “BONAPARTE A LA BATAILLE D’ARCOLE, LE 27 BRUMAIRE, AN V.”

      It was in such a situation that Bonaparte saw the Austrian force outside of Mantua, increased to fifty thousand men, and a new commander-in-chief, Alvinzi, put at its head. The Austrians advanced in two divisions, one down the Adige, the other by the Brenta. The French division which met the enemy at Trent and Bassano were driven back. In spite of his best efforts, Bonaparte was obliged to retire with his main army to Verona. Things looked serious. Alvinzi was pressing close to Verona, and the army on the Adige was slowly driving back the French division sent to hold it in check. If Davidovich and Alvinzi united, Bonaparte was lost.

      “Perhaps we are on the point of losing Italy,” wrote Bonaparte to the Directory. “In a few days we shall make a last effort.” On November 14th this last effort was made. Alvinzi was close upon Verona, holding a position shut in by rivers and mountains on every side, and from which there was but one exit, a narrow pass at his rear. The French were in Verona.

      On the night of the 14th of November Bonaparte went quietly into camp. Early in the evening he gave orders to leave Verona, and took the road westward. It looked like a retreat. The French army believed it to be so, and began to say sorrowfully among themselves that Italy was lost. When far enough from Verona to escape the attention of the enemy, Bonaparte wheeled to the southeast. On the morning of the 15th he crossed the Adige, intending, if possible, to reach the defile by which alone Alvinzi could escape from his position. The country into which his army marched was a morass crossed by two causeways. The points which it was necessary to take to command the defile were the town of Arcola and a bridge over the rapid stream on which the town lay. The Austrians discovered the plan, and hastened out to dispute Arcola and the bridge. All day long the two armies fought desperately, Bonaparte and his generals putting themselves at the head of their columns and doing the work of common soldiers. But at night Arcola was not taken, and the French retired to the right bank of the Adige, only to return on the 16th to reëngage Alvinzi, who, fearful lest his retreat be cut off, had withdrawn his army from near Verona, and had taken a position at Arcola. For two days the French struggled with the Austrians, wrenching the victory from them before the close of the 17th, and sending them flying towards Bassano. Bonaparte and his army returned to Verona, but this time it was by the gate which the Austrians, three days before, were pointing out as the place where they should enter.

      It was a month and a half before the Austrians could collect a fifth army to send against the French. Bonaparte, tormented on every side by threatened uprisings in Italy; opposed by the Directory, who wanted to make peace; and distressed by the condition of his army, worked incessantly to strengthen his relations, quiet his enemies, and restore his army. When the Austrians, some forty-five thousand strong, advanced in January, 1797, against him, he had a force of about thirty-five thousand men ready to meet them. Some ten thousand of his army were watching Wurmser and twenty thousand Austrians shut up at Mantua.

      Alvinzi had planned his attack skilfully. Advancing with twenty-eight thousand men by the Adige, he sent seventeen thousand under Provera to approach Verona from the east. The two divisions were to approach secretly, and to strike simultaneously.

      At first Bonaparte was uncertain of the position of the main body of the enemy. Sending out feelers in every direction, he became convinced that it must be that it approached Rivoli. Leaving a force at Verona to hold back Provera, he concentrated his army in a single night on the plateau of Rivoli, and on the morning of January 14th advanced to the attack. The struggle at Rivoli lasted two days. Nothing but Bonaparte’s masterly tactics won it, for the odds were greatly against him. His victory, however, was complete. Of the twenty-eight thousand Austrians brought to the field, less than half escaped.

      While his battle was waging, Bonaparte was also directing the fight with Provera, who was intent upon reaching Mantua and attacking the French besiegers on the rear, while Wurmser left the city and engaged them in front. The attack had begun, but Bonaparte had foreseen the move, and sent a division to the relief of his men. This battle, known as La Favorita, destroyed Provera’s division of the Austrian army, and so discouraged Wurmser, whose army was terribly reduced by sickness and starvation, that he surrendered on February 2d.

      The Austrians were driven utterly from Italy, but Bonaparte had no time to rest. The Papal States and the various aristocratic parties of southern Italy were threatening to rise against the French. The spirit of independence and revolt which the invaders were bringing into the country could not but weaken clerical and monarchical institutions. An active enemy to the south would have been a serious hindrance to Napoleon, and he marched into the Papal States. A fortnight was sufficient to silence the threats of his enemies, and on February 19, 1797, he signed with the Pope the treaty of Tolentino. The peace was no sooner made than he started again against the Austrians.

      When Mantua fell, and Austria saw herself driven from Italy, she had called her ablest general, the Archduke Charles, from the Rhine, and given him an army of over one hundred thousand men to lead against Bonaparte. The French had been reënforced to some seventy thousand, and though twenty thousand were necessary to keep Italy quiet, Bonaparte had a fine army, and he led it confidently to meet the main body of the enemy, which had been sent south to protect Trieste. Early in March he crossed the Tagliamento, and in a series of contests, in which he was uniformly successful, he drove his opponent back, step by step, until Vienna itself was in sight, and in April an armistice was signed. In May the French took possession of Venice, which had refused a French alliance, and which was playing a perfidious part, in Bonaparte’s judgment, and a republic on the French model was established.

      Italy and Austria, worn out and discouraged by this “war of principle,” as Napoleon called it, at last compromised, and on October 17th, one year, seven months, and seven days after he left Paris, Napoleon signed the treaty of Campo Formio. By this treaty France gained the frontier of the Rhine and the Low Countries to the mouth of the Scheldt. Austria was given Venice, and a republic called the Cisalpine was formed from Reggio, Modena, Lombardy, and a part of the States of the Pope.

      The military genius that this twenty-seven-year-old commander had shown in the campaign in Italy bewildered his enemies and thrilled his friends.

      “Things go on very badly,” said an Austrian veteran taken at Lodi. “No one seems to know what he is about. The French general is a young blockhead who knows nothing of the regular rules of war. Sometimes he is on our right, at others on our left; now in front, and presently in our rear. This mode of warfare is contrary to all system, and utterly insufferable.”

      It is certain that if Napoleon’s opponents never knew what he was going to do, if his generals themselves were frequently uncertain, it being his practice to hold his peace about his plans, he himself had definite rules of warfare. The most important of these were:

      “Attacks should not be scattered, but should be concentrated.”

      “Always be superior to the enemy at the point of attack.”

      “Time is everything.”

      To these formulated rules he joined marvelous fertility in stratagem. The feint by which, at the beginning of the campaign, he had enticed Beaulieu to march on Genoa, and that by which, a few days later, he had induced him to place his army near Valenza, were masterpieces in their way.

      His quick-wittedness in emergency frequently saved him from disaster. Thus, on August 4th, in the midst of the excitement of the contest, Bonaparte went to Lonato to see what troops could be drawn from there.