of Carnot, that the armies of the Rhine and of Italy, subduing the forces of Austria in their course, should open a communication through the passes of the Tyrol, and, meeting in the heart of Austria, dictate peace at Vienna. Bonaparte's portion of the task was promptly and fully executed and after the repeated defeats of the Austrians, he was ready to open up his way to the capital of Germany. But the defeat of Jourdan and the retreat of Moreau, (the most memorable event of the Rhenish warfare,) left him to struggle single-handed with all the strength of Austria. Holding Lombardy as his own, and declaring in all his proclamations that his war was with the government and not with the people, he prepared to withstand the armies of Germany, and, on the same spot, like another Attila, he broke again the power of the empire." "The thunder-cloud which had been so long blackening on the mountains of the Tyrol, seemed now about to discharge its fury." Wurmser, the most celebrated of the Austrian generals, with an army of 80,000 men, marched from Trent against the French in northern Italy, whose armies he had already driven from Germany to France. One division directed its march on Breschia, along the valley of the Chiese; another descended the Adige and manœuvred on Verona, while the other passed along the left bank of Lake of Garda. Bonaparte rushed at the head of an army, "which his combinations had rendered superior," upon the right wing of the Austrians, and defeated them in separate detachments at Salo, which touches its waters, and at Lonato, which is situated at the bottom of the lake; where also the second division of the Austrian army was speedily routed. The third was defeated at Castiglione, upon the banks and near the source of a stream that flows into the Mincio,-and the last portion of ap their army was broken at Peschiera. They fled in all directions upon the Mincio. "After their defeat," says Sir Walter Scott, "there can be nothing imagined more confused or calamitous than the condition of the Austrian divisions, who found themselves opposed and finally overwhelmed by an enemy who peared to possess ubiquity. They could hardly be brought to do their duty, in circumstances where it seemed THAT DESTINY ITSELF WAS FIGHTING AGAINST THEM. The splendid army was destroyed in detail. The Austrians are supposed to have lost 40,000 men in these disastrous battles." The sprinklings of the vial fell as suddenly as before on the rivers and fountains of waters. Bonaparte toiled like a slave at his task; he flew from battle to battle, and from river to river," nor slept except by starts" during "seven days, the brief period of the campaign. Twenty thousand fresh troops were added to the discomfited army of Wurmser: and he marched from Trent towards Mantua, through the defiles of the Brenta, at the head of 30,000 men; leaving 20,000 or 25,000 under Davidowich at Roveredo, to cover the Tyrol." Bonaparte, says one historian, darted on Roveredo.* It was upon Davidowich, says another, that Bonaparte first meant to POUR his thunder. The battle of Roveredo, (4th September 1796,) was one of that great generals's splendid days. The action took place on both sides of the river.+ The wrecks of Davidowich's army fled deeper into the Tyrol, and took up a position at Lavissa, a small village, on a river of a similar name, about three leagues to the northward of Trent. Bonaparte instantly pursued them-passed the Lavissa-drove * Hist. of Napoleon, vol. i. p. 69. + Scott's Life of Napoleon, vol. iii. pp. 200, 201. them from their position, secured and occupied it— being the entrance of one of the chief defiles of the Tyrol. Wurmser "doubted not that Napoleon would march onward to Germany;" but the scene of warfare was not yet to be changed, and the victor rapidly returned from the defiles of the Tyrol, or the fountains of the Adige, to the banks of the Brenta. "Wurmser was his mark. After a forced march of not less than sixty miles, performed in two days-the Austrian van was destroyed in a twinkling." Next day Napoleon reached Bassano, the head-quarters of Wurmser. The French descended the defiles of the Brenta. "Augereau and Massena penetrated into both sides of the town; bore down all opposition; seized the cannon by which the bridge was defended, and Wurmser and his staff were in absolute flight." Joining a previously detached portion of his army, and having collected with difficulty the remnant of his discomfited troops, "the aged Marshal had still the command of about sixteen thousand men, out of sixty thousand," with whom he had, scarce a week before, commenced the campaign,-and after repeated contests, unable any longer to keep the field, he threw himself into Mantua, with the shattered fragment of his army. In those terrible campaigns, three imperial armies had already been annihilated. A formidable army of 60,000, under Alvinzi, again advanced from Germany. The French retreated. Bonaparte fixed his head-quarters at Verona. The whole territory between the Brenta and the Adige was again in the hands of the enemy, and had to be reconquered anew. Unable to combat the more wary general and his combined host on the plain, Bonaparte, by occupying a station in their rear, drew them " among vast morasses, where numbers could no longer avail.” “Ar cola is situated upon a small stream which finds its way into the Adige, through a wilderness of marshes, intersected with ditches and traversed by dikes in various directions." Such was the scene of "the three battles of Arcola," which decided the fate of the fourth imperial army. "It was at the point where he wished to cross the Alpon that Bonaparte chiefly desired to attain a decided superiority; and, in order to win it, he added stratagem to audacity. Observing one of his columns repulsed, and retreating along the causeway, he placed the 32d regiment in ambuscade in a thicket of willows which bordered the rivulet, and saluting the pursuing enemy with a close, heavy, and unexpected fire, instantly rushed to close with the bayonet, and attacking the flank of a column of nearly three thousand Croats, forced them into the marsh, where most of them perished."* "In these three days Bonaparte lost 8000 men: the slaughter among his opponents must have been terrible."+ It is calculated," says Las Casas, "that out of Alvinzi's 60,000 or 70,000 men, he lost from 30,000 to 35,000." "Thus ended the fourth campaign, undertaken for the Austrian possessions in Italy." "Austria who seemed to cling to Italy with the tenacity of a dying grasp, again, and now for the fifth time, recruited her armies on the frontier, and placing Alvinzi once more at the head of sixty thousand men, commanded him to resume the offensive against the French in Italy."§ The Austrians, still holding by the fatal rivers of waters, made the fifth descent on Northern Italy, with the same infatuation as before, in two different lines and divisions, along the Upper Adige and the Brenta. "Bonaparte, uncertain which of these attacks was considered as the main one, concentrated his army at Verona, which had been so important a place during all these campaigns as a central point, from which he might at pleasure march Scott's Life of Napoleon, p. 231. either up the Adige against Alvinzi, or descend the river to resist the attempts of Provera." In the clear and beautiful moonlight, where the passions in the breasts of men ill accorded with the calm of nature, "Napoleon ascended several heights, (on the night before the famous battle of Rivoli,) and observed the different lines of the enemy's fires. They filled the country between the Adige and the lake of Garda; the atmosphere was reddened by them."† They lay between the river and the fountains of waters; and there a vial would be poured on the morrow that would quench them. The 14th of January 1797, was one of the brightest days in the military chronicles of Napoleon. The discomfiture of the Austrians was as complete as ever. Massena, afterwards duke of Rivoli, "swept every thing before him." "The French batteries thundered on the broken columns of the enemy-their cavalry made repeated charges, and the whole Austrians who had been engaged fell into inextricable disorder. The columns which had advanced were irretrievably defeated; those which remained were in such a condition, that to attack would have been madness." Intrusting to Massena, Murat, and Joubert the pursuit of the flying columns of Alvinzi, Bonaparte, resting neither after victory nor before it, having heard during the battle that Provera, the general of the second Austrian army, had forced his way to the lake of Garda, and was already by means of boats, in communication with Mantua, hastened with all speed from the Adige to the Mincio, "surrounded and attacked with fury the troops of Provera, while the blockading army compelled the garrison, at the bayonet's point, to re-enter the besieged city of Man * Scott's Life of Napoleon, ib. p. 239. † Las Casas, ib. p. 182. Scott's Life of Napoleon, p. 242. |