Napoleon. Adam Zamoyski
figures, and singling out individual acts of courage in melodramatic images of republican heroism. At the same time, he stressed his lack of equipment and berated his masters in Paris for failing to send him guns and trained artillery officers and engineers. To Carnot he expressed his ‘despair, I could almost say my rage’ at not having the tools with which to do the job he had been set.23
Desperate to reap the fruits of success, the Directory proclaimed the victories of French arms loudly and published extracts from the despatches. The name of Bonaparte was soon familiar throughout the country, and was becoming subliminally associated with heroism, genius and victory. On 25 April Bonaparte sent Joseph and Junot to Paris with the twenty-one enemy standards captured so far, knowing that their progress through France and their arrival in Paris would make an impression. ‘It would be difficult to convey the enthusiasm of the population,’ Joseph confirmed. After signing the armistice of Cherasco, Bonaparte sent Murat with the document and more standards. Whatever their feelings about him and his doings, the Directory were happy to bask in the reflected glory, and could only hail him as a national hero.24
Murat was burdened with another mission – to persuade Josephine to come to Italy. From the moment he left Paris Bonaparte had not stopped thinking about her and longing for her to join him, and nothing could banish her from his thoughts. He could not understand why she did not write more often, why her letters were often lukewarm, and why she had not made haste to join him. He wrote to her every day, sometimes more than once, even after exhausting marches and hard-fought engagements. He had thoughts for nobody else. After Dego he was brought a beautiful young woman taken prisoner along with an Austrian officer, but he passed up the chance of having her and allowed her to go on her way.25
When he sent Joseph to Paris he entrusted him with a letter for Josephine, whom he had yet to meet. She was sure to like him, he wrote. ‘Nature has endowed him with a gentle, even and thoroughly good character; he is full of good qualities,’ he assured her. He wanted her to come out to Italy with the returning Junot. ‘You must come with him, do you understand?’ he wrote, urging her to seek inspiration and strength by reading Ossian. ‘Take wing, come, come!’ He had also written to Barras, asking him to press her to come. From Cherasco the day following the armistice he assured her that no woman was ever ‘loved with more devotion, fire and tenderness’, and that his love grew with every day that passed. He could not understand how she had come to mean so much to him. He had a carriage, silver and china for her, so all she needed was to bring a chambermaid and a cook.26
Josephine had no intention of leaving Paris, with its parties and theatres and the many friends she loved. And she had recently taken up with Hippolyte Charles, a dashing hussar officer, a good lover and a jovial companion who kept her entertained. Bonaparte had begun to suspect something of the sort, but his mind was taken up with more pressing matters.
11
Beaulieu was by no means beaten, and given the chance to rally he would be in a position to crush the French. Bonaparte’s forces had been whittled down by fighting and forced marches, and although he had received reinforcements, his army’s cohesion and morale were still frail. According to his own assessment, the French soldier’s outstanding quality was the ability to march quickly in pursuit of a retreating enemy, building up as he went a determination and an impetus which gave him the edge. But this was lost when he came under attack from seasoned regulars.1
He ordered Sérurier to feign crossing the Po at Valenza in order to prompt Beaulieu to defend that stretch of the river. He himself led a small body of troops in a forced march covering sixty-four kilometres in thirty-six hours along the right bank of the river to Piacenza. There, deep in the Austrian rear, he crossed the river on 9 May 1796, hoping to cut off Beaulieu’s line of retreat. ‘The second campaign has begun,’ he wrote to Carnot that evening. ‘Beaulieu is disconcerted; he calculates poorly and constantly falls into the traps set for him.’ But the Austrian commander had realised what was happening and hastily fell back across the next line of defence, the river Adda. Bonaparte pursued him but failed to catch up, reaching the little town of Lodi as the Austrian rearguard was crossing the river. He only just managed to bring up a couple of guns and open fire to prevent them from destroying the bridge.2
No sensible general would have considered trying to cross this 200-metre-long wooden bridge, no more than ten metres wide, at the other end of which the Austrians had placed cannon which could rake it with fire. But Bonaparte was not a sensible general, and his men were buoyed by success. Without waiting for the rest of his force to arrive, he drew up the troops at his disposal, made a rousing speech and ordered them to storm the bridge. They surged forward, only to be mown down by canister shot, but others followed, led by Berthier, Masséna and Lannes, who showed total disregard for danger. Having got halfway across, some of the men climbed down the piles onto a sandbank from which they waded across to the opposite bank, where they engaged the Austrian defenders from the flank. After two more attempts the French managed to charge across the bridge and dislodge the Austrians, who fell back leaving 153 dead, 182 wounded and 1,701 prisoners. French losses totalled less than 500, possibly as little as 350.3
‘Pero non fu gran cosa,’ Bonaparte commented that evening at dinner in the residence of the Bishop of Lodi. But he was determined that to the outside world it should be a grandissima cosa. ‘The battle of Lodi, my dear Director, gives the whole of Lombardy to the Republic,’ he wrote to Carnot that evening, announcing that he was about to pursue and finally defeat Beaulieu. His description of the capture of the bridge was predictably florid, and he claimed for this ‘battle’ a significance which it would acquire only thanks to his efforts. Saliceti followed up with an account that was outright poetic. These would be broadcast to the public in France, and would soon be supplemented by images. Bonaparte asked the French minister in Genoa, Guillaume Faipoult, to commission an engraving of the glorious feat, the result of which was an image of himself, standard in hand, leading his men across the bridge under a hail of shot. He made sure that from now on every feat of arms was immortalised by an icon.4
He needed to enhance his authority by any means available. While at Lodi he had received two letters from Paris, one welcome, one less so. The first was from Murat, informing him that Josephine had only delayed coming out to join him in Italy because she was pregnant and feared travelling. It was not true, but she could think of no other excuse to avoid leaving Paris. Bonaparte was pleased by the news that he was to become a father, and while he was concerned for her health, he felt that her supposed condition would guarantee her fidelity.5
Earlier that day he had received less welcome news. The Directory felt he had accomplished his prescribed aim of creating a diversion to assist the two French armies operating in Germany, and now sent him new instructions. They ordered the remainder of the Army of the Alps into Italy, and planned to divide the French forces on the peninsula into a northern one under the sixty-five-year-old professional soldier and acclaimed victor of the invading Prussians at Valmy in 1792, General Kellermann, and a southern under Bonaparte, which was to march on Rome and overthrow ‘the last of the popes’.
This did not suit him at all, as he was set on his cherished enterprise of the subversion of Italy. On 1 May he had written to Faipoult in Genoa asking for material on the topography, resources, constitutional arrangements and economic potential of every state on the peninsula. During his march to Piacenza he had crossed territory belonging to the neutral duchy of Parma. He had made a feint as though he were about to attack its capital, which prompted the duke to despatch envoys to ask for his neutrality to be respected – which it was, in return for a huge bribe in silver, corn, oats and other victuals, 1,600 horses, twenty works of art, and an undertaking to maintain hospitals for the French wounded. ‘These little princes need to be managed,’ Bonaparte commented in his report to the Directory, ignoring the fact that it was not his business to manage anybody beside his soldiers. ‘The war in Italy at this moment is half military and half diplomatic,’ he explained, instructing his superiors in Paris on the positions they should take in negotiating a