The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte (Vol. 1-4). William Milligan Sloane
of Louis XVIII, and his court had been a nest of plotting French emigrants. When his agents reached Paris they were received with coarse resentment by the Directory and bullied into an alliance, though they had been instructed to make only a peace. Their sovereign was humiliated to the limit of possibility. The loss of his fortress robbed him of his power. By the terms of the treaty he was to banish the French royalists from his lands. Stripped thus of both force and prestige, he did not long survive the disgrace, and died, leaving to Charles Emmanuel, his son, no real dominion but that over the island of Sardinia. The contrast between the ferocious bluster of the Directory and the generous simplicity of a great conqueror was not lost on the Italians nor on the moderate French. For them as for Bonaparte, a military and political aspirant in his first independence, everything, absolutely everything, was at stake in those earliest engagements; on the event hung not merely his career, but their release. In pleasant succession the spring days passed like a transformation scene. Success was in the air, not the success of accident, but the resultant of forethought and careful combination. The generals, infected by their leader's spirit, vied with each other in daring and gallantry. For happy desperation Rampon's famous stand remains unsurpassed in the annals of war.
From the heights of Ceva the leader of conquering and now devoted soldiers could show to them and their equally enthusiastic officers the gateway into the fertile and well-watered land whither he had promised to lead them, the historic fields of Lombardy. Nothing comparable to that inexhaustible storehouse of nature can be found in France, generous as is her soil. Walled in on the north and west by the majestic masses of the Alps, and to the south by the smaller but still mighty bastions of the Apennines, these plains owe to the mountains not only their fertility and prosperity, but their very existence. Numberless rills which rise amid the icy summits of the great chain, or the lower peaks of the minor one, combine into ever growing streams of pleasant waters which finally unite in the sluggish but impressive Po. Melting snows and torrential rains fill these watercourses with the rich detritus of the hills which renews from year to year the soil it originally created. A genial climate and a grateful soil return to the industrious inhabitants an ample reward for their labors. In the fiercest heats of summer the passing traveler, if he pauses, will hear the soft sounds of slow-running waters in the irrigation sluices which on every side supply any lack of rain. Wheat, barley, and rice, maize, fruit, and wine, are but a few of the staples. Great farmsteads, with barns whose mighty lofts and groaning mows attest the importance of Lombard agriculture, are grouped into the hamlets which abound at the shortest intervals. And to the vision of one who sees them first from a mountain-top through the dim haze of a sunny day, towns and cities seem strewn as if they were grain from the hand of a sower. The measure of bewilderment is full when memory recalls that this garden of Italy has been the prize for which from remotest antiquity the nations of Europe have fought, and that the record of the ages is indelibly written in the walls and ornaments of the myriad structures—theaters, palaces, and churches—which lie so quietly below. Surely the dullest sansculotte in Bonaparte's army must have been aroused to new sensations by the sight. What rosy visions took shape in the mind of their leader we can only imagine.
Piedmont having submitted, the promised descent into these rich plains was not an instant deferred. "Hannibal," said the commanding general to his staff, "took the Alps by storm. We have turned their flank." He paused only to announce his feats to the Directory in modest phrase, and to recommend for preferment those who, like Lannes and Lanusse, had earned distinction. The former was just Bonaparte's age but destitute of solid education, owing to the poverty of his parents. He enlisted in 1792 and in 1795 was already a colonel, owing to his extraordinary inborn courage and capacity. Through the hatred of a Convention legate he was degraded from his rank after the peace of Basel and entered Bonaparte's army as a volunteer. Thereafter his promotion was fast and regular until he became the general's close friend and steadfast supporter. Lanusse was only twenty-four but had been chief of battalion for four years, and now entered upon a brilliant though short career which ended by his death in 1801 at Aboukir. The advance of Bonaparte's army began on May thirtieth. Neither Genoa, Tuscany, nor Venice was to be given time for arming; Beaulieu must be met while his men were still dispirited, and before the arrival of reinforcements: for a great army of thirty thousand men was immediately to be despatched under Wurmser to maintain the power of Austria in Italy. Beaulieu was a typical Austrian general, seventy-one years old, but still hale, a stickler for precedent, and looking to experience as his only guide. Relying on the principles of strategy as he had learned them, he had taken up what he considered a strong position for the defense of Milan, his line stretching northeasterly beyond the Ticino from Valenza, the spot where rumors, diligently spread by Bonaparte, declared that the French would attempt to force a passage. Confirmed in his own judgment by those reports, the old and wary Austrian commander stood brave and expectant, while the young and daring adventurer opposed to him marched swiftly by on the right bank fifty miles onward to Piacenza. There he made his crossing on May seventh in common ferry-boats and by a pontoon bridge. No resistance was made by the few Austrian cavalry who had been sent out merely to reconnoiter the line. The enemy were outwitted and virtually outflanked, being now in the greatest danger. Beaulieu had barely time to break camp and march in hot haste northeasterly to Lodi, where, behind the swift current of the Adda, he made a final stand for the defense of Milan, the seat of Austrian government. In fact, his movements were so hurried that the advance-guards of both armies met by accident at Fombio on May eighth, where a sharp engagement resulted in a victory for the French. Laharpe, who had shown his usual courage in this fight, was killed a few hours later, through a mistake of his own soldiers, in a night mêlée with the pickets of a second Austrian corps. On the ninth the dukes of Parma and of Piacenza both made their submission in treaties dictated by the French commander, and simultaneously the reigning archduke quitted Milan. Next day the pursuing army was at Lodi.
Bonaparte wrote to the Directory that he had expected the passage of the Po would prove the most bold and difficult manœuver of the campaign. But it was no sooner accomplished than he again showed a perfect mastery of his art by so manœuvering as to avoid an engagement while the great river was still immediately in his rear. He was then summoned to meet a third emergency of equal consequence. The Adda is fordable in some places at certain times, but not easily; and at Lodi a wooden bridge about two hundred yards in length then occupied the site of the later solid structure of masonry and iron. The approach to this bridge Beaulieu had seized and fortified. Northwestward was Milan; to the east lay the almost impregnable fortress of Mantua. Beaten at Lodi, the Austrians might still retreat, and make a stand under the walls of either town with some hope of victory: it was Bonaparte's intention so to disorganize his enemy's army that neither would be possible. Accordingly on May tenth the French forces were concentrated for the advance. They started immediately and marched so swiftly that they overtook the Austrian rear-guard before it could withdraw behind the old Gothic walls of the town, and close the gates. Driving them onward, the French fought as they marched. A decisive conflict cleared the streets; and after a stubborn resistance the brave defenders retreated over the bridge to the eastern bank of what was now their last rampart, the river. With cool and desperate courage, Sebottendorf, whose Austrians numbered less than ten thousand men, then brought into action his artillery, and swept the wooden roadway.
In a short time the bridge would no doubt have been in flames; it was uncertain whether the shifting and gravelly bottom of the stream above or below would either yield a ford or permit a crossing by any other means. Under Bonaparte's personal supervision, and therefore with miraculous speed, the French batteries were placed and began an answering thunder. In an access of personal zeal, the commander even threw himself for an instant into the whirling hail of shot and bullets, in order the better to aim two guns which in the hurry had been misdirected. Under this terrible fire and counterfire it was impossible for the Austrians to apply a torch to any portion of the structure. Behind the French guns were three thousand grenadiers waiting for a signal. Soon the crisis came. A troop of Bonaparte's cavalry had found the nearest ford a few hundred yards above the bridge, and were seen, amid the smoke, struggling to cross, though without avail, and turn the right flank of the Austrian infantry, which had been posted a safe distance behind the artillery on the opposite shore. Quick as thought, in the very nick of opportunity, the general issued his command, and the grenadiers dashed for the bridge. Eye-witnesses declared that the fire of the Austrian artillery was now redoubled, while from houses on the opposite side soldiers hitherto concealed