Beaulieu had in fact spent the day several kilometres away, sitting badly bruised by a roadside while his escort struggled to repair the carriage that had pitched him to the ground. He had realised his mistake too late and had lost valuable time, which Bonaparte was not going to let him regain. He urged Augereau, most of whose men were still marching without boots, and many without muskets, to hasten his attack on Millesimo, and Masséna to strike further into the Austrian rear at Dego. Once Augereau had accomplished his task, he was to swing left and begin to roll up the extremity of the Sardinian line.
Bonaparte needed to keep up the momentum so that neither of his opponents had time to regroup and strike back; if they did, he would be caught between two fires. He therefore reacted violently to any apparent hitch. After Augereau had sent the Sardinians reeling at Millesimo, one force of about 1,000 men under General Provera had ensconced themselves in an old fortress at Cosseria. Knowing them to have no more supplies or water than those they carried, Augereau meant to leave a few hundred men to pin them down and take their inevitable surrender while he went after the retreating main body of Sardinians. But Bonaparte insisted he storm Cosseria. In the ensuing assault the French suffered heavy losses from the Sardinians sniping from the battlements. Provera offered to capitulate, but Bonaparte tried to bully him into unconditional surrender, threatening to take no prisoners, and ordered Augereau to attack once more. This attack proved as futile as the first. Provera duly surrendered the next morning, having lost no more than 150 men, while Bonaparte’s impatience had cost the French at least 600 and possibly as many as 1,000 casualties. He did have the good grace to admit his mistake and express regret.17
To Augereau’s right, Masséna attacked the citadel of Dego, where over the next two days some of the most serious fighting took place, with the citadel changing hands several times. After the final assault, which he directed himself, Bonaparte promoted a young chef de bataillon named Lannes whose dash had caught his attention.
On 16 April Bonaparte learned that Beaulieu was retreating to Acqui on the road to Milan; his plan had worked. He ordered Masséna to move northwards against the Sardinians. Colli’s dwindling force was falling back in order to defend Turin. It fought doggedly, inflicting heavy losses on the French, but on 21 April, after a brief defence it had to abandon its base and stores at Mondovi. That evening the King of Sardinia, Victor Amadeus, summoned a special council in Turin. As Beaulieu had signalled that he was not able to come to his aid further resistance seemed pointless; on the morning of 23 April Colli requested an armistice.
Bonaparte replied that he lacked the necessary powers and continued his advance. When pressed by the desperate Sardinians to agree to a ceasefire, he replied that he would be putting himself at risk if he did so without guarantees, and could only sign one if they handed over the fortresses of Coni, Tortona and Alessandria. In order to prevent Beaulieu from attempting to succour his Sardinian allies, he moved quickly on Cherasco and Alba, where he encouraged Piedmontese revolutionaries to establish a ‘Republic’, as a signal to the king that he could overthrow him if he wished. He applied further pressure by raising his demands to include the cession of Savoy and Nice to France, and the supply of his army with all its needs. These he delivered as an ultimatum on 27 April.18
The two men sent to conclude the negotiations and sign the armistice, the old Piedmontese General La Tour and Colli’s chief of staff Colonel Costa de Beauregard, found Bonaparte late on the night of 27 April in a barely guarded house in Cherasco. He was haughty and firm, threatening to launch further attacks every time they suggested softening his terms. At one o’clock in the morning he informed them that his troops were under orders to begin the advance on Turin at two. But having bullied them into signing the armistice he offered them a snack of broth, cold meats, hardtack and some pastries made by the local nuns, during which he became talkative. Although Beauregard was impressed by the brilliance and wide-ranging interests Bonaparte displayed, he found him cold, proud, bitter, and lacking in any grace or amenity. He also noted that he was very tired and his eyes were red. As they parted he said to Bonaparte, ‘General, how sad that one cannot like you as much as one cannot help admiring and esteeming you!’19
Bonaparte had weightier concerns than the affection of his enemies. He had exceeded both his brief and his duty as a soldier. He was single-handedly deciding French foreign policy, presenting the Directory with a fait accompli. He was, it is true, acting in concert with commissioner Saliceti who was with him during the negotiations, but he was still at risk of being recalled in disgrace. As he had meant to act independently all along, he had anticipated this eventuality and been shoring up his position.
His treatment of the troops under his command had been designed from the start not only to make them more effective as fighting men, but also to turn them into his men. He had achieved the first aim by giving them victory: nothing acts on the soldier’s self-esteem like success. It was clear to them that this success was largely due to Bonaparte’s talents, yet he made them feel it was all down to them. He had developed a gift for talking to the men as equals. His extraordinary memory allowed him to remember their names, their units, where they came from, their ages, histories, and above all their military exploits. He would come up to a man and ask about some personal problem or congratulate him on a past feat like an old comrade. He was not shy of reprimanding officers in front of the troops, to show that he was their friend.
He had refrained from being too strict with them at first, allowing these men who had been starved of food, comforts and action for so long to indulge their basic instincts. They preyed on the country they went through, and by the time he had reached Cherasco he had to admit to being frightened by the ‘horrors’ they were committing. ‘The soldier who lacks bread is driven to excesses of violence which make one blush for humanity,’ he reported on 24 April. By then they had had a chance to fill their bellies and pull boots and items of clothing they lacked from Austrian and Sardinian dead or prisoners. Once he had halted his advance and managed to capture Sardinian stores, Bonaparte was able to begin reining them in. ‘The pillage is growing less widespread,’ he reported to the Directory on 26 April. ‘The primal thirst of an army lacking everything is being quenched.’ He had three men shot and six others condemned to hard labour, then shot a few more for looting a church. ‘It costs me much sadness and I have passed some difficult moments,’ he admitted.20
While he tightened discipline, he took care to flatter the soldiers’ self-esteem, making throwaway statements such as ‘With 20,000 men like that one could conquer Europe!’ He described their feats of arms in superlative terms in his proclamations. In that of 26 April he listed the engagements they had taken part in as if they were great battles, gave inflated figures of enemy dead and wounded, guns and standards captured, and told them they were heroic conquerors and liberators who would one day look back with pride on the glorious epic they had shared in. He encouraged the sense that they were making history with references to Hannibal as they came over the Alpine passes.21
A mixture of growing self-confidence and the urge to earn praise fed their eagerness to live up to his expectations of them. ‘I can hardly express to what degree of intoxication and pride such resounding, repeated and rapid triumphs transported our army, and what a noble emulation inspired all ranks,’ noted Collot. ‘They vied with each other to be the first to reach a redoubt, to be the first to storm a battery, the first across a river, to show the most devotion and audacity.’22
Bonaparte’s despatches to the Directory were no less hyperbolic. He wrote dramatic descriptions of every engagement, exaggerating the obstacles and the efforts