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“Don’t be anxious; love me like your eyes—but that’s not enough—like yourself; more than yourself, than your thoughts, your mind, your life, your all. But forgive me, I’m raving. Nature is weak when one loves....”
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“I have received a letter which you interrupt to go, you say, into the country; and afterwards you pretend to be jealous of me, who am so worn out by work and fatigue. Oh, my dear!... Of course, I am in the wrong. In the early spring the country is beautiful; and then the nineteen-year old lover was there, without a doubt. The idea of wasting another moment in writing to the man three hundred leagues away, who lives, moves, exists only in memory of you; who reads your letters as one devours one’s favorite dishes after hunting for six hours!”
JUNOT (1771–1813).
Chapter V
The First Italian Campaign—Napoleon’s Way of Making War
But Napoleon had much to occupy him besides his separation from Josephine. Extraordinary difficulties surrounded his new post. Neither the generals nor the men knew anything of their new commander. “Who is this General Bonaparte? Where has he served? No one knows anything about him,” wrote Junot’s father when the latter at Toulon decided to follow his artillery commander.
In the Army of Italy they were asking the same questions, and the Directory could only answer as Junot had done: “As far as I can judge, he is one of those men of whom nature is avaricious, and that she permits upon the earth only from age to age.”
He was to replace a commander-in-chief who had sneered at his plans for an Italian campaign and who might be expected to put obstacles in his way. He was to take an army which was in the last stages of poverty and discouragement. Their garments were in rags. Even the officers were so nearly shoeless that when they reached Milan and one of them was invited to dine at the palace of a marquise, he was obliged to go in shoes without soles and tied on by cords carefully blacked. They had provisions for only a month, and half rations at that. The Piedmontese called them the “rag heroes.”
Worse than their poverty was their inactivity. “For three years they had fired off their guns in Italy only because war was going on, and not for any especial object—only to satisfy their consciences.” Discontent was such that counter-revolution gained ground daily. One company had even taken the name of “Dauphin,” and royalist songs were heard in camp.
Napoleon saw at a glance all these difficulties, and set himself to conquer them. With his generals he was reserved and severe. “It was necessary,” he explained afterward, “in order to command men so much older than myself.” His look and bearing quelled insubordination, restrained familiarity, even inspired fear. “From his arrival,” says Marmont, “his attitude was that of a man born for power. It was plain to the least clairvoyant eyes that he knew how to compel obedience, and scarcely was he in authority before the line of a celebrated poet might have been applied to him:
“‘Des egaux? dès longtemps Mahomet n’en a plus.’”
General Decrès, who had known Napoleon well at Paris, hearing that he was going to pass through Toulon, where he was stationed, offered to present his comrades. “I run,” he says, “full of eagerness and joy; the salon opens; I am about to spring forward, when the attitude, the look, the sound of his voice are sufficient to stop me. There was nothing rude about him, but it was enough. From that time I was never tempted to pass the line which had been drawn for me.”
Lavalette says of his first interview with him: “He looked weak, but his regard was so firm and so fixed that I felt myself turning pale when he spoke to me.” Augereau goes to see him at Albenga, full of contempt for this favorite of Barras who has never known an action, determined on insubordination. Bonaparte comes out, little, thin, round-shouldered, and gives Augereau, a giant among the generals, his orders. The big man backs out in a kind of terror. “He frightened me,” he tells Masséna. “His first glance crushed me.”
He quelled insubordination in the ranks by quick, severe punishment, but it was not long that he had insubordination. The army asked nothing but to act, and immediately they saw that they were to move. He had reached his post on March 22d; nineteen days later operations began.
The theatre of action was along that portion of the maritime Alps which runs parallel with the sea. Bonaparte held the coast and the mountains; and north, in the foot-hills, stretched from the Tende to Genoa, were the Austrians and their Sardinian allies. If the French were fully ten thousand inferior in number, their position was the stronger, for the enemy was scattered in a hilly country where it was difficult to unite their divisions.
As Bonaparte faced his enemy, it was with a youthful zest and anticipation which explains much of what follows. “The two armies are in motion,” he wrote Josephine, “each trying to outwit the other. The more skilful will succeed. I am much pleased with Beaulieu. He manœuvres very well, and is superior to his predecessor. I shall beat him, I hope, out of his boots.”
The first step in the campaign was a skilful stratagem. He spread rumors which made Beaulieu suspect that he intended marching on Genoa, and he threw out his lines in that direction. The Austrian took the feint as a genuine movement, and marched his left to the sea to cut off the French advance. But Bonaparte was not marching to Genoa, and, rapidly collecting his forces, he fell on the Austrian army at Montenotte on April 12th, and defeated it. The right and left of the allies were divided, and the centre broken.
By a series of clever feints, Bonaparte prevented the various divisions of the enemy from reënforcing each other, and forced them separately to battle. At Millesimo, on the 14th, he defeated one section; on the same day, at Dego, another; the next morning, near Dego, another. The Austrians were now driven back, but their Sardinian allies were still at Ceva. To them Bonaparte now turned, and, driving them from their camp, defeated them at Mondovi on the 22d.
It was phenomenal in Italy. In ten days the “rag heroes,” at whom they had been mocking for three years, had defeated two well-fed armies ten thousand stronger than themselves, and might at any moment march on Turin. The Sardinians sued for peace.
The victory was as bewildering to the French as it was terrifying to the enemy, and Napoleon used it to stir his army to new conquests.
“Soldiers!” he said, “in fifteen days you have gained six victories, taken twenty-one stands of colors, fifty-five pieces of cannon, and several fortresses, and conquered the richest part of Piedmont. You have made fifteen hundred prisoners, and killed or wounded ten thousand men.
“Hitherto, however, you have been fighting for barren rocks, made memorable by your valor, but useless to the nation. Your exploits now equal those of the conquering armies of Holland and the Rhine. You were utterly destitute, and have supplied all your wants. You have gained battles without cannons, passed rivers without bridges, performed forced marches without shoes, bivouacked without brandy, and often without bread. None but republican phalanxes—soldiers of liberty—could have borne what you have endured. For this you have the thanks of your country.
“The two armies which lately attacked you in full confidence, now fly before you in consternation.... But, soldiers, it must not be concealed