CHAPTER VIII

My father in the Army of Italy--He is received at Milan by Bonaparte and Joséphine--Bonaparte's troubles in Italy--Scurvy--The campaign is resumed--Discouragement--Battle of Arcole.

Whilst these wonders were being performed in Upper Italy my father was still commanding a division of the Army of the Alps: as we have pointed out, since it was a post of observation, he had placed the brigadier-generals Dufresne and Pailloc respectively at the foot of Mont Cenis, and at St. Pierre d'Albigny in the Tarantaise, whilst he established his own headquarters at la Chambre, a little village comprising a dozen houses, situated at the base of a chain of peaks which abounded in chamois. Herein lay his predilection for la Chambre, where, besides, he knew he would meet again one of his old guides from Mont Cenis, a most ardent hunter, with whom he spent days and nights on the mountains.

One night, on his return after three days' grand sport, my father found a letter commanding him to go to Italy and put himself at the disposal of General Bonaparte. This order was dated 22 Vendémiaire (October 14th).

Bonaparte no longer signed himself "Buonaparte."

It was exactly what my father had been hoping for, although to some extent he shared the same dislike felt by his colleagues, who considered themselves experienced generals at the age of thirty-two and thirty-four years, and who objected to serve under a general aged twenty-six; yet the roar of the cannons and the sound of many battles had been ringing in his ears for a year, until he was quite ready to ask for service in Italy, no matter in what rank.

My father reached Milan, October the 19th, 1796.

Bonaparte gave him a cordial welcome, and Joséphine an even warmer reception; she had just joined her husband, and, as a Creole, was passionately attached to anything that recalled her beloved Colonies.

He found Bonaparte in a state of great uneasiness, and very angry because of the conduct of the Directory, which had deserted him. The Austrian generals were beaten, but Austria herself was not beaten.

The troops at the emperor's disposition in Poland, thanks to the promises Catherine had given him, were able to march to the Alps; many troops, too, were stationed to watch over the Danube and to keep an eye on Turkey; moreover, all the reserves of the Austrian monarchy were being prepared for Italy; a new and splendid army therefore was being equipped in Friuli, made up of the remnant of Wurmser's troops, those from Poland and Turkey, with reserves and recruits. Marshal Alvintzy was charged to take command of this fourth army, intended to avenge the honour of Colli, Beaulieu and Wurmser.

Bonaparte had not more than 25,000 men of the troops which had accompanied him to Italy, or had joined him there, with which to meet this new army; for the Austrian cannon had made great gaps in our ranks, in spite of their defeats. Some battalions had reached him from la Vendée, but they were greatly reduced by desertion; Kellermann, who had just despatched my father, sent word by him that he could not weaken the line of the Alps, as he was compelled to keep a watch on Lyons and the banks of the Rhone, where the Compagnies de Jésus were given over to all kinds of brigandage. Bonaparte clamoured vehemently for the 40th and the 83rd brigades with their 6000 men, and, if they should arrive, he would be equal to anything.

He wrote thus to the Directory:--"I am unwell, I can hardly sit my horse; there is nothing left me but courage, and that alone is not enough for the position I am in: our prestige is regarded as evaporated; send troops or Italy is lost."

Indeed, my father found Bonaparte very ill. The malady of which he complained was scurvy, which he had caught at Toulon in doing a very heroic act, in himself cleaning out a gun with the sponge of an artillery-man who had just been killed; he had neglected the disease, and it was wearing him out; he was frightfully thin, he looked like a walking skeleton with nothing alive about him but his eyes.

Nevertheless, he did not despair; he recommended my father to exercise the utmost vigilance and incessant industry; and, informing him of his next plan of campaign, he sent him to take command of the first division before Mantua.

So, eleven days later, the campaign re-opened.

The fourth hydra-head was scotched; Marshal Alvintzy had thrown bridges over the Piave and advanced to Brenta with 40,000 men.

The struggle was terrible. It lasted from the 1st to the 17th of November; Bonaparte, with 20,000 men, attacked 50,000; once his army was reduced to 15,000; once Bonaparte, discouraged by the indecisive battles of Bassano and Caldiero, addressed the following cry of distress to the Directory.

It was the 14th November; on the 13th Bonaparte had reached Verona after ten days of struggle, not only against the Austrians, but against mud, rain, and hail.

"All our superior officers," he wrote, "are _hors de combat_; the Army of Italy, reduced to a mere handful, is exhausted; the heroes of Millesimo, of Lodi, of Castiglione and of Bassano have died for their country or are in the hospital; there is nothing left the corps but their pride and their reputation; Joubert, Lannes, Lamart, Victor, Murat, Charlet, Dupuis, Rampon, Pigeon, Menard, Chabadon are wounded; we are abandoned in the heart of Italy; the brave men who remain to us have to face inevitable death in the very midst of continual hazards and with inferior numbers. Perhaps the fatal hour for the brave Augereau and the dauntless Masséna is on the point of striking; then, then what is to become of these brave men? This thought keeps me back. I dare no longer court death to the discouragement of those I value so highly; had I only received the 83rd and been strengthened by 3500 tried men, I would have dared anything; perhaps in a few days 40,000 men will not suffice to save us.

"To-day our troops are resting; to-morrow, subject to the movements of the enemy, we will take action."

Here we have the complaints, or rather the gloomy predictions, of a tired-out, discouraged, and depressed man: the strongest of constitutions succumb to such moments of doubt, and experience these hours of despair: after great fatigue the body overrides the mind, the sheath tarnishes the blade.

Two hours after having penned this letter Bonaparte had devised a new plan.

The battle of Roneo took place on the following day, being the beginning of the famous battle of Arcole, which lasted three days.

By the third day the Austrians had lost 5000 men as prisoners, 8000 or 10,000 killed or wounded, and, although still 40,000 strong, they withdrew to the mountains, pursued by 15,000 French.

They retreated into the capital of the Tyrol: 15,000 French had accomplished the gigantic undertaking of fighting against and conquering 50,000 men.

But they had only repulsed the army of Alvintzy, they had not destroyed it, as they had destroyed the three others.

Bonaparte advised Serrurier to continue the blockade of Mantua, to harass Wurmser as he had harassed Beaulieu (Cauto d'Irles), and took up his winter quarters at Milan, a centre for negotiations with all the little princedoms of Italy, which through fear alone became our allies.

About three weeks after, an event occurred during the blockade which was to have a great influence on the course of events of this terrible campaign.

One night--either the 23rd or 24th December, which corresponded to that of the 2nd or 3rd Nivôse--my father was awakened by the visit of three or four soldiers, who brought a man before him who had been captured by one of our advanced sentinels just as he was going to leap over the first barricade at Mantua.

My father was at Marmirolo.

The colonel in command of our outposts at St. Antoine sent this man to my father with the message that he was a Venetian spy and he believed he carried important intelligence.

The man's replies were astonishing. He was in the Austrian service, and one of the garrison of Mantua, which town he had left on account of a love affair; he was just returning when he was challenged and arrested by the sentinel, who had heard the noise of his footsteps on the frozen snow.

Although he was searched all over, nothing was found on him.

But, in spite of the apparent frankness of his answers and his ease of manner during his examination, my father thought he detected certain quick glances, certain nervous twitches, which denoted a man who was not quite sure of his ground. Moreover, the word "spy" when used before him confused him, and made the reasons he gave for his going out and returning hard to believe. Furthermore, when a general is watching' a town of the importance of Mantua, and hopes he has caught hold of a spy, he does not easily renounce his hopes.

But there seemed nothing further to be said: the man's pockets were perfectly empty, and his replies mathematically precise.

Favourite books of my father's were Polybius and Cæsar's _Commentaries._ A volume of the _Commentaries_ of the conqueror of Gaul lay open on the table near his bed, and the passage my father had just been re-reading before going to sleep was where Cæsar relates how, in order to pass his lieutenant through to Labienus with valuable information, he had enclosed his letter in a little ivory ball about the size of a child's toy; how the messenger when he came to the enemy's pickets, or to any place where he feared being taken prisoner, was to carry the ball in his mouth, and to swallow it if he were pushed to extremes.

This passage from Cæsar flashed across my father's mind as a ray of light.

"Very well," said my father; "since this man lies, he must be taken out and shot."

"What! General," the Venetian exclaimed in terror. "Why am I to be shot?"

"To cut open your stomach and find the despatches you have swallowed," said my father with as much certainty as though the matter had been revealed to him by his familiar spirit.

The spy trembled.

The men hesitated.

"Oh! it is not a joke," said my father to the soldiers who had taken the prisoner; "if you wish it, I will give you a written order."

"No, General," replied the soldiers; "if you are serious--"

"Perfectly serious; take him away and shoot him."

The soldiers moved forward to lead off the spy.

"One moment!" he said, seeing that matters had taken a grave turn.

"Will you confess?"

"Yes, yes, I confess," said the spy, after a moment's hesitation.

"You confess you have swallowed your despatches?"

"Yes, General."

"And how long ago did you do that?"

"About two hours and a half ago, General."

"Dermoncourt," said my father to a young aide-de-camp who slept in the next room to his, and who had been listening and looking on since the beginning of this scene with the greatest attention, not seeing what it was going to lead to.

"Here I am, General."

"You have heard?"

"What, General?"

"That this man has swallowed his despatches?"

"Yes."

"Two and a half hours ago?"

"Two and a half hours ago."

"Very well, go and find the chemist of the village and ask him whether it is a purgative or an emetic that should be given to a man to make him get rid of what he has taken two hours and a half ago; he is to tell you which will have the quickest result."

Five minutes later Dermoncourt returned, his hand at the salute and, with wonderful command of his features, he replied:

"A purgative, General."

"You have brought one with you?"

"Yes, General."

They gave the purgative to the spy, who swallowed it with a grimace; then they took him to Dermoncourt's room, where two soldiers kept him in view, whilst Dermoncourt passed a very bad night, being waked up by the soldiers each time they thought the medicine was going to take effect. At last, towards three in the morning, he was delivered of a tabloid of wax, as large as a filbert. This little ball of wax was washed in one of those irrigating canals which are to be found in thousands in the meadows round Mantua, steeped in a liquid the spy carried for the purpose in a tiny flask hidden in his waistcoat pocket which the soldiers had not thought necessary to take from him, and handed to my father; he passed it on to be opened by Dermoncourt, who, in his capacity of secretarial aide-de-camp, had to open despatches.

One fear alone remained to them--the despatch might be in German, and not a single man in the general's quarters could speak German.

In the meantime, Dermoncourt was performing the Cæsarian operation on the wax pellet with his pen-knife; and he drew from it a letter written on vellum in such small characters that, when rolled between the fingers, the letter was not larger than a big pea.

Great was the delight of the two operators when they perceived that the letter was written in French; one might almost have said the emperor and his commander-in-chief had foreseen the possibility of this letter falling into my father's hands.

I give the tenor of the letter, which I take from a copy in my father's handwriting; the original, as we shall see presently, was sent to Bonaparte:--

"TRENT, _15th December 1796._

"I have the honour to transmit to your Excellency His Majesty's commands, dated 5th of the month, literally, and in the same language in which I received them.

"You will take care to advise Field Marshal Vurmser without delay not to discontinue his operations; you will inform him that I am expecting him valorously and zealously to defend Mantua to the last extremity; that I know him, and the brave officers of his staff who are with him, too well to fear they will give themselves up as prisoners; moreover, he must try to transport the garrison into France rather than to send it back into my realm; I desire that in the event of his being reduced to the last extremity and without means of subsistence, he will take measures to destroy as far as possible anything in Mantua that would be serviceable to the enemy, and, in leading out the portion of his troops that are fit to follow him, to make for and to cross the Po, and then to march to Ferrara or to Bologna, holding himself ready, if the need arises, to go towards Rome or into Tuscany; he will find very few of the enemy in those regions, which are _favourably disposed_ towards the provisioning of his troops, on whose behalf, if needful, he must use force, as he would to surmount any other obstacle.

"FRANÇOIS.

"A reliable man, a cadet from the Straroldo regiment, brings this important despatch to your Excellency. I would add that the actual situation and the requirements of the army do not allow of attempting any fresh operations for _three weeks or a month_, without exposing it anew to the danger of non-success.

"I cannot too strongly urge upon your Excellency to hold on in Mantua as long as you possibly can, His Majesty's commands acting as your general instructions; whatever happens, I beg of your Excellency to send me news by some safe means, in order that I may keep in touch with you.

"ALVINTZY.

"_P.S._-In all probability the next action I am arranging will take place on the 13th or 14th January. I shall march with 30,000 men to the plateau of Rivoli, and I shall despatch Provera with 10,000 men along the Adige to Legnago, with a considerable convoy. When you hear firing, make a sortie to cause a diversion in favour of his movement."