Chapter 32

Rivoli and the Capitulation of Mantua.

The Diplomatic Feint of Great Britain -- Clarke and the Directory -- Catherine the Great and Paul I -- Austria's Strategic Plan -- Renewal of Hostilities -- The Austrians at Rivoli and Nogara -- Bonaparte's Night March to Rivoli -- Monte Baldo and the Berner Klause -- The Battle of Rivoli -- The Battle of La Favorita -- Feats of the French Army -- Bonaparte's Achievement -- The Fall of Mantua.

[Sidenote: 1797.]

The fifth division of the Italian campaign was the fourth attempt of Austria to retrieve her position in Italy, a position on which her rulers still believed that all her destinies hung. Her energy was now the wilfulness of despair. Events in Europe were shaping themselves without regard to her advantage. The momentary humiliation of France in Jourdan's defeat, the deplorable condition of British finances as shown by the fall of the three per cents to fifty-three, the unsettled and dangerous state of Ireland, with the menace of Hoche's invasion impending, these circumstances created in London a feeling that perhaps the time was propitious for negotiating with France, where too there was considerable agitation for peace. Accordingly, in the autumn of 1796, Lord Malmesbury was sent to Paris under rigid cautionary instructions. The envoy was cold and haughty; Delacroix, the French minister, was conceited and shallow. It soon appeared that what the agent had to offer was either so indefinite as to be meaningless, or so favorable to Great Britain as to be ridiculous in principle. The negotiations were merely diplomatic fencing. To the Englishman the public law of Europe was still that of the peace of Utrecht, especially as to the Netherlands; to the Frenchman this was preposterous since the Low Countries were already in France by enactment and the rule of natural boundaries. About the middle of November, Malmesbury was informed that he must either speak to the point or leave. Of course the point was Belgium; if France would abandon her claim to Antwerp she could have compensation in Germany. There was some further futile talk about what both parties then as before, and thereafter to the end, considered the very nerve of their contention. Malmesbury went home toward the close of December, and soon after, Hoche's fleet was wrecked in the Channel. The result of the British mission was to clarify the issues, to consolidate British patriotism once more, to reopen the war on a definite basis. Hoche was assigned to the Army of the Sambre and Meuse, declaring he would first thunder at the gates of Vienna and then return through Ireland to London and command the peace of the world.

Meantime the Directory had noted the possibility of independent negotiation with Austria. It did not intend, complaisant as it had been hitherto, to leave Bonaparte unhampered in so momentous a transaction. On the contrary, it selected a pliable and obedient agent in the person of General Clarke, offspring of an Irish refugee family, either a mild republican or a constitutional monarchist according to circumstances, a lover of peace and order, a conciliatory spirit. To him was given the directors' confidential, elaborate, and elastic plan for territorial compensations as a basis for peace, the outcome of which in any case would leave Prussia preponderant in Germany. Liberal and well disposed to the Revolution as they believed, she could then be wooed into a firm alliance. In Italy, France was to maintain her new authority and retain what she had conquered for her own good pleasure. Bonaparte intended to do as he found necessary in both these cases. After Arcola, Thugut, the Austrian minister, expressed a sense of the deepest humiliation that a youth commanding volunteers and rapscallions should work his will with the fine troops and skilled generals of the empire. But, undaunted, he applied to Russia for succor. Catherine had dallied with Jacobinism in order to occupy both Prussia and Austria while she consolidated and confirmed her strength in Poland and the Orient. This she had accomplished and was now ready to bridle the wild steed she had herself unloosed. Intervening at the auspicious hour, she could deliver Italy, take control of central Europe, subjugate the north, and sway the universe.

Accordingly she demanded from Pitt a subsidy of two and a half million dollars, and ordered Suvoroff with sixty thousand troops to the assistance of Austria. Just then, in September, 1796, Gustavus IV, of Sweden, was at St. Petersburg for his betrothal with the Empress's granddaughter Alexandra. He required as a matter of course that she should adopt his faith. This was contemptuously refused and the preparations for the festival went forward to completion as if nothing had occurred. At the appointed hour for the ceremonial, the groom did not and would not appear. Consternation gave way to a sense of outrage, but the "Kinglet," as the great courtiers styled him, stood firm. The Empress was beside herself, her health gave way, and she died in less than two months, on November seventeenth. The dangerous imbecile, her son Paul I, reigned in her stead. Weird figure that he was, he at least renounced his mother's policy of conquest and countermanded her orders to Suvoroff, recalling him and his army. Austria was at bay, but she was undaunted.

Once more Alvinczy, despairing of success, but obedient to his orders, made ready to move down the Adige from Trent. Great zeal had been shown in Austria. The Vienna volunteer battalions abandoned the work of home protection for which they had enlisted, and, with a banner embroidered by the Empress's own hand, joined the active forces. The Tyrolese, in defiance of the atrocious proclamation in which Bonaparte, claiming to be their conqueror, had threatened death to any one taking up arms against France, flocked again to the support of their Emperor. By a recurrence to the old fatal plan, Alvinczy was to attack the main French army; his colleague Provera was to follow the Brenta into the lower reaches of the Adige, where he could effect a crossing, and relieve Mantua. He was likewise to deceive the enemy by making a parade of greater strength than he really had, and thus draw away Bonaparte's main army toward Legnago on the lower Adige. A messenger was despatched to Wurmser with letters over the Emperor's own signature, ordering him, if Provera should fail, to desert Mantua, retreat into the Romagna, and under his own command unite the garrison and the papal troops. This order never reached its destination, for its bearer was intercepted, and was compelled by the use of an emetic to render up the despatches which he had swallowed.

On January seventh, 1797, Bonaparte gave orders to strengthen the communications along his line, massing two thousand men at Bologna in order to repress certain hostile demonstrations lately made in behalf of the Pope. On the following day an Austrian division which had been lying at Padua made a short attack on Augereau's division, and on the ninth drove it into Porto Legnago, the extreme right of the French line. This could mean nothing else than a renewal of hostilities by Austria, although it was impossible to tell where the main attack would be made. On the eleventh Bonaparte was at Bologna, concluding an advantageous treaty with Tuscany; in order to be ready for any event, he started the same evening, hastened across the Adige with his troops, and pressed on to Verona.

On the twelfth, at six in the morning, the enemy attacked Masséna's advance-guard at St. Michel, a suburb of that city. They were repulsed with loss. Early on the same day Joubert, who had been stationed with a corps of observation farther up in the old and tried position at the foot of Monte Baldo, became aware of hostile movements, and occupied Rivoli. During the day the two Austrian columns tried to turn his position by seizing his outpost at Corona, but they were repulsed. On the thirteenth he became aware that the main body of the Austrians was before him, and that their intention was to surround him by the left. Accordingly he informed Bonaparte, abandoned Corona, and made ready to retreat from Rivoli. That evening Provera threw a pontoon bridge across the Adige at Anghiari, below Legnago, and crossed with a portion of his army. Next day he started for Mantua, but was so harassed by Guieu and Augereau that the move was ineffectual, and he got no farther than Nogara.

The heights of Rivoli command the movements of any force passing out of the Alps through the valley of the Adige. They are abrupt on all sides but one, where from the greatest elevation the chapel of St. Mark overlooked a winding road, steep, but available for cavalry and artillery. Rising from the general level of the tableland, this hillock is in itself a kind of natural citadel. Late on the thirteenth, Joubert, in reply to the message he had sent, received orders to fortify the plateau, and to hold it at all hazards; for Bonaparte now divined that the main attack was to be made there in order to divert all opposition from Provera, and that if it were successful the two Austrian armies would meet at Mantua. By ten that evening the reports brought in from Joubert and by scouts left this conclusion no longer doubtful. That very night, therefore, being in perfect readiness for either event, Bonaparte moved toward Rivoli with a force numbering about twenty thousand. It was composed of every available French soldier between Desenzano and Verona, including Masséna's division.[68] By strenuous exertions they reached the heights of Rivoli about two in the morning of the fourteenth. Alvinczy, ignorant of what had happened, was waiting for daylight in order to carry out his original design of inclosing and capturing the comparatively small force of Joubert and the strong place which it had been set to hold, a spot long since recognized by Northern peoples as the key to the portal of Italy. Bonaparte, on his arrival, perceived in the moonlight five divisions encamped in a semicircle below; their bivouac fires made clear that they were separated from one another by considerable distances. He knew then that his instinct had been correct, that this was the main army, and that the decisive battle would be fought next day. The following hours were spent in disposing his forces to meet the attack in any form it might take. Not a man was wasted, but the region was occupied with pickets, outposts, and reserves so ingeniously stationed that the study of that field, and of Bonaparte's disposition of his forces, has become a classic example in military science.

[Footnote 68: Somewhat under 40,000. Bonaparte guessed, and his guess was very shrewd, that all told he was then confronted by 45,000. The Austrians have never made the facts clear, though their initial strength is set at 28,000. I have found no estimate of the reinforcements. In any case they lost 10,000 here, the whole of Provera's corps at La Favorita, and 18,000 were captured at Mantua: their fighting force in Italy was annihilated.]

The gorge by which the Adige breaks through the lowest foot-hills of the Alps to enter the lowlands has been famous since dim antiquity. The Romans considered it the entrance to Cimmeria; it was sung in German myths as the Berner Klause, the majestic gateway from their inclement clime into the land of the stranger, that warm, bright land for the luxurious and orderly life of which their hearts were ever yearning. Around its precipices and isolated, frowning bastions song and fable had clustered, and the effect of mystery was enhanced by the awful grandeur of the scene. Overlooking all stands Monte Baldo, frowning with its dark precipices on the cold summits of the German highland, smiling with its sunny slopes on the blue waters of Lake Garda and the fertile valley of the Po. In the change of strategy incident to the introduction of gunpowder the spot of greatest resistance was no longer in the gorge, but at its mouth, where Rivoli on one side, and Ceraino on the other, command respectively the gentle slopes which fall eastward and westward toward the plains. The Alps were indeed looking down on the "Little Corporal," who, having flanked their defenses at one end, was now about to force their center, and later to pass by their eastward end into the hereditary dominions of the German emperors on the Danube.

At early dawn began the conflict which was to settle the fate of Mantua. The first fierce contest was between the Austrian left and the French right at St. Mark; but it quickly spread along the whole line as far as Caprino. For some time the Austrians had the advantage, and the result was in suspense, since the French left, at Caprino, yielded for an instant before the onslaught of the main Austrian army made in accordance with Alvinczy's first plan, and, as he supposed, upon an inferior force by one vastly superior in numbers. Berthier, who by his calm courage was fast rising high in his commander's favor, came to the rescue, and Masséna, following with a judgment which has inseparably linked his name with that famous spot, finally restored order to the French ranks. Every successive charge of the Austrians was repulsed with a violence which threw their right and center back toward Monte Baldo in ever growing confusion. The battle waged for nearly three hours before Alvinczy understood that it was not Joubert's division, but Bonaparte's army, which was before him. A fifth Austrian column then pressed forward from the bank of the Adige to scale the height of Rivoli, and Joubert, whose left at St. Mark was hard beset, could not check the movement. For an instant he left the road unprotected. The Austrians charged up the hill and seized the commanding position; but simultaneously there rushed from the opposite side three French battalions, clambering up to retrieve the loss. The nervous activity of the latter brought them quickly to the top, where at once they were reinforced by a portion of the cavalry reserve, and the storming columns were thrown back in disorder. At that instant appeared in Bonaparte's rear an Austrian corps which had been destined to take the French at Rivoli in their rear. Had it arrived sooner, the position would, as the French declared, have been lost to them. As it was, instead of making an attack, the Austrians had to await one. Bonaparte directed a falling artillery fire against them, and threw them back toward Lake Garda. He thus gained time to re-form his own ranks and enabled Masséna to hold in check still another of the Austrian columns, which was striving to outflank him on his left. Thereupon the French reserve under Rey, coming in from the westward, cut the turning column entirely off, and compelled it to surrender. The rest of Alvinczy's force being already in full retreat, this ended the worst defeat and most complete rout which the Austrian arms had so far sustained. Such was the utter demoralization of the flying and disintegrated columns that a young French officer named Réné, who was in command of fifty men at a hamlet on Lake Garda, successfully imitated Bonaparte's ruse at Lonato, and displayed such an imposing confidence to a flying troop of fifteen hundred Austrians that they surrendered to what appeared to be a force superior to their own. Next morning at dawn, Murat, who had marched all night to gain the point, appeared on the slopes of Monte Baldo above Corona, and united with Joubert to drive the Austrians from their last foothold. The pursuit was continued as far as Trent. Thirteen thousand prisoners were captured in those two days.

While Murat was straining up the slopes of Monte Baldo, Bonaparte, giving no rest to the weary feet of Masséna's division,--the same men who two days before had marched by night from Verona,--was retracing his steps on that well-worn road past the city of Catullus and the Capulets onward toward Mantua. Provera had crossed the Adige at Anghiari with ten thousand men. Twice he had been attacked: once in the front by Guieu, once in the rear by Augereau. On both occasions his losses had been severe, but, nevertheless, on the same morning which saw Alvinczy's flight into the Tyrol, he finally appeared with six thousand men in the suburb of St. George, before Mantua. He succeeded in communicating with Wurmser, but was held in check by the blockading French army throughout the day and night until Bonaparte arrived with his reinforcements. Next morning there was a general engagement, Provera attacking in front, and Wurmser, by preconcerted arrangement, sallying out from behind at the head of a strong force. The latter was thrown back into the town by Sérurier, who commanded the besiegers, but only after a fierce and deadly conflict on the causeway. This was the road from Mantua to a country-seat of its dukes known as "La Favorita," and was chosen for the sortie as having an independent citadel. Victor, with some of the troops brought in from Rivoli, the "terrible fifty-seventh demi-brigade," as Bonaparte designated them, attacked Provera at the same time, and threw his ranks into such disorder that he was glad to surrender his entire force. This conflict of January sixteenth, before Mantua, is known as the battle of La Favorita, from the stand made by Sérurier on the road to that residence. Its results were six thousand prisoners, among them the Vienna volunteers with the Empress's banner, and many guns. In his fifty-fifth year this French soldier of fortune had finally reached the climax of his career. Having fought in the Seven Years' War, in Portugal and in Corsica, the Revolution gave him his opening. He assisted Schérer in the capture of the Maritime Alps, and fought with leonine power at Mondovi and these succeeding movements. While his fortunes were linked with Bonaparte's they mounted higher and higher. As governor of Venice he was so upright and incorruptible as to win the sobriquet "Virgin of Italy." The discouragement of defeat under Moreau in 1798 led him to retire into civil life, where he was a stanch Bonapartist and faithful official to the end of the Napoleonic epoch, when he rallied to the Bourbons.

Bonaparte estimated that so far in the Italian campaigns the army of the republic had fought within four days two pitched battles, and had besides been six times engaged; that they had taken, all told, nearly twenty-five thousand prisoners, including a lieutenant-general, two generals, and fifteen colonels; had captured twenty standards, with sixty pieces of artillery, and had killed or wounded six thousand men.

This short campaign of Rivoli was the turning-point of the war, and may be said to have shaped the history of Europe for twenty years. Chroniclers dwell upon those few moments at St. Mark and the plateau of Rivoli, wondering what the result would have been if the Austrian corps which came to turn the rear of Rivoli had arrived five minutes sooner. But an accurate and dispassionate criticism must decide that every step in Bonaparte's success was won by careful forethought and by the most effective disposition of the forces at his command. So sure was he of success that even in the crises when Masséna seemed to save the day on the left, and when the Austrians seemed destined to wrest victory from defeat on the right, he was self-reliant and cheerful. The new system of field operations had a triumphant vindication at the hands of its author. The conquering general meted out unstinted praise to his invincible squadrons and their leaders, but said nothing of himself, leaving the world to judge whether this were man or demon who, still a youth, and within a public career of but one season, had humiliated the proudest empire on the Continent, had subdued Italy, and on her soil had erected states unknown before, without the consent of any great power, not excepting France. It is not wonderful that this personage should sometimes have said of himself, "Say that my life began at Rivoli," as at other times he dated his military career from Toulon.

Wurmser's retreat to Mantua in September had been successful because of the strong cavalry force which accompanied it. He had been able to hold out for four months only by means of the flesh of their horses, five thousand in number, which had been killed and salted to increase the garrison stores. Even this resource was now exhausted, and after a few days of delay the gallant old man sent a messenger with the usual conventional declarations as to his ability for further resistance, in order, of course, to secure the most favorable terms of surrender. There is a fine anecdote in connection with the arrival of this messenger at the French headquarters, which, though perhaps not literally, is probably ideally, true. When the Austrian envoy entered Sérurier's presence, another person wrapped in a cloak was sitting at a table apparently engaged in writing. After the envoy had finished the usual enumeration of the elements of strength still remaining to his commander, the unknown man came forward, and, holding a written sheet in his hand, said: "Here are my conditions. If Wurmser really had provisions for twenty-five days, and spoke of surrender, he would not deserve an honorable capitulation. But I respect the age, the gallantry, and the misfortunes of the marshal; and whether he opens his gates to-morrow, or whether he waits fifteen days, a month, or three months, he shall still have the same conditions; he may wait until his last morsel of bread has been eaten." The messenger was a clever man who afterward rendered his own name, that of Klenau, illustrious. He recognized Bonaparte, and, glancing at the terms, found them so generous that he at once admitted the desperate straits of the garrison. This is substantially the account of Napoleon's memoirs. In a contemporary despatch to the Directory there is nothing of it, for he never indulged in such details to them; but he does say in two other despatches what at first blush militates against its literal truth. On February first, writing from Bologna, he declared that he would withdraw his conditions unless Wurmser acceded before the third: yet, in a letter of that very date, he indulges in a long and high-minded eulogium of the aged field-marshal, and declares his wish to show true French generosity to such a foe. The simple explanation is that, having sent the terms, Bonaparte immediately withdrew from Mantua to leave Sérurier in command at the surrender, a glory he had so well deserved, and then returned to Bologna to begin his final preparations against Rome. In the interval Wurmser made a proposition even more favorable to himself. Bonaparte petulantly rejected it, but with the return of his generous feeling he determined that at least he would not withdraw his first offer. Captious critics are never content, and they even charge that when, on the tenth, Wurmser and his garrison finally did march out, Bonaparte's absence was a breach of courtesy. It requires no great ardor in his defense to assert, on the contrary, that in circumstances so unprecedented the disparity of age between the respective representatives of the old and the new military system would have made Bonaparte's presence another drop in the bitter cup of the former. The magnanimity of the young conqueror in connection with the fall of Mantua was genuine, and highly honorable to him. So at least thought Wurmser himself, who wrote a most kindly letter to Bonaparte, forewarning him that a plot had been formed in Bologna to poison him with that noted, but never seen, compound so famous in Italian history--aqua tofana.