interior lines.” It lies far deeper. So far as it is possible to summarize it in one phrase, it lies in the fact that though the Directory meant this campaign to be the final word on the Revolutionary War, for the nation at large this final word had been said at Fleurus. The troops were still the nation; they no longer fought for a cause and for bare existence, and Moreau and Jourdan were too closely allied in ideas and sympathies with the misplaced citizen soldiers they commanded to be able to dominate their collective will. In default of a cause, however, soldiers will fight for a man, and this brings us by a natural sequence of ideas to the war in Italy.
The War in Italy 1793–97
Hitherto we have ignored the operations on the Italian frontier, partly because they were of minor importance and partly because the conditions out of which Napoleon’s first campaign arose can be best considered in connexion with that campaign itself, from which indeed the previous operations derive such light as they possess. It has been mentioned that in 1792 the French overran Savoy and Nice. In 1793 the Sardinian army and a small auxiliary corps of Austrians waged a desultory mountain warfare against the Army of the Alps about Briançon and the Army of Italy on the Var. That furious offensive on the part of the French, which signalized the year 1793 elsewhere, was made impossible here by the counter-revolution in the cities of the Midi.
In 1794, when this had been crushed, the intention of the French government was to take the offensive against the Austro-Sardinians. The first operation was to be the capture of Oneglia. The concentration of large forces in the lower Rhone valley had naturally infringed upon the areas told off for the provisioning of the Armies of the Alps (Kellermann) and of Italy (Dumerbion); indeed, the sullen population could hardly be induced to feed the troops suppressing the revolt, still less the distant frontier armies. Thus the only source of supply was the Riviera of Genoa: “Our connexion with this district is imperilled by the corsairs of Oneglia (a Sardinian town) owing to the cessation of our operations afloat. The army is living from hand to mouth,” wrote the younger Robespierre in September 1793. Vessels bearing supplies from Genoa could not avoid the corsairs by taking the open sea, for there the British fleet was supreme. Carnot therefore ordered the Army of Italy to capture Oneglia, and 21,000 men (the rest of the 67,000 effectives were held back for coast defence) began operations in April. The French left moved against the enemy’s positions on the main road over the Col di Tenda, the centre towards Ponte di Nava, and the right Saorgio.along the Riviera. All met with success, thanks to Masséna’s bold handling of the centre column. Not only was Oneglia captured, but also the Col di Tenda. Napoleon Bonaparte served in these affairs on the headquarter staff. Meantime the Army of the Alps had possessed itself of the Little St Bernard and Mont Cenis, and the Republicans were now masters of several routes into Piedmont (May). But the Alpine roads merely led to fortresses, and both Carnot and Bonaparte—Napoleon had by now captivated the younger Robespierre and become the leading spirit in Dumerbion’s army—considered that the Army of the Alps should be weakened to the profit of the Army of Italy, and that the time had come to disregard the feeble neutrality of Genoa, and to advance over the Col di Tenda.
Napoleon’s first suggestion for a rapid condensation of the French cordon, and an irresistible blow on the centre of the Allies by Tenda-Coni,[1] came to nothing owing to the waste of time in negotiations between the generals and the distant Committee, and meanwhile new factors came Napoleon
in 1794.into play. The capture of the pass of Argentera by the right wing of the Army of the Alps suggested that the main effort should be made against the barrier fortress of Demonte, but here again Napoleon proposed a concentration of effort on the primary and economy of force in the secondary objective. About the same time, in a memoir on the war in general, he laid down his most celebrated maxim: “The principles of war are the same as those of a siege. Fire must be concentrated on one point, and as soon as the breach is made, the equilibrium is broken and the rest is nothing.” In the domain of tactics he was and remains the principal exponent of the art of breaking the equilibrium, and already he imagined the solution of problems of policy and strategy on the same lines. “Austria is the great enemy; Austria crushed, Germany, Spain, Italy fall of themselves. We must not disperse, but concentrate our attack.” Napoleon argued that Austria could be effectively wounded by an offensive against Piedmont, and even more effectively by an ulterior advance from Italian soil into Germany. In pursuance of the single aim he asked for the appointment of a single commander-in-chief to hold sway from Bayonne to the Lake of Geneva, and for the rejection of all schemes for “revolutionizing” Italy till after the defeat of the arch-enemy.
Operations, however, did not after all take either of these forms. The younger Robespierre perished with his brother in the coup d’état of 9th Thermidor, the advance was suspended, and Bonaparte, amongst other leading spirits of the Army of Italy, was arrested and imprisoned. Profiting by this moment, Austria increased her auxiliary corps. An Austrian general took command of the whole of the allied forces, and pronounced a threat from the region of Cairo (where the Austrians took their place on the left wing of the combined army) towards the Riviera. The French, still dependent on Genoa for supplies, had to take the offensive at once to save themselves from starvation, and the result was the expedition of Dego, planned chiefly by Napoleon, who had been released from prison and was at headquarters, though unemployed. The movement began on the 17th of September; and although the Austrian general Colloredo repulsed an attack at Dego (Sept. 21) he retreated to Acqui, and the incipient offensive of the Allies ended abruptly.
The first months of the winter of 1794–1795 were spent in re-equipping the troops, who stood in sore need after their rapid movements in the mountains. For the future operations, the enforced condensation of the army on its right wing with the object of protecting its line of supply to Genoa and the dangers of its cramped situation on the Riviera suggested a plan roughly resembling one already recommended by Napoleon, who had since the affair of Dego become convinced that the way into Italy was through the Apennines and not the Alps. The essence of this was to anticipate the enemy by a very early and rapid advance from Vado towards Carcare by the Ceva road, the only good road of which the French disposed and which they significantly called the chemin de canon.
The plan, however, came to nothing; the Committee, which now changed its personnel at fixed intervals, was in consequence wavering and non-committal, troops were withdrawn for a projected invasion of Corsica, and in November 1794 Dumerbion was replaced by Schérer, who Schérer and Kellermann.assembled only 17,000 of his 54,000 effectives for field operations, and selected as his line of advance the Col di Tenda-Coni road. Schérer, besides being hostile to any suggestion emanating from Napoleon, was impressed with the apparent danger to his right wing concentrated in the narrow Riviera, which it was at this stage impossible to avert by a sudden and early assumption of the offensive. After a brief tenure Schérer was transferred to the Spanish frontier, but Kellermann, who now received command of the Army of Italy in addition to his own, took the same view as his predecessor—the view of the ordinary general. But not even the Schérer plan was put into execution, for spring had scarcely arrived when the prospect of renewed revolts in the south of France practically paralysed the army.
This encouraged the enemy to deliver the blow that had so long been feared. The combined forces, under Devins,—the Sardinians, the Austrian auxiliary corps and the newly arrived Austrian main army,—advanced together and forced the French right wing to evacuate Vado and the Genoese littoral. But at this juncture the conclusion of peace with Spain released the Pyrenees armies, and Schérer returned to the Army of Italy at the head of reinforcements. He was faced with a difficult situation,
- ↑ Liguria was not at this period thought of, even by Napoleon, as anything more than a supply area.
