met each day as if with full expectation of attaining it before sunset. Strategical conditions and “new French” methods of war did not save Bonaparte in the two crises—the Dego rout and the sullen halt of the army at San Michele—but the personality which made the soldiers, on the way to Montenotte, march barefoot past a wagon-load of new boots.
We have said that Napoleon’s strategy was the result of this personal magnetism. Later critics evolved from his success the theory of “interior lines,” and then accounted for it by applying the criterion they had evolved. Actually, the form in which the will to conquer found expression was in many important respects old. What, therefore, in the theory or its application was the product of Napoleon’s own genius and will-power? A comparison with Souham’s campaign of Tourcoing will enable us to answer this question. To begin with, Souham found himself midway between Coburg and Clerfayt almost by accident, and his utilization of the advantages of his position was an expedient for the given case. Napoleon, however, placed himself deliberately and by fighting his way thither, in an analogous situation at Carcare and Cairo. Military opinion of the time considered it dangerous, as indeed it was, for no theory can alter the fact that had not Napoleon made his men fight harder and march farther than usual, he would have been destroyed. The effective play of forces on interior lines depends on the two conditions that the outer enemies are not so near together as to give no time for the inner mass to defeat one before the arrival of the other, and that they are not so far apart that before one can be brought to action the other has inflicted serious damage elsewhere.
Neither condition was fully met at any time in the Montenotte campaign. On the 11th Napoleon knew that the attack on Voltri had been made by a part only of the Austrian forces, yet he flung his own masses on Montenotte. On the 13th he thought that Beaulieu’s main body was at Dego and Colli’s at Millesimo, and on this assumption had to exact the most extraordinary efforts from Augereau’s troops at Cossaria. On the 19th and 20th he tried to exclude the risks of the Austrians’ intervention, and with this the chances of a victory over them to follow his victory over Colli, by transferring the centre of gravity of his army to Ceva and Garessio, and fighting it out with Colli alone.
It was not, in fact, to gain a position on interior lines—with respect to two opponents—that Napoleon pushed his army to Carcare. Before the campaign began he hoped by using the “cannon-road” to destroy the Piedmontese before the Austrians were in existence at all as an army. But on the news from Voltri and Monte Legino he swiftly “concentrated fire, made the breach, and broke the equilibrium” at the spot where the interests and forces of the two Allies converged and diverged. The hypothesis in the first case was that the Austrians were practically non-existent, and the whole object in the second was to breach the now connected front of the Allies (“strategic penetration”) and to cause them to break up into two separate systems. More, having made the breach, he had the choice (which he had not before) of attacking either the Austrians or the Sardinians, as every critic has pointed out. Indeed the Austrians offered by far the better target. But he neither wanted nor used the new alternative. His purpose was to crush Piedmont. “My enemies saw too much at once,” said Napoleon. Singleness of aim and of purpose, the product of clear thinking and of “personality,” was the foundation-stone of the new form of strategy.
In the course of subduing the Sardinians, Napoleon found himself placed on interior lines between two hostile masses, and another new idea, that of “relative superiority.” reveals itself. Whereas Souham had been in superior force (90,000 against 70,000), Napoleon (40,000 against 50,000) was not, and yet the Army of Italy was always placed in a position of relative superiority (at first about 3 to 2 and ultimately 2 to 1) to the immediate antagonist. “The essence of strategy,” said Napoleon in 1797, “is, with a weaker army, always to have more force at the crucial point than the enemy. But this art is taught neither by books nor by practice; it is a matter of tact.” In this he expressed the result of his victories on his own mind rather than a preconceived formula which produced those victories. But the idea, though undefined, and the method of practice, though imperfectly worked out, were in his mind from the first. As soon as he had made the breach, he widened it by pushing out Masséna and Laharpe on the one hand and Augereau on the other. This is mere common sense. But immediately afterwards, though preparing to throw all available forces against Colli, he posted Masséna and Laharpe at Dego to guard, not like Vandamme on the Lys against a real and pressing enemy, but against a possibility, and he only diminished the strength and altered the position of this containing detachment in proportion as the Austrian danger dwindled. Later in his career he defined this offensive-defensive system as “having all possible strength at the decisive point,” and “being nowhere vulnerable,” and the art of reconciling these two requirements, in each case as it arose, was always the principal secret of his generalship. At first his precautions (judged by events and not by theRelative superiority. probabilities of the moment) were excessive, and the offensive mass small. But the latter was handled by a general untroubled by multiple aims and anxieties, and if such self-confidence was equivalent to 10,000 men on the battlefield, it was legitimate to detach 10,000 men to secure it. These 10,000 were posted 8 m. out on the dangerous flank, not almost back to back with the main body as Vandamme had been,[1] and although this distance was but little compared to those of his later campaigns, when he employed small armies for the same purpose, it sufficed in this difficult mountain country, where the covering force enjoyed the advantage of strong positions. Of course, if Colli had been better concentrated, or if Beaulieu had been more active, the calculated proportions between covering force and main body might have proved fallacious, and the system on which Napoleon’s relative superiority rested might have broken down. But the point is that such a system, however rough its first model, had been imagined and put into practice.
This was Napoleon’s individual art of war, as raiding bakeries and cutting communications were Beaulieu’s speciality. Napoleon made the art into a science, and in our own time, with modern conditions of effective, armament and communications, it is more than possible that Moreaus and Jourdans will prove able to practise it with success. But in the old conditions it required a Napoleon. “Strategy,” said Moltke, “is a system of expedients.” But it was the intense personal force, as well as the genius, of Napoleon that forged these expedients into a system.
The first phase of the campaign satisfactorily settled, Napoleon was free to turn his attention to the “arch-enemy” to whom he was now considerably superior in numbers (35,000 to 25,000). The day after the signature of the armistice of Cherasco he began preparing for a new advance and also for the rôle of arbiter of the destinies of Italy. Many whispers there were, even in his own army, as to the dangers of passing on without “revolutionizing” aristocratic Genoa and monarchical Piedmont, and of bringing Venice, the pope and the Italian princes into the field against the French. But Bonaparte, flushed with victory, and better informed than the malcontents of the real condition of Italy, never hesitated. His first object was to drive out Beaulieu, his second to push through Tirol, and his only serious restriction the chance that the armistice with Piedmont would not result in a definitive treaty. Beaulieu had fallen back into Lombardy, and now bordered the Po right and left of Valenza. To achieve further progress, Napoleon had first to cross that river, and the point and method of crossing was the immediate problem, a problem the more difficult as Napoleon had no bridge train and could only make use of such existing bridges as he could seize intact.[2] If he crossed above Valenza, he would be confronted by one river-line after another, on one of which at least Beaulieu would probably stand to fight. But quite apart from the immediate problem, Napoleon’s intention was less to beat the Austrians than to dislodge them. He needed a foothold in Lombardy which would make him independent of, and even a menace to, Piedmont. If this were assured, he could for a few weeks entirely ignore his communications with France and strike out against Beaulieu, dethrone the king of Sardinia, or revolutionize Parma, Modena and the papal states according to circumstances.
Milan, therefore, was his objective, and Tortona-Piacenza his route thither. To give himself every chance, he had stipulated with the Piedmontese authorities for the right of passing at Valenza, and he had the satisfaction of seeing Beaulieu fall into the trap and concentrate opposite thatPiacenza. part of the river. The French meantime had moved to the region Alessandria-Tortona. Thence on the 6th of May Bonaparte, with a picked body of troops, set out for a forced march on Piacenza, and that night the advanced guard was 30 m. on the way, at Castel San Giovanni, and Laharpe’s and the cavalry divisions at Stradella, 10 m. behind them. Augereau was at Broni, Masséna at Sale and Sérurier near Valenza, the whole forming a rapidly extending fan, 50 m. from point to point. If the Piacenza detachment succeeded in crossing, the army was to follow rapidly in its track. If, on the other hand, Beaulieu fell
- ↑ We have seen that after Tourcoing, taught by experience, Souham posted Vandamme’s covering force 14 or 15 m. out. But Napoleon’s disposition was in advance of experience.
- ↑ The proposed alliance with the Sardinians came to nothing. The kings of Sardinia had always made their alliance with either Austria or France conditional on cessions of conquered territory. But, according to Thiers, the Directory only desired to conquer the Milanese to restore it to Austria in return for the definitive cession of the Austrian Netherlands. If this be so, Napoleon’s proclamations of “freedom for Italy” were, if not a mere political expedient, at any rate no more than an expression of his own desires which he was not powerful enough to enforce.
