Dennis Wheatley - The wanton princess

Roger accompanied him. As he mounted his horse he little thought that he would come very close to death before he saw Paris again.

5

Marengo

While centred on Dijon the Army of Reserve constituted a threat to both the Austrian fronts, for it could have moved with equal ease towards Swabia to reinforce Moreau or down into Italy to rescue Massena, and so swift was the transi­tion to Geneva that the Austrians had no idea that its Head­quarters had moved. Bonaparte's immediate staff was aware that he intended to descend into Italy but he did not make up his own mind until the last moment about what route he would take. To cross the Alps by the Simplon Pass was the obvious route, but the St. Bernard would bring him im­mediately upon the rear of the Austrian Army, cut its com­munications and force General Melas to fight him with his back to Massena's forces in Genoa. The difficulties of con­veying a large Army and all its gear over the Great St. Ber­nard were immense, but after Bonaparte's engineers had re­ported that only fifteen miles of the route were impassable for carriages, he decided to take it.

Working tirelessly by day and through the greater part of the night he dealt with the thousand and one matters neces­sary to ensure the success of the crossing. On May 15th, satisfied that no more could be done, he ordered the crossing to begin. Five days later he set out himself: not as was afterwards depicted by the famous painter, David, on a prancing steed, but on a sure-footed mule led by a Swiss mountaineer of long experience.

Up in the mountains the cold was bitter, and in some places the many thousands of men had to progress along narrow ledges where a false step would have meant a fall into the abyss and death on the rocks far below. The horses could be led and the gun carriages carried in sections, so the great problem had been how to transport the weighty cannon. Marmont had solved it by having tree trunks hollowed out and the great iron barrels wedged inside them, then hiring hundreds of peasants to draw these home-made sledges. On the steepest slopes, the peasants gave up exhausted: so the troops, filled with enthusiasm for this great adventure on which they were being led, volunteered to replace them. To the strains of martial music from the bands and singing patriotic songs, they managed to drag the cannons to the summit of the pass.

There stood the ancient monasterv of St Bernard.

Bonaparte had sent on to it in advance a great sore of provisions and the hospitable monks added to them from their own reserves. As the seemingly endless column of half-frozen soldiers passed the Monastery, from behind long tables set out in from of it, the monks supplanted their hard biscuits and cheese with bowls of hot soup and spiced wine. The troops then began to slither down the even more dangerous descent.

Lannes was in command of the vanguard and when Bonaparte reached the monastery, to his great annoyance, he learned from him that unexpectedly the descent into Italy was blocked. The Army had to pass through the narrow valley of Dora Baltea and at its entrance lay the village and fort of Bard, which was being held by an Austrian garrison.

Hurrying forward. Bonaparte personally surveyed the posi­tion. Marmont had got some of his cannon remounted but, owing to the position of the fort on a pinnacle of rock, it could not be bombarded; and the fusillades of musketry directed at it by the French were having little effect on its stubborn defence by the Austrians.

Led by the intrepid Lannes, a body of infantry worked their way round the fort by a goat track and, on the 22nd took the town of Ivrea: but it would have been impossible to follow with the guns, and without artillery Bonaparte could not hope to defeat the main Austrian Army down in the plains of Italy.

With his usual resourcefulness, Bonaparte devised a way to overcome the obstacle that threatened to ruin his plans. All the Austrian troops in the village had retired into the fort, so he ordered that when darkness fell straw should be spread thickly in the village street; then, taking advantage of a night of storm which further muffled the rumble of their wheels, the guns were sent forward. It was not until the greater part of the artillery train was through the village that the Austrians realized what was happening and when they opened fire their cannon did little damage.

Bonaparte passed the Alps with forty-one thousand troops, only a handful of whom had become casualties, and his men acclaimed him as having achieved the impossible. But Roger, having read his classics, was secretly of the opinion that Hannibal's crossing had been a much greater achievement; for Bonaparte had met with only the slight opposition at Bard, whereas the Carthaginian General had been harassed the whole way by swarms of fierce Gauls and Helvetians.

Nevertheless, the Austrians, too. had thought it impossible, and their General, Melas, was taken entirely by surprise. Concentrating his Army as swiftly as he could in the neigh­bourhood of Turin, he planned to fall upon Bonaparte's flank as he advanced to the relief of Genoa.

Anticipating this, the First Consul decided on a new and bolder stroke. Further east Moncey was crossing the St. Gotthard with another eighteen thousand men and Turreau's division was coming over the Mont Cenis pass. By leaving Massena temporarily to his fate and joining them instead, Bonaparte would have under him a force of seventy thousand. With it he could throw the Austrians out of Lom­bardy, thus cutting Melas' lines of communications and iso­lating him between two French Armies. Lannes had already surprised and occupied Aosta. On June 2nd Bonaparte, almost unopposed, arrived in Milan, the capital of Lombardy.

He was greeted with wild acclaim by the pro-French popu­lation, and at once re-established the Cisalpine Republic which he had founded there in '96. For seven days he remained in the city reinstating the officials who had been proscribed when the Austrians had recaptured it during his absence in Egypt. Meanwhile his troops had seized Cremona, with its great store of enemy provisions and war material, and he had despatched Mural and Lannes across the Po to take Piacenza.

There they met strong opposition from an Austrian corps under General Ott, but with the aid of Victor's division and Murat's cavalry, on June 9th at Montebello, Lannes inflicted a crushing defeat on the enemy.

By the time Bonaparte reached Milan, Massena was in desperate straits. In Genoa, horses, dogs, cats and rats were being used as food and whenever a sortie was made from the city thousands of the starving inhabitants followed the troops out to gather grass and nettles to boil for soup. Driven to the last extremity by Massena's refusal even lo consider sur­render, they broke into open revolt. He put it down with the utmost ruthlessness and gave orders that whenever more than four citizens were seen gathered together they should be fired upon.

But by June 4th his position became hopeless. Still refusing to surrender, he informed the Austrians that he meant to evacuate Genoa and if they refused to let him pass he would cut his way through them with the bayonet. His courageous defiance led to the enemy's allowing him and the eight thousand troops that had survived the siege to march out with colours flying and the honours of war.

Melas meanwhile was concentrating his forces round the great stronghold of Alessandria and ordered his troops on the Var to join him there. Suchet immediately recrossed the river, recaptured Nice and furiously harassed their retreat. Now that the Austrians were almost encircled, Bonaparte was preparing to give battle. On June 9th he left Milan and advanced through Stradella. With Genoa open to him Melas' wisest course would have been to retire on the city and evacuate his Army in the British ships, but pride decided him to stand at Alessandria and fight with the hope of breaking right through the French. And, although he was unaware of it, his decision had much to recommend it; as Bonaparte's forces were now spread over a great area and when he arrived opposite Marengo, a village some three miles south­east of Alessandria, on June 14th, he had only eighteen thousand men under his hand to oppose the breakout of thirty-one thousand Austrians.