Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Battle of Lonato was fought on the 3rd and the 4th of August 1796, as part of a week of hard-fought actions that began on the 29th of July and ended on the 4th of August during the War of the First Coalition.
The French Army of Italy was commanded by General Napoleon Bonaparte. The Austrian corps was led by Lieutenant General Peter Quasdanovich, whose 18,000-strong force consisted of four mixed brigades under General-Majors Ott von Bátorkéz, Reuss-Plauen, Ocskay von Ocsko, and Sporck.
An isolated Austrian column of around 3,000 men under Oberst Knorr marched into Lonato, where Bonaparte stood with only 1,200 French soldiers. Bonaparte bluffed the Austrians into surrendering by falsely claiming his entire army was present, netting 2,000 prisoners and 3 cannons. The Austrians only discovered after being disarmed that there were no French forces nearby.
In the battles of the 3rd and the 4th of August 1796, the Austrians lost 23 cannons and at least 5,000 men killed, wounded, and captured. French losses were at least 2,000.
Quasdanovich's defeat at Lonato allowed Bonaparte to concentrate more than 30,000 men against Wurmser's 25,000, leading directly to a French victory at the Battle of Castiglione on the 5th of August 1796. This forced Wurmser to retreat to Trento and abandon the campaign to relieve Mantua.
On the night of the 30th of July 1796, Austrian forces under Klenau seized the French base at Brescia in a surprise dawn raid, capturing 600-700 able-bodied soldiers and 2,000 more in hospital, including Colonels Jean Lannes, Joachim Murat, and François Étienne de Kellermann. The threat posed by Quasdanovich's 18,000-strong corps compelled Bonaparte to abandon the siege and concentrate against the Austrian western column.