Army of Italy (France)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Army of Italy, known in French as the Armée d'Italie, was a field army of the French Army stationed along the Italian border. It became one of history's most consequential military commands, yet the soldiers who served in it during the 1790s were barefoot, poorly clothed, and sometimes forced to loot simply to eat. How did a starving, indisciplined force on the edge of collapse become the launching pad for one of the most celebrated military careers in European history? What happened when a young general named Bonaparte arrived on the 27th of March 1796 to take command? And how did this same army dissolve, reform, and fight on through nearly two decades of revolutionary and Napoleonic warfare?

• 2. Bonaparte Takes Command

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  When Bonaparte arrived on the 27th of March 1796, the army he inherited was in a state of near disintegration. Uniforms and shoes were rare. Reinforcements came irregularly. Indiscipline was rife, and Chouan songs, the kind associated with royalist counter-revolution, were being sung openly by the troops. A company of soldiers even formed under the name of the Dauphin, a pointed royalist gesture in the midst of a revolutionary army.

  Bonaparte moved on multiple fronts at once. He worked to improve the supply system as much as conditions allowed, but he also struck hard at the symptoms of disaffection. Officers who had cried "Vive le roi!" were condemned. The 13th regiment of hussards was dismissed for indiscipline. When an entire regiment revolted at the end of March, he dissolved it. Purged in this way, the Army of Italy became, as contemporaries noted, the most Jacobin of all the French armies.

  The first victories that followed changed the army's material situation. Conquered lands provided "war contributions" that eased pay problems, and resupply became more reliable. Yet private memoirs, as distinct from the official communiques, continued to speak of individual and collective failures right through to 1797. The gap between the army's public reputation and its internal reality was, from the start, a defining feature of this command.

• 3. A Revolving Door of Generals

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  Before Bonaparte, the Army of Italy cycled through commander after commander. General d'Anselme held informal authority from the 7th of November to the 25th of December 1792, exercising neither the title nor the formal prerogatives of a general. Maréchal de camp Brunet followed on an interim basis, then General Biron, then Brunet again, who served from the 5th of May to the 8th of August 1793 before falling under the broader authority of General Kellermann.

  During the siege of Toulon, a separate sub-command called the Army before Toulon ran parallel to the main army. It passed through the hands of General Carteaux, then La Poype as interim, then Doppet in a provisional role, before settling under Dugommier from the 16th of November to the 28th of December 1793. It was during Dugommier's tenure that a young artillery commander named Bonaparte helped win the First Battle of Dego on the 21st of September 1794, with the victory credited in part to his handling of the guns.

  General Pierre Jardat Dumerbion held command from the 29th of December 1793 to the 21st of November 1794, with both Napoleon Bonaparte and Andre Massena serving as his subordinates. The Battle of Loano on the 24th of November 1795 fell under General Schérer's command; it was counted a victory, though one observers called unexploited, achieved largely through the infantry work of Masséna. Command then passed back to Schérer, who resigned his post in March 1796, leaving the way open for Bonaparte.

• 4. Dissolution and Rebirth

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  Much of the original Armée d'Italie was absorbed into the Army of Egypt as Napoleon's ambitions shifted east. Back in France, a new formation called the armée de Réserve was organized at Dijon on the 8th of March 1800, recorded in the revolutionary calendar as the 17th of ventôse, year VIII. When it merged with the remnants of the original Armée d'Italie on the 23rd of June 1800, the combined force took up the old name once again.

  The new army's first commander was General Masséna. Command then passed to Bonaparte, now serving as First Consul and listed as commander in person, before transferring to General Berthier, who held the title of Général en chef from the 2nd of April to the 23rd of June 1800. It was under Berthier's command that the army fought the Austrians at the Battle of Marengo on the 14th of June 1800, a result that had lasting political as well as military consequences. The fractured, reconstituted force had, within months of its reformation, fought one of the most significant engagements of the entire Napoleonic period.

• 5. Later Campaigns and Final Years

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  The Army of Italy did not disappear after Marengo. During the war of the Third Coalition in 1805, the Armée d'Italie fought in the battles of Verona and Caldiero in northern Italy, serving under André Masséna. Four years later, during the war of the Fifth Coalition in 1809, command passed to Eugène de Beauharnais. Under him, the army engaged Austrian forces at Sacile, then again at Caldiero, at the Piave, and at Raab.

  Eugène de Beauharnais was still leading the army when the final chapter opened in 1813-1814. He fought the Austrians across northern Italy as Napoleon's empire contracted around him. One of the battles from that period was the Battle of Mincio. General Joubert, who had held command from the 5th to the 15th of August 1799, was killed at the Battle of Novi during that earlier phase, a reminder that the list of commanders on the record was not purely a roster of survivors. The army's history, spanning from the confused commands of 1792 through to the defensive campaigns of 1814, traced the entire arc of the revolutionary and Napoleonic eras.