Battle of Borghetto

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Battle of Borghetto nearly ended Napoleon Bonaparte's career before it had truly begun. On the 30th of May 1796, somewhere along the narrow bridge at Borghetto on the Mincio River, a group of Austrian hussars rode into the town of Valeggio and came close enough to seize the French general himself. Bonaparte escaped. But the episode shook him enough that he created a personal cavalry bodyguard on the spot, placing Jean-Baptiste Bessières in command of a unit that would one day become the famed Chasseurs à Cheval of the Imperial Guard.

  That near-capture was just one moment in a battle that decided the fate of northern Italy. The crossing of the Mincio forced the entire Austrian army to abandon its position and retreat north, leaving the great fortress of Mantua exposed and alone. From that point forward, all the major fighting in the region would orbit around a single siege. How did Bonaparte maneuver an entire army across a flooded river into the teeth of Austrian opposition? And how did a brilliant feint, a sudden illness, and a traffic jam on a bridge combine to unravel one of the most carefully prepared defensive lines of the campaign?

• 2. The Mincio Line

  ›

  Feldzeugmeister Johann Peter Beaulieu chose the Mincio River as his final defensive stand in northern Italy for good reason. The river exits Lake Garda at Peschiera del Garda and runs south for 30 kilometers, and in May the snowmelt from the Alps pushed its width to a maximum of 40 meters. That made it nearly impossible to ford without preparation. Between Lake Garda and Mantua there were only four bridges: at Peschiera, Borghetto, Goito, and at Rivalta near the river's bend toward the east.

  The ground around Peschiera and Borghetto offered an additional advantage. A series of moraines formed ridges there, capable of hiding large bodies of troops from enemy observers. South toward Goito and Mantua, the terrain flattened out entirely, offering no cover. Valeggio sul Mincio sat on a hill one kilometer east of Borghetto, commanding the crossing. Beaulieu posted the bulk of his river-center force in and around that town under Feldmarschall-Leutnants Michael von Melas and Karl Philipp Sebottendorf, who jointly commanded over 8,000 infantry and more than 2,000 cavalry.

  To plug gaps at the northern crossing, General-major Anton Lipthay de Kisfalud held Peschiera with roughly 3,800 infantry and cavalry. At Goito to the south, Feldmarschall-Leutnant Michelangelo Alessandro Colli-Marchi held a division of over 3,500 men including Austrian and Neapolitan cavalry. The Rivalta bridge, nearest to Mantua, was covered by Feldmarschall-Leutnant Josef Canto d'Irles and a garrison of 12,800, though many of those men were already weakened after grueling service in the earlier Montenotte and Lodi campaigns.

• 3. Bonaparte's Feint

  ›

  Bonaparte had already driven through Lombardy in the weeks before Borghetto. In early May, French forces won at Fombio and Lodi and swept through the Austrian province. Beaulieu evacuated Milan, leaving only a 2,000-man garrison in the citadel. By mid-May the French held both Milan and Brescia, though they paused to put down a revolt in Pavia. At the village of Binasco, French troops massacred the adult male population in what the source describes as an atrocity.

  Facing the Mincio line, Bonaparte chose Borghetto as his crossing point. To keep Beaulieu guessing, he ordered a feint toward Peschiera. General of Brigade Jean-Baptiste Dominique Rusca was sent to Salo on the western shore of Lake Garda, where French troops began conspicuously gathering boats. Bonaparte meanwhile held all three of his combat divisions well to the west, out of Austrian sight.

  Beaulieu took the bait precisely as the French commander intended. Rather than massing his strength at the bridges, the Austrian general spread his forces in a cordon defense along the river between Peschiera and Goito. In the center he deployed the brigades of General-major Peter Gummer and Oberst Ernst Beust at Salionze and Oliosi, General-major Franz Nicoletti's brigade at Campagnola and Pozzolo, and General-major Philipp Pittoni von Dannenfeld's force in and around Valeggio. Spreading troops across that wide frontage left him with no meaningful reserve.

• 4. A Bridge in Disorder

  ›

  On the 29th of May, Beaulieu fell ill. His headquarters issued a series of confusing orders that threw the Austrian army into disarray on the very eve of the French advance. When Kilmaine's advance guard moved out from Castiglione delle Stiviere toward Borghetto via Solferino the next morning, the Austrians were still sorting themselves out. Masséna's division followed in support. Augereau covered the left flank and Sérurier came up on the right.

  Kilmaine's troops reached the Borghetto bridge at roughly 9 in the morning after pushing back Austrian hussar outposts. The retreating horsemen then created a problem for their own side: when they surged onto the narrow bridge, the span became choked with men and horses. A number of Austrians simply veered off the road and crossed the river at unintended points, and in doing so revealed exactly where the Mincio could be forded.

  Only single battalions of the Strassoldo Infantry Regiment Nr. 27 and Jordis Infantry Regiment Nr. 59 were on hand to defend the bridge. Under Pittoni's direction they fought hard despite being badly outnumbered, but few reserves arrived. Chef de Brigade Gaspard Amedee Gardanne led French troops across the ford and pushed the defenders uphill toward Valeggio. The town fell after further fighting, though Austrian cavalry managed to prevent the French from advancing farther than the town itself.

• 5. The Hussars and the Guides

  ›

  General-major Prince Friedrich Franz Xaver of Hohenzollern-Hechingen rallied the retreating Austrians after Valeggio fell and launched a counterattack on the town. At some point in the afternoon, Austrian hussars actually penetrated into Valeggio and came close to seizing Bonaparte himself. The incident shook the French commander enough to take immediate action: he formed a cavalry bodyguard unit on the spot, called the Guides, and placed Bessières in command. That unit would eventually develop into the Chasseurs a Cheval of the Imperial Guard.

  Elsewhere along the river, Austrian coordination broke down in ways that compounded the crisis at Valeggio. At Campagnola, Sebottendorf kept his attention fixed on French troops in his immediate front and sent no reinforcements north to the embattled center. At Salionze farther north, Melas was similarly pinned down by aggressive French patrols. Colli at Goito did recognize the danger and marched his entire force north, but he arrived too late to change the outcome.

  Beaulieu ordered a general retreat. Sebottendorf attempted once more to retake Valeggio, was repulsed, and fell back to Villafranca di Verona. Colli detached Rukavina's brigade to rejoin the Mantua garrison and led his cavalry to Villafranca. Melas gathered the right-center troops and withdrew to Castelnuovo del Garda, where Hohenzollern's force later joined him. At Peschiera, Lipthay abandoned his position under French pressure, though his cavalry cut up a pursuing unit from Augereau's command, killing or wounding 100 French soldiers at a cost of only nine Austrians.

• 6. Aftermath and Mantua

  ›

  That night the broken Austrian units marched north from Castelnuovo and Villafranca. By the next morning most had reached safety at Dolce in the Adige valley. Austrian casualties came to 572 killed, wounded, or captured. French losses are estimated at 500.

  The strategic consequences dwarfed those numbers. The Austrian retreat up the Adige valley to Trento left Mantua entirely isolated. In June the French moved to invest the fortress. Over the following month the Austrians received substantial reinforcements from Germany and replaced several commanders. Feldmarschall Dagobert von Wurmser took over from the ailing Beaulieu as army commander.

  From June 1796 until February 1797 every major engagement in northern Italy revolved around the Siege of Mantua. One authority's assessment of Borghetto cut to the heart of the Austrian failure: Beaulieu, that observer wrote, "had fallen into the error of trying to guard all possible crossings over the Mincio, and in consequence his over-extended army was without a reserve." Wurmser would spend months trying to undo that error, driving multiple relief columns toward Mantua in the campaigns that followed.