Battle of Rivoli

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Rivoli, fought on the 14th of January 1797, nearly ended in catastrophe for France. By eleven in the morning, an Austrian column under the command of Franz Josef de Lusignan was cutting off Napoleon Bonaparte's retreat south of the village of Rivoli. A second Austrian force was pouring artillery fire from the east bank of the Adige River. A third column was pushing through a gorge to turn the French right flank. Bonaparte, outnumbered and pressed from three directions at once, had almost no reserves left.

  How did a general in this position walk away with what was called his greatest victory at the time? And what happened in the weeks that followed to end Austria's presence in northern Italy entirely? Those questions thread through one of the most consequential mornings of the Italian campaign of 1796-1797.

• 2. Alvinczi's Gamble

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  General of the Artillery Josef Alvinczi arrived at Rivoli carrying the weight of three previous failures. His fourth attempt to relieve the Austrian garrison besieged at Mantua was, by any measure, a desperate plan. He concentrated 28,000 men in five separate columns in the mountains east of Lake Garda, aiming to overwhelm Barthélemy Joubert's force of 10,000 and punch through to open country north of Mantua where Austrian numerical superiority could be brought to bear.

  Alvinczi launched his opening assault on Joubert on the 12th of January. Joubert held. Then Louis-Alexandre Berthier arrived to reinforce him. At two in the morning on the 14th, Bonaparte himself reached the position, bringing elements of André Masséna's division. The French formed a defensive line on the Trambasore Heights just north of Rivoli. The stage was set for a race: could Alvinczi pull his scattered columns together before French reinforcements arrived in sufficient numbers?

  Alvinczi was also fighting something beyond the French. His deteriorating health shadowed the entire campaign, a detail his subordinates would have noticed even if the historical record only mentions it in passing.

• 3. Crisis on the Plateau

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  Before dawn on Saturday the 14th, Joubert moved aggressively. His troops attacked and drove the Austrians from the chapel of San Marco before daybreak, seizing a foothold that would matter enormously a few hours later.

  At nine in the morning, Austrian brigades under Samuel Koblos and Anton Lipthay counterattacked on the Trambasore Heights. Prince Heinrich of Reuss-Plauen attempted to swing around the French right through the Rivoli gorge. On that same right flank, Peter Vitus von Quosdanovich's force, combined with the guns of Josef Philipp Vukassovich firing across the Adige from the east, drove the French out of the village of Osteria and back onto the Rivoli plateau.

  By eleven in the morning, Lusignan's column was cutting Bonaparte's line of retreat south of Rivoli. With reserves nearly exhausted, Bonaparte called on Masséna's 18th Demi-brigade, known as "the Brave," which had just arrived from Lake Garda. He sent the 18th to hold Lusignan. Then he turned every remaining resource toward the gorge, where Quosdanovich was the key threat.

• 4. The Gorge and the Charge

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  Bonaparte understood the logic of interior lines. He thinned Joubert's frontline facing the heights and concentrated force at the gorge entrance, massing a battery of fifteen French guns to fire canister shot at close range into the Austrian column emerging from the defile.

  The effect was immediate and violent. The canister rounds hit the advancing Austrian dragoons first. They broke, stampeding backward through their own infantry and causing mass chaos in the column. At that moment, the brigade of Charles Leclerc assaulted the column from the front while Joubert poured flanking fire down from San Marco.

  Then came Antoine Charles de Lasalle with just 26 horsemen of the 22nd Horse Chasseurs, charging directly into the chaos. With that tiny force, Lasalle's men captured an entire Austrian battalion and seized five enemy flags. It is one of the more striking small-unit actions in the battle's record.

  Quosdanovich, recognizing he could not force the defile, ordered his troops to pull back out of artillery range. The gorge threat was finished.

• 5. Collapse of the Austrian Columns

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  The centre of the battle still hung in the balance after the gorge action. Joseph Ocskay renewed his assault from San Marco and drove back the brigade of Honoré Vial. At midday, French cavalry under Joachim Murat charged the flanks of Ocskay's troops and pushed them back to their morning positions.

  Lusignan, who had cut Bonaparte's retreat, now found himself caught. The brigade of Guillaume Brune engaged him from the front. Then the division of Gabriel Rey, arriving from Castelnuovo, and the reserve brigade of Claude Victor closed in from another direction. The combined pressure crushed Lusignan's column. He fled westward with fewer than 2,000 men remaining from what had been a full Austrian column.

  The French lost 3,200 killed and wounded, with a further 1,000 captured. Austrian losses were 4,000 killed and wounded, plus 8,000 men and 40 guns captured. A second accounting, given by one authority, puts total French losses at 5,000 and Austrian losses at 14,000. Whatever the precise figures, the Austrian army in northern Italy had been broken in a single morning.

  The next day, Joubert and Rey began pursuing the remnants of Alvinczi's force, driving them north up the Adige Valley in confusion.

• 6. Mantua and the Final Reckoning

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  The fall of Rivoli did not immediately end the campaign. On the 13th of January, a separate Austrian force under Giovanni di Provera, 9,000 men, had crossed north of Legnano and driven directly toward Mantua. On the night of the 15th, Provera sent a message into the fortress ordering Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser to break out in a coordinated attack.

  On the 16th of January, Wurmser attacked. Jean Sérurier drove him back into the city. Masséna, who had force-marched from Rivoli, struck the Austrians from the front. Pierre Augereau's division hit them from the rear. The entire Austrian relief force was forced to surrender.

  On the 2nd of February, Mantua itself surrendered. The garrison that marched out numbered 16,000 men, all that remained of an army that had once numbered 30,000. The troops laid down their arms under the honours of war. Wurmser was allowed to leave with his staff and an escort. The remaining soldiers were sent to Austria after swearing an oath not to serve against France for a year. Inside the fortress, 1,500 guns were found.

  With Mantua gone, Austria had no foothold left on Italian soil.

• 7. Aftermath and Legacy

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  Bonaparte did not pause long after Mantua fell. On the 18th of February he marched south with 8,000 men toward Rome, pressing the Papal States, which had maintained covert hostility to France throughout the Italian campaign. Pope Pius VI agreed to an armistice negotiated at Tolentino.

  Austria still refused peace terms even then. The Alpine passes were closed by snow, but Bonaparte prepared a final campaign east into Austria itself, toward Vienna. France ultimately won the wider War of the First Coalition later in 1797, a result with Rivoli and Mantua at its foundation.

  The battle's name entered the Paris streetscape. The Rue de Rivoli, running through the heart of central Paris, was named in its honor, one of the more visible civic memorials to the Italian campaign still standing today.