Italian campaign of 1796–1797
The Italian campaign of 1796-1797 opened against a backdrop of military collapse. On the 25th of March 1796, two battalions of the French Army of Italy mutinied in Nice. Some units harbored royalist councils, and the army's pay was several months late. Food rations ran chronically short. Within eighteen months, that same force would bring Austria to the negotiating table and sign away the Republic of Venice. Napoleon Bonaparte would become the dominant military figure in Europe.
The Army of Italy numbered approximately 63,000 personnel on paper. Only 37,600 were ready for immediate action. The men were strung along the coastal road from Nice to Savona. The Royal Navy threatened from the sea; Waldensian guerrillas harassed from the hills. The War Ministry in Paris considered Italy a secondary front. The Rhine was the true axis of advance toward Vienna. Napoleon saw it differently. On the 2nd of March 1796, he was given command of the Army of Italy.
At Toulon in 1793, Napoleon Bonaparte earned his first promotion to brigadier general. Working alongside him there were two National Convention representatives: Augustin de Robespierre and Antoine Christophe Saliceti. Both became key figures in his early career. Within a year, those connections would nearly destroy him.
By the spring of 1794, the Army of Italy had spent two years fighting the Kingdom of Sardinia under Victor Amadeus III. Napoleon devised a plan to conquer Oneglia, outflank the Sardinian army, and re-establish contact with Genoa. Du Merbion, the army's commander, gave him 20,000 of his 43,000 men. Andre Massena took Ormea without resistance and then turned west to cut off Austrian forces near Saorgio. By May, the French held the Argentera, Colle di Tenda, and Colle San Bernardo passes.
The coup of the 27th of July 1794 changed everything. Maximilien Robespierre fell, and Napoleon, implicated by his association with Augustin Robespierre, was arrested on the 6th of August by order of Saliceti himself. The army's stagnation without him forced Saliceti to release him within weeks.
After a brief period in Toulon followed by an assignment to infantry in the Vendee, Napoleon found his opportunity back in Paris. Royalists led 20,000 soldiers of the national guard toward the Tuileries on the 5th of October 1795. The government turned to Paul Barras, who immediately called on Napoleon. Bonaparte dispersed the rebels with cannon fire. Five days later, he was back in the ranks.
His predecessor in Italy, Barthelemy Louis Joseph Scherer, had won the Battle of Loano in November 1795. The momentum had since stalled, with Austrian forces establishing a defensive line at Acqui.
On the 27th of March 1796, the same day he formally took command, Napoleon summoned his three senior division generals. Jean Mathieu Philibert Serurier, Pierre Francois Charles Augereau, and Andre Massena met at headquarters. Aide-de-camp Joachim Murat and Major Jean-Andoche Junot were also present, along with Napoleon's brother Louis Bonaparte and Auguste Marmont. The start of operations was announced as the 15th of April.
Napoleon had identified the critical weakness in the junction between the Austrian and Piedmontese armies at Carcare. Driving a wedge there would let him fight each enemy separately. He moved his headquarters from Nice to Albenga and then on to Savona on the 9th of April. An unexpected Austrian attack on Voltri forced him to bring the offensive forward by four days.
General Argenteau, who commanded 15,000 Austrians from Acqui Terme, received his orders late. Before he could rally his troops, Laharpe and Massena stopped him at the Battle of Montenotte on the 12th of April. The following day, Massena moved toward Dego while Augereau and Serurier struck the Piedmontese at Millesimo. Massena took Dego on the 14th, capturing 5,000 Austrians and 19 cannons.
Colli's Piedmontese held a strong position at the confluence of the Tanaro and Corsaglia rivers, and French attacks failed repeatedly to dislodge him. On the 19th of April, Napoleon opened a new supply route through the upper Tanaro valley, freeing men for a fresh push. Colli avoided battle and retreated on the night of the 20th to the 21st of April to Mondovi. Serurier caught him there on the 21st at the Battle of Mondovi. With the city taken, Napoleon advanced toward Turin.
On the 28th of April 1796, Vittorio Amedeo III signed the armistice of Cherasco. The Treaty of Paris followed on the 15th of May. In ten days of active campaigning, with the loss of 6,000 soldiers, Napoleon had removed Piedmont-Sardinia from the war entirely. His southern flank was now secure, and the road to the Po lay open.
Napoleon's objective was now the destruction of Beaulieu's Austrian army. He concentrated 39,600 men between Tortona, Alessandria, and Valenza, looking for a place to cross the Po. Beaulieu had positioned himself at Valeggio, far from the Ticino river. Napoleon exploited this gap by sending 3,600 grenadiers and 2,500 cavalrymen under General Claude Dallemagne to cross near Piacenza.
Dallemagne arrived in Piacenza at nine in the morning on the 7th of May. By mid-afternoon, Laharpe's division had also crossed the river. In the confusion of night fighting near Codogno, Laharpe was killed by his own men. Chief of staff Berthier and other subordinates took matters into their own hands, defeating the Austrians and steadying the situation. Beaulieu ordered a general retreat to Lodi on the Adda river.
The French avant-garde reached Lodi in the early hours of the 10th of May. Beaulieu had withdrawn most of his force across the Adda. General Karl Philipp Sebottendorf held the bridge with a rear guard of 10,000 men, three battalions, and a dozen guns. Napoleon deployed cannons on the south bank and sent cavalry under Michel Ordener and Marc-Antoine Beaumont to search for a ford downstream. French grenadiers started the assault but faltered midway across. Massena, Berthier, Dallemagne, and Cervoni personally led the second charge, and this time the French reached the far bank. A counterattack by Sebottendorf nearly retook the bridge, but Massena and Augereau's men cut short the effort while Ordener's cavalry, having found a ford, broke the Austrian lines.
On the 21st of May 1796, the Directory assured Napoleon of full confidence after he objected to a proposal to split command with Kellermann. Kellermann contributed 10,000 reinforcements to the Italian army.
Five days after Lodi, Napoleon entered Milan. Austrians barricaded in the Sforza Castle surrendered on the 29th of June. Despite Napoleon's efforts to identify himself with Italian nationalism, looting and new taxes quickly antagonized the Milanese, who provided French soldiers with roughly half their back pay. Napoleon's next target was the city of Mantua, where 12,000 Austrians were already trapped inside.
Napoleon ordered Serurier to lay siege to Mantua on the 3rd of June, then turned his attention south. Together with Augereau and Vaubois, he took possession of the Fort Urbano, a powerful papal fortress, on the 23rd of June. Its cannons were sent to reinforce the Mantua operation. Florence and Ferrara opened their gates to the French voluntarily, while Vaubois occupied Livorno, depriving the Royal Navy of a useful Mediterranean base.
Pope Pius VI had been planning his own response. He had arranged for 30,000 Neapolitan soldiers to fight Bonaparte and was courting Sardinia, Modena, and Venice to join the effort. Napoleon struck first. He occupied the Duchy of Modena and Reggio and established a military base in Genoa. On the 10th of October, he concluded a Franco-Sicilian-Neapolitan treaty that isolated the Pope. On the 15th of October, the Transpadane Republic was proclaimed in Milan.
Austrian general Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser had gathered around 50,000 soldiers in Trento and began his advance on Mantua in late July. Wurmser and Quosdanovich threatened to unite their forces south of Lake Garda, which would have given the Austrians an overwhelming advantage. Napoleon lifted the siege on the 31st of July, fell back to better positions, and drove the two wings apart. On the 3rd and the 4th of August, Quosdanovich's columns fell to Massena at the Battle of Lonato. Wurmser was defeated at the Battle of Castiglione on the 5th of August.
At a cost of 6,000 dead and wounded and 4,000 prisoners, Napoleon had repelled the first Austrian relief effort. He inflicted at least 16,700 losses on Wurmser's forces. Mantua was besieged again on the 7th of August. Wurmser refused to abandon the effort. By September he had regrouped 19,000-20,000 disciplined soldiers and descended the Brenta valley toward the Adriatic.
Instead of retreating along the Adige, as the Austrian generals expected, Napoleon pursued Wurmser along the same route the Austrians had just used. On the 7th of September, Augereau forced the Austrian defenses at Primolano. The Battle of Bassano on the 8th of September split the Austrian forces in two. One section retreated toward Friuli; the other, with Wurmser and roughly 3,500 men reinforced by General Meszaros's 16,000 soldiers, pressed stubbornly toward Mantua. Wurmser crossed the Adige on the 10th of September and forced his way through the French blockade. By the 12th of September, the Mantua garrison had grown to 23,000 men. Wurmser had escaped one trap only to sit inside another. The enlarged garrison meant more mouths to feed in an already starving fortress.
By the beginning of November, a new Austrian force of 46,000 men was ready for a third attempt to relieve Mantua. Joseph Alvinczy von Berberek commanded the main body of 28,000; General Davidovich led a second column. Alvinczy's plan relied on deceiving Napoleon about Davidovich's approach through Trento. Napoleon was supposed to focus on Alvinczy's march toward Bassano while Davidovich struck from the north at the critical moment.
Vaubois's division moved forward, but reconnaissance reports quickly made the size of Alvinczy's force clear. Alvinczy repelled Massena on the 6th of November at both Fontaniva and Bassano del Grappa. Vaubois failed to hold Trento and Rovereto, stopping the Austrian advance only at Rivoli Veronese. Napoleon pulled Massena and Augereau back behind the Adige and stripped two brigades from the Mantua garrison to reinforce Vaubois. An attack on Alvinczy's right flank with 13,000 men at Caldiero on the 12th of November ended in defeat.
Napoleon had 18,000 soldiers from Augereau's and Massena's units to face Alvinczy's 23,000. He planned to draw the Austrians into the marshy ground between the Alpone and Adige rivers. A fight near Villanova di San Bonifacio would neutralize the Austrian numerical advantage. On the 15th of November, Augereau and Massena's men occupied the village of Porcile. Augereau was then pinned at the Arcole bridge by Austrian fire. Napoleon seized a French tricolor and personally led a charge on the bridge. The Austrians repelled this too, and Napoleon fell into a ditch; his aide-de-camp pulled him out.
On the second day, the French held Porcile but not Arcole, which had returned to Austrian hands overnight. Napoleon withdrew his forces to the Adige each evening in case they were needed to help Vaubois. On the 17th of November, with the Austrians now divided, he struck at Alvinczy's main body. After a bayonet clash in the marshes, the Austrians surrendered part of Arcole. Napoleon then gathered four trumpeters and a small bodyguard detachment. Unseen by the Austrians, the group crossed the Alpone. Through the sound of the instruments, they mimicked the approach of a large French force directly behind the Austrian line at Arcole. Austrian forces, convinced of a heavy attack, retreated northward. Augereau reunited with Massena in a liberated Arcole. Alvinczy, alarmed at what appeared to be a serious threat to his rear, ordered his whole army to pull back toward Vicenza.
At the opening of 1797, Napoleon had 34,000 men on the Italian front, supported by 78 field guns, with another 10,000 engaged at Mantua. Alvinczy, still in the field, commanded 45,000 men plus the garrison inside the city. He struck first, his forces attacking Legnago, Verona, and La Corona from the 7th to the 12th of January.
On the 13th of January, after correspondence with General Joubert, Napoleon identified Rivoli as the critical point. Alvinczy had concentrated his main force of 28,000 men there, with the attacks on Legnago and Verona serving as feints. Napoleon ordered Joubert to hold firm and sent Massena and Rey marching through the night toward Rivoli.
Alvinczy had divided his army into six columns under Quosdanovich, Lusignan, Lipthay, Koblos, Ocskay, and Vukassovich. His battle plan required multiple simultaneous attacks from different directions, which proved difficult to coordinate. Napoleon joined Joubert at Rivoli on the night of the 13th, with reinforcements still en route. At dawn on the 14th, Joubert attacked the Austrian columns before him, only to be repelled by Koblos and flanked by Lipthay. Massena's men arrived and plugged the gap. To the south, Lusignan completed a wide outflanking march that cut Napoleon's line of retreat. Napoleon diverted forces to meet Lusignan while the Austrians seized formidable positions in the Osteria gorge. By eleven in the morning, the French position was near breaking.
Napoleon suddenly swung Joubert's brigades from the north to attack the Osteria gorge from the east. He blasted the packed Austrian forces there with an artillery battery at close range. A lucky shot struck two Austrian ammunition wagons, and a French charge through the chaos secured the gorge. Those same forces wheeled back north to help against Koblos and Lipthay. Lusignan, caught between the victorious French to his north and fresh reinforcements from the south, also retreated.
Leaving Joubert to pursue the defeated columns, Napoleon rushed south. On the 15th of January, Joubert repelled the three central Austrian columns at La Corona. Murat and Vial cut off their retreat through the mountain passes. Provera reached Mantua on the 15th but was stopped by Serurier's besieging force. On the 16th of January, Wurmser's final sortie from inside the city failed. That afternoon, Napoleon and Augereau arrived and surrounded Provera, forcing his surrender at the Battle of La Favorita. Two weeks later, on the 2nd of February 1797, Mantua surrendered with the honor of arms.
Napoleon was elsewhere when Mantua fell. He had already gathered 9,000 men and marched into Romagna. Pope Pius VI signed the Treaty of Tolentino on the 19th of February. France received a large sum of money to continue the war and gained the region of Romagna from the Papal States. Archduke Charles of Habsburg-Teschen was already gathering the remnants of the Austrian army to face the French in a new campaign.
In February 1797, the Directory shifted resources from the Rhine to Italy, placing their hopes for ending the war on Napoleon. He now commanded 60,000 men. He left 10,000 under Joubert in Tyrol and advanced in two columns toward Vienna.
Massena, Guieu, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, and Serurier occupied Primolano on the 1st of March without difficulty. On the 16th of March, Bernadotte's forces forded the Tagliamento, capturing 500 Austrians and 6 cannons. Archduke Charles retreated to Udine and then continued withdrawing. French forces under Bernadotte pursued toward Ljubljana while General Dugua entered Trieste. By the 25th of March, Archduke Charles had lost 15,000 men in his first campaign against Napoleon. Joubert's column had taken Bolzano and Bressanone, and Massena, Guieu, and Chabot reached Klagenfurt on the 29th of March.
Napoleon then left his lines of communication exposed, driving further into Austria to force a peace. His vanguards reached Semmering. Archduke Charles signed a five-day truce on the 7th of April. The French occupied Leoben, in present-day Styria, the same day. A second five-day truce followed on the 13th of April. On the 18th of April 1797, Napoleon put forward his terms in the Peace of Leoben, which the Austrians accepted and signed. The Italian campaign was over.
Per the Leoben agreement, Austria would receive the Republic of Venice, a neutral party throughout the war. In May 1797, Napoleon fought a short war to dissolve the republic. Celebrations in France over the peace and Napoleon's threat to enter politics if the Directory rejected the terms pushed the Directory toward acceptance.
The elections of 1797 had returned a conservative supermajority to the French legislature, raising the prospect of a Bourbon restoration. Napoleon supplied the Directory with a document detailing the treasonous activities of Jean-Charles Pichegru, then president of the Council of Five Hundred. Backed by troops from Augereau, the Directory purged the legislature in the Coup of 18 Fructidor on the 4th of September 1797. Napoleon sent his aide-de-camp Antoine de Lavalette to observe but kept his distance. The coup ended the Bourbon restoration threat, and the Austrians moved toward a final settlement.
Austria accepted the final terms on the 17th of October 1797. Napoleon personally signed the Treaty of Campo Formio, without waiting for the Directory's own representative. The Holy Roman Empire ceded the Austrian Netherlands to France and accepted French occupation of the Rhine's left bank and the Ionian Islands. Austria also recognized the Cisalpine Republic. France offered the Republic of Venice, including Istria, Dalmatia, and other Adriatic territories, in exchange. Napoleon Bonaparte arrived in Paris on the 5th of December 1797 to a hero's welcome. The Russian general Alexander Suvorov had remarked of him: "My God, how he moves!" Henri Jacques Guillaume Clarke served as the Directory's representative in Italy throughout the campaign. He wrote to Paris: "Bonaparte will be put by posterity in the rank of the greatest men." The campaign also concluded with Napoleon's appointment to command the Army of England.
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What was the Italian campaign of 1796-1797?
The Italian campaign of 1796-1797 was a series of French military operations in which Napoleon Bonaparte's Army of Italy defeated the forces of Piedmont-Sardinia, the Habsburg monarchy, and the Papal States across Northern and Central Italy. It established French dominance over the region and ended with the Treaty of Campo Formio on the 17th of October 1797, which confirmed the defeat of the Holy Roman Empire and the First Coalition.
How did Napoleon defeat Piedmont-Sardinia during the Italian campaign?
Napoleon defeated Piedmont-Sardinia in ten days of fighting between the 11th and the 21st of April 1796, beginning at the Battle of Montenotte and ending at Mondovi. He separated the Austrian and Piedmontese armies by driving through the junction at Carcare, then defeated each separately. Vittorio Amedeo III signed the armistice of Cherasco on the 28th of April 1796, followed by the definitive Treaty of Paris on the 15th of May.
What happened at the Battle of Lodi during the Italian campaign of 1796?
At the Battle of Lodi on the 10th of May 1796, French forces under Napoleon stormed a bridge over the Adda river held by General Karl Philipp Sebottendorf and a rear guard of 10,000 men. Massena, Berthier, and other officers personally led the assault that finally crossed the bridge, while cavalry under Michel Ordener found a ford downstream that broke the Austrian defense.
Why was the siege of Mantua important in the Italian campaign of 1796-1797?
Mantua was a major Austrian fortress that held from June 1796 to the 2nd of February 1797, forcing Napoleon to defeat four successive Austrian relief armies while the siege continued. Napoleon was absent when it finally surrendered; he was already in Romagna compelling Pope Pius VI to sign the Treaty of Tolentino. Its fall confirmed French control of Northern Italy and opened the road to Vienna.
What was the Battle of Arcole in 1796?
The Battle of Arcole was a three-day engagement fought on the 15th to the 17th of November 1796, in which Napoleon defeated the Austrian relief army of Joseph Alvinczy von Berberek. Napoleon personally led a charge on the Arcole bridge on the first day and later used four trumpeters to deceive the Austrians into retreat on the third. The French suffered 4,500 deaths over the three days.
What were the terms of the Treaty of Campo Formio signed by Napoleon in 1797?
The Treaty of Campo Formio, signed by Napoleon on the 17th of October 1797, required the Holy Roman Empire to cede the Austrian Netherlands to France and accept French occupation of the Rhine's left bank and the Ionian Islands. Austria recognized the Cisalpine Republic. France offered Austria the Republic of Venice, including Istria and Dalmatia, in exchange.
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28 references cited across the entry
- 4The 1799 Campaign in ItalyWaterloo Association — 2020-01-07
- 5Napoleon's Italian CampaignHarrison W. Mark
- 7Napoleon's Italian CampaignHarrison W. Mark
- 17Lodi and Arcola: making the myth The PastMilitary History — 2024-09-12
- 19Battle of CastiglioneHarrison W. Mark
- 26Battle of RivoliHarrison W. Mark
- 29BookThe Oxford History of the French RevolutionWilliam Doyle — Oxford University Press — 2002