Montenotte campaign

• 1. Introduction

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  The Montenotte campaign began on the 10th of April 1796 with a battle the French did not start. Napoleon Bonaparte had spent weeks planning an offensive for the 15th of April, only to have the Habsburg commander Johann Peter Beaulieu strike first. In eighteen days, across a narrow strip of mountain passes and river valleys in northwest Italy, Bonaparte's French army fought and won a series of engagements that knocked one country out of the war entirely and left a second bloodied and isolated. How did a French force that was barely clothed, months behind on its pay, and short of muskets accomplish something that had defeated earlier armies? And what mistakes by the allied commanders handed Bonaparte his opening?

• 2. An Army in Tatters

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  When Bonaparte took command of the Army of Italy in March 1796, he inherited a force that had been raised with 106,000 men at the outset of the War of the First Coalition in 1792. Desertion, sickness, and combat had reduced that figure to a nominal 63,000, of whom only 37,600 could be placed in the field along with 60 field guns. The rest existed on paper. What greeted the new commander was worse than the numbers suggested. Whole battalions had no shoes. Many men lacked muskets and bayonets. The army's entire transport capacity amounted to 200 mules. Pay was months in arrears, and the soldiers were dependent on fraudulent contractors who enriched themselves while the men went hungry. Officers and soldiers alike left their units daily to forage for food. Royalist agents were at work in the ranks. Bonaparte faced an army that, by any conventional measure, was not yet a fighting force. Yet the geography he was handed offered something those earlier French commanders had failed to fully exploit.

• 3. Passes, Rivers, and the Vital Point

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  The Ligurian Alps between the Italian Riviera and Piedmont were crossed by several passes and river valleys running north from the coast. From west to east, these included the Col de Tende, the Tanaro River corridor through Ceva, the Colle di Cadibona between Savona and Carcare, the Col di Giovo near Sassello, the Turchino Pass north of Voltri, and the Bocchetta Pass north of Genoa. The coastal strip was too narrow to sustain an army without abundant supplies. To the north, however, Piedmont and the Po valley were rich in resources. Savona sits on the coast 56 km west of Genoa. A road climbs northwest from there, crosses the Colle di Cadibona, and descends to Carcare on the Bormida River 20 km inland. From Carcare it continues another 8 km west to Millesimo, then 21 km further to the small fortress of Ceva in the Tanaro valley, and 22 km beyond that to Mondovi. Bonaparte studied his maps carefully and fixed on Carcare as the key. That single town linked Beaulieu's Habsburg army to the east with Michelangelo Alessandro Colli-Marchi's 21,000-strong Sardinian army to the west. Seize it, and the two allied forces could be driven apart. His offensive, planned around a thrust from Savona through the Cadibona, was set to begin on the 15th of April. Beaulieu had other ideas.

• 4. Beaulieu Strikes First

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  On the 10th of April, Beaulieu personally accompanied Karl Philipp Sebottendorf and 3,200 men as they advanced across the Turchino Pass to attack Jean-Baptiste Cervoni's 5,000 French troops at Voltri, near Genoa. A second column of 4,000 men under Philipp Pittoni von Dannenfeld came through the Bocchetta Pass at the same time. One source later described the attack as badly organized, poorly coordinated, and using a surprisingly small number of troops. Outnumbered, Cervoni conducted a masterly withdrawal to the west, avoiding the trap that had been set for him. Beaulieu declined to pursue and began shifting units toward his right flank, sending four battalions under Josef Philipp Vukassovich on a difficult road toward Sassello and ordering the bulk of his force back to Acqui. Meanwhile, Argenteau and Mathias Rukavina von Boynograd assembled 4,000 soldiers near Montenotte on the morning of the 11th. They advanced southeast toward 2,000 French soldiers at Monte Negino. Antoine-Guillaume Rampon repulsed several Austrian attacks through the day. By moving against Voltri first, Beaulieu had telegraphed his intentions and given Bonaparte the opening he needed. Bonaparte ordered Laharpe to strike Argenteau the next morning with two brigades while Andre Massena enveloped the Austrian flank with a third.

• 5. The Wedge Driven Home

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  On the 12th of April, Laharpe led 7,000 troops in a frontal assault from Monte Negino while Massena moved north with 4,000 men to turn Argenteau's weak right flank. A further 11,000 troops were moved up in support. Massena's flanking movement broke through. Argenteau could not seal the gap. When the Austrian withdrew his battered force to Dego, he reported that he could rally only 700 men to the colors. Bonaparte turned west on the 13th of April. Pierre Augereau's division easily pushed back Giovanni Marchese di Provera's weak force at Millesimo. Provera and 1,000 picked troops then took shelter in a ruined hilltop castle at Cosseria, and Bonaparte ordered it stormed rather than bypassed. The Austro-Sardinians repelled every assault with heavy French casualties through the rest of that day. Provera surrendered the following morning when his defenders exhausted their food, water, and ammunition. On the 14th of April, Massena and Laharpe attacked Argenteau again in the Second Battle of Dego, inflicting 1,500 French casualties while killing, wounding, or capturing most of the outnumbered Austrians. A poorly written order from Beaulieu then sent Vukassovich's brigade to Dego a full day late. At dawn on the 15th, Vukassovich surprised Meynier's troops in the act of looting the town and routed them. The French retook it hours later after a tough fight, with Bonaparte supervising the assault personally, and Vukassovich retreated to Acqui. The wedge between the Habsburg and Sardinian armies was now deep enough that neither could relieve the other.

• 6. Colli's Collapse

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  After a clash at Montezemolo, Colli pulled back to Ceva, and on the 16th of April Augereau attacked the Sardinians there and was repulsed. Fearing that Jean-Mathieu-Philibert Serurier, approaching from Ormea, would strike him from the rear, Colli withdrew to the Corsaglia River at San Michele Mondovi, leaving one battalion to hold Ceva's small fortress. Colli directed Jean-Gaspard Dichat de Toisinge with 8,000 soldiers and 15 cannon to defend the Corsaglia position. On the 19th of April, Bonaparte sent Serurier to attack San Michele while Augereau flanked the river line from the north. Augereau's effort failed because of high water. Serurier's men fought across the river but dispersed in search of food and plunder. Colli counterattacked and threw them back. Faced with a three-division attack Bonaparte called up the next day, Colli abandoned the Corsaglia line on the night of the 20th-the 21st of April. The vigorous French pursuit overran his rearguard. Serurier attacked with his least experienced troops formed in three columns, covered by veterans in open order, then charged with his central column and Massena's division in support. The French broke the Sardinian lines and forced them from Mondovi. Dichat was killed in the fighting. Henri Christian Michel de Stengel received a mortal wound while leading dragoons in pursuit. On the morning of the 23rd of April, Bonaparte received a letter from Colli requesting an armistice. Bonaparte pushed his army forward anyway, ordering it to seize as much territory as possible. The arrival of hungry French troops in the comparatively wealthy plains triggered widespread looting, and Bonaparte had several men shot to suppress it.

• 7. The Armistice and Its Price

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  By the 25th of April, Serurier held Fossano on the left flank, Massena occupied Cherasco in the center, and Augereau held Alba on the right. Macquard and Garnier were ordered to seize Cuneo. Under the Armistice of Cherasco, signed on the 28th of April, territory east of the Stura di Demonte and Tanaro Rivers passed to French control. French garrisons entered the fortresses of Cuneo, Ceva, and Tortona. The Sardinians also granted the French army the right to cross Sardinian territory, and a secret clause allowed Bonaparte to cross the Po River at Valenza. Bonaparte sent Joachim Murat to Paris with the terms. Total French casualties during the campaign stood at 6,000. Austrian and Sardinian losses together reached around 25,000. Historian Martin Boycott-Brown later argued that the outcome hinged not only on the disastrous separation between Beaulieu and Argenteau but also on the wider gap between the Austrian and Habsburg armies more broadly. As he put it, had the Austrians chosen to concentrate closer to the Piedmontese positions, as Colli had wanted, Bonaparte would have found it far less easy to drive them apart. Boycott-Brown concluded that while one could heap blame on Beaulieu, he was given a difficult hand to play, and if he came off second best in a contest with one of the greatest strategists in the history of war, it is not surprising. Within weeks, Bonaparte launched a new offensive that delivered victories over Beaulieu at Fombio and Lodi in May.