Second Battle of Dego

• 1. Introduction

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  The Second Battle of Dego was fought on the 14th and the 15th of April 1796 around a hamlet in northwestern Italy. Hamlets rarely decide campaigns, but this one stood on the only road by which two enemy armies could link up. Whoever held it decided whether Austria and Piedmont-Sardinia could fight as one.

  Napoleon Bonaparte brought about 15,000 French soldiers to the problem, and the fight ended in a French victory. Why did this particular hamlet matter so much? What went wrong between one day and the next? And what did a commander still learning his trade take away from it?

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• 2. The Plan

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  Montenotte had already gone Napoleon Bonaparte's way when he turned toward Dego. There he had beaten the Austrian right wing, and he meant to follow that blow with a wedge. His plan was to drive apart the Austrian army of General Johann Beaulieu and the army of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, led by General Michelangelo Colli.

  Dego's defences combined stone and earth. A castle stood on a bluff above the hamlet, and earthworks ran along rising ground nearby. The men behind them were a mixed force, with units from both the Austrian and the Piedmont-Sardinian armies standing side by side.

  The regiments on each side are recorded in unusual detail, and the list rewards a closer look before the fighting begins.

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• 3. Two Rosters

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  On the French side, André Masséna commanded a corps of two divisions. Amédée Laharpe led the first, with six demi-brigades: the 1st Light and the 14th, 21st, 69th, 70th and 99th Line. His brigadiers were Jean Pijon, Jean Ménard and Jean Cervoni.

  Jean Meynier led the second division, built from the 45th, 46th, 84th and 100th Line demi-brigades. Its brigadiers were Elzéard Dommartin and Barthélemy Joubert, though Joubert was not present. Henri Stengel's cavalry division, with the 5th Dragoons and the 22nd Horse Chasseurs, was attached to Bonaparte's own headquarters rather than to Masséna's corps.

  Eugène Argenteau's wing of the Austrian right, numbering 5,700 men, was a patchwork. Seven Austrian regiments each supplied a single battalion, among them Stain, Pellegrini, Schröder and Deutschmeister. The Preiss regiment, numbered 24, brought three battalions, and Archduke Anton's regiment, numbered 52, brought two. Two Sardinian regiments added to the mix: La Marina with two battalions and Montferrat with one.

  Colonel Josef Vukassovich commanded a separate brigade of 3,500. It held two battalions of the Carlstadt Grenz regiment, plus one battalion each from the Alvinczi, Nádasdy and Preiss regiments. Masséna's divisions would meet this patchwork on the 14th of April.

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• 4. The First Assault

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  Masséna led the attack on Dego on the 14th of April, using Laharpe's division and one brigade from Meynier's. The French overran the defences. The price was about 1,500 killed and wounded. The Austrians lost 3,000 men, and a large share of them were taken prisoner.

  Argenteau's survivors fled northeast to the town of Acqui Terme, leaving Dego behind them.

  Bonaparte then divided his strength. He ordered Meynier to hold the captured town, and he took Laharpe's division west to confront Colli's Sardinians. That division was now marching away from Dego, and it would be called back.

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• 5. Fog Over Dego

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  By nightfall on the 14th, the French in Dego had stopped behaving like an army on guard. The men gave themselves over to looting, and most of them spent the night scattered through the nearby houses.

  At dawn on the 15th, fog covered the approach of Colonel Vukassovich and his Austrians. They struck the defences by surprise. The French were rapidly driven out of Dego and back to the ground where they had started the day before.

  The timing owed much to a clerical failure. Beaulieu had intended Vukassovich to reinforce Argenteau on the 14th. His orders were poorly written, and a subordinate reached Dego a day too late. Arriving when they did, the Austrians found a garrison that was asleep rather than ready.

  One story, offered only as an allegation, says the attack caught Masséna in bed with a woman, and that he escaped in his nightshirt. The man who had led the first day's assault now had to take the town back.

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• 6. Retaking Dego

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  Masséna needed some time to take control of the situation again. He recalled Laharpe, and he organised a counter-attack. Bonaparte supported it with further reinforcements. Vukassovich's force was heavily outnumbered and could not defend for long. It was driven out, and Dego stayed in French hands.

  Historians read the morning as a warning about Bonaparte's command. His structure was still inexperienced, and poor discipline and scattered deployments left French units open to a sudden Austrian move.

  Chandler points out that this was among the first occasions on which Bonaparte saw the strategic value of keeping concentrated reserves. He applied that lesson in later Italian battles. The next test of it was waiting with Colli's Sardinian army.

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• 7. The Reckoning

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  The second day's fighting cost the Austrians a further 670 killed and wounded, and 1,087 more were captured. The Preiss regiment, numbered 24, took especially heavy losses. French casualties were lighter: 621 killed and wounded, and 317 captured.

  On the 16th of April, Bonaparte reorganised his forces and sent out strong patrols. The surprise at Dego had left him anxious that Beaulieu might come in from the east. Beaulieu never did. The mauling of Argenteau at Montenotte and Dego had shaken his nerve, and he stayed near Acqui.

  Satisfied that Beaulieu was out of the picture, Bonaparte turned on Colli with his main strength on the 17th of April. The Battle of Mondovì on the 21st of April brought Colli's defeat, and the Sardinian government sued for peace soon afterward.

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