sent. The governments, however, wanted ability to avail themselves of this advantage; ignorance, falsehood, and venality, pervaded every public department of the different states; and it was as impossible to depend on the truth of an official report, as to calculate on the just execution of an official order. The Italian governments were so many powerless despotisms already falling to pieces by the weight of their own worthlessness. Not a single man of any ability rose to authority from the Alps to the gulf of Tarentum; and Italy beheld foreign armies contending for the supremacy of the land, while her own sons remained inglorious spectators of the long and sanguinary struggle. The French army, of which Napoleon came to assume the command, was stationed in the Riviera, a narrow stripe of coast-land about ninety miles in length, and from ten to twenty in breadth, that forms a semicircle round the head of the bay of Genoa. This district is separated from the rest of Italy by a lofty screen of mountains, the northwestern part of which is formed by the Maritime Alps, the south-eastern by the Apennines; these mighty mountain-ranges join near the sources of the Tanaro, where their elevation is at its lowest. The French had for two years been in possession of the higher ridges of this range, many points of which they had fortified, and were thus, to a certain extent, masters of the outlets into the lower country. Their right wing was at Voltri,* near Genoa; their left, not including a few detached corps that maintained the communication with General Kellermann and the army of the Alps, was in the valleys at the head of the Tanaro; the cavalry was cantoned in rear of the infantry along the sea coast. The effective strength of this army at the opening of the campaign was 43,000 men, 4000 of whom were cavalry; and they had sixty pieces of artillery. Their nominal, or "return" strength, has been ridiculously exaggerated, in order to make the effective appear small by the contrast; but however exagge rated it was in this case, there always was a great disparity in the French republican armies between the nominal and effective strength of corps. Brave, gallant, and distinguished as these troops were, their excellence was in their fire-steeled edge, so to express ourselves, in the very front of battle: whatever was in the rear, all that was connected with the civil administration, up to the very heads of the military departments of the government, was vile and worthless in the extreme; and thousands of men were borne on the official states who never saw their corps. Besides the army of Italy, the French had an army of 20,000 men called the army of the Alps, which under General Kellermann threatened Piedmont from the north. There was another corps of 10,000 men, stationed as a reserve at Toulon. Napoleon had no direct authority over these troops; but the presence of Kellermann's army on the northern frontier lent him most essential aid, as it obliged the Sardinian government to detach 20,000 men under the Prince of Carignano, to watch the motions of this threatening force. The nominal strength of the Austro-Sardinian army, including 1500 Neapolitans, was 57,000 men; but they had 7000 sick at the commencement of the campaign, which with other casualties, left them only 46,000 effective men; of these 5000 were cavalry, and they had 148 pieces of artillery. The position of this army, having diverging lines of retreat, was precarious in the extreme. General Colli, with the Sardinian troops and 5000 Austrian auxiliaries, stood as a sort of advanced guard in the mountains near Ceva. General Argenteau, with the right wing of the main Austrian army, which was only half assembled when hostilities commenced, had also been thrown into the mountains. As the spring advanced, he joined the left of Colli, and extending his posts from Oviedo to Cairo, and covered with his 7000 men about thirty miles of wild and intersected mountain country; traversed by the deep ravines through which the countless tributaries of the Po force By mistake engraved Votri on the wood-sketch. their downward course. How this small force must have been splintered out into battalions and companies, may therefore be easily conceived. The left wing of the army was assembling at Pozzolo, Formigaro, and occupied Campo Freddo and Bochetta with some detached battalions. One half of the army was thus in sight of the enemy, while the other half was still on the march from the winter-quarters they had occupied in Lombardy and along the banks of the Po. The object of this long line of posts was rather to prevent the French from making excursions into the low country than to maintain any of its points as actual positions; and the arrangement became so very faulty only from the circumstance of there being no place of general assembly indicated for the troops to fall back upon in case of reverse, and at a sufficient distance to the rear to admit of the movement being safely executed. We must still, before entering on the events of the field, say a word of the generals and their respective armies. riority consisted chiefly in cavalry and artillery, the least useful arms in a mountainous country. They were also better supplied than the French; but these boasted supplies were not of the nature that produce any favourable effect on the health, strength, and spirits of the troops. It was not at that time the custom for Continental governments to release their soldiers from the constant state of half famine to which they were regularly condemned, so that these vaunted supplies consisted of nothing more than the useless stores with which the armies of the period so constantly encumbered themselves, but which contributed nothing to the well-being of the men. On the contrary, we know from many a wellauthenticated statement, that the troops suffered severely from want and privation, stationed, as they were, along the high and barren ridges of the Apennines. Sickness had made great ravages in the ranks, and the morale of the army was, in consequence of their situation and previous defeats, at a very low ebb. A few months, indeed, before the opening of the campaign, Marshal Colli, the commander of the Piedmontese army, actually declared his troops to be totally unfit to meet the enemy. There is no subject on which the idolators of Napoleon display more vapid eloquence than in contrasting the wretchedness of the French, with what they call the splendid condi tion of the allied army at the commencement of this campaign. The Republican general, they tell us, found himself, on assuming the command, at the head of a half-starved force, cooped up in a barren corner of Piedmont, destitute of every thing, and vastly inferior to the enemy, who are described as not only superior in numbers, but perfectly equipped, abundantly supplied with all the necessaries of war, and commanded by the most experienced officers in Europe. There is enough of truth in these statements to deceive the unguarded reader; though the whole truth, when stated, must lead to diametrically opposite conclusions to those which the advocates of Napoleon would have us infer. The return strength of the allied army, composed of Austrians, Sardinians, and Neapolitans, amounted to 57,000 men: they were thus supenor to the French, who had only 43,000; but even this nominal supe The French were hungry and in rags; but they were the enthusiastic soldiers of the revolution, drawn from among the best men of France. Many were still honest believers in the dream of freedom; a far greater number were animated by accounts of the spoil and fame acquired by the republican conquerors of Holland and Belgium, and all were eager to share in the flesh-pots of Italy. Is it not evident to common understanding, that far more was to be effected with such a fiery multitude, than with the mere drilled soldiers of Austria, paupers in uniform, drawn from the refuse of the German population, trained under an iron, soul-and-limbcrushing system of discipline, who saw nothing in the past, present, or future, to stimulate them to exertion? In regard to generals, the advantage was also on the side of the French, independently even of the superior talents claimed for Napoleon. The latter was in the twenty seventh, Beaulieu in the seventysecond year of his age. A new and splendid career, in which crowns and dictatorships were to be gained by daring and enterprise, was opening to the former; the career of the latter had almost attained to its natural close. Napoleon had received a good military education, which the worldshaking events of the Revolution had developed; while his mind had also, we may suppose, been inflated by the extravagant, unprincipled, and impelling spirit which distinguished the republican doctrines of the period. Beaulieu was the disciple of the pipeclay and button-stick school, which, for upwards of fifty years, had so successfully exerted itself to cramp the minds, and crush the energies of all ranks of military men. Napoleon was, at least, the equal of the rulers of France, who were besides partly indebted to him for their very power, which his sword had assisted to uphold on the 13th Vendémiaire (5th October), 1795, against the revolted sections. Beaulieu, on the other hand, was the servant of an ancient and venerated imperial dynasty, and the unhappy tool of a deaf and blind Aulic Council, claiming implicit obedience while attempting to command armies at hundreds of miles from the scene of action. Napoleon, again, was, by birth, knowledge, and education, the superior of the officers he came to command; for Massena, Augereau, Joubert, Serrurier, though brave and daring leaders, were only rough, ignorant, and illiterate men, and the new general had gained the hearts of his soldiers by his very first address, worded in the real French style of the period. It promised spoil and glory, and could not possibly fail of success. It ran as follows: :- "Soldiers! you are naked and ill-fed; the government owes you much, and has nothing to give you. The patience and courage which midst of these rocks are admirable; you display in the but they obtain for you no glory. I will lead you into the most fertile plains of the world. Rich provinces and large cities shall be in your power: their possession will confer honour, glory, and wealth upon you. Soldiers of Italy! can you want courage or constancy?" Under these circumstances, nine chances out of ten were in favour of the French; and the measures of their adversaries, which we have now to describe, augmented almost to a certainty these favourable prospects of success. Beaulieu arrived at Alessandria on the 27th of March, the same day that Napoleon reached Nice. Both generals had orders to attack, but the nature of these orders were probably very different in other respects. Napoleon was directed to force the King of Sardinia into a peace, and to drive the Austrians out of Lombardydirect and intelligent objects that were not to be effected by half measures. Those who still look upon Carnot as a great strategist will regret that he entered into the details of the operations by which this bold and simple plan was to be executed; for few documents can possibly furnish greater proof of the total absence of all clear perceptions of the power of armies, and the influence of time, circumstance, and situation. Fortune, however, assumed the chief command to herself, and left generals and ministers to divide the honour of the result. The new system of tactics which Napoleon is said to have put in practice during these campaigns, never had any existence except in the imagination of his eulogists and biographers, for it is a singular fact, that he never, during the whole of his career, made the slightest improvement or alteration in the system of tactics which he found established; for the tactical Règlement of 1791 remained unaltered in the French service down to the year 1825. The method of fighting which he followed to the last, together with his mode of supporting armies, were exactly those which the Revolution had introduced from the first. The gallantry and intelligence of the French troops redeemed and cast a halo of splendour over the bloodwasting manner in which the incapacity of their principal leaders hurled them on to slaughter while the altered situation of the world, the humanity and good feeling for which, as a people, the French are naturally distinguished, prevented the system of living by requisition and at free quarters, from being exactly what it had been under the Huns and the Vandals. It came, on some occasions, far too near to its barbaric origin to from whence it had been derived. leave any doubts as to the real source Beaulieu's orders do not appear, so that we must judge him by his measures. The French had advanced a brigade under General Cervoni as far as Voltri, in order to give effect to some money negotiation which they were carrying on with the government of Genoa. This alarmed the Austrians, who knew that there was a strong republican party within the walls, and that the government was feeble and irresolute. Beaulieu determined, therefore, to cover the city, to put himself in communication with the English fleet, which was on the coast, and then, no doubt, to follow up whatever success fortune might throw in his way. On the 9th of April he advanced by the Bochetta, against Voltri, with ten battalions and four squadrons, making in all about 7000 men. General Argenteau, with 3000 more, directed his march on Montenotte, to cover the right of the main column, to keep up the communication with the extreme right of the army, and to co-operate in the attack on the right of the French. While these 10,000 men were thus occupied, General Colli was to make a demonstra TURIN tion to his front, so as to engage the attention of whatever troops might be before him. This general had proposed, that, instead of this halfmeasure, the whole of the allied army should fall on the left wing of the French; a measure which, if successful, would probably have led to their ruin, as it must have cut them off from their only line of communication with France, and thrown them completely back upon the coast, which was closely watched by the English squadron. Beaulieu declined this judicious plan, saying, that he did not wish to bring on decisive operations at the moment; forgetting how difficult it is in war, when the most trifling events may lead to the greatest consequences, to draw a line between what is important and unimportant. Colli, therefore, sent General Provera with 2000 men, to make a demonstration towards Cossario. Napoleon had not been idle while Beaulieu was making these arrangements. He had assembled three divisions of his army near Savona, and intended to break into Piedmont, by the heads of the Bormida, at the other, decided the result before a single blow had been struck. From three different and unconnected points, 12,000 Austrians were thus marching down, not on the extreme right, but on what proved to be the concentrated mass of the French army; while 30,000 more were assembling at Acqui and other points in the rear and never, since wars have been carried on by men, had hostile Fortune delivered brave troops over to their adversaries in this unhappy manner. Beaulieu arrived before Voltri on the evening of the 11th April, intending to attack the Republicans on the following morning. The light troops, however, not satisfied with driving in the French outposts, followed them up farther than was intended, attacked the town itself in the darkness, and induced General Cervoni to fall back on the main body of La Harpe's division, leaving a few hundred wounded and prisoners in the hands of the Austrians. The premature success of this onset tended of itself to foil one of the main objects of the enterprise; for the French escaped without serious injury, instead of being overwhelmed as proposed by Beaulieu's front and Argenteau's flank attack. While the Austrian commander was halting at Voltri, and holding a conference with Commodore Nelson, General Argenteau was driving the French picquets from Upper and Lower Montenotte. This march had been slow, for it was evening before he reached Monte Legino, which the French had fortified, and where Colonel Rampon was stationed with two battalions. This gallant officer, when attacked, made his soldiers swear, under the very fire of the enemy, to perish rather than to yield their post: nor was it likely that such men could be driven from behind good fieldworks by adversaries who were so little superior, and who, owing to the mountainous nature of the ground, were without artillery. The Austrians made the attempt however, but failing in their efforts, and night setting in, they retired to Upper Montenotte, intending to renew the action in the morning. Napoleon was near Savona with three divisions of his army, when this action was fought close to his front: as Beaulieu had not followed up the feeble blow struck at Voltri, and was still at a distance on the evening of the 11th of April, it was natural to advance upon the nearest enemy, ing already been arrested by a fieldwho was evidently not in force, havredoubt defended by a couple of battalions. He immediately marched upon Monte Legino, and while General La Harpe's division took post behind the redoubt to assist Colonel Rampon in its defence; the divisions of Augereau and Massena, turned the right of the Austrians under cover of a heavy fog, which continued to hang over the hills for some hours after day-break. Objects were no sooner visible on the morning of the 12th of April, than Argenteau returned to the attack of the redoubt; but the superiority of the enemy soon decided the combat against him; having lost 400 men in killed, wounded, and prisoners, he fell back in all haste, and though outflanked by two divisions, he was yet enabled to effect his retreat; a proof that no particular energy was displayed by his adversaries. French accounts estimate the loss of the vanquished at 4000 men in this combat, and history has too readily followed these extravagancies. The retreat of the Austrian commanders was as singular as their advance had been. Argenteau, when driven from Montenotte, instead of falling back on Sassello, where he had left four battalions on his advance, or upon Dego, which was one of his main posts, and where he had four battalions stationed, passed between the two points, and hurried back all the way to Perotto, eight or nine miles farther to the rear! Beaulieu, hearing what had happened, sent Colonel Wukassowitch with three battalions to assist the defeated troops, and then set out for Acqui, to meet the corps that were still on their advance out of Lombardy; while the whole line of advanced posts that were almost under the enemy's guns were thus left to send reports far to the rear, and to receive orders from an equal distance, a step by which all unity of action was completely broken. The French, pursuing their victory, now threw themselves into a district of country, of which Cairo may be considered the centre, and round |