The Generals

Chapter 16

By the time the last of his senior staff officers had arrived Napoleon had formed his plan and was impatient to give the orders.

‘I assume you’ve all the heard the news. It seems that the Austrians have got more balls than we thought.’

The officers chuckled and Napoleon raised a hand to quieten them.

‘We have been saved the job of finding the Austrians, and it’s time to take the battle to them. Cervoni’s brigade is here.’ He tapped his finger on the map. ‘He’s holding his position at the moment, and buying us time to move into the attack. General La Harpe is the closest to the Austrians’ line of advance. Berthier, you will order him to attack at once.The Austrians will be forced to stop and turn to face the threat, which will free Masséna to march on their flank and rear.The rest of the army will be given orders to move up in support. Gentlemen, if we act swiftly, the Army of Italy will have its first victory of the campaign, courtesy of the Austrians. See to it. I’m riding ahead to join Cervoni. Send any messages to me there.’

As soon as the officers had been dismissed Napoleon called for a horse to be readied. Taking a handful of dragoons with him, he galloped down the coast road towards Voltri. He soon caught up with the rear elements of Masséna’s division quick-marching to join their commander and strike at the Austrians. Some of the men cheered as he rode past and Napoleon raised his hat in acknowledgement. Then, four miles short of Voltri, he came to the junction that led up into the hills where Cervoni’s brigade was fighting the Austrian vanguard. Already he could hear the faint boom of cannon and the crackle of musket fire echoing from the hills. Napoleon kicked his heels in, urging his mount up the track, and the dragoons struggled to keep up with their general.

As the small party of horsemen came up on to the ridge, they had a clear view down the far slope which dropped steeply towards a mountain stream crossed by a narrow stone bridge. Cervoni’s men had formed up in solid ranks to contest the crossing. Ahead of them, clustered amongst rock outcroppings, were small parties of light infantry, keeping up a steady fire on the Austrians on the far side of the stream. Beyond the bridge, a battalion of the white-uniformed enemy stood in neatly dressed ranks, busily loading their weapons and then bringing them up to fire in company volleys at the French skirmishers as if they were on a parade ground. Each time the Austrian muskets rose to the shoulder the French ducked down, and nearly every shot rattled harmlessly off the rocks or whistled overhead. By contrast, the irregular fire of the skirmishers was whittling down the Austrians. Behind them a battery of artillery was unlimbering on a patch of even ground close to the stream, and beyond stood a long column of infantry waiting for the order to force their way across the bridge.

Colonel Cervoni had spotted his commander and trotted his horse up to Napoleon. He saluted. ‘Good morning, sir.’

Napoleon nodded. ‘Better than we could have hoped for. Must be three or four thousand men over there. I think you’ve managed to find the Austrian army for me, Cervoni. What’s the situation?’

Cervoni turned to look down the slope as he stroked his stubbled chin. ‘We’ve been falling back by battalions. Each time they’ve deployed just like that, as if they were following a manual and had all the time in the world. Our skirmishers have been shooting them up until their guns open fire, then withdrawing.’

‘What are your losses?’

‘No more than fifty men so far. A fraction of what they’ve lost, sir.’

There was a dull roar from the far side of the stream and Napoleon turned to see a puff of smoke swirling in front of one of the guns of the Austrian battery. Shortly afterwards a divot of grass and stone was thrown into the air a short distance in front of the foremost of Cervoni’s line companies.

‘I’m afraid that’s about to change,’ Napoleon said quietly. ‘You must hold this ridge as long as possible. The Austrians must not reach the coast road. Augereau’s division is moving forward to attack the Austrian column, and Masséna is marching round to the east.’ Napoleon gestured to the hills on his right. ‘But they won’t come up for two or three hours. You have to hold this position until then. Whatever the cost.’

Cervoni nodded. ‘I understand, sir.’

Napoleon looked over the ground below him.‘Where are your guns? You’re supposed to have two six-pounders attached to your brigade.’

‘There, sir.’ Cervoni smiled as he indicated a thicket of reeds a hundred and fifty yards from the bridge. When Napoleon squinted he could just make out the crews crouched round two dark shapes. Cervoni explained. ‘I had them smear the guns in mud so they wouldn’t show.They have orders not to fire until the head of the column is on our side of the bridge.’

Napoleon nodded approvingly.‘That’ll be a nasty surprise.You can return to your battle, Cervoni. I’ll watch from here for a while.’

‘Yes, sir.’

They exchanged a salute and Cervoni wheeled his horse round and trotted back to his small cluster of staff officers. Now the Austrian guns had found their range and a well-aimed shot ploughed a bloody furrow through the centre of the nearest company. More solid shot followed and several men were swept away before the order to take cover reached them. The enemy gunners reloaded with grapeshot and trained the guns on the skirmishers covering the bridge. Then the Austrian drums beat the advance and the light company peeled aside to let the main column approach the bridge.They came on at a steady, measured pace, up to the parapet and tramping over the slight hump in the middle of the bridge. They were led by a slender officer who rested his sword on his shoulder as he led his men towards the near bank of the stream.

The French gunners rose up, still half hidden by the reeds, and two tongues of flame ripped out, disgorging two cones of lead shot into the face of the Austrian column. The guns had been well laid and almost every man on the bridge was cut down to lie in twisted heaps, splattered with blood. The front of the column halted, dumbstruck, and then bulged forward as the men behind pressed into them. The men nearest the hidden guns had nowhere else to go and stumbled over the bodies of their comrades as they pressed on over the bridge.

Cervoni’s guns discharged more grapeshot, adding further carnage to the scene on the bridge. The commander of the Austrian battery was frantically giving orders to his men to redirect their fire on to the French guns but they were obscured by the bridge and the gunners could not see their target. A third blast of grapeshot decided the issue and the Austrian column backed away, leaving at least forty of their comrades littered across the small span of ancient stones.

‘Fine work.’ Napoleon smiled with satisfaction as he turned his horse back towards the ridge and the road that led to his headquarters. Berthier was waiting for him when Napoleon reached Savona shortly before noon.

‘What news?’

‘Augereau’s division are moving towards Montenotte, General. His forces have been sighted by the Austrians and the enemy are already turning to face him.’

‘Excellent!’ Napoleon slapped his hand down on the map. ‘And Masséna?’

‘Cutting round their flank, as ordered. He estimated that he would be ready to strike no later than four o’clock.’

‘Then we should have trapped our Austrian friends very nicely.’ Napoleon smiled excitedly. ‘Our first victory!’

It was not until the following morning that the scale of the Austrian defeat at Montenotte was evident. Over fifteen hundred Austrians had been killed and wounded and another two and a half thousand were taken prisoner.The survivors fled towards the town of Dego, abandoning cannon, muskets and other equipment. The French seized the enemy’s weapons eagerly. Over a thousand men in Augereau’s division had had no muskets and these now shouldered Austrian weapons, ready for use against their former owners.

Napoleon seized the advantage at once, urging Masséna’s columns forward in pursuit of the enemy, while Augereau and Serurier fell on the Piedmontese army and drove them from one town after another over the next ten days, until on the evening of 23 April the French army was on the road to Turin. A farmhouse had been found for the general’s headquarters and as Napoleon sat hunched over a quick meal of cold chicken and bread it began to rain, the drops rattling on the roof tiles overhead. The door opened and Junot was briefly outlined against the steel glint of a curtain of rain as he ducked under the lintel and closed the door behind him. He stood dripping on the stone floor and smiled at his commander.

Napoleon set down the hunk of bread in his hand, and quickly swallowed. ‘What’s the matter, Junot?’

‘There’s a Piedmontese colonel standing outside. He carries a message from General Colli.’

‘And?’

‘General Colli is requesting an armistice.’

‘An armistice?’ Napoleon pushed his plate aside and folded his hands together, his mind racing as he considered the implications of the offer. He nodded at a spare chair on the other side of the plain country table and Junot sat down.

‘What have you said to him, Junot?’

‘As we were walking up to headquarters he asked me if I thought you would accept. I said nothing.’

‘You didn’t speak to him?’

‘Not a word.’ Junot shrugged. ‘I thought it was presumptuous of him even to ask.’

‘And so it was!’ Napoleon laughed. ‘Well then, Colli wants to break off the fighting, does he?’

‘It’s not difficult to see why, sir. We’ve been snapping at their heels since we turned on them after Montenotte.They’re hungry and exhausted and need a breathing space. Same as our men. We could use the time to regroup.’

‘Yes, but they don’t know that.’ Napoleon looked up sharply. ‘This colonel, was he blindfolded as he passed through our lines?’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘Very well then, you’d better tell him that I reject the offer.’

Junot looked surprised, and hesitated a moment before he spoke. ‘May I ask why, sir?’

‘Junot, the fact that they have approached us for an armistice means they must think they have more to gain from it than we do. Turin is two days’ march away. Why give them a chance to fortify it? Let’s push on, and then offer them an armistice on our terms. Now, go and tell him.’

Over the next two days the French threw themselves after the retreating Piedmontese, driving them back from one village to the next and cutting them off from the Austrian army. Now it was Napoleon’s turn to offer an armistice. General Colli reluctantly conceded the key fortress towns of Cuneo, Ceva and Tortona and signed the documents that Junot had drawn up.

The same night, Napoleon wrote a quick note to Josephine and gave it to Colonel Murat to take to Paris along with the provisional terms of the armistice for the Directors to consider. Then he sat down to compose the following morning’s order of the day. Napoleon paused to take in the speed at which the campaign had moved. He had never felt such a sense of achievement and he was proud of his men. Yet, even now, he looked ahead. He dipped his pen into the inkwell and began to write.

Soldiers! In fifteen days you have taken twenty-one colours and fifty-five pieces of artillery, seized several fortresses and the richest lands of Piedmont. You have captured fifteen thousand prisoners and inflicted more than ten thousand casualties. The success I promised you has been fulfilled, yet this is only the beginning . . .