on Valentia and the Po. By this position, on one side, he supported Tortona, and on the other, by the course of the Po, gave some protection to Turin. He hoped to oblige the allies to waste the campaign in a war of posts and sieges, and give the republic time to collect new armies.

"The imperialists, taking possession of the whole of the left bank of the Upper Po, abandoned by the French, pushed their advanced posts as far as Chiavasso. A strong detachment entered the valley of Aasti, and took possession of Jarea. The centre of the Russian army entered the Lummeline, presenting a front against the French army. The left wing traversed the duchy of Parma, and occupied Bobbio. The right pushed its advanced posts as far as Vaghera. Morbegno and Como were taken, and a corps, sent from Milan, proceeded as far as Arona, on the lake Maggionne. Such is the condensed picture of the multiplied operations which the allied army undertook at the beginning of May: operations which divided it into a great number of corps, and thus, very much reducing the principal body of the army, afforded Moreau the hope to be able to maintain his ground. THE ALLIES WERE ACTING ON A

LINE ALMOST CIRCULAR ROUND THE BASON FORMED

OF

BY THE ALPS AND APPENINES, and intersected by the Po. Of the great variety of objects which this campaign embraced, and the MULTIPLICITY ACTIONS going on at the same time in different places, it is utterly impossible, in any other than a history professedly and solely military, to give a detailed account."*

Moreau, induced by the movements of the Austrian camp, suddenly passed the Bormida, by a bridge of boats, at the head of ten thousand troops, but was

* Annual Register, ibid. pp. 284-286.

repulsed with the loss of twelve hundred men. The allied army, more than 30,000 strong, encamped in the vicinity of Turin. And the fortified cities, garrisoned by the French, on their previous retreat, having been rapidly reduced, immense magazines, the spoils of Italy, were transferred from the republicans to the imperialists, on the surrender of Mantua, Peschiera, Ancona, Ferrara, and Ravenna. "The Austrians, confined and threatened as they had been at the end of March, on the line of the Adige, had in two months carried their right to the frontiers of France, and their left to the Adriatic sea."

The wide and watered expanse of northern Italy was again clear of the invader, except on a single region "where so many rivers have their sources," the fountains of waters. But the contest was the fiercer, as the territory became circumscribed. Armies rushed towards Piedmont. Not only were the forces, that had invested the cities and fortresses, again free to act in the field; but, exclusive of these and of the multitude of armed peasants that voluntarily rose to resist the French, a new accession of twenty-five thousand Russians and Austrians swelled the ranks of the imperialists. The French army in Piedmont, bordering on France, lay close to its supplies. And Macdonald, the commander of the French "army of Naples," in retreating from Italy, "had resolved to advance between the Appenines and the Po." To form a junction of their forces, Moreau advanced to meet Macdonald, and occupied the upper valley of the Tanaro, the defile of Bochetta, and other passes of the Appenines. Suwarrow hastened to intercept and to attack the foe, and, like Bonaparte, to cut off armies by detail.

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dreadful battle ensued, which was interrupted only by night, on the 17th, 18th, and 19th, on both sides of the Trebbia." In the battle, or series of battles, the French lost above ten thousand men, or more

than a third part of their army. So sanguinary was the conflict, that "the loss of the allies was little less than that of the enemy." On the surrender of Turin, which, after a terrible bombardment, was simultaneous with the victories of the Trebbia, ninety thousand Russians and Austrians contended in Piedmont as their field of blood, with seventy thousand French in garrisons and the field. And on the subsequent union of his army with that of Macdonald, Moreau had a disposable force of forty or fifty thoussand men, who were spread from the eastern extremity of the state of Genoa, as far as Coni, and occupied in that line" all the defiles of the Appenines.

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Twenty thousand troops being on the point of joining the forces of Suwarrow, and many more rapidly advancing, Joubert, who had been newly nominated commander-in-chief of the republican army, determined to act on the offensive, and to hazard a battle, in order to relieve Tortona. The French advanced from Milesimo, crossed the Bormida, and took a position at Orba, in the plain of Alexandria. Suwarrow concentrated his forces and (August 13th) marched towards the enemy, who had then penetrated to Novi. The French were attacked with Russian ferocity. After a desperate and long-contested battle, the republicans were defeated, "pursued by the whole line, and eight thousand were slain. Of the imperialists seven thousand were killed, wounded or lost of whom the lost did not exceed six hundred. The Russians gave no quarter." "As soon as the republicans had recovered from their consternation, they took their posi tions nearly in the line they had before occupied. Suwarrow pursued a plan for dispossessing them of their situation, and forcing the passages to Genoa." But having accomplished his object in the discomfit

* Annual Register, ibid, pp. 286-291.

ure of the republicans, till they could no longer keep the field, Suwarrow, (Sept. 11,) leaving to the Austrians the task of expelling them from Italy, withdrew to Switzerland, only to suffer disappointments and disasters, and speedily re-conducted his army into Russia. Whenever his work was accomplished his laurels faded, and retained nothing but the deep shade of blood.

The Austrians closed the campaign with no less energy amidst the fountains of waters in Piedmont, than that with which they had commenced it on the banks of the Adige. One division drove the enemy. from the vale of Domo Dossola, and forced them to re-ascend the mountains; another, in like manner, repulsed them at Aosta, and drove the enemy into the higher valley; a third dislodged them again and took Pignerol. Twelve thousand were defeated on the plains of Sturo, and compelled to retire to Coni. The republicans fought with no better success in the neighbourhood of Alexandria, and were discomfited in all their attempts to raise the siege of Coni: but blood was still so profusely shed that in these battles the victors lost two thousand killed and wounded. Coni, Mondovi, Ceva, and Seravalle, and all the important posts of the valley of Sturo, were finally surrendered to the Austrians; and "there remained in all Italy, only Genoa and its small territory,” (situated beyond the bounds of Piedmont, or its fountains of waters,) "in the possession of the French, at the close of the year 1799."*

"The loss of the allies, in killed and wounded, has been stated by most competent judges, at thirty thousand, that of the French at forty-five thousand,"t-or, seventy-five thousand killed and wounded in the course of one campaign, all slain, as before,

*Annual Register, pp. 291-307.

† Ibid.

where the vial was poured out upon the rivers and fountains of waters, and they became blood.

But the dregs of the vial of wrath had still to be poured along other fountains yet untouched, and were exhausted at last on the plains of Piedmont.

In 1800 the armies of France in Europe, were again under the command of Bonaparte: and Piedmont, which he formerly had conquered, was again his mark. In no part of Europe did he lead on an army to battle, from the time that he was first invested with the command till he was crowned as emperor, but solely amidst the rivers and fountains of waters. And when the directory fell, and the consulate was established in France, the new form of government was not less faithful to its task than the former; and Bonaparte, as consul, freely completed that which he first had begun at the dictation of the Directory,

"Bonaparte left Paris on the 6th of May 1800." -During the interval between the 15th and 18thof May, all the columns of the French army (60,000) were put in motion to cross the Alps-one column by Mount Cenis, on Exilles and Susa; another by the route of the Little St. Bernard." On the 15th Bonaparte himself, at the head of the main body of the army, passed the Great St. Bernard, an immense and apparently inaccessible mountain,"*"and the next morning, 16th May, the vanguard took possession of Aosta, a village of Piedmont, from which extends the valley of the same name, watered by the river Doria." "They advanced down the valley to Ivrea, carried the town by storm, combated and defeated an Austrian division at Romano. The roads to Turin and Milan were now alike open to Bonaparte." "Marches, man

* Sir Walter Scott's Life of Napoléon, vol. iv. pp. 250-256. † Ibid. pp. 262-268.