Читать книгу The History of Napoleon Buonaparte - J. G. Lockhart - Страница 16

Piedmont being now in the hands of Buonaparte, the Austrian general concentrated his army behind the Po, with the purpose of preventing the invader from passing that great river and making his way to the capital of Lombardy.

Napoleon employed every device to make Beaulieu believe that he designed to attempt the passage of the Po at Valenza; and the Austrian, a man of routine, who had himself crossed the river at that point, was easily persuaded that these demonstrations were sincere. Meanwhile his crafty antagonist executed a march of incredible celerity upon Placenza, fifty miles lower down the river; and appeared there on the 7th of May, to the utter consternation of a couple of Austrian squadrons, who happened to be reconnoitring in that quarter. He had to convey his men across that great stream in the common ferry boats, and could never have succeeded had there been anything like an army to oppose him. Andreossi (afterwards so celebrated) was commander of the advanced guard; Lannes (who became in the sequel Marshal Duke of Montebello) was the first to throw himself ashore at the head of some grenadiers. The German hussars were driven rapidly from their position. Buonaparte himself has said that no operation in war is more critical than the passage of a great river; on this occasion the skill of his arrangements enabled him to pass one of the greatest in the world without the loss of a single man.

Beaulieu, as soon as he ascertained how he had been outwitted, advanced upon Placenza, in the hope of making the invader accept battle with the Po in his rear, and therefore under circumstances which must render any check in the highest degree disastrous. Buonaparte, in the meantime, had no intention to await the Austrian on ground so dangerous, and was marching rapidly towards Fomboi, where he knew he should have room to manœuvre. The advanced divisions of the hostile armies met at that village on the 8th of May. The Imperialists occupied the steeples and houses, and hoped to hold out until Beaulieu could bring up his main body. But the French charged so impetuously with the bayonet, that the Austrian, after seeing one-third of his men fall, was obliged to retreat, in great confusion, leaving all his cannon behind him, across the Adda; a large river which, descending from the Tyrolese mountains, joins the Po at Pizzighitone—and thus forms the immediate defence of the better part of the Milanese against any enemy advancing from Piedmont. Behind this river Beaulieu now concentrated his army, establishing strong guards at every ford and bridge, and especially at Lodi, where as he guessed (for once rightly) the French general designed to force his passage.

The wooden bridge of Lodi formed the scene of one of the most celebrated actions of the war; and will ever be peculiarly mixed up with the name of Buonaparte himself. It was a great neglect in Beaulieu to leave it standing when he removed his headquarters to the east bank of the Adda: his outposts were driven rapidly through the old struggling town of Lodi on the 10th; and the French sheltering themselves behind the walls and houses, lay ready to attempt the passage of the bridge. Beaulieu had placed a battery of thirty cannon so as to sweep it completely; and the enterprise of storming it in the face of this artillery, and the whole army drawn up behind, is one of the most daring on record.

Buonaparte's first care was to place as many guns as he could get in order in direct opposition to this Austrian battery. A furious cannonade on his side of the river also now commenced. The General himself appeared in the midst of the fire, pointing with his own hand two guns in such a manner as to cut off the Austrians from the only path by which they could have advanced to undermine the bridge; and it was on this occasion that the soldiery, delighted with his dauntless exposure of his person, conferred on him his honorary nickname of The Little Corporal. In the meantime he had sent General Beaumont and the cavalry to attempt the passage of the river by a distant ford (which they had much difficulty in effecting), and awaited with anxiety the moment when they should appear on the enemy's flank. When that took place, Beaulieu's line, of course, showed some confusion, and Napoleon instantly gave the word. A column of grenadiers, whom he had kept ready drawn up close to the bridge, but under shelter of the houses, were in a moment wheeled to the left, and their leading files placed upon the bridge. They rushed on, shouting Vive la Republique! but the storm of grape-shot for a moment checked them. Buonaparte, Lannes, Berthier, and Lallemagne, hurried to the front, and rallied and cheered the men. The column dashed across the bridge in despite of the tempest of fire that thinned them. The brave Lannes was the first who reached the other side, Napoleon himself the second. The Austrian artillerymen were bayoneted at their guns, before the other troops, whom Beaulieu had removed too far back, in his anxiety to avoid the French battery, could come to their assistance. Beaumont pressing gallantly with his horse upon the flank, and Napoleon's infantry forming rapidly as they passed the bridge, and charging on the instant, the Austrian line became involved in inextricable confusion, broke up, and fled. The slaughter on their side was great; on the French there fell only 200 men. With such rapidity, and consequently with so little loss, did Buonaparte execute this dazzling adventure—"the terrible passage," as he himself called it, "of the bridge of Lodi."

It was indeed, terrible to the enemy. It deprived them of another excellent line of defence, and blew up the enthusiasm of the French soldiery to a pitch of irresistible daring. Beaulieu, nevertheless, contrived to withdraw his troops in much better style than Buonaparte had anticipated. He gathered the scattered fragments of his force together, and soon threw the line of the Mincio, another tributary of the Po, between himself and his enemy. The great object, however, had been attained: the Austrian general escaped, and might yet defend Mantua, but no obstacle remained between the victorious invader and the rich and noble capital of Lombardy. The garrison of Pizzighitone, seeing themselves effectually cut off from the Austrian army, capitulated. The French cavalry pursued Beaulieu as far as Cremona, which town they seized; and Napoleon himself prepared to march at once upon Milan.

It was after one of these affairs that an old Hungarian officer was brought prisoner to Buonaparte, who entered into conversation with him, and among other matters questioned him "what he thought of the state of the war?" "Nothing," replied the old gentleman, who did not know he was addressing the general-in-chief—"nothing can be worse. Here is a young man who knows absolutely nothing of the rules of war; to-day he is in our rear, to-morrow on our flank, next day again in our front. Such violations of the principles of the art of war are intolerable!"

The Archduke, who governed in Lombardy for the Emperor, had made many a long prayer and procession; but the saints appeared to take no compassion on him, and he now withdrew from the capital. A revolutionary party had always existed there, as indeed in every part of the Austrian dominions beyond the Alps; and the tricolor cockade, the emblem of France, was now mounted by multitudes of the inhabitants. The municipality hastened to invite the conqueror to appear among them as their friend and protector; and on the 14th of May, four days after Lodi, Napoleon accordingly entered, in all the splendour of a military triumph, the venerable and opulent city of the old Lombard kings.

He was not, however, to be flattered into the conduct, as to serious matters, of a friendly general. He levied immediately a heavy contribution (eight hundred thousand pounds sterling) at Milan—taking possession, besides, of twenty of the finest pictures in the Ambrosian gallery.

The conqueror now paused to look about and behind him; and proceeded still farther to replenish his chest by exactions, for which no justification can be adduced from the ordinary rules of international law. With Sardinia he had already reckoned; of the Austrian capital in Italy he had possession; there was only one more of the Italian governments (Naples) with which the French Republic was actually at war; although, indeed, he had never concealed his intention of revenging the fate of Basseville on the court of Rome. The other powers of Italy were, at worst, neutrals; with Tuscany and Venice, France had friendly relations. But Napoleon knew or believed, that all the Italian governments, without exception, considered the French invasion of Italy as a common calamity; the personal wishes of most of the minor princes (nearly connected as these were, by blood or alliance, with the imperial house of Austria) he, not unreasonably, concluded were strongly against his own success in this great enterprise. Such were his pretences—more or less feasible; the temptation was, in fact, great; and he resolved to consider and treat whatever had not been with him as if it had been against him. The weak but wealthy princes of Parma and Modena, and others of the same order, were forthwith compelled to purchase his clemency not less dearly than if they had been in arms. Besides money, of which he made them disburse large sums, he demanded from each a tribute of pictures and statues, to be selected at the discretion of Citizen Monge and other French connoisseurs, who now attended his march for such purposes.

In modern warfare the works of art had hitherto been considered as a species of property entitled in all cases to be held sacred; and Buonaparte's violent and rapacious infraction of this rule now excited a mighty clamour throughout Europe. Whether the new system originated with himself, or in the commands of the Directory, is doubtful. But from this time the formation of a great national gallery of pictures and statues at Paris was considered as an object of the first importance; and every victorious general was expected to bring trophies of this kind in his train. Whether the fine arts themselves are likely to be improved in consequence of the accumulation in any one place of such vast treasures as the Louvre were long exhibited, there has been, and will no doubt continue to be, much controversy. It is certain that the arts of France derived no solid advantage from Napoleon's museum. The collection was a mighty heap of incense for the benefit of the national vanity; and the hand which brought it together was preparing the means of inflicting on that vanity one of the most intolerable of wounds, in its ultimate dispersion.

The Duke of Modena would fain have redeemed the famous St. Jerome, of Correggio, at the price of £80,000; and Buonaparte's lieutenants urged him to accept the money. "No," said he, "the duke's two millions of francs would soon be spent; but his Correggio will remain for ages to adorn Paris, and inspire the arts of France." The prophecy was not inspired. Of one thing there can be no doubt; namely, that the abstraction of these precious monuments of art from the Italian collections was deeply and permanently resented by the Italian people. This sacrilege, as those enthusiastic and intelligent lovers of all the elegant arts considered it, turned back many a half-made convert from the principles of the French Revolution.

Buonaparte remained but five days in Milan; the citadel of that place still held out against him; but he left a detachment to blockade it, and proceeded himself in pursuit of Beaulieu. The Austrian had now planted the remains of his army behind the Mincio, having his left on the great and strong city of Mantua, which has been termed "the citadel of Italy," and his right at Peschiera a Venetian fortress, of which he took possession in spite of the remonstrances of the Doge. Peschiera stands where the Mincio flows out of "its parent lake," the Lago di Guarda. That great body of waters, stretching many miles backwards towards the Tyrolese Alps, at once extended the line of defence, and kept the communication open with Vienna. The Austrian veteran occupied one of the strongest positions that it is possible to imagine. The invader hastened once more to dislodge him.

The French Directory, meanwhile, had begun to entertain certain not unnatural suspicions as to the ultimate designs of their young general, whose success and fame had already reached so astonishing a height. They determined to check, if they could, the career of an ambition which they apprehended might outgrow their control. Buonaparte was ordered to take half his army, and lead it against the Pope and the King of Naples, and leave the other half to terminate the contest with Beaulieu, under the orders of Kellerman. But he acted on this occasion with the decision which these Directors in vain desired to emulate. He answered by resigning his command. "One half of the army of Italy," said he, "cannot suffice to finish the matter with the Austrian. It is only by keeping my force entire that I have been able to gain so many battles and to be now in Milan. You had better have one bad general than two good ones." The Directory durst not persist in displacing the chief whose name was considered as the pledge of victory. Napoleon resumed the undivided command, to which now, for the last time, his right had been questioned.

Another unlooked-for occurrence delayed, for a few days longer, the march upon Mantua. The heavy exactions of the French, and even more perhaps the wanton contempt with which they treated the churches and the clergy, had produced or fostered the indignation of a large part of the population throughout Lombardy. Reports of new Austrian levies being poured down the passes of the Tyrol were spread and believed. Popular insurrections against the conqueror took place in various districts: at least 30,000 were in arms. At Pavia the insurgents were entirely triumphant; they had seized the town, and compelled the French garrison to surrender.

This flame, had it been suffered to spread, threatened immeasurable evil to the French cause. Lannes instantly marched to Benasco, stormed the place, plundered and burnt it, and put the inhabitants to the sword without mercy. The general in person appeared before Pavia; blew the gates open; easily scattered the townspeople; and caused the leaders to be executed, as if they had committed a crime in endeavouring to rescue their country from the arm of a foreign invader. Everywhere the same ferocious system was acted on. The insurgent commanders were tried by courts-martial, and shot without ceremony. At Lugo, where a French squadron of horse had been gallantly and disastrously defeated, the whole of the male inhabitants were massacred. These bloody examples quelled the insurrections; but they fixed the first dark and indelible stain on the name of Napoleon Buonaparte.

The spirit of the Austrian and Catholic parties in Lombardy thus crushed, the French advanced on the Mincio. The general made such disposition of his troops, that Beaulieu doubted not he meant to pass that river, if he could, at Peschiera. Meantime he had been preparing to repeat the scene of Placenza;—and actually, on the 30th of May, forced the passage of the Mincio, not at Peschiera, but further down at Borghetto. The Austrian garrison at Borghetto in vain destroyed one arch of the bridge. Buonaparte supplied the breach with planks; and his men, flushed with so many victories, charged with a fury not to be resisted. Beaulieu was obliged to abandon the Mincio, as he had before the Adda and the Po, and to take up the new line of the Adige.

Meanwhile an occurrence, which may be called accidental, had nearly done more than repay the Austrians for all their reverses. The left of their line, stationed still further down the Mincio—at Puzzuolo, no sooner learned from the cannonade that the French were at Borghetto, than they hastened to ascend the stream, with the view of assisting the defence of their friends. They came too late for this; the commander at Borghetto had retreated before they arrived. They, however, came unexpectedly; and, such was the chance, reached Valleggio after the French army had pursued the Austrians through it and onwards—and, at the moment when Buonaparte and a few friends, considering the work of the day to be over, and this village as altogether in the rear of both armies, were about to sit down to dinner in security. Sebetendorff, who commanded the Puzzuolo division, came rapidly, little guessing what a prize was near him, into the village. The French general's attendants had barely time to shut the gates of the inn, and alarm their chief by the cry "To arms." Buonaparte threw himself on horseback, and galloping out by a back passage, effected the narrowest of escapes from the most urgent of dangers. Sebetendorff was soon assaulted by a French column, and retreated, after Beaulieu's example, on the line of the Adige. Buonaparte, profiting by the perilous adventure of Valleggio, instituted a small corps of picked men, called Guides, to watch continually over his personal safety. Such was the germ from which sprung the famous Imperial Guard of Napoleon.

The Austrian had, in effect, abandoned for the time the open country of Italy. He now lay on the frontier, between the vast tract of rich provinces which Napoleon had conquered, and the Tyrol. The citadel of Milan, indeed, still held out; but the force there was not great, and, cooped up on every side, could not be expected to resist much longer. Mantua, which possessed prodigious natural advantages, and into which the retreating general had flung a garrison of full 15,000 men, was, in truth, the last and only Italian possession of the imperial crown, which, as it seemed, there might still be a possibility of saving. Beaulieu anxiously waited the approach of new troops from Germany, to attempt the relief of this great city; and his antagonist, eager to anticipate the efforts of the imperial government, sat down immediately before it.

Mantua lies on an island, being cut off on all sides from the main land by the branches of the Mincio, and approachable only by five narrow causeways, of which three were defended by strong and regular fortresses or entrenched camps, the other two by gates, drawbridges, and batteries. Situated amidst stagnant waters and morasses, its air is pestilential, especially to strangers. The garrison were prepared to maintain the position with their usual bravery; and it remained to be seen whether the French general possessed any new system of attack, capable of abridging the usual operations of the siege, as effectually as he had already done by those of the march and the battle. His commencement was alarming: of the five causeways, by sudden and overwhelming assaults, he obtained four; and the garrison were cut off from the main land, except only at the fifth causeway, the strongest of them all, named, from a palace near it, La Favorita. It seemed necessary, however, in order that this blockade might be complete, that the Venetian territory, lying immediately beyond Mantua, should be occupied by the French. The power of this ancient government was no longer such as to inspire much respect, and Buonaparte resolved that the claim of neutrality should form no obstacle to his measures. The French Directory had already most ungenerously trampled on the dignity of Venice, by demanding that she should no longer afford a retreat to the illustrious exile, the Count of Provence, eldest surviving brother of Louis XVI.[9] That unfortunate prince had, accordingly, though most reluctantly, been desired to quit the Venetian states, and had already passed to the Rhine, where his gallant cousin, the Prince of Condé, had long been at the head of a small and devoted army composed of the expatriated gentry of France. Buonaparte, however, chose to treat the reluctance with which Venice had been driven to this violation of her hospitality, as a new injury to his government: he argued that a power who had harboured in friendship, and unwillingly expelled, the Pretender to the French monarchy, had lost all title to forbearance on the part of the Revolutionary forces. This was a gross and ungenerous insult, and it was a gratuitous one; for he had a far better argument behind. The imperial general had, as we have seen, neglected the reclamations of the Doge, when it suited his purpose to occupy Peschiera. "You are too weak," said Buonaparte, when the Venetian envoy reached his headquarters, "to enforce neutrality on hostile nations such as France and Austria. Beaulieu did not respect your territory when his interest bade him violate it; nor shall I hesitate to occupy whatever falls within the line of the Adige." In effect, garrisons were placed forthwith in Verona, and all the strong places of that domain. The tricolor flag now waved at the mouth of the Tyrolese passes; and Napoleon, leaving Serrurier to blockade Mantua, returned to Milan, where he had important business to arrange.

The King of Naples, utterly confounded by the successes of the French, was now anxious to procure peace, almost on whatever terms, with the apparently irresistible Republic. Nor did it, for the moment, suit Buonaparte's views to contemn his advances. A peace with this prince would withdraw some valuable divisions from the army of Beaulieu; and the distance of the Neapolitan territory was such, that the French had no means of carrying the war thither with advantage, so long as Austria retained the power of sending new forces into Italy by the way of the Tyrol. He concluded an armistice accordingly, which was soon followed by a formal peace, with the King of the Two Sicilies; and the Neapolitan troops, who had recently behaved with eminent gallantry, abandoning the Austrian general, began their march to the south of Italy.

This transaction placed another of Napoleon's destined victims entirely within his grasp. With no friend behind him, the Pope saw himself at the mercy of the invader; and in terror prepared to submit. Buonaparte occupied immediately his legations of Bologna and Ferrara, making prisoners in the latter of these towns four hundred of the papal troops, and a cardinal, under whose orders they were. The churchman militant was dismissed on parole; but, being recalled to headquarters, answered that his master, the Pope, had given him a dispensation to break his promise. This exercise of the old dispensing power excited the merriment of the conquerors. The Vatican, meanwhile, perceived that no time was to be lost. The Spanish resident at the Roman court was despatched to Milan; and the terms on which the holy father was to obtain a brief respite were at length arranged. Buonaparte demanded and obtained a million sterling, a hundred of the finest pictures and statues in the papal gallery, a large supply of military stores, and the cession of Ancona, Ferrara, and Bologna, with their respective domains.

He next turned his attention to the grand duke of Tuscany—a prince who had not only not taken any part in the war against the Republic, but had been the very first of the European rulers to recognise its establishment, and had kept on terms of friendship with all its successive authorities. Buonaparte, however, in pursuance of his system, resolved that the brother of the emperor should pay for his presumed inclinations. For the present, the Florentine museum and the grand duke's treasury were spared; but Leghorn, the seaport of Tuscany and great feeder of its wealth, was seized without ceremony; the English goods in that town were confiscated to the ruin of the merchants; and a great number of English vessels in the harbour made a narrow escape. The grand duke, in place of resenting these injuries, was obliged to receive Buonaparte with all the appearances of cordiality at Florence; and the spoiler repaid his courtesy by telling him, rubbing his hands with glee, during the princely entertainment provided for him, "I have just received letters from Milan; the citadel has fallen;—your brother has no longer a foot of land in Lombardy." "It is a sad case," said Napoleon himself long afterwards—speaking of these scenes of exaction and insolence—"it is a sad case when the dwarf comes into the embrace of the giant; he is like enough to be suffocated—but 'tis the giant's nature to squeeze hard."

In the meantime the general did not neglect the great and darling plan of the French government, of thoroughly revolutionising the North of Italy, and establishing there a group of Republics modelled after their own likeness, and prepared to act as subservient allies in their mighty contest with the European monarchies. The peculiar circumstances of Northern Italy, as a land of ancient fame and high spirit, long split into fragments, and ruled, for the most part, by governors of German origin, presented many facilities for the realisation of this design; and Buonaparte was urged constantly by his government at Paris, and by a powerful party in Lombardy, to hasten its execution. He, however, had by this time learned to think of many idols of the Directory with about as little reverence as they bestowed on the shrines of Catholicism; in his opinion more was to be gained by temporising with both the governments and the people of Italy, than by any hasty measures of the kind recommended. He saw well the deep disgust which his exactions had excited. "You cannot," said he, "at one and the same moment rob people and persuade them you are their friends." He fancied, moreover, that the Pope and other nerveless rulers of the land might be converted into at least as convenient ministers of French exaction, as any new establishments he could raise in their room. Finally he perceived that whenever the Directory were to arrange seriously the terms of a settlement with the great monarchy of Austria, their best method would be to restore Lombardy, and thereby purchase the continued possession of the more conveniently situated territories of Belgium and the Luxembourg. The general, therefore, temporised; content, in the meantime, with draining the exchequers of the governments, and cajoling from day to day the population. The Directory were with difficulty persuaded to let him follow his own course; but he now despised their remonstrances, and they had been taught effectually to dread his strength.

Napoleon, it is clear enough, had no intention to grant these Italian governments anything but a respite; nor is it to be doubted that their disposition to take part with Austria remained as it had been before they entered into these treaties with France. That the purpose of deceit was mutual, affords, however, no plea of justification—least of all to the stronger party. "It will be well," says Sir Walter Scott, "with the world, when falsehood and finesse are as thoroughly exploded in international communication as they are among individuals in civilised countries."