Battle of Montenotte, 1796: Napoleon's first victory in command

In March 1796 Napoleon Bonaparte was 26 and had never commanded an army in the field. Within a month he had beaten the Austrians and driven Piedmont out of the war. The run of victories began in the hills above Savona, at a hamlet called Montenotte, and it began with a defensive stand by one of his colonels.²

Background

France had been at war with Austria since 1792, and by 1796 Austria and the Kingdom of Sardinia, whose mainland heart was Piedmont, were its enemies in Italy. The French Army of Italy had spent four years fighting its way up the passes of the Alps and along the Riviera, and now stood on the defensive.³ › The Greatest Napoleonic Battles

Bonaparte was appointed to command that Army of Italy in March 1796 and reached his headquarters at Nice at the end of the month. Britannica notes that the army numbered 43,000 men on paper but scarcely 30,000 present, ill fed, ill paid and ill equipped. His first proclamation told them so: “Soldiers, you are naked, badly fed,” and promised them rich provinces and great cities on the other side of the mountains.⁴

He spent his first days on the army's stomach and pay rather than on its maps: he organized convoys and stores, found money for the troops and reinforced the field divisions with men taken from the coastal garrisons. After a few days he left Nice for the front along the coast road, within reach of the British warships that held the sea.⁵

The army was strung out along the narrow coast between Nice and Genoa, with the Apennines between it and its enemies. To the north lay two allied armies: the Austrians under General Johann Beaulieu, covering Lombardy and Milan, and the Piedmontese under General Colli, covering Turin. Their line was long and broken by mountain spurs, and the two allies looked first to their own capitals.⁶

Bonaparte meant to strike at the point where the two armies met. From Savona a road ran over the low Cadibona pass to Carcare, where the roads to Turin and to Milan divided. A French army at Carcare would stand between the allies and could beat each in turn.⁷

Armies and commanders

Every count gives the allies more men and many more guns. Sargent puts the Army of Italy at about 40,000 men with only 24 light cannon, against 30,000 Austrians, 20,000 Piedmontese and 200 guns. Dodge reckons no more than 37,000 French in the field against 35,000 Austrians and 25,000 Piedmontese, and the Fondation Napoléon gives the French a little more than half the allied infantry and 40 horse-drawn guns against nearly 200.⁸

Bonaparte's divisional generals were André Masséna, Amédée Laharpe, Charles Augereau and Jean Sérurier. On the Austrian side the column that would fight at Montenotte was led by General Eugène-Guillaume Argenteau, and the bridge between the Austrian and Piedmontese armies was held by a smaller force under Provera.⁹

Beaulieu planned to attack first. A French brigade had been pushed along the coast to Voltri, near Genoa, and Bonaparte had asked the neutral Genoese for passage through their territory. Fearing a French march on Genoa, Beaulieu decided to strike the French at Voltri with his left, while Argenteau, with about 9,000 to 10,000 men, came down from Sassello by way of Montenotte on Savona to cut off their retreat along the coast road.¹⁰

The battle in phases

On 10 April Beaulieu attacked the French brigade at Voltri, which fell back fighting toward Savona. Argenteau was slower, held up in the mountains, and only reached the French outposts on 11 April.¹¹

Above the pass between Savona and Montenotte stood old redoubts, built the year before, and the key one crowned Monte Legino, also written Monte Negino. Some 1,200 to 1,300 French troops held it. Argenteau's men attacked it again and again through 11 April and were thrown back each time; Dodge counts three assaults. The defense is usually credited to Colonel Antoine-Guillaume Rampon, though Dodge notes that whether Rampon or Fornésy commanded in the redoubt is disputed, and Rickard names them both.¹²

The attacks told Bonaparte what he needed to know. The two Austrian columns were separated by mountains, and Argenteau had struck exactly where Bonaparte meant to break through. Sargent judges that if Argenteau had carried the redoubts, the Army of Italy, not the allies, would have been cut in two.¹³

Turning point

During the night of 11 to 12 April the French divisions moved. Laharpe's division came up to the redoubt to attack Argenteau from the front. Masséna's marched west by the Cadibona pass and Altare to fall on the Austrian right and rear, and Bonaparte went with it. Augereau's division headed for Cairo to block any help from the Piedmontese.¹⁴

On the morning of 12 April Laharpe attacked from the front while Masséna broke into the Austrian flank by way of Montenotte Inferiore. Argenteau had brought up only part of his force, and Dodge writes that he had to fight in retreat from the outset. Napoléon et Empire puts the odds on the field at 14,000 or 15,000 French against 4,000 Austrians.¹⁵

The Austrians broke and fled down the Erro valley, and the survivors made their way toward Dego in the Bormida valley. Augereau's division never reached the field.¹⁶

Aftermath

The cost is uncertain. Rickard puts the Austrian loss at 1,000 to 1,500 men and Dodge at nearly 2,500. Napoléon et Empire notes that the Austrians admitted 300 dead or wounded and 400 missing, but also the destruction of two whole battalions, and estimates the real loss at 2,000 to 3,000; the French lost a few hundred at most.¹⁷

Beaulieu, advancing slowly along the coast, heard the guns at Montenotte and halted. The next day he learned that his center had been beaten and turned his columns back across the mountains to gather them again.¹⁸

Bonaparte did not wait. On 13 April Augereau attacked the Piedmontese at Millesimo, and Provera, who had thrown himself into the ruined castle of Cosseria with part of his men, held it through a day and a night until lack of water forced him to surrender the next day. On 14 April Masséna and Laharpe stormed Dego, and on 15 April they retook it from an Austrian counterattack. The allied center was gone.¹⁹

Bonaparte then turned on the Piedmontese, drove them back past Ceva and beat them at Mondovì on 21 April. Piedmont asked for an armistice, signed at Cherasco on 28 April, and left the war.²⁰ › Napoleon Bonaparte

Legacy and memory

Montenotte was Napoleon's first victory as the commander of an army. Napoléon et Empire notes that the fighting of the following days at Millesimo, Cosseria and Dego is often grouped with it as the battle of Montenotte, and that it cost Beaulieu no fewer than 10,000 men over four days. Sargent counts more than 12,000 allied soldiers killed or captured and more than 40 guns taken in the eighteen days that ended at Cherasco.²¹

Napoleon himself later said where the allies had gone wrong: the Piedmontese should have leaned on Dego, beside the Austrians, instead of standing directly across the road to Turin. As Sargent quotes him, “united, the two forces would have been superior to the French army; separated, they were lost.” Dodge makes the same criticism of Colli.²²

Historians have read the campaign as the first display of Bonaparte's method: concentrate quickly, strike one part of a divided enemy, then turn on the next. Dodge wrote that its speed and audacity had never yet been equaled in modern days, and Napoléon et Empire calls it a strategy of successive engagements against fractions of the opposing army.²³

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