Battle of Lodi
Napoleon took a bridge over the Adda at Lodi on 10 May 1796 in an action that mattered far more to him than to the campaign. The Austrians under Beaulieu had been driven out of Piedmont and were retreating east across the Lombard plain, leaving a rearguard of some 9,500 men and fourteen guns on the far bank to cover the crossing. The bridge was about two hundred metres long and swept by artillery. Napoleon massed his own guns on the near bank, sent cavalry to find a ford upstream, and formed a column of grenadiers who charged onto the bridge under canister, stalled halfway, and got across when officers went to the front and the cavalry appeared on the flank. The Austrians lost perhaps 2,000 men and most of the rearguard's guns; the French lost a few hundred. It was tactically unnecessary — the ford was found and the position could have been turned — and it was militarily minor, since Beaulieu's army escaped intact. What it produced was the legend. The soldiers gave Napoleon the nickname le petit caporal at Lodi, and he wrote afterwards that it was on that evening that he first believed himself to be a superior man and conceived the ambition of doing great things. He was twenty-six and had commanded an army for six weeks. He entered Milan five days later, and the myth-making of the Italian campaign — the bulletins, the printed accounts, the painting of him on the bridge — began immediately. The engraving of the young general seizing a standard on the bridge was printed across Europe within the year, and he had not in fact carried one. He understood the value of the picture before he understood much else about power.
- Year: 1796 CE
- Category: Military
