Battle of Marengo
Napoleon lost the battle of Marengo in the afternoon of 14 June 1800 and won it in the evening. He had crossed the Great St Bernard pass in May with some 40,000 men, taking guns over on hollowed tree trunks, and had come down behind the Austrian army besieging Genoa. Genoa surrendered before he arrived, which freed the Austrians to fight. He then made the error the whole battle turned on. Believing that Melas intended to avoid an engagement, he detached two divisions to block routes he thought the enemy would use, one of them under Desaix towards Novi, leaving himself perhaps 22,000 men against 31,000. The Austrians attacked at dawn across the Bormida, and by two in the afternoon the French had been pushed back some five kilometres and were breaking; Melas, seventy and bruised, handed over to a subordinate and rode back to Alessandria to write his despatch. Desaix had heard the guns and marched towards them without orders. He arrived at about five with a fresh division, remarked that the battle was lost and that there was time to win another, and attacked the pursuing Austrian column, which was strung out and unformed. Kellermann's cavalry took it in the flank at exactly the right moment. Desaix was killed in the first minutes. Austria signed an armistice the next day, and the reports Napoleon issued about it were revised three times over the following decade. The bulletin issued after the battle credited the whole plan to Napoleon and moved Desaix's arrival to a moment when it looked less like a rescue, and the account was rewritten again on St Helena. Kellermann, who had made the charge, complained about it for the rest of his life.
- Year: 1800 CE
- Category: Military
