Battle of Montenotte
Napoleon's first victory as an army commander came at Montenotte on 12 April 1796, two weeks after he took over the Army of Italy. He was twenty-six and had been given a force of about 40,000 that was starving, unpaid, without transport or tents, holding the Ligurian coast against an Austrian and Piedmontese army in the mountains behind it. His opening address to them, promising rich provinces and great cities to men without boots, is one of the most quoted documents of his career and was probably written up afterwards. His plan was the one he used repeatedly: get between two allied armies and beat each separately before they can combine. The Austrians under Beaulieu obliged by pushing a column towards Genoa along the coast, opening a gap between themselves and the Piedmontese to the north-west. Montenotte was fought around a redoubt held overnight by a colonel called Rampon, who held long enough for Napoleon to bring three divisions onto the Austrian flank and rear at dawn. The Austrians lost some 2,500 men and withdrew east, and the alliance came apart within days. Dego, Millesimo and Mondovì followed in a fortnight, and Piedmont signed an armistice on 28 April, leaving the Austrians alone in Italy. The campaign that followed took Milan in May, and by the next spring French troops were within eighty miles of Vienna. Napoleon later said that his nobility dated from Montenotte, which is a claim about legitimacy rather than about the size of the battle.
- Year: 1796 CE
- Category: Military
