HARPER'S
NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

No. XVIII.—NOVEMBER, 1851.—VOL. III.

[Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by Harper and Brothers, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York.]

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.

BY JOHN S.C. ABBOTT.

IV. THE SIEGE OF MANTUA.

Early in July, 1796, the eyes of all Europe were turned to Mantua. Around its walls these decisive battles were to be fought which were to establish the fate of Italy. This bulwark of Lombardy was considered almost impregnable. It was situated upon an island, formed by lakes and by the expansion of the river Mincio. It was approached only by five long and narrow causeways, which were guarded by frowning batteries. To take the place by assault was impossible. Its reduction could only be accomplished by the slow, tedious, and enormously expensive progress of a siege.

THE ENCAMPMENT.

Napoleon, in his rapid advances, had not allowed his troops to encumber themselves with tents of any kind. After marching all day, drenched with rain, they threw themselves down at night upon the wet ground, with no protection whatever from the pitiless storm which beat upon them. "Tents are always unhealthy," said Napoleon at St. Helena. "It is much better for the soldier to bivouac in the open air, for then he can build a fire and sleep with warm feet. Tents are necessary only for the general officers who are obliged to read and consult their maps." All the nations of Europe, following the example which Napoleon thus established, have now abandoned entirely the use of tents. The sick, the wounded, the exhausted, to the number of fifteen thousand, filled the hospitals. Death, from such exposures, and from the bullet and sword of the enemy, had made fearful ravages among his troops. Though Napoleon had received occasional reinforcements from France, his losses had kept pace with his supplies, and he had now an army of but thirty thousand men with which to retain the vast extent of country he had overrun, to keep down the aristocratic party, ever upon the eve of an outbreak, and to encounter the formidable legions which Austria was marshaling for his destruction. Immediately upon his return from the south of Italy, he was compelled to turn his eyes from the siege of Mantua, which he was pressing with all possible energy, to the black and threatening cloud gathering in the North. An army of sixty thousand veteran soldiers under General Wurmser, an officer of high renown, was accumulating its energies in the wild fastnesses of the northern Alps, to sweep down upon the French through the gorges of the Tyrol, like a whirlwind.

About sixty miles north of Mantua, at the northern extremity of Lake Garda, embosomed among the Tyrolean hills, lies the walled town of Trent. Here Wurmser had assembled sixty thousand men, most abundantly provided with all the munitions of war, to march down to Mantua, and co-operate with the twenty thousand within its walls in the annihilation of the audacious foe. The fate of Napoleon was now considered as sealed. The republicans in Italy were in deep dismay. "How is it possible," said they, "that Napoleon, with thirty thousand men, can resist the combined onset of eighty thousand veteran soldiers?" The aristocratic party were in great exultation, and were making preparations to fall upon the French the moment they should see the troops of Napoleon experiencing the slightest reverse. Rome, Venice, Naples began to incite revolt, and secretly to assist the Austrians. The Pope, in direct violation of his plighted faith, refused any further fulfillment of the conditions of the armistice, and sent Cardinal Mattei to negotiate with the enemy. This sudden development of treachery, which Napoleon aptly designated as a "Revelation," impressed the young conqueror deeply with a sense of his hazardous situation.

Between Mantua and Trent there lies, extended among the mountains, the beautiful Lake of Garda. This sheet of water, almost fathomless, and clear as crystal, is about thirty miles in length, and from four to twelve in breadth. Wurmser was about fifteen miles north of the head of this lake at Trent; Napoleon was at Mantua, fifteen miles south of its foot. The Austrian general, eighty years of age, a brave and generous soldier, as he contemplated his mighty host, complacently rubbed his hands, exclaiming, "We shall soon have the boy now." He was very fearful, however, that Napoleon, conscious of the utter impossibility of resisting such numbers, might, by a precipitate flight, escape. To prevent this, he disposed his army at Trent in three divisions of twenty thousand each. One division, under General Quasdanovich, was directed to march down the western bank of the lake, to cut off the retreat of the French by the way of Milan. General Wurmser, with another division of twenty thousand, marched down the eastern shore of the lake, to relieve Mantua. General Melas, with another division, followed down the valley of the Adige, which ran parallel with the shores of the lake, and was separated from it by a mountain ridge, but about two miles in width. A march of a little more than a day would reunite those vast forces, thus for the moment separated. Having prevented the escape of their anticipated victims, they could fall upon the French in a resistless attack. The sleepless vigilance and the eagle eye of Napoleon, instantly detected the advantage thus presented to him. It was in the evening of the 31st of July, that he first received the intimation from his scouts of the movements of the enemy. Instantly he formed his plan of operations, and in an hour the whole camp was in commotion. He gave orders for the immediate abandonment of the siege of Mantua, and for the whole army to arrange itself in marching order. It was an enormous sacrifice. He had been prosecuting the works of the siege with great vigor for two months. He had collected there, at vast labor and expense, a magnificent battering train and immense stores of ammunition. The city was on the very point of surrender. By abandoning his works all would be lost, the city would be revictualed, and it would be necessary to commence the whole arduous enterprise of the siege anew. The promptness with which Napoleon decided to make the sacrifice, and the unflinching relentlessness with which the decision was executed, indicated the energetic action of a genius of no ordinary mould.

The sun had now gone down, and gloomy night brooded over the agitated camp. But not an eye was closed. Under cover of the darkness every one was on the alert. The platforms and gun carriages were thrown upon the campfires. Tons of powder were cast into the lake. The cannon were spiked and the shot and shells buried in the trenches. Before midnight the whole army was in motion. Rapidly they directed their steps to the western shore of Lake Garda, to fall like an avalanche upon the division of Quasdanovich, who dreamed not of their danger. When the morning sun arose over the marshes of Mantua, the whole embattled host, whose warlike array had reflected back the beams of the setting sun, had disappeared. The besieged, who were half famished, and who were upon the eve of surrender, as they gazed, from the steeples of the city, upon the scene of solitude, desolation, and abandonment, could hardly credit their eyes. At ten o'clock in the morning, Quasdanovich was marching quietly along, not dreaming that any foe was within thirty miles of him, when suddenly the whole French army burst like a whirlwind upon his astonished troops. Had the Austrians stood their ground they must have been entirely destroyed. But after a short and most sanguinary conflict