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

The Army of Italy on the coast

Bonaparte reached Nice on 27 March 1796 to take over the Army of Italy. His army was strung out along the coast from Nice toward Genoa, with the Apennines between it and the allies. The main Austrian army under General Johann Beaulieu was around Alessandria; the Piedmontese army lay further west, covering the passes of the Maritime Alps and the road to Turin. Bonaparte meant to drive into the gap between them and beat each in turn.³

He set off along the coast road for Savona, under fire from British warships, and arrived on 9 April. To make the Austrians look east, he asked the neutral republic of Genoa for passage and pushed an advance guard to Voltri, west of the city. Beaulieu took the bait. He planned to strike the French at Voltri with one column while a second, under General Eugène-Guillaume Argenteau, came down the Bormida valley to Carcare and on to Savona to cut off the French retreat.⁴

The redoubt on Monte Legino

On 10 April Beaulieu drove the French out of Voltri. Argenteau was slower, held up in the mountains, and did not reach the French line until 11 April. Above the pass that ran from Savona to Altare and Carcare stood earthworks built the year before. The key one crowned Monte Legino, also written Monte Negino, a summit of 705 meters.⁵

There Colonel Antoine-Guillaume Rampon and his men held off repeated Austrian attacks through 11 April. HistoryOfWar.org names Fornésy alongside him in the redoubts. Napoléon et Empire calls the defense heroic and notes that René Théodore Berthon painted it in 1812.⁶

The night march

Argenteau had attacked exactly where Bonaparte wanted him. During the night of 11 to 12 April the French divisions moved into place. Laharpe's division came up from Madonna di Savona to the redoubt to attack Argenteau head on. Masséna's division marched west by the Cadibona pass to Altare, to fall on the Austrian right from the west, and Bonaparte went with it, setting up near Altare to follow the fighting through a telescope. Augereau's division, which had come from Finale, crossed the San Giacomo pass toward Cairo Montenotte to block any Piedmontese help from the west.⁷

12 April: the Austrian line breaks

On the morning of 12 April Laharpe attacked from the front. Masséna, helped by fog, climbed through the Corvo ravine north-east of Montenotte Superiore, overpowered the battalion guarding the Austrian flank at Ferriera and broke through by Montenotte Inferiore into Argenteau's right and rear. Argenteau left only two battalions facing Laharpe and tried to clear his line of retreat, but he was too slow and too heavily outnumbered.⁸

The Austrians fled in disorder through the Erro valley toward Pontinvrea, where, according to Napoléon et Empire, barely 700 of them rallied. HistoryOfWar.org has them falling back north to Montenotte Inferiore and then west to Dego in the Bormida valley. By marching fast, Bonaparte had brought 14,000 or 15,000 men against about 4,000. Augereau's division never fired a shot.⁹

Counting the cost

Losses are uncertain. John Rickard of HistoryOfWar.org puts the Austrian loss at between 1,000 and 1,500 men. Napoléon et Empire notes that the Austrians admitted 300 dead or wounded and 400 missing, but also the destruction of two complete battalions, and estimates the real loss at probably 2,000 to 3,000 men; French losses were a few hundred at most.¹⁰

Beaulieu, advancing slowly along the coast, heard the guns at Montenotte and learned the next day that his center had been beaten. He fell back north across the mountains. None of the nearby Piedmontese troops moved.¹¹

Four days that split two armies

Montenotte opened a sequence of blows. Bonaparte beat the Piedmontese at Millesimo and Cosseria and the Austrians at Dego, then turned west on Ceva and won at Mondovì on 21 April. Napoléon et Empire puts Beaulieu's losses over the four days around Montenotte at no fewer than 10,000 men and perhaps 40 guns. Two days after Mondovì, Piedmont sued for peace. The general who had arrived in Nice a month earlier was now the most talked-about soldier in France, and his later career is told in our biography of Napoleon.¹²