Battle of the Trebbia, 1799: Suvorov stops Macdonald

In the spring of 1799 the French position in Italy collapsed. The War of the Second Coalition had begun with French and Austrian armies facing each other on the Adige, and the French lost at Verona on 26 March and at Magnano on 5 April. Then a Russian army arrived under Field Marshal Alexander Suvorov, a veteran of the Turkish wars who had been called back from disgrace to command the allies in Italy. The allies forced the Adda at Cassano on 27 April and took Milan, and the French commander, General Moreau, fell back toward the coast around Genoa.²

Two French armies

Further south, General Jacques Macdonald's Army of Rome was ordered north to rescue the situation. He marched from Rome to Florence and in mid-June crossed the Apennines onto the plain near Modena, then moved up the Po, too slowly according to John Rickard of HistoryOfWar.org, toward Piacenza. Moreau planned to come out of the mountains from Genoa and join him. General Victor's division reached Macdonald from Genoa before the battle, giving him just over 30,000 men.³

Among them was the Polish Legion of General Jan Henryk Dąbrowski, formed in 1797 from Poles who wanted to fight for the restoration of their partitioned country at the side of revolutionary France. Polish teaching materials of the national education portal ZPE note that by 1797 the legions in Italy numbered some 7,000 men and fought against Austria and Russia from 1799.⁴

Suvorov decided that the two French armies must not unite. An Austrian division under General Karl Ott was posted on the Trebbia, but it could not hold for long, so on 15 June Suvorov set off toward Piacenza with 24,000 men. Rickard notes that they covered 30 miles in 24 hours.⁵

17 June: the Tidone

The ground was a flat plain between the Po and the foothills of the Apennines, crossed by rivers that run north into the Po: the Trebbia just west of Piacenza and the Tidone a little further west. On 17 June Macdonald's advance guard, the divisions of Victor, Dąbrowski and Rusca, pushed Ott back from the Tidone. Then Suvorov arrived and attacked with Bagration on the left by the Po, Ott in the center and Melas on the right. Russian infantry held Dąbrowski's Poles in place and Russian cavalry drove them back, then fell on Victor's flank. The French retreated over the Tidone to the Trebbia, where Macdonald formed a new line to wait for his remaining divisions.⁶

18 June: across the Trebbia

Suvorov planned to cross the Trebbia near Rivalta, at the southern end of the line close to the mountains, with Rosenberg's corps. Victor struck first and crossed the river, but was driven back, and neither side could make further progress. Elsewhere the day passed mostly in a cannonade. During the night a French unit moving into position for the next day's attack was mistaken for a general assault, and costly fighting broke out in the dark before officers on both sides restored order.⁷

19 June: the last attack

By now the armies were roughly equal, about 35,000 allies against 33,500 French, but Suvorov was still receiving reinforcements and Macdonald was not. Macdonald attacked at both ends of the line. Dąbrowski crossed at Rivalta, and Victor and Rusca enveloped one of Rosenberg's divisions and for a time put Suvorov himself in danger, until Bagration came back to restore the line. In the center Montrichard and Olivier crossed the river and threatened to break through, but the Austrian reserve under Melas, with Prince Liechtenstein's cavalry, counterattacked and drove them back. On the French right Watrin had reached Calendasco, from where he might have turned the allied flank, but with the center retreating he had to fall back too.⁸

Retreat and losses

That was the end. On the night of 19 to 20 June the French withdrew to the Nura. Rickard puts French losses during the fighting at about 9,000 and allied losses at around 5,500, and the allies also captured some 7,000 wounded French soldiers in Piacenza. Macdonald escaped across the Apennines to the coast and reached Genoa with the surviving half of his army. For the Poles, ZPE describes the battle as a near annihilation: covering the French retreat, Dąbrowski's legion was cut to pieces by Suvorov's army, and only about 1,500 men survived.⁹

After the Trebbia

The allies went on to take the fortress of Mantua in July and to win again at Novi in August, and the French were driven from almost all of northern Italy. Tsar Paul I gave Suvorov the title of Prince of Italy for the campaign. Dąbrowski did not give up. Wounded at Bosco in October, he survived, ZPE recounts, only because the bullet lodged in a book in his breast pocket, and he rebuilt the legion: by late 1800 his first legion alone had more than 6,000 men. The same river had seen an older battle: in 218 BC Hannibal crushed a Roman army on the Trebia. For Dąbrowski's life, see our biography.¹⁰