Napoleon's Italian campaign of 1 796---97 has always provoked military historians to superlatives.

His
contemporaries were equally enthusiastic. In October 1797 the Directory presented the Army of Italy
with an inscribed flag. This recorded that the Army had taken 1 5o,ooo prisoners, 170 enemy standards,
540 cannon and howitzers, five pontoon trains, nine 64-gun ships of the line, twelve frigates, eighteen
galleys, in addition to sending to Paris masterpieces by Michelangelo, Guercino, Titian, Paolo Veronese,
Corregio Albano, Raphael and the Caracci. More saliently, the army had fought sixty-seven actions and
triumphed in eighteen pitched battles enumerated as follows: Montenotte, Millesimo, Mondovi, Lodi,
Borghetto, Lonato, Castiglione, Rovereto, Bassano, St George, Fontana Viva, Caldiero, Arcola, Rivoli, La
Favorita, Tagliamento, Tarnis and Neumarcht. What enabled Napoleon to win so many battles and with
such apparent ease? Did luck or military genius play the greater part? Were the revolutionary armies
different in kind from the Austrian forces? Was Napoleon a tactical or strategic innovator? Was he a
political visionary who used his victories to promote a pilot form of Italian federation? Or was he just a
glorified pillager? And what precisely was it that made him an object of fear, envy and hatred by the
Directory, who by their actions tacitly acknowledged that he was already the single most powerful man
in France? There were four main factors that contributed to Napoleon's remarkable military success:
technology, the effects of the French Revolution, the superior morale of his men, and his own genius as
tactician and strategist. Overwhelming defeat in the Seven Years War had the result that the French
thereafter bent their energies to be abreast of all the latest military technology. The most encouraging
results were in the field of artillery, which Jean-Baptiste de Gribeauval had first begun modernizing in
1763 . Lighter gun-barrels and carriages made it possible to produce 1 2- or 24-pounder calibres for
field-guns, which was the ordnance hitherto thought possible only for siege-guns. 136 Gribeauval's new
artillery was at the technological forefront until r 825, but the Revolution provided a new fillip after
Valmy in 1792, which was far in advance of any battle yet fought in terms of big guns and artillery
rounds fired. The war fever of 1793 saw massive production of artillery weapons - seven thousand
cannon in that year alone - and the efforts of scientists like Gaspard Monge made sure that France
remained at the technological cutting edge. The know-how was therefore in place, ready to be exploited
by an artilleryman of high talent. No more perfect individual for this particular historical moment could
be imagined than the young Bonaparte, schooled as he was in the doctrines of du Teil and Guibert. Yet if
France had the edge in big guns, its superiority in infantry firepower was marginal. Battlefield firearms
were still mainly muzzleloading, smooth-bore flintlocks, and the standard issue was the 1 777 Charleville
musket (in use until r 84o) - a .70 calibre weapon, fifty inches long (without bayonet). This was virtually
useless against compact bodies of troops at ranges greater than 250 yards, and even a sharpshooter
needed one hundred yards range or less to pick out an individual. The crudity of this weapon was the
reason battlefields were often blacked out with dense clouds of smoke. Every soldier carried into battle
fifty cartridges, powder charges and three spare flints, but the coarse black powder used by the French
resulted in excessive fouling of the barrels, so that they had to be cleaned after every fifty rounds; the
flint also needed to be changed after a dozen shots. Muskets misfired on average once in six shots,
which in the heat of battle often led to soldiers double-loading their weapons. The crudity of gunfire in
this period needs emphasis. Reloading was a clumsy, complicated, time-consuming business. Typically
an infantryman would take a paper cartridge from his pouch and bite off the end containing the ball,
which he retained in his mouth; then he opened the 'pan' of his musket, poured in a priming charge and
closed it; next he tipped the remainder of the powder down the barrel, spat the musket ball after it,
folded the paper into a wad and then forced both ball and wad down the barrel on to the powder
charge with his ramrod; finally he took aim and fired. The mere recital shows how many things could go
wrong: a soldier could double-load after an unnoticed misfire, or forget to withdraw his ramrod before
pulling the trigger; most commonly, clumsy or malingering soldiers would spill most of the powder
charge on the ground to avoid the mule-kick of the weapons at their shoulder. When to the crudity of
the musket is added generally poor marksmanship by the French, it can be readily understood why
Napoleon 137 thought artillery was the key to winning battles. Although an expert marksman could get
off five shots a minute, the average was only one or two. Slowness was compounded by inaccuracy. At a
range of 225 yards only 25% of shots could be expected to hit their target, 40% at 1 50 yards and only 6o
% even as close as 75 yards. French infantrymen were generally poor shots because musketry practice
was .neglected, partly to save ammunition, partly to avoid casualties from burst barrels but most of all
out of a doctrinaire conviction that killing by shot was the job of the artillery; the infantry went in to
'mop up' with cold steel. Even so, deaths from the bayonet were few: its impact tended to be
psychological rather than actual, causing fear but not death. On the other hand, at ranges less than fifty
yards ('whites of eyes' range) even the 1 777 musket was deadly and could produce horrific casualties.
When it came to individual weaponry, Napoleon laid most emphasis on the rifled carbines - lighter,
smaller-calibred weapons - issued to snipers, sharpshooters, skirmishers, voltigeurs and non-
commissioned officers. Dense clouds of these skirmishers, in numbers sometimes amounting to
regimental strength, would engage and harass the enemy while the main column approached with
drawn bayonets. If the morale of the main body of attackers was low, an elite grenadier company would
be placed in the rear to urge others forward; if morale was good, the elite corps would lead the right
wing into battle. Napoleon planned his battles to maximize the advantages of technology and minimize
the disadvantages of infantry and muskets. First he would unleash a devastating bombardment from his
big guns to inflict heavy losses and lower resistance. While this barrage was going on, snipers and
voltigeurs used the cover to advance within musketry range in hopes of picking off officers and
spreading confusion. The next stage was a series of carefully coordinated cavalry and infantry assaults.
The cavalry would attempt to brush aside the enemy's horse and then force his infantry to form square;
French infantry then moved up to close quarters to prevent the enemy in square from reforming in line.
The square was usually proof against cavalry charges but it left those forming it highly vulnerable to an
infantry attack, since men drawn up in a square or rectangular formation could fire only in a limited
number of directions, enabling the advancing French columns to come to close quarters without
sustaining the withering fire and unacceptable casualties normal when engaging an enemy drawn up in
line. The final stage came when the infantry forced a gap in the enemy lines: horse artillery would widen
the breach; and then French cavalry would sweep forward for the breakthrough. Time and again the
Austrian method of relying on infantry unprotected by cover or 138 cavalry screens played into
Napoleon's hands and proved useless against the combination of massed artillery and highly-trained
sharpshooters. Objectively, then, the French Army of Italy, though outnumbered, disposed of superior
technology which a commander of high talents could use to open up a decisive gap. Yet Napoleon was
unimaginative when it came to the exploration of new technologies. He showed no interest in the use of
military observation balloons, even though he had been formed in a revolutionary culture where
Danton's balloon flight was a central image. Nor did he show any interest in inventions which had the
potential for producing a military 'quantum leap', such as Fulton's submarine and steamboat. This is
puzzling, since Napoleon prided himself on his interest in science and was closely associated with
scientists like Monge, Laplace and Chaptal. Some historians have argued that Napoleon sensed the
contemporary limitations of technology, and it is true that the technical breakthrough in metallurgy
which would usher in railways, the steamship and the breech-loading rifle, was a post-r8rs
phenomenon. The second great advantage Napoleon had in the Italian campaign was that he had a
relatively homogeneous army infused with the spirit of the Revolution, whereas the Austrian army was
polyglot (composed of Serbs, Croats and Hungarians as well as Austrians), stymied by paperwork and
excessive bureaucracy, and still in thrall to the frozen hierachies of the ancien regime. The Revolution
made possible new tactics and organization, provided fresh pools of manpower and talent and provided
a citizen army with positive ideals, images and ideologies. It is not necessary to go all the way with the
theorists Clausewitz and Georges Sorel and claim that a citizen army was a sufficient explanation for
Napoleon's success in Italy, but it was a necessary one. Military service by citizens who genuinely felt
they were participating in a state enterprise of which they approved produced a highly motivated force
of what Sorel called 'intelligent bayonets'.