At his headquarters Napoleon found 37,000 ill-fed, unpaid and
demoralized troops, with which he was supposed to clear 52,000
Austrians out of half a dozen mountain passes between Nice and Genoa.
He was fortunate to have at his side his old Corsican friend Saliceti, who
raised a loan in Genoa to see to the Army's most pressing supply
problems. Even so, Napoleon reported to the Directory on 28 March:
'One battalion has mutinied on the ground that it had neither boots nor
pay,' and a week later wrote again: 'The army is in frightening penury ...
Misery has led to indiscipline, and without discipline there can be no
victory.' The famous proclamation Napoleon is said to have made to his
troops at this time is apocryphal. It was written in St Helena and
represents the Aristotelian spirit of what might have been said and even
what ought to have been said. It also shows Napoleon as a master of
propaganda and already sedulously at work on his own legend:
Soldiers, you are naked, ill-fed; though the Government owes you
much, it can give you nothing. Your patience, the courage you have
shown amidst these rocks, are admirable; but they procure you no
glory, no fame shines upon you. I want to lead you into the most fertile
plains in the world. Rich provinces, great cities will lie in your power;
you will find there honour, glory and riches. Soldiers of the Army of
Italy, will you lack courage or steadfastness?Napoleon saw at once that his best chance of breaking into Italy was by
separating the Austrians from their allies the Piedmontese. His intelli
gence sources told him there was bad blood between the two
commanders, the allies were scattered in three different locations, and the
Austrian commander, Beaulieu, thought the main French blow would fall
on the Riviera coast. Napoleon therefore decided to engage the Austrian
right in the mountains and take out the war-weary Piedmontese, ensuring
himself local superiority in numbers at all times. On 12 April he won his
first victory, at Montenotte, employing Massena adroitly and using a
combination of clouds of skirmishers with charges from battalion
columns, which inflicted 3,000 casualties on the enemy. Further
successful actions followed at Millesimo (13 April) against the Sards and
Dego against the Austrians (14 April). Having split the allies, Napoleon
then turned to deal with the Piedmontese and broke them in the
three battles of San Michele, Ceva and Mondovi (19-23 April). On
23 April Colli, the Piedmontese commander, requested an armistice.
Within ten days Napoleon was in control of the key mountain passes