by the Austrians. The bridge, zoo yards long and twelve feet wide, forced
attacking troops into a bottlenecked killing ground, and Napoleon's
generals advised him that to attack artillery along such a narrow front was
suicide. But Napoleon was determined to take the bridge by storm. First,
he worked on the feelings of his 4,000 assault troops, alternately cajoling
them and telling them that they lacked the courage for the planned
enterprise. Then he sent his cavalry on a wide sweep in search of a ford;
they were to cross and fall on the Austrians from the rear.
At 6 p.m. on ro May Napoleon released his assault force of Frenchmen
and Savoyards on to the bridge. Predictably they took terrible casualties
from the massed Austrian guns. Seeing their men falter, Lannes and
Massena led an elite squad of grenadiers on another attack across the
bridge. Fifty yards from the other side, they dived into the river to avoid
point-blank fire. In response the Austrians unleashed their cavalry, which
drove the elite squad back into the water. Just when all appeared lost, the
devious circling French cavalry, which had taken an unconscionable time
to find a suitable ford, swept in on the Austrian flank. Once it had
silenced the big guns, Napoleon's troops streamed across the long line of
planks. As dusk fell, the Austrians broke and ran, leaving behind all
sixteen guns, 335 casualties and r,700 prisoners. But the French had paid
dearly for the victory and left two hundred dead on the bridge and in the
nver.
Even though he had not been able to vanquish Beaulieu decisively - a
fact disguised and obfuscated by Bonapartist mystique and triumphalism
- Lodi was a psychological breakthrough for Napoleon. To have pulled
off such a feat of arms gave him confidence in his star. He wrote later: 'It
was only on the evening of Lodi that I believed myself a superior man,
and that the ambition came to me of executing the great things which had
so far been occupying my thoughts only as a fantastic dream ... After
Lodi I no longer saw myself as a mere general, but as a man called upon
to influence the destiny of a people. The idea occurred to me that I could
well become a decisive actor on our political scene.' His troops too
believed, after seven clear victories, that they were led by an ever
victorious general. It was now that the nickname of the 'little corporal'
was first bestowed. Apparently one of his units decided to see how long
he would take to become a 'real' general, starting from the ranks and
getting a promotion after each victory. But the later image of Napoleon
leading the first wave of attackers over the bridge is the stuff of legend:
Napoleon did not lack personal courage, but on this occasion he was
supervising his artillery.