"a significant disadvantage in the consequent Battle of Marengo (14 June). Napoleon was effectively defeated in a tough battle in the morning and early afternoon; Melas, thinking he had already won, had turned over delivery of the coup de grace to a subordinate, when the prompt return of a detached French force under Desaix and a vigorous French counter-attack (in the course of which Desaix was killed) converted the battle into an important French victory. Melas promptly entered into negotiations which led to the Austrians evacuating Northern Italy west of the Ticino, and suspending military operations in Italy. Napoleon returned"
"his brightest campaigns (1796 and 1800, culminating in the historical Battle of Marengo), he found an advanced country and made it into his Kingdom of Italy. With Napoleon's final defeat the Austrians came back, but they were no more welcome. In the west,in Piedmont, the Savoy dynasty would emerge to serve as a springboard for Italian unification. The Risorgimento, after an unsuccessful start in 1848 and 1849, triumphed ten years later in Lombardy, which was conquered by a Franco-Piedmontese army. In 1866 Veneto joined young Italy, thanks to Prussia's defeat of Austria. Poverty in the countryside increased emigration to the"
"context of that campaign. By a daring crossing of the Alps with his Army of the Reserve (officially commanded by Louis Alexandre Berthier) in mid-May 1800 almost before the passes were open, Bonaparte (who crossed on a mule) had threatened Melas' lines of communications in northern Italy. The French army then seized Milan on 2 June, followed by Pavia, Piacenza and Stradella, Lombardy, cutting the main Austrian supply route eastward along the south bank of the Po river. Bonaparte hoped that Melas' preoccupation with the Siege of Genoa, held by Gen. André Masséna, would prevent the Austrians from responding to"
"with the Convention of Alessandria, which granted them safe passage to friendly soil in exchange for their fortresses throughout the region. Although critics have blamed Napoleon for several tactical mistakes preceding the battle, they have also praised his audacity for selecting a risky campaign strategy, choosing to invade the Italian peninsula from the north when the vast majority of French invasions came from the west, near or along the coastline. As Chandler points out, Napoleon spent almost a year getting the Austrians out of Italy in his first campaign; in 1800, it took him only a month to achieve the"
"against Bonaparte. Napoleon’s troops defeated the allied armies at the Battle of Austerlitz in December 1805 and the Neapolitan corps at Campo Tenese. Following these victories, Napoleon's forces occupied Naples in 1806. The Emperor gave the crown of Naples to his brother Joseph Bonaparte, and four years later to his brother-in-law Joachim Murat. Maria Isabella, with the rest of the royal family, had to flee from Naples to Sicily in February 1806. Despite successive attempts by Murat to invade the island, King Ferdinand and Maria Carolina held their status and power in Sicily under the protection of British troops, but"
"by Napoleon, and in mid-May set out to cross the Alps to attack the Austrian rear. The bulk of the army crossed by the Great St Bernard Pass still covered by snow. Artillery was manhandled over with great effort and ingenuity. On May 14, 1800, the 40,000-strong French army was stopped by 400 Austro-Piedmontese soldiers at Fort Bard in the Aosta Valley. They held the pass for two weeks, completely ruining Napoleon's surprise attack on the Po Valley. Once over the Alps, Napoleon did not proceed directly to the relief of Genoa. Instead, he advanced on Milan, to improve his"
"against the background of the French Revolutionary Wars, the establishment of the Roman Republic, and its subsequent fall in 1799 when the French withdrew from Rome. Following the French withdrawal, Rome was controlled by the Kingdom of Naples, supported by the British and Austrians. However, the fighting continued elsewhere in Italy. The French troops had been defeated by the Austrians at the Siege of Genoa on 4 June 1800. Then on 14 June 1800, three days before the play begins, Napoleon's troops fought the Austrian forces at the Battle of Marengo. Although out-numbered, the French were ultimately victorious, despite early"
"the Napoleonic Wars. Following the decision by King Ferdinand IV of Naples to ally himself with the Austrian Empire, Russian Empire, and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Napoleon's decisive victory over the Allies at the Battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon declared Bourbon rule of southern Italy at an end. In the second week of February 1806 the Imperial French armies poured across the border in the Invasion of Naples. The Neapolitan army, split into two wings, retreated before the superior forces of their opponents. At Campo Tenese, Damas attempted to make a stand with the left wing in"
"Battle of Tolentino The Battle of Tolentino was fought from 2–3 May 1815 near Tolentino, Kingdom of Naples in what is now Marche, Italy: it was the decisive battle in the Neapolitan War, fought by the Napoleonic King of Naples Joachim Murat to keep the throne after the Congress of Vienna. The battle was similar to the Battle of Waterloo. Both occurred during the Hundred Days following Napoleon's return from exile and resulted in a decisive victory for the Seventh Coalition, leading to the restoration of a Bourbon king. By the end of April 1815, Murat had lost all the"
"order to give the right wing time to join him. After the defeat, the Neapolitan army disintegrated away from desertion, and only a few thousand soldiers outlasted to be evacuated to Sicily by the British Royal Navy. However, the conflict was far from over. The Siege of Gaeta, the British victory at Maida, and a bitter insurrection in Calabria proved to be obstacles to the French victory. In early 1805, French Emperor Napoleon prepared to defend his possessions in Italy against the Austrian Empire. To this end, he deployed 68,000 troops under Marshal André Masséna in the north, 18,000 soldiers"
"able to escape to the sea. To celebrate the victory, Naples was illuminated for three nights, and on 30 May, the Duke of Montemar, Charles' army commander, was named the Duke of Bitonto. Today there is an obelisk in the city of Bitonto commemorating the battle. After the fall of Reggio Calabria on 20 June, Charles also conquered the towns of L'Aquila (27 June) and Pescara (28 July). The last two Austrian fortresses were Gaeta and Capua. The Siege of Gaeta, which Charles observed, ended on 6 August. Three weeks later, the Duke of Montemar left the mainland for Sicily"
"and allowing the French bases to be used against Austria. After a short pause, Napoleon carried out a brilliant flanking manoeuvre, and crossed the Po at Piacenza, nearly cutting the Austrian line of retreat. The Austrians escaped after the Battle of Fombio, but had their rear-guard mauled at Lodi on 10 May, after which the French took Milan. Bonaparte then advanced eastwards again, drove off the Austrians in the Battle of Borghetto and in June began the Siege of Mantua. Mantua was the strongest Austrian base in Italy. Meanwhile, the Austrians retreated north into the foothills of the Tyrol. During"
"continuing south, where Capua opened its gates after only token resistance. On 14 February Masséna took possession of Naples and, the following day, Joseph staged a triumphant entrance into the city. Reynier was then quickly dispatched to seize control of the Strait of Messina and on 9 March inflicted a crushing defeat on the Neapolitan Royal Army at the Battle of Campo Tenese, effectively destroying it as a fighting force and securing the entire mainland for the French. On 30 March 1806 Napoleon issued a decree installing Joseph as King of Naples and Sicily, the decree reading as follows: """"Napoleon,"
"June, Fort Elmo in Naples harbor on 11 July, Capua on 28 July, Gaeta on 1 August, Rome on 29 September and Ancona on 13 November 1799. Even the French-held fortresses of northern Italy fell rapidly. Turin capitulated on 20 June, Bologna on 3 July, Fort Urbano on 10 July, Alessandria on 22 July and Mantua on 28 July. The next major engagement was the Battle of Novi on 15 August 1799. Battle of Trebbia (1799) The Battle of Trebbia or the Napoleonic Battle of the Trebbia (17–20 June 1799) was fought near the Trebbia River in northern Italy between"
"was renewed. Battle of Pozzolo The Battle of Pozzolo (also known as the Battle of the Mincio River, and Monzambano) was fought on 25 December 1800 and resulted the difficult victory of French under General Brune against Austrians under General Bellegarde. Following the armistice agreed after the Battle of Marengo the Austrians had held the line of the Mincio river. The French ""Army of Reserve"" was now commanded by Brune after Napoleon's departure for Paris. On Christmas Day 1800, he attacked the Austrian positions and broke their line. The Austrians fell back eastwards over the Adige River. Two days later"
"Pyramids, Mount Tabor and Abukir. These victories and the conquest of Egypt further enhanced Napoleon's popularity back in France and he returned in triumph in the fall of 1799. However, the Royal Navy had won the Battle of the Nile in 1798, further strengthening British control of the Mediterranean. Napoleon's arrival from Egypt led to the fall of the Directory in the Coup of 18 Brumaire, with Napoleon installing himself as Consul. Napoleon then reorganized the French army and launched a new assault against the Austrians in Italy during the spring of 1800. This brought a decisive French victory at"
"taken power in France during the 18 Brumaire on 9 November 1799, Napoleon was determined to return to Italy to reinforce the French troops in the country and retake the territory seized by the Austrians in the preceding years. In the spring of 1800 he led the Reserve Army across the Alps through the Great St. Bernard Pass. The Austrian forces, under Michael von Melas, were laying siege to Masséna in Genoa and Napoleon hoped to gain the element of surprise by taking the trans-Alpine route. By the time Napoleon's troops arrived, Genoa had fallen; but he pushed ahead, hoping"
"the army of Marshal André Masséna in the 1805 Italian theater. On 24 November, his 2nd Division helped capture Prince Louis Victor Rohan-Guéméné's 4,400 Austrians at the Battle of Castelfranco Veneto. Reynier's 6,000 Frenchmen routed the 10,000-man army of the Bourbon Kingdom of Naples and Sicily at the Battle of Campo Tenese on 9 March 1806. This victory helped Napoleon to install his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the throne of the newly created Napoleonic Kingdom of Naples. On 4 July of that year, a British raiding force inflicted a severe drubbing on an overconfident Reynier at the Battle of Maida"
"of the confidence I have in you than by giving you command of the first army of the Republic [Army of Italy]."" The Austrians also recognized the significance of Masséna's defense; the Austrian chief of staff declared firmly, ""You won the battle, not in front of Alessandria but in front of Genoa."" Siege of Genoa (1800) During the Siege of Genoa (6 April – 4 June 1800) the Austrians besieged and captured Genoa. However, this was a pyrrhic victory as the smaller French force at Genoa under André Masséna had diverted enough Austrian troops to enable Napoleon to win the"
"Battle of Maida The Battle of Maida on 4 July 1806 was a battle between the British expeditionary force and a First French Empire division outside the town of Maida in Calabria, Italy during the Napoleonic Wars. John Stuart led 5,200 British troops to victory over about 5,400 French soldiers under Jean Reynier, inflicting significant losses while incurring relatively few casualties. Maida is located in the toe of Italy, about west of Catanzaro. In early 1806, the French invaded and overran the Kingdom of Naples, forcing King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies and his government to flee to Sicily."
"a diversionary attack against the Austrians and their allies in the south, in northern Italy. The conduct of the Italian campaign was given to the young (27 years old the time) general Napoleon Bonaparte, who in April 1796 crossed the Alps with 45,000 men to confront the Austrians and the Piemontese. In a lightning campaign, Napoleon managed to knock Sardinia out of the war, and then moved on the Duchy of Milan, controlled by the Habsburg forces. On 9 May Archduke Ferdinand, the Austrian governor of Milan, retired with his family to Bergamo, in Venetian territory. Six days later, after"
"British Army garrison. In 1806 Emperor Napoleon appointed his brother Joseph Bonaparte to rule over southern Italy as king. The proximate cause of the invasion was Ferdinand's double-crossing of Napoleon. Wanting to keep things quiet in southern Italy, Napoleon and Ferdinand signed a convention that specified that the French would evacuate Apulia. In return, the Kingdom of Naples would stay neutral in the impending War of the Third Coalition. No sooner had the French occupying force marched away than Ferdinand admitted British and Russian armies into his kingdom. In December 1805, Napoleon's armies crushed the armies of Austria and Russia."
"Naples at Monteregio and the subsequent Peace of Florence, in 1801 the French general Nicolas Soult occupied with 13,000 soldiers the provinces of Bari, Lecce and the harbour of Taranto. Napoleon wanted to build a stronghold to keep under pression the British base of Malta. On 23 April 1801, 6,000 French soldiers of the ""Armée d'observation du midi"" entered in Taranto (20.000 inhabitants at the time) and fortified it in order to obtain """"a sort of Gibitrair"""" (Napoleon). On 25 March 1802, France and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Amiens, which required France to leave South Italy, but after"
"of Napoleon as King of Italy on 17 March 1805. Sweden, which had already agreed to lease Swedish Pomerania as a military base for British troops against France, entered the coalition on 9 August. The Austrians began the war by invading Bavaria with an army of about 70,000 under Karl Mack von Leiberich, and the French army marched out from Boulogne in late July 1805 to confront them. At Ulm (25 September – 20 October) Napoleon surrounded Mack's army, forcing its surrender without significant losses. With the main Austrian army north of the Alps defeated (another army under Archduke Charles"
"The Neapolitan-Sicilian army was crushed at the Battle of Campo Tenese, forcing Ferdinand to flee to Sicily and concede the Neapolitan crown to the French. Napoleon then installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the Neapolitan throne. By July 1806, the French had crushed all Neapolitan resistance except for the uprising in Calabria and a garrison at Gaeta. There, André Masséna's force become embroiled in a lengthy siege. The British, rather than supporting the defenders or relieving the siege, decided to organise an expedition into Calabria to further the insurrection against the French, and prevent any potential invasion of Sicily. A"
"course of the summer, Suvorov's forces took a key position on the Tidone River on 17 June 1799, west of Piacenza, another at the junction of the Trebbia River and the Po, in northern Italy, on 17–20 June 1799, and the town of Novi Ligure on 15 August 1799, southeast of Alessandria on the Tanaro river. In early 1800, Klenau transferred to the ""K(aiserlich) und K(oeniglich)"" (Imperial and Royal) army of Germany, in Swabia, under the command of Feldzeugmeister Paul, Baron von Kray. The 1800 campaign in southwest Germany began on 1 May 1800, at the village of Büsingen, east"
"of northwest Italy, northeast of Carcare municipality. However, the fighting occurred in an area from Genoa on the east to Cuneo on the west. In the spring of 1796, Bonaparte planned to launch an offensive against the combined armies of Sardinia and Austria. However, the Austrian army moved first, attacking the French right flank at Voltri, near Genoa. In response, Bonaparte counterattacked the center of the enemy array, striking the boundary between the armies of his adversaries. Beating the Austrians at Montenotte, the budding military genius strove to drive the Piedmontese west and the Austrians northeast. Victories at Millesimo over"
"the regime artificially doubled the participation rate to indicate popular enthusiasm for the Consulate. In the first few months of the Consulate, with war in Europe still raging and internal instability still plaguing the country, Napoleon's grip on power remained very tenuous. In the spring of 1800, Napoleon and his troops crossed the Swiss Alps into Italy, aiming to surprise the Austrian armies that had reoccupied the peninsula when Napoleon was still in Egypt. After a difficult crossing over the Alps, the French army entered the plains of Northern Italy virtually unopposed. While one French army approached from the north,"
"a relentless westward drive against Colli's Austro-Sardinian forces. Battle of Millesimo The Battle of Millesimo, fought on 13 and 14 April 1796, was the name that Napoleon Bonaparte gave in his correspondence to one of a series of small battles that were fought in Liguria, Northern Italy between the armies of France and the allied armies of Austria and of the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont. In late March 1796, General Bonaparte took command of the French Army of Italy, which consisted of around 40,000 men under arms. After being attacked near Genoa on 10 April by the left wing of the"
"not war. On 2 April Murat entered Bologna without a fight, but soon he was in headlong retreat as the Austrians crossed the Po at Occhiobello and his Neapolitan forces disintegrated at the first sign of a skirmish. Murat withdrew to Cesena, then Ancona, then Tolentino. At the Battle of Tolentino on 3 May 1815 the Neapolitan army was swept aside and, though Murat escaped to Naples, his position was irrecoverable and he soon continued his flight, leaving Naples for France. Ferdinand IV & VI was soon restored and the Napoleonic kingdom came to an end. The Congress of Vienna"
"it on top because he was already wearing the golden wreath. Instead he placed the crown on Josephine's head, the event commemorated in the officially sanctioned painting by Jacques-Louis David. Napoleon was also crowned King of Italy, with the Iron Crown of Lombardy, at the Cathedral of Milan on 26 May 1805. He created eighteen Marshals of the Empire from among his top generals to secure the allegiance of the army on 18 May 1804, the official start of the Empire. Great Britain had broken the Peace of Amiens by declaring war on France in May 1803. In December 1804,"
"was just 18, and he was en route to the liberation of Rome. For the next few years they lived quietly, while producing two sons. In 1806 Napoleon, Emperor of the French, decided to place his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the Neapolitan throne. Some 32,000 French troops invaded Naples in January, in three columns under General Laurent de Gouvion-Saint-Cyr, later a Marshal of France; about 12,000 men marched down the Adriatic coast, 15,000 more attacked down the Apennines, which form the spine of Italy, and General Jean Louis Reynier led about 10,000 troops down the Appian Way. The Neapolitan Army,"
"in France gave the name of the battle to their newly discovered bright purple chemical dye; the dye and the colour took the name magenta. The rest of the Austrian army was able to escape while Napoleon III and King Victor-Emmanuel made a triumphal entry on 10 June into the city of Milan, previously ruled by the Austrians. They were greeted by huge, jubilant crowds waving Italian and French flags. The Austrians had been driven from Lombardy, but the army of General Giulay remained in the region of Venice. His army had been reinforced and numbered 130,000 men, roughly the"