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Wedge and Destroy: Napoleon's Italian Campaign Masterclass
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
In fifteen days, Napoleon Bonaparte fought six battles, shattered two armies, and invented a template for offensive warfare that would define the next two decades of European history. This is how the general was born.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
In the spring of seventeen ninety-six, a twenty-six-year-old general with no independent command experience led a half-starved army into northern Italy and changed the nature of warfare. What happened over the next twelve months wasn't just a military success.
Coming off our last episode, we left Napoleon in Paris, a skilled artillery officer who'd impressed the Directory with his political usefulness and his grasp of strategic theory. The appointment as commander of the Army of Italy in March seventeen ninety-six looked, to many of the officers who served under him, like a mistake.
The military situation facing Napoleon was genuinely difficult. Against his thirty-seven thousand men, the combined Austrian and Piedmontese forces numbered somewhere around fifty-two thousand.
The opening phase of the Italian campaign produced something almost without precedent. In fifteen days between mid and late April, Napoleon fought and won six separate engagements.
With Piedmont neutralized, Napoleon turned his full attention to the Austrians. Beaulieu pulled back, expecting the French to follow the obvious route and engage him on ground he'd chosen.
Taking Milan was a symbolic victory. Controlling northern Italy was a strategic one.
The Italian campaign lasted just over a year, from spring seventeen ninety-six to spring seventeen ninety-seven. By the end of it, the man who had arrived with a ragged army and a reputation for being clever about maps had become the most celebrated general in Europe.
Napoleon returned to Paris in December seventeen ninety-seven as a hero of the republic, or at least as someone the republic needed to treat as one. He was twenty-eight years old.
In the next episode, Six Battles in Fifteen Days: The Lightning of Montenotte. Don't miss it.
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