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Updated: May 6, 2025
The cavalry brigade, under General Kellermann, and a few squadrons of chasseurs and hussars, forming the left, filled up, along the advanced line, the gap between the divisions of Gardannes and Chamberlhac. A second brigade, under General Champeaux, filled up the gap on the right between General Lannes' cavalry.
General Victor had already divined the advantages to be derived from this natural intrenchment, and be used it to rally the divisions of Gardannes and Chamberlhac. Bonaparte, approving Victor's arrangements, sent him word to defend Marengo to the very last extremity. He himself needed time to prepare his game on this great chess-board inclosed between the Bormida, the Fontanone, and Marengo.
Through a false report, received through General Gardannes, the First Consul was led to believe that the enemy refused to give battle and was retiring to Genoa. He sent Desaix and his division on the road to Novi to cut them off. The night of the 13th passed tranquilly. In spite of a heavy storm, an engagement had taken place the preceding evening in which the Austrians had been defeated.
General Rivaud, of Gardannes' division, saw the Austrians preparing for this manoeuvre.
The moment they crossed the river the latter columns came in contact with the troops of General Gardannes, posted, as we have said, at the farmhouse and the ravine of Petra Bona. It was the noise of the artillery advancing in this direction that had brought Bonaparte to the scene of battle.
Desaix, overtaken by Bonaparte's aide-de-camp, ought at that hour to be on his way to the battle. Meanwhile, Lannes with his two divisions came to the help of his struggling comrades. This reinforcement enabled Gardannes and Chamberlhac to reform their lines parallel to the enemy, who had now debouched, through Marengo, to the right and also to the left of the village.
He arrived just as Gardannes' division, crushed under the fire of that artillery, was beginning to fall back, and General Victor was sending forward Chamberlhac's division to its support. Protected by this move, Gardannes' troops retreated in good order, and covered the village of Marengo. The situation was critical; all the plans of the commander-in-chief were overthrown.
After that he took up a position to the right of the battalion, which had not retreated a step. But during this time Gardannes' division, which had been struggling with the enemy from early morning, was driven back upon Marengo, followed by the first Austrian line, which forced Chamberlhac's division to retreat in like manner.
When the day broke, the French troops were stationed as follows: The division Gardannes and the division Chamberlhac, forming the extreme advance, were encamped around a little country-place called Petra Bona, at the angle formed by the highroad from Marengo to Tortona, and the Bormida, which crosses the road on its way to the Tanaro.
Instead of attacking, as was his wont, with troops judiciously massed, he was attacked himself before he could concentrate his forces. The Austrians, profiting by the sweep of land that lay before them, ceased to march in columns, and deployed in lines parallel to those of Gardannes and Chamberlhac with this difference, that they were two to the French army's one.
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