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Updated: June 13, 2025
When Napoleon was about to crown himself so I have somewhere read they submitted to him the royal genealogy they had faked up for him. He crumpled the parchment and flung it in the face of the chief herald, or whoever it was. "My line," said he, "dates from Montenotte." And so I say, my line dates from the campaign that completed and established my fame from "Wild Week."
The Austrians under Argenteau were to fall on its rear from Montenotte, a village to the north of Savona, with the idea of driving that wing of Bonaparte's army back along the shore road, on which it was hoped they would fall under the fire of Nelson's guns. Laharpe, however, retreated to Savona in perfect safety, for the English fleet was not near.
"You must know that after Bonaparte's first conquest of Northern Italy, when he had turned the Alps by the Savona depression, and by the battles of Montenotte and others in that neighbourhood, gained the interior plains and carried all before him, Piedmont was annexed, and after the then French fashion, all church property was seized.
The academical military school excommunicated him, and as it lost its footing; hence, the implacable rancor of the old Caesarism against the new; of the regular sword against the flaming sword; and of the exchequer against genius. On the 18th of June, 1815, that rancor had the last word. and beneath Lodi, Montebello, Montenotte, Mantua, Arcola, it wrote: Waterloo.
While he was occupying Voltri, the boom of cannon echoing across the mountains warned his outposts that the real campaign was opening in the broken country north of Savona. There the weak Austrian centre had occupied a ridge or plateau above the village of Montenotte, through which ran the road leading to Alessandria and Milan.
After Arcola he appeared as a man very different from the novice he had been before Montenotte.
We rap their knuckles at Montenotte; we hurry on to thrash them at Rivoli, Lodi, Arcola, and Millesimo, and we never let them go. The army came to have a liking for winning battles.
After two decisive blows at their points of connection, he purposed driving them on divergent lines of retreat, just as he had driven the Austrians and Sardinians down the roads that bifurcate near Montenotte. True, there were in Belgium no mountain spurs to prevent their reunion; but the roads on which they were operating were far more widely divergent.
Hence, if Bonaparte could penetrate the point of junction of the two armies, it was probable they would separate in their retreat, and could be beaten singly. He therefore attacked the centre of the allied line, and, driving back the Austrians from Montenotte on April 12th, turned against the Piedmontese and defeated them at Millesimo the next day.
A letter, almost threatening, written by nineteen bishops assembled at the house of Cardinal Fesch, accompanied the officious propositions of the emperor. The anger of Napoleon had weighed heavily on the Council. On the 9th of May the three prelates arrived secretly at Savona. Chabrol, the Prefect of Montenotte, announced their visit to the Pope.
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