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Updated: June 26, 2025
Provera, on whom he had relied for assistance from Padua, was cut off and taken prisoner with his entire corps. Wurmser capitulated at Mantua with twenty-one thousand men. The spring of 1797 had scarcely commenced when Bonaparte was already pushing across the Alps toward Vienna. Hoche, at the same time, again attacked the Lower and Moreau the Upper Rhine.
Victor, with some of the troops brought in from Rivoli, the "terrible fifty-seventh demi-brigade," as Bonaparte designated them, attacked Provera at the same time, and threw his ranks into such disorder that he was glad to surrender his entire force.
Augereau rushed upon the outposts of Millesimo, seized and retained the gorge which defends that place, and cut off Provera with two thousand Austrians, who occupied an eminence called Cossaria, from the main body of Colli's army. Next morning Buonaparte himself arrived at that scene of the operations.
The surrender of Provera and Wurmser, following the total rout of Alvinzi, placed Lombardy wholly in the hands of Napoleon; and he now found leisure to avenge himself on the Pope for those hostile demonstrations which, as yet, he had been contented to hold in check.
While Murat was straining up the slopes of Monte Baldo, Bonaparte, giving no rest to the weary feet of Masséna's division, the same men who two days before had marched by night from Verona, was retracing his steps on that well-worn road past the city of Catullus and the Capulets onward toward Mantua. Provera had crossed the Adige at Anghiari with ten thousand men.
He had posted Joubert at Rivoli, to dispute that important position, should the campaign open with an attempt to force it by Alvinzi; while Augereau's division was to watch the march of Provera. He remained himself at Verona until he could learn with certainty by which of these generals the first grand assault was to be made.
But that would sever their connections with the Sardinians, whose base of supplies, Turin, lay in a north-westerly direction. Bonaparte therefore hurled his forces at once against the Austrians and a Sardinian contingent at Millesimo, and defeated them, Augereau's division cutting off the retreat of twelve hundred of their men under Provera.
Leaving Joubert to pursue it towards Trent, Bonaparte now flew southwards towards Mantua, whither Provera had cut his way. Again his untiring energy, his insatiable care for all probable contingencies, reaped a success which the ignorant may charge to the account of his fortune.
But that would sever their connections with the Sardinians, whose base of supplies, Turin, lay in a north-westerly direction. Bonaparte therefore hurled his forces at once against the Austrians and a Sardinian contingent at Millesimo, and defeated them, Augereau's division cutting off the retreat of twelve hundred of their men under Provera.
On the thirteenth he became aware that the main body of the Austrians was before him, and that their intention was to surround him by the left. Accordingly he informed Bonaparte, abandoned Corona, and made ready to retreat from Rivoli. That evening Provera threw a pontoon bridge across the Adige at Anghiari, below Legnago, and crossed with a portion of his army.
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