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The historians do not dwell upon the mistakes of Colli, Beaulieu, and Wurmser in 1796, but on the brilliant resolution with which Napoleon took advantage of them; and the salient features, both of the Valley Campaign and of that of 1796, are the untiring vigilance with which opportunities were looked for, the skill with which they were detected, and the daring rapidity with which they were seized.
Napoleon had intelligence which Wurmser wanted. Wurmser himself was his mark; and he returned from Trent to Primolano where the Imperialist's vanguard lay, by a forced march of not less than sixty miles performed in two days. The surprise with which this descent was received may be imagined. The Austrian van was destroyed in a twinkling.
A triumph of the mediocres which is sweet to the majority. Destiny consented to this irony. In his decline, Napoleon found Wurmser, the younger, again in front of him. In fact, to get Wurmser, it sufficed to blanch the hair of Wellington. Waterloo is a battle of the first order, won by a captain of the second.
Wurmser advanced to relieve Mantua, and once more make Italy the field of battle; but he was overpowered, like his predecessor, by Bonaparte, who, after having raised the blockade of Mantua, in order to oppose this new enemy, renewed it with increased vigour, and resumed his positions in Tyrol. The plan of invasion was executed with much union and success.
The reinforcement and revictualling of that garrison were all that Wurmser could show, in requital of his lost artillery, stores, and 40,000 men. During this brief campaign the aversion with which the ecclesiastics of Italy regarded the French manifested itself in various quarters.
Under circumstances comparatively hopeless the brave Wurmser held Mantua to extremity. But in spite of example or argument, in terror or in treachery, General Mack capitulated without hazarding a blow.
But the pride of the Emperor Francis brooked no surrender of his Italian possessions, and again Würmser was spurred on from Vienna to another invasion of Venetia. It would be tedious to give an account of Würmser's second attempt, which belongs rather to the domain of political fatuity than that of military history.
It is one of his many titles to fame and to the homage of posterity. How poor by the side of this encyclopaedic genius are the gifts even of his most brilliant foes! At that same time the Archduke Charles of Austria was vegetating in inglorious ease on his estates. As for Beaulieu and Würmser, they had subsided into their native obscurity.
Wurmser was a master of the old school, working like an automaton under the hand of his government, and commanding according to well-worn precept his well-equipped battalions, every soldier of which was a recruit so costly that destructive battles were made as infrequent as possible, because to fight many meant financial ruin.
If there could be any doubt on this point, it ought to be dispelled by Massena's campaign in Switzerland, where he sustained himself only by attacking the enemy at every opportunity, even when he was obliged to seek him on the Grimsel and the Saint-Gothard. Napoleon's course was similar in 1796 in the Tyrol, when he was opposed to Wurmser and Alvinzi.
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