Napoleon's Campaigns in Italy 1796-1797 and 1800

NAPOLEONS CAMPAIGNS IN ITALY 1796-1797 and 1800 by BRIGADIER-GENERAL R. G. BURTON. First published in 1912. PREFACE: THE historian Gibbon tells us that war and the ad ministration of affairs are the principal subjects of history. In the opening campaign of Napoleon Bonaparte we see the conduct of events by a master of both. Especially instructive to the soldier is the first series of operations conducted by the greatest master of the art of war, whose very name sounds like a trumpet-call, and whose genius illuminates one of the most lurid and marvellous epochs in the history of the world. In the Middle Ages and until the advent of Napoleon, the art of war as exemplified in the campaigns of Alexander and Caesar had been neglected or forgotten. War had become a pageant, a stately ceremonial, governed by none of those logical principles which are based on the foundations of nature and of reason. It had degenerated into a series of manoeuvres, frequently carried out to avoid com bat, while lengthy sieges and the occupation of towns and territory were regarded as the objects of strategy, to the neglect of the true and proper object the destruction of the enemys armed forces. It fell to Napoleon Bonaparte to deduce from the ex perience of history and to illustrate in the practice of war the whole art of military operations, based on immutable principles, and exemplified in the annals of the world The first campaign in which he exercised supreme command consequently marks the opening of an epoch in the art of war, and serves as a lasting example to those who would scale the glittering pinnacle of military fame...