Battle of Montenotte
| date | April 12, 1796 |
|---|---|
| place | Cairo Montenotte |
| output | French victory |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
| Troop strength | |
| approx. 14,000 men | approx. 9,000 men (alternatively: 25,000) |
| losses | |
|
800 |
2,500 |
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First Coalition War (1792–1797)
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The Battle of Montenotte took place on April 12, 1796 near the village of Montenotte (in north-western Italy) as part of the Italian campaign during the coalition wars between the French army under Napoléon Bonaparte and the armies of the Kingdom of Sardinia and Austria under the command of General Jean-Pierre de Beaulieu took place and ended in a French victory.
prehistory
When Bonaparte took up his post in Nice on March 27, shortly after his appointment as Commander in Chief of the French Army of Italy ( Armée d'Italie ) , the army was in a pitiful state. Many of the 106,000 troops estimated by the War Department had died, been captured or deserted . The 31,000 remaining soldiers, 28,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry units were poorly fed, poorly dressed, and poorly armed. They only had 30 cannons and 500 mules for transport and supplies.
On the other hand, the Austrian army in northern Italy had 42 battalions and 44 squadrons , while the Sardinian troops numbered 30,000 men, plus 2,000 Neapolitan horsemen; this led to a total strength of the Austro-Sardinian troops in northern Italy of around 80,000 men and 200 guns.
The battle
General Bonaparte, who had advanced along the Ligurian coast, drove a wedge between the Austrian forces under General Beaulieu and the Sardinian forces under Count Mercy-Argenteau . When attacking the Sardinian army at Montenotte, he ordered General de Laharpe to attack the enemy from the front, while at the same time he let General Massena attack the right wing. Count Argenteau's attempt to stop the attack failed due to his belated decision and most of the Allied forces were dispersed or captured. The battle was Napoleon's first victory in the Italian campaign .
Remarkable
The battle also became famous through Napoleon's Ma noblesse date de Montenotte (“My nobility comes from Montenotte”), which exemplifies the historical change from the principle of heredity to the principle of achievement as a publicly recognized basis of legitimation for political violence.
literature
- David G. Chandler : Dictionary of the Napoleonic wars . Greenhill, London 1993, ISBN 1-85367-150-9 (EA London 1979).
- Digby Smith : The Greenhill Napoleonic Wars Data Book . Greenhill, London 1998, ISBN 1-85367-276-9 .
- Martin Boycott-Brown: The Road to Rivoli. Napoleon's First Campaign . Cassell, London 2001, ISBN 0-304-35305-1 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ See Emmanuel de Las Cases : Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, ou Journal se trauve consigné, jour par jour, ce qu'a dit et fait Napoléon durant dix-huit mois, vol. 1 . Éditions Remy, Paris 1824, p. 148.