Let us now turn to the campaigns of Napoleon. In his first campaign in
Italy, 1796, the general was directed "to seize the forts of Savona,
compel the senate to furnish him with pecuniary supplies, and to
surrender the keys of Gavi, a fortress perched on the rocky height
commanding the pass of the Bocchetta." Setting out from Savona, he
crossed the mountains at a weak point between the Alps and the
Apennines, and succeeded in piercing the enemy's line of defence. The
king of Sardinia, jealous of Austrian influence, had refused to permit
the Austrian army to garrison his line of fortifications. Napoleon,
profiting by his victorious attitude, the mutual jealousy of Austria
and Sardinia, and the intrigues of his diplomatists, soon gained
possession of these important works. "_These Sardinian fortresses_," he
wrote to the Directory, "_at once put the Republicans in possession of
the keys of the Peninsula_." Basing himself on Coni, Mondovi, Ceva,
Gavi, and Alessandria, with Tortosa as his depot of magazines, he
advanced against Lombardy. Now basing himself on the Adda and Po, with
the fortress of Pizzighettone as the depot of his magazines, he advanced
upon the line of the Adige. Pechiera became his next depot, and he now
had four fortresses in echelon between him and his first depot of
magazines; and, after the fall of Mantua, basing himself on the Po, he
advanced against the States of the Church, making Ferrara and then
Ancona, his places of depot.

From the solid basis of the fortresses of Piedmont and Lombardy, "he was
enabled to turn his undivided attention to the destruction of the
Austrians, and thus commence, with some security, that great career of
conquest which he already meditated in the imperial dominions." In this
campaign of 1797, after scouring his base, he fortified Palma-Nuova,
Osapo, &c., repaired the old fortifications of Klagenfurth, and, as he
advanced, established, to use his own words, "a good _point d'appui_ at
every five or six marches."

Afterwards, when the Austrians had nearly wrested Italy from the weak
grasp of Napoleon's successors, the French saved their army in the
fortress of Genoa and behind the line of the Var, which had been
fortified with care in 1794-5. Numerous attempts were made to force this
line, the advanced post of Fort Montauban being several times assaulted
by numerous forces. But the Austrian columns recoiled from its murderous
fire of grape and musketry, which swept off gr