taneously sustained
by the wings and the reserves; but it is quite different on a line of
three hundred miles in extent.

In 1795 Prussia and Spain retired from the coalition, and the principal
theater of war was shifted from the Rhine to Italy,--which opened a new
field of glory for the French arms. Their lines of operations in this
campaign were double; they desired to operate by Dusseldorf and Manheim.
Clairfayt, wiser than his predecessors, concentrated his forces
alternately upon these points, and gained victories at Manheim and in
the lines of Mayence so decisive that they caused the army of the Sambre
and Meuse to recross the Rhine to cover the Moselle, and brought
Pichegru back to Landau.

In 1796 the lines of operations on the Rhine were copied from those of
1757 and those in Flanders in 1794, but with different results. The
armies of the Rhine, and of the Sambre and Meuse, set out from the
extremities of the base, on routes converging to the Danube. As in 1794,
they were exterior lines. The Archduke Charles, more skillful than the
Prince of Coburg, profited by his interior lines by concentrating his
forces at a point nearer than that expected by the French. He then
seized the instant when the Danube covered the corps of Latour, to
steal several marches upon Moreau and attack and overwhelm Jourdan: the
battle of Wurzburg decided the fate of Germany and compelled the army of
Moreau to retreat.

Bonaparte now commences in Italy his extraordinary career. His plan is
to separate the Piedmontese and Austrian armies. He succeeds by the
battle of Millesimo in causing them to take two exterior strategic
lines, and beats them successively at Mondovi and Lodi. A formidable
army is collected in the Tyrol to raise the siege of Mantua: it commits
the error of marching there in two bodies separated by a lake. The
lightning is not quicker than Napoleon. He raises the siege, abandons
every thing before Mantua, throws the greater part of his force upon the
first column, which debouches by Brescia, beats it and forces it back
upon the mountains: the second column arrives upon the same ground, and
is there beaten in its turn, and compelled to retire into the Tyrol to
keep up its communications with the right. Wurmser, upon whom these
lessons are lost, desires to cover the two lines of Roveredo and
Vicenza; Napoleon, after having overwhelmed and thrown the first back
upon the Lavis, changes direction by the right, debouches by