erienced in the handling of cavalry and infantry could
make his first essays in tactics with fair chances of success. Speed,
energy, and the prompt seizure of a commanding central position were
the prime requisites; the handling of vast masses of men was
impossible. The plains of Lombardy facilitated larger movements; but
even here the numerous broad swift streams fed by the Alpine snows,
and the network of irrigating dykes, favoured the designs of a young
and daring leader who saw how to use natural obstacles so as to baffle
and ensnare his foes. Bonaparte was now to show that he excelled his
enemies, not only in quickness of eye and vigour of intellect, but
also in the minutiae of tactics and in those larger strategic
conceptions which decide the fate of nations. In the first place,
having the superiority of force, he was able to attack. This is an
advantage at all times: for the aggressor can generally mislead his
adversary by a series of feints until the real blow can be delivered
with crushing effect. Such has been the aim of all great leaders from
the time of Epaminondas and Alexander, Hannibal and Caesar, down to the
age of Luxembourg, Marlborough, and Frederick the Great. Aggressive
tactics were particularly suited to the French soldiery, always eager,
active, and intelligent, and now endowed with boundless enthusiasm in
their cause and in their leader.

Then again he was fully aware of the inherent vice of the Austrian
situation. It was as if an unwieldy organism stretched a vulnerable
limb across the huge barrier of the Alps, exposing it to the attack of
a compacter body. It only remained for Bonaparte to turn against his
foes the smaller geographical features on which they too implicitly
relied. Beaulieu had retired beyond the Po and the Ticino, expecting
that the attack on the Milanese would be delivered across the latter
stream by the ordinary route, which crossed it at Pavia. Near that
city the Austrians occupied a strong position with 26,000 men, while
other detachments patrolled the banks of the Ticino further north, and
those of the Po towards Valenza, only 5,000 men being sent towards
Piacenza. Bonaparte, however, was not minded to take the ordinary
route. He determined to march, not as yet on the north of the River
Po, where snow-swollen streams coursed down from the Alps, but rather
on the south side, where the Apennines throw off fewer streams and
also of smaller volume. From the fortress of Tortona