hreatened by Moreau's Army
of the Rhine, Francis determined at all costs to recover his Italian
possessions.

To this end the Emperor now replaced the luckless Beaulieu by General
Wuermser, who had gained some reputation in the Rhenish campaigns; and,
detaching 25,000 men from his northern armies to strengthen his army
on the Adige, he bade him carry the double-headed eagle of Austria
victoriously into the plains of Italy. Though too late to relieve the
citadel of Milan, he was to strain every nerve to relieve Mantua; and,
since the latest reports represented the French as widely dispersed
for the plunder of Central Italy, the Emperor indulged the highest
hopes of Wuermser's success.[56]

Possibly this might have been attained had the Austrian Emperor and
staff understood the absolute need of concentration in attacking a
commander who had already demonstrated its supreme importance in
warfare. Yet the difficulties of marching an army of 47,000 men
through the narrow defile carved by the Adige through the Tyrolese
Alps, and the wide extent of the French covering lines, led to the
adoption of a plan which favoured rapidity at the expense of security.
Wuermser was to divide his forces for the difficult march southward
from Tyrol into Italy. In defence of this arrangement much could be
urged. To have cumbered the two roads, which run on either side of the
Adige from Trient towards Mantua, with infantry, cavalry, artillery,
and the countless camp-followers, animals, and wagons that follow an
army, would have been fatal alike to speed of marching and to success
in mountain warfare. Even in the campaign of 1866 the greatest
commander of this generation carried out his maxim, "March in separate
columns: unite for fighting." But Wuermser and the Aulic Council[57] at
Vienna neglected to insure that reunion for attack, on which von
Moltke laid such stress in his Bohemian campaign. The Austrian forces
in 1796 were divided by obstacles which could not quickly be crossed,
namely, by Lake Garda and the lofty mountains which tower above the
valley of the Adige. Assuredly the Imperialists were not nearly strong
enough to run any risks. The official Austrian returns show that the
total force assembled in Tyrol for the invasion of Italy amounted to
46,937 men, not to the 60,000 as pictured by the imagination of Thiers
and other French historians. As Bonaparte had in Lombardy-Venetia
fully 45,000 men (including 10,000 now engaged in the