Exhibition labels & didactics - National Gallery of Victoria

THE BATTLE OF MARENGO, 1800
A key goal of Napoleon’s foreign policy as First Consul was to
reconquer northern Italy, which was reverting to Austrian control
after military defeats inflicted by Austrian expeditionary forces in
1799, and following Austria’s invasion of Lombardy and Liguria in
April 1800. Napoleon’s opening move was spectacularly imaginative:
to deploy the Reserve Army (of around fifty thousand men) over
the Swiss Alps into northern Italy, where they would emerge
unexpectedly behind Austrian lines.
In a shrewd act of propaganda, Napoleon personally led the French
forces through the Swiss Alps, echoing the legendary exploits of
Charlemagne and Hannibal. Hannibal, one of the greatest military
strategists of antiquity, was famed for his epic feat of marching the
Carthaginian Army, including thirty-seven war elephants, through
the Alpine passes in 218 BCE. But of even greater significance
to Napoleon was the invasion of northern Italy via the Alps that had
been undertaken by the French King Charlemagne in 773 CE.
Though the weather was in fact excellent during the crossing,
Napoleon wrote to the other consuls at the time that ‘we struggled
against the ice, the snow, the difficulties and the avalanches’,
and this is the version that has come down to history.
Napoleon managed to complete the crossing and to skirt the
Austrian fort at Bard in fifteen days, emerging on the plains of
Lombardy on 30 May 1800, ready to meet the Austrian Army,
which he defeated at the Battle of Marengo on 14 June 1800.
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