In October 1797 the Directory presented the Army of Italy with an inscribed flag. This recorded that, the Army had taken 150000 prisoners, 170 enemy standards, 540 cannon and howitzers, five pontoon trains, nine 64-gun ships of the line, twelve frigates, eighteen galleys. The french army fought sixty-seven actions and triumphed in eighteen pitched battles like Montenotte, Millesimo, Mondovi, Lodi, Borghetto, Lonato, Castiglione, Rovereto, Bassano, St George, Fontana Viva, Caldiero, Arcola, Rivoli, La Favorita, Tagliamento, Tarnis and Neumarcht. Napoleon's luck & military genius made him win so many battles.
When contact was made with hostile forces, Napoleon ordered the sordiers nearest to the enemy to pin him down. Meanwhile the rest of the army would be engaged in forced marches to fall on the enemy flanks and Perfect timing and coordination were necessary to achieve outright victory by this method, and tremendous courage and planning on the part of the 'pinning' soldiers, which was sure to take heavy losses. Napoleon arranged for his various soldier to arrive at the battle at different times. The enemy would find to his consternation that he was fighting more and more Frenchmen.Napoleon had to work out through the smoke of battle exactly when the enemy commander committed his final reserves. The commander of the enveloping force had to keep his troops like greyhounds on the leash, lest a premature attack betray their presence. Napoleon was launching a frontal attack, or he could opt for retreat - supremely perilous in the teeth of attacking forces. Napoleon liked to launch his final frontal attack at the 'hinge' of the enemy's weakened front so as to cut his army in two.
Napoleon defeated overall superior numbers by gaining local numerical superiority. He would then concentrate his forces, crash through the hinge and interpose himself between two armies. Forced apart and thus, in technical language, operating on exterior lines, the enemy would be at a natural disadvantage. Having selected which enemy force he would deal with first, Napoleon deployed two-thirds of his forces against the chosen victim while the other third pinned the other enemy army, usually launching assaults that looked like the prelude to a full-scale attack. After defeating the first army.
Napoleon would detach half his victorious host to deal with the second enemy army, while the rest of his victorious troops pursued the remnants of the vanquished force. There were two snags to this strategy. The obvious one was that, since Napoleon himself could not be in two places at once, it was likely that a less skilled general would botch the operation Bonaparte was not supervising personally. The other, more serious, problem was intrinsic to the strategy itself: because he needed to divert half his victorious force to deal with the second enemy army, he did not have the resources to follow up the vanquished foe and score a truly decisive victory. For this reason the 'central position' as a strategy.
From the Italian campaign evolved certain military principles that Napoleon never altered. These are the army's lines of communication must always be kept open; the army must have a clear primary objective with no secondary distractions; the enemy army, not his capital or fortified towns, must always be the objective; always attack, never remain on the defensive; always remember the importance of artillery so that ideally you go into battle with four big guns for every thousand men; the moral factor is to the material as three is to one. Above all, Napoleon emphasized the importance of concentration of force, speed and the factor of time, and the cardinal principle of outflanking.
Napoleon defeated overall superior numbers by gaining local numerical superiority. He would then concentrate his forces, crash through the hinge and interpose himself between two armies. Forced apart and thus, in technical language, operating on exterior lines, the enemy would be at a natural disadvantage. Having selected which enemy force he would deal with first, Napoleon deployed two-thirds of his forces against the chosen victim while the other third pinned the other enemy army, usually launching assaults that looked like the prelude to a full-scale attack. After defeating the first army.
Napoleon would detach half his victorious host to deal with the second enemy army, while the rest of his victorious troops pursued the remnants of the vanquished force. There were two snags to this strategy. The obvious one was that, since Napoleon himself could not be in two places at once, it was likely that a less skilled general would botch the operation Bonaparte was not supervising personally. The other, more serious, problem was intrinsic to the strategy itself: because he needed to divert half his victorious force to deal with the second enemy army, he did not have the resources to follow up the vanquished foe and score a truly decisive victory. For this reason the 'central position' as a strategy.
From the Italian campaign evolved certain military principles that Napoleon never altered. These are the army's lines of communication must always be kept open; the army must have a clear primary objective with no secondary distractions; the enemy army, not his capital or fortified towns, must always be the objective; always attack, never remain on the defensive; always remember the importance of artillery so that ideally you go into battle with four big guns for every thousand men; the moral factor is to the material as three is to one. Above all, Napoleon emphasized the importance of concentration of force, speed and the factor of time, and the cardinal principle of outflanking.
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