Afterwards, when the Austrians had nearly wrested Italy from the weak grasp of Napoleon’s successors, the French saved their army in the fortress of Genoa and behind the line of the Var, which had been fortified with care in 1794-5.  Numerous attempts were made to force this line, the advanced post of Fort Montauban being several times assaulted by numerous forces.  But the Austrian columns recoiled from its murderous fire of grape and musketry, which swept off great numbers at every discharge.  Again the assault was renewed with a vast superiority of numbers, and again “the brave men who headed the column almost perished at the foot of the intrenchment; and, after sustaining a heavy loss, they were compelled to abandon the enterprise.”

While the forces on the Var thus stayed the waves of Austrian success, Massena, in the fortifications of Genoa, sustained a blockade of sixty, and a siege of forty days, against an army five times as large as his own; and when forced to yield to the stern demands of famine, he almost dictated to the enemy the terms of the treaty.  These two defences held in check the elite of the Austrian forces, while the French reserve crossed the Alps, seized the important points of the country, and cut off the Austrian line of retreat.  “But even after the victory of Marengo,” says Napoleon, “I did not consider the whole of Italy reconquered, until all the fortified places between me and the Mincio should be occupied by my troops.  I gave Melas permission to return to Mantua, on condition of his surrendering all these fortresses.”

He now directed Chasseloup de Laubat and his engineers to repair and remodel the fortifications of Verona, Legnano, Pechiera, Mantua, the line of the Adda, Milan, Alessandria,[5] Roco d’Aufo, Genoa, and several smaller works; thus forming a quadruple line of defence against Austrian aggression in Italy.  These works were of great service to the French in 1805, enabling Massena with fifty thousand men to hold in check the Archduke Charles with more than ninety thousand, while Napoleon’s grand army, starting from the solid base of the Rhine, traversed Germany and seized upon the capital of Austria.

[Footnote 5:  More than twenty millions of money were appropriated for this place alone.]

The neglect of the Prussians to place their country in a state of military defence, previous to declaring war against Napoleon in 1806, had a most disastrous influence upon the campaign.  Napoleon, on the other hand, occupied and secured all the important military positions which he had captured in the preceding campaign.  “The Prussians,” said he, “made no preparations for putting into a state of defence the fortifications on their first line, not even those within a few marches of our cantonments.  While I was piling up bastion upon bastion at Kehl, Cassel, and Wesel, they did not plant a single palisade at Magdeburg, nor put in battery a single cannon at Spandau.”  The works on the three great