Soult, who now gained their first laurels as generals,
maintained a most obstinate resistance, defying alike the assaults of
the white-coats, the bombs hurled by the English squadron, and the
deadlier inroads of famine and sickness. The garrison dwindled by
degrees to less than 10,000 effectives, but they kept double the
number of Austrians there, while Bonaparte was about to strike a
terrible blow against their rear and that of Melas further west. It
was for this that the First Consul urged Massena to hold out at Genoa
to the last extremity, and nobly was the order obeyed.

Suchet meanwhile defended the line of the River Var against Melas. In
Germany, Moreau with his larger forces slowly edged back the chief
Austrian army, that of General Kray, from the defiles of the Black
Forest, compelling it to fall back on the intrenched camp at Ulm.

On their side, the Austrians strove to compel Massena to a speedy
surrender, and then with a large force to press on into Nice,
Provence, and possibly Savoy, surrounding Suchet's force, and rousing
the French royalists of the south to a general insurrection. They also
had the promise of the help of a British force, which was to be landed
at some point on the coast and take Suchet in the flank or rear.[139]
Such was the plan, daring in outline and promising great things,
provided that everything went well. If Massena surrendered, if the
British War Office and Admiralty worked up to time, if the winds were
favourable, and if the French royalists again ventured on a revolt,
then France would be crippled, perhaps conquered. As for the French
occupation of Switzerland and Moreau's advance into Swabia, that was
not to prevent the prosecution of the original Austrian plan of
advancing against Provence and wresting Nice and Savoy from the French
grasp. This scheme has been criticised as if it were based solely on
military considerations; but it was rather dictated by schemes of
political aggrandizement. The conquest of Nice and Savoy was necessary
to complete the ambitious schemes of the Hapsburgs, who sought to gain
a large part of Piedmont at the expense of the King of Sardinia, and
after conquering Savoy and Nice, to thrust that unfortunate king to
the utmost verge of the peninsula, which the prowess of his
descendants has ultimately united under the Italian tricolour.

The allied plan sinned against one of the elementary rules of
strategy; it exposed a large force to a blow from the r