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 siege of
Mantua), scattered along a front of fifty miles from Milan to Brescia
and Legnago, the incursion of Wuermser's force, if the French were held
to their separate positions by diversions against their flanks, must
have proved decisive. But the fault was committed of so far dividing
the Austrians that nowhere could they deal a crushing blow.
Quosdanovich with 17,600 men was to take the western side of Lake
Garda, seize the French magazines at Brescia, and cut their
communications with Milan and France: the main body under Wuermser,
24,300 strong, was meanwhile to march in two columns on either bank of
the Adige, drive the French from Rivoli and push on towards Mantua:
and yet a third division, led by Davidovich from the district of
Friuli on the east, received orders to march on Vicenza and Legnago,
in order to distract the French from that side, and possibly relieve
Mantua if the other two onsets failed.

Faulty as these dispositions were, they yet seriously disconcerted
Bonaparte. He was at Montechiaro, a village situated on the road
between Brescia and Mantua, when, on July 29th, he heard that the
white-coats had driven in Massena's vanguard above Rivoli on the
Adige, were menacing other positions near Verona and Legnago, and were
advancing on Brescia. As soon as the full extent of the peril was
manifest, he sent off ten despatches t