Chapter 816: The New Hegemon of Northern Italy
Joseph's decision was certainly not born of some sudden admiration for General Melas's heroic performance on the battlefield. Rather, it was simply because Melas was delightfully incompetent.
If the man returned to Austria and managed to retain his position of power, he would undoubtedly hand the French another magnificent victory on a silver platter in their next encounter.
This was far more advantageous than keeping him as a prisoner and forcing the Austrian army to replace him with a more capable commander.
At the same time, this act projected an image of France as a nation that respected the traditions of chivalry—the ancient right of nobles to buy back their freedom with a ransom.
Firstly, this would serve to undermine the resolve of enemy generals in future conflicts, making them less likely to fight to the bitter death. Secondly, should an important French general ever be captured, this precedent established a clear path for their return.
Of course, had he captured a heavyweight of the caliber of the Duke of Wellington, Archduke Charles, or Mikhail Kutuzov, Joseph would have tossed that chivalric spirit into the wastebasket without a second thought.
In Alessandria, the air was thick with anticipation.
Representatives from seven or eight Italian states, including Genoa, Parma, and Sardinia, had been invited to the fountain square to witness the formal surrender ceremony of the Austrian forces.
In truth, even Tuscany and the Papal States had received invitations, though they had chosen to remain silent and offered no response.
After all, only two months ago, they had been the Austrians' allies. Had their King not switched sides in the nick of time, many Sardinians would likely have been among those dejected ranks.
The young women of Italy, however, had eyes only for the French Hussars guarding the prisoners. They watched the soldiers' dashing figures with bashful or infatuated smiles.
Following the column of prisoners was a convoy of over a dozen carriages.
At the head of the convoy, a French officer held aloft the instrument of surrender signed by Melas, displaying it to the gathered crowds.
The curtains of the trailing carriages were drawn tight, obscuring those within. However, according to well-informed sources, Melas himself and twelve other Austrian officers were seated inside.
Once the ceremony concluded, these men would be escorted with all due courtesy back to Vienna. For the privilege of this journey, they had paid a collective fare of 3.9 million francs in ransom.
Behind the carriages marched hundreds of towering French Hussars, followed by an artillery battalion and a grenadier battalion. These were all hand-picked, handsome young men, tall of stature and carrying themselves with an air of gallantry.
This grand ceremony of surrender sent shockwaves through the whole of Northern Italy.
By the time newspapers across the various states began flooded with detailed reports of the ceremony and the preceding campaign, the influence Austria had painstakingly built over a century in Northern Italy vanished almost overnight.
In its place came a universal recognition of French power.
Parma and Modena went so far as to send envoys to the Palace of Versailles, expressing a desire to expand bilateral trade and privately offering their congratulations to the King and Queen of France on the army's magnificent victory.
Two weeks after the surrender ceremony, the Royal Third Infantry Division, two royal horse artillery batteries, and over four thousand newly trained recruits arrived in Milan.
This reinforcement totaled sixteen thousand soldiers.
With the arrival of these troops, the Army of Italy had expanded to more than thirty-nine thousand men.
After consulting with his ministers, Amedeo III decided to place fifteen thousand Sardinian troops under the command of Lieutenant General Thaon to join the French order of battle.
Furthermore, Napoleon used the Milan City Guard as a foundation to raise a three-thousand-man Lombardy Legion, placing it under the command of Sérurier.
By mid-September, a grand Franco-Sardinian allied force of fifty-seven thousand men marched out of Milan in a majestic display, following Napoleon toward the Mantua Fortress.
While Napoleon was crushing Melas's army, the British Mediterranean Fleet had ended its pursuit of the French Toulon Fleet and was returning to the naval base at Gibraltar.
However, the Royal Navy's return journey was far from a triumphant procession; it was a wretched affair.
Inside the commander's cabin of the flagship Victory, Lord Hood winced as the faint, rhythmic thud of cannon fire echoed in his ears. Irritated, he shook his head and barked at the attendant by the door, "How much further?"
The attendant knew he was asking about the distance to Gibraltar. He hurried to the bridge to inquire before rushing back. "General, only sixty nautical miles remain."
Lord Hood checked his pocket watch. It was already half past one in the afternoon. It seemed they wouldn't make port today, which meant another full day of being tormented by those cursed steamships.
Indeed, since the French merchant ships had completed the resupply of Genoa, Brigadier General Dichayera had led the Mediterranean Fast Squadron to the Barbary Sea to rendezvous with the main force of the Toulon Fleet.
They did not formally merge their formations. Instead, the Toulon Fleet continued to lead the British on a chase while Dichayera trailed closely behind the British rear.
On the surface, it appeared the French fleet was fleeing like hounded curs, afraid to enter any port for over a month for fear of being blockaded.
In reality, only the British knew the true depth of their frustration.
Those French steamships were like hyenas that had caught the scent of rotting meat. They followed relentlessly, constantly utilizing their superior speed to surge forward and rake the sterns of the rearmost British warships with cannon fire before pivoting and vanishing into the distance.
A short while later, another ship would take its place, fire a few rounds, and slip away.
Initially, Lord Hood had dispatched ships to drive off these hyenas, but he quickly realized it was a futile endeavor.
If he sent third or fourth-rate ships of the line, the French steamships would simply circle the main fleet. The heavy battleships had no hope of catching them.
Moreover, after being toyed with, these battleships often found it difficult to return to the main formation.
Hood was forced to slow the entire fleet to wait for them.
This, in turn, gave the French Toulon Fleet a chance to breathe.
They used these very opportunities to successfully resupply at the port of Tripoli.
Worse yet, if any ship sent to disperse the hyenas allowed its formation to become even slightly ragged, the French would swarm in and bite hard!
A month ago, the third-rate ship of the line Audacious had thought it saw a golden opportunity to sink a French frigate. In hindsight, it was clearly a trap set by the French. The Audacious failed to move back toward the other warships in time and was swarmed by a large number of steamships.
In the end, it relied on its sturdy hull to avoid being sent to the bottom, but it was left battered and bruised. Almost none of the wooden planks on the rear half of its broadside remained intact, rendering it virtually useless for combat.
Hood then tried using faster galleys to drive the French away, but the attempt only resulted in two galleys being sunk.
The French steamships possessed far greater endurance than any galley. After twenty minutes of maneuvering, the galleys' speed would begin to falter, at which point they became nothing more than sitting ducks.
Since then, Hood had stopped sending ships to engage the steamships entirely.
The French, however, continued to shadow and harass his main fleet.
Though the firepower of these small vessels was not overwhelming, they had been nibbling away for over fifty days. By now, there was hardly a single ship of the line in Hood's main fleet that did not bear the scars of battle.
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