The Struggle for Genoa

Chapter 781

East of Cattibona Pass, Alps.

General Dimoubin, the nominal Commander-in-Chief of France's Army of Italy, felt the warm breeze blowing in from the Mediterranean Sea, and his old bones, nearly cracked apart by the cold, finally eased a little.

He recalled the order the Crown Prince had sent him a few days earlier and could not help letting out a long, bitter sigh.

He had thought he would at most put on a show in Nice City—Bonaparte had proven himself an outstanding commander, so there had been no need for Dimoubin to interfere—but then the Crown Prince had suddenly ordered him to replace Bonaparte and command the army.

Nearly sixty years old, Dimoubin had no choice but to drag his aged body across the Alps and put on the appearance of preparing to storm Montferrat, a southern province of Sardinia.

Turin lay north of Montferrat. By now, Sardinia was in utter chaos, and Amedeo III was frantically sending plea after plea for aid to Vienna.

After the crushing defeat at the Battle of Toulon, Beaulieu had fewer than seven thousand Austrian Army troops left on the Italian Peninsula, along with the twenty thousand men of the Sardinia Legion led by Koli and another two thousand stationed in Milan.

That handful of troops was not enough to reinforce Sardinia; he was worried whether Milan itself could even be held.

Left with no alternative, Franz II dispatched the Swiss Army to assist in Italy and had Melas, commander of the Swiss Army, replace Beaulieu as commander of the Army of Italy.

Only after Melas's vanguard reached Milan did Beaulieu finally breathe a sigh of relief.

With Melas's thirty-thousand-strong army, the situation in Italy was finally more or less stabilized.

Meanwhile, Amedeo III sent another ten thousand soldiers to defend Montferrat.