SOME FAME. THE ALPS IN SPRING, I LEARNED, ARE COLD, windy, and wet, with snow the color of snot. The Saint Bernard of Switzerland was not even the Saint Bernard of Clairvaux: there are too many saints in the world, apparently, including two Bernards within a few hundred miles of each other. And no one believed I was hiking to the pass out of idle American curiosity, carrying my Pennsylvania longrifle like a walking stick. Everyone assumed I was exactly what I kept denying, an early scout for Bonaparte, since the first consul was visiting the encampments near Geneva and taking the unprecedented step of actually explaining to the common soldiers what it was he wanted them to do—to emulate the Carthaginians who’d stormed Rome. I was so obviously an agent that I found myself bargaining with the monks at the summit hospice to supply Napoleon’s troops with food. Indeed, the first consul ran up a bill of forty thousand francs from wine, cheese, and bread sold from trestle tables the enterprising friars put out in the snow. What the holy men didn’t grasp is that Napoleon always bought on credit, and was a master of evading bills at the same time he was extorting tribute from provinces he’d overrun. “Let war pay for war,” his ministers said.
The painter David gave us a portrait of Bonaparte at the crest on a rearing charger, and it’s as inspiring a piece of nonsense as I’ve ever seen. The truth is that Napoleon ascended the Alps on a sure-footed mule and slid down the far side on his own ass, he and his officers whooping with delight. Most of his sixty thousand soldiers walked, or rather trudged, up steadily worsening roads until, for the last seven miles, they were on a trail of ice and mud, potential avalanches poised above and yawning gorges below. Each hour they’d rest for a five-minute “pipe,” or smoke, which was one of the two pleasures of army life—the other being to curse the stupidity of their superiors. Then on again! It was a hard, dangerous ascent that had them sweating in the cold. The soldiers slept at the summit, two to a blanket, great heaps of them huddled together like wolves, and by morning half had fevers and raw throats. Ice cut shoes to pieces, lungs gasped at thin air, and gaiters couldn’t keep cold mud out of socks. Extremities went numb.
Yet they were proud. It was one of the boldest maneuvers of its age, made more so when the French snuck by a stubborn Austrian fort on the far side of the pass by muffling the hooves of their animals with straw. They hauled their artillery muzzles across the Alps in hollowed-out pine trees. Sixty thousand men crossed that pass, and every powder keg, cannon ball, and box of biscuit was packed or pulled by men with tumplines to their foreheads.
They sang revolutionary tunes. I handed out cups of wine in encouragement as they passed the summit. A friar kept tally.
Once over the pass, Bonaparte was everywhere, as usual. He studied the mountain fortress of Bard from concealing bushes, ordered different placement of his siege guns, and got it to capitulate in two days. We entered Milan on June 2. In a masterstroke he’d occupied the Austrian rear and made the French surrender of Genoa suddenly irrelevant. (The siege had been so horrific that Massena’s hair had turned white.) The Austrians had driven their enemy out one side of Italy, only to have Napoleon’s army show up on the other! Of course there was nothing to prevent General Melas from doing what Napoleon had done. He could have marched the opposite way across a different Alpine pass, left the French stranded in Italy, captured Lyon without a shot, and probably forced Bonaparte’s abdication. Except that the Austrian was forty years older and didn’t think in such sweeping terms. He was a superb tactician who saw a few leagues at a time. Napoleon could see the world.
Unless, that is, Napoleon was distracted. While Josephine’s infidelities had made him come close to divorcing her, he set no such moral bounds on himself. Milan featured the famed diva Giuseppina Grassini, who conquered the French general first by song and then with her smoldering eyes, swollen lips, and bountiful bosom. Bonaparte spent six long days in Milan, too much of it in bed, and that was time enough for Melas to wheel his troops from the Italian coast and concentrate toward the French. Somewhere between Genoa and Milan, the great showdown would take place. It happened at Marengo.
My plan was to be well away. I’d seen plenty of war in the east, had played my part as scout for Hannibal, and was more than ready to scuttle back to Paris. There was no diva in Milan for me, and no other amusement, either. The Italians had been looted by rival armies too many times, and the best women had too many generals to choose from.
Then Bonaparte found a way to harness my talents. A spy had come, a swarthy imp of a man named Renato, oily as a neapolitan salad, who told us Melas and the Austrians were running. The French had merely to march forward to scoop up the reward for their alpine crossing! The spy carried Austrian documents in his boot heel as proof, and displayed a con man’s confidence. But as a rogue myself, I was suspicious. Renato was a little too ingratiating, and kept glancing at me like a rival. In fact, he looked almost as if he knew me.
“You don’t believe my spy, Gage?” Napoleon asked after the agent had gone.
“He has a rascal’s manner.” I should know.
“Surely I pay better than the Austrians. I must, at his price.”
That was another thing that annoyed me: Renato undoubtedly made more money than I did. “He may be too slippery to be properly bought.”
“He’s a spy, not a priest! You Americans are squeamish about such things, but agents are as necessary as artillery. Don’t think I don’t have my own reservations, about everyone.” He gave me a hard stare. “I remain outnumbered two to one, my army is living on captured supplies, and I’m fearfully short of cannons. One loss and my rivals will have my throat. I know very well I have no true friends. Thank God Desaix has arrived from Egypt!”
Louis-Antoine Desaix, his favorite general, had landed in Toulon the same day we’d left Paris and been given a division here in Italy. Loyal, modest, shy of women, and extremely able, he was happiest sleeping under a cannon. He had Napoleon’s talent without his ambition, the perfect subordinate.
“Perhaps I could carry word of your predicament to ministers in Paris?” The last thing I wanted was to be caught on the losing side.
“On the contrary, Gage, since you’re so suspicious I want you to spy on our spy. Renato suggested a rendezvous to pass on the latest from the Austrians and mentioned your reputation for daring. Take the road to Pavia and the Po, trail Renato, make the rendezvous, and report back. I know you like the perfume of gunsmoke as much as I do.”
Perfume of gunsmoke? “But I’m a savant, not a spy, First Consul. And I don’t speak German or Italian.”
“We both know you’re an amateur savant at best, a dabbler and a dilettante. But when you look, you actually see. Humor me, Gage. Take a ride toward Genoa, confirm what we’ve been told, and then I’ll send you back to Paris.”
“Maybe we should just believe Renato after all.”
“Take your rifle, too.”