The “Surprise of Brescia”
1796

Introduction

by Bernard Voykowitsch, Austria

In 30 July 1796 a small Austrian force surprised the French forces in the small Italian town of Brescia 30 kms west of the southern end of Lake Garda.

This was part of the larger Austrian counter offensive of Feldmarschall Graf Wurmser against the French Armee d’Italie under Napoleon, then General Bonaparte. During April and May 1796 Napoleon had conquered Piedmont and Lombardy and in July the French had started to formally besiege the last fortress held by Austrian troops - Mantua. Wurmser’s “Castiglione” offensive was the first of four Austrian attempts to defeat the Armee d’Italie.

The other three to come were those connected with the battles of Bassano and better known Arcole and Rivoli. At the first glance the surprise of Brescia seems to be a minor event but a deeper analysis shows that it was that event that finally determined Napoleon to concentrate his army back west against Brescia. This decision had farreaching consequences as it allowed Wurmser to relieve Mantua and as the French lost almost all the siege guns they had been able to collect through Italy and could not replace. This in turn reduced Napoleon to only blockade Mantua and to wait its fall from hunger.

On the other side it allowed the Austrians to stage another three attempts to defeat the Armee d’Italie. The story is also interesting insofar as it shows a couple of well-known persons of both sides in an earlier phase of their careers: Murat, Lannes, Kellermann the younger, Lasalle and Lefebvre-Desnoettes were taken prisoner in Brescia; the Austrian force is lead by Count Klenau Austrian corps commander in 1809 and 1813-14.

In the following you will find the translations of two texts accompanied by some maps and photographs. The limited space provided by 96 book pages I dared to print prevented me from putting all that the stuff into my “Castiglione 1796”. The first text is an article entitled “The Surprise Attack of Brescia on 30 July 1796”. It was written by Count Neipperg, also a well-known man of the period - post 1815 lover and second husband to Maria Luisa. In 1796 he was a Hauptmann in the Austrian Generalquartiermeisterstab accompanying the column advancing against Brescia. His article was published in the September 1812 issue of the Austrian Military Magazin. It was part of a series of articles that was intended to show the army that even in the dark days of 1792-1801 not everything had gone bad and that there had been many occasions of bravery, glory and victory. Today the article may show that contrary to readily available generalisations at the lower levels of the Austrian army of the times there was a decent degree of motivation and skill.

In 1796 Brescia was surrounded by early renaissance bastioned ramparts and had a citadel on a hill. The bigger part of the ramparts have been demolished during the 19th century yet the citadel is still there. It is a great place to visit as is the whole of the Lake Garda region with many battlefields of 1796 campaign within a short reach.

Overview of the theatre of operations

The “Surprise of Brescia” 1796

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