The Montenotte campaign began on 10 April 1796 with an action at Voltri and ended with the Armistice of Cherasco on 28 April. In his first army command, Napoleon Bonaparte's French army separated the army of the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont under Michelangelo Alessandro Colli-Marchi from the allied Habsburg army led by Johann Peter Beaulieu. The French defeated both Habsburg and Sardinian armies and forced Sardinia to quit the First Coalition. The campaign formed part of the Wars of the French Revolution. Montenotte Superiore is located at the junction of Strada Provinciale 12 and 41 in the Liguria region of northwest Italy, northeast of Carcare municipality. However, the fighting occurred in an area from Genoa on the east to Cuneo on the west.
In the spring of 1796, Bonaparte planned to launch an offensive against the combined armies of Sardinia and the Habsburg Monarchy. However, the Habsburg army moved first, attacking the French right flank at Voltri, near Genoa. In response, Bonaparte counterattacked the center of the enemy array, striking the boundary between the armies of his adversaries. Beating the Austrians at Montenotte, the budding military genius strove to drive the Piedmontese west and the Austrians northeast. Victories at Millesimo over the Sardinians and at Second Battle of Dego over the Austrians began to drive a deep wedge between them. Leaving a division to observe the stunned Austrians, Bonaparte's army chased the Piedmontese west after a second clash at Ceva. A week after the French drubbed the Sardinians at Mondovì the Sardinian government signed an armistice and withdrew from the War of the First Coalition. In two and a half weeks, Bonaparte had overcome one of France's enemies, leaving the crippled Habsburg army as his remaining opponent in northern Italy.
Background
See Montenotte 1796 Campaign Order of Battle for a list of French, Habsburg, and Sardinian units and organizations.
Before the Campaign
The morale of the army was not of the highest order; the units were strung out in numerous small detachments[...], their communications exposed [...] For their meager rations they were dependent on the whim of fraudulent army contractors, who were amassing private fortunes at the expense of the soldiers [...] officers and men alike [...] quitted their units every day in search of food [...] their pay, already months in arrears [...] relied on the [...] practically bankrupt French Government. Every type of equipment was in short supply. Whole battalions were without shoes—many men even without muskets and bayonets; the entire transport facilities of the army amounted to 200 mules. [...] Part of the army was in a mutinous frame of mind, and it was common knowledge that royalist agents were at work in the ranks.
At the outset of the War of the First Coalition in 1792, the Army of Italy was raised by the First French Republic with 106,000 men. Due to a combination of desertion, sickness, and military action this had dwindled to a nominal force of 63,000 men by the time Napoleon Bonaparte took command in March 1796, and of that number only 37,600 men and 60 field guns were available for immediate action.
Aim and Geography
The government of the First French Republic wished to drive Sardinia-Piedmont out of the First Coalition. To achieve this aim, the French Army of Italy first had to defeat Michelangelo Alessandro Colli-Marchi's 21,000-man Sardinian army (including 4,000 Austrians) and Johann Peter Beaulieu's 28,000-strong Habsburg army.
Several passes and river valleys crossed the Ligurian Alps mountain chain between the Italian Riviera and Piedmont. From west to east, they were the Col de Tende which was guarded on the north by the fortress city of Cuneo, the Tanaro River which passed through Ceva, the Colle di Cadibona between Savona and Carcare, the Col di Giovo near Sassello, the Turchino Pass north of Voltri and the Bocchetta Pass north of Genoa. The coastal strip to the south was not sufficient to support an army unless it was well supplied. However, to the north, Piedmont and the Po valley were rich in resources. The theater of operations stretched from the Col de Tende on the west to Voltri on the east.