Melas meanwhile was concentrating his forces round the great stronghold of Alessandria and ordered his troops on the Var to join him there. Suchet immediately recrossed the river, recaptured Nice and furiously harassed their retreat. Now that the Austrians were almost encircled, Bonaparte was preparing to give battle. On June 9th he left Milan and advanced through Stradella. With Genoa open to him Melas' wisest course would have been to retire on the city and evacuate his Army in the British ships, but pride decided him to stand at Alessandria and fight with the hope of breaking right through the French. And, although he was unaware of it, his decision had much to recommend it; as Bonaparte's forces were now spread over a great area and when he arrived opposite Marengo, a village some three miles southeast of Alessandria, on June 14th, he had only eighteen thousand men under his hand to oppose the breakout of thirty-one thousand Austrians.
A few days earlier, Desaix had arrived unexpectedly upon the scene. This paladin was Bonaparte's favourite General; but as his decision to leave Egypt had been taken so abruptly and Desaix was then commanding a corps far up the Nile, he had had to be left behind. Having succeeded in getting back to Europe, Desaix had at once decided to rejoin his former Chief, and Bonaparte was overjoyed to see him. Detaching six thousand men from the twenty-four thousand he by then had available, he sent Desaix off with them in the direction of Genoa to prevent the Austrians from retiring on the port and escaping from it. Now, as battle was joined, he realized too late that he had made a big mistake and was heavily outnumbered.
At dawn Melas opened the attack by pouring his troops across the Bormida river. They drove the French outposts back on Marengo but met with stout resistance from Victor, who was holding the village. This gave time for Lannes to bring up his division; but by ten o'clock the full force of the Austrian assault had developed. Marengo was captured and Lannes, although contesting every inch of the ground, was being driven back. An hour later Bonaparte came up from the rear to find his troops giving way in the centre and outflanked on both wings. He at once threw his only reserve, the Consular Guard, into the battle. For an hour its one thousand men. formed up in square, fought valiantly, and by their stand enabled Victor and Lannes to get their battered divisions back into better shape. But by two o'clock only St. Cyr, on the right flank, was holding his ground. All but five of Marmont's guns had been put out of action, and the flood of white-coated Austrians was again forcing back the centre and the left. Despite threats, pleas and exhortations from their officers and Bonaparte himself, many of the men were throwing down their weapons and several units were in full retreat. There could be no doubt about it, the French were being beaten.
Early that morning Desaix had heard the distant sound of gunfire and, turning his columns about, set off in that direction. Then, in mid-morning, one of Bonaparte's A.D.Cs came galloping up to him with an urgent order to hasten to his Chiefs assistance; but to reach Marengo meant many hours of forced marching. Despite his doing his utmost it was not until five o'clock that he arrived on the field of battle. By then, although many French units were still fighting gallantly, the line was broken in several places and the Austrian cavalry through, cutting down fleeing men from shattered battalions.
As Desaix rode up Bonaparte said to him glumly, 'What do you think of it?'
Glancing at the terrible scene of carnage. Desaix replied, 'This battle is lost, but there is still time to gain another.'
Bonaparte swiftly made fresh dispositions. Marmont had just brought up a reserve battery of thirteen guns from the rear. They were deployed to fire through the gaps torn in the French line. Desaix was despatched to take up a position behind Marengo village and a nearby hill. Kellermann, the son of the veteran General, was in command of the heavy cavalry. It had already done good service throughout the day and had suffered heavy casualties, but was still capable of making a charge, and was sent round behind Desaix to the extreme French left. When these troops had taken up their positions Bonaparte launched his counter-attack.
The sudden appearance of Desaix's six thousand tired, but still unused, troops advancing in parade ground formation over the hill put new life into the other divisions; their impact on the enemy stayed the retreat, but was not sufficient to force them back. For another hour the terrible struggle raged, swayed first one way then the other, and it remained uncertain which Army would emerge victorious.
Throughout most of the day. with his staff sitting their horses behind him, Bonaparte had been stationed on a rise in the ground watching the battle; now and then, after a glance through his spy glass, sending one of his A.D.C.s off with an order to the commander of a unit.
Now, with perfect timing, he turned, looked at Roger and snapped, 'Tell Kellermann to charge.'
Instantly Roger repeated the order, set spurs to his horse, and galloped off across the plain.
During the battle he had, like the other A.D.C.s, carried several orders, either verbally or scribbled by Bonaparte on a pad, to various senior officers, and two of his companions had failed to return. That did not necessarily mean that they had been killed or seriously wounded. When delivering their messages gallopers were, at times, caught up in the fighting and, although it was their duty to rejoin their General as soon as possible, two or three hours might elapse before they were able to do so. Nevertheless Roger greatly disliked such missions.
It was not that he was a coward. Far from it. He had fought several duels and would have met any man with sword or pistol. He had, too, never openly displayed fear in the numerous battles in which he had been forced to take part. But he had gained his sobriquet of "Lc Brave Breuc' largely under false pretences.
Bonaparte had originally formed the impression that he was a courageous man because, within a week or so of their first meeting, Roger had. with the Corsican looking on, led on foot a charge against a battery of Spanish guns; but only because, in the particular circumstances, he had had no option. Admittedly he had personally and alone defended the General from an attack by a dozen conspirators while in Venice, and received a Sword of Honour as a reward for his gallantry; but that had been more in the nature of a duel against odds. The truth about his having brought a Turkish standard to Bonaparte at the siege of Acre was not that he had fought desperately to capture it, but that while unobserved he had simply picked it up from a dead soldier in a trench and walked off with it; while the exploit that had clinched his reputation throughout the Army for bravery was his having, presumably, been taken prisoner by the British at the Battle of the Nile and afterwards making his escape in full daylight with them shooting at him—but shooting to miss because he was escaping with their connivance.
So as he now rode at full tilt across the bullet-scarred ground, littered with dead and wounded, smashed gun carriages and abandoned weapons he felt none of the exhilaration that a Murat or a Lannes would have experienced. Instead he was praying that he would once again manage to carry out his orders without getting involved in the indiscriminate killing which he so heartily disliked.
As for twelve hours without cessation some sixty thousand men had been blazing off with cannon and muskets, a great pall of smoke hung over the battle-field creating a premature dusk on this summer evening. Smoke, too, obscured the greater part of the conflict that was still raging, so Roger could catch only glimpses here and there of groups of soldiers either firing volleys or going forward at an uneven run. The din was terrible, the boom of cannon and the continuous rattle of musketry being pierced every few moments by a shouted order or the scream of a badly wounded man.