“How the devil should I know?” said Bourrienne.  “Why, look here, you fool,” said the First Consul:  “Melas is at Alessandria with his headquarters.  There he will remain until Genoa surrenders.  He has at Alessandria his magazines, his hospitals, his artillery, his reserves.  Crossing the Alps here (at the Great St. Bernard), I shall fall upon Melas, cut off his communications with Austria, and meet him here in the plains of the River Scrivia at San Giuliano.”

I quote this passage as showing how readily such stories of ready-made plans gain credence, until they come to be tested by Napoleon’s correspondence.  There we find no strategic soothsaying, but only a close watching of events as they develop day by day.  In March and April he kept urging on Moreau the need of an early advance, while he considered the advantages offered by the St. Gotthard, Simplon, and Great St. Bernard passes for his own army.  On April 27th he decided against the first (except for a detachment), because Moreau’s advance was too slow to safeguard his rear on that route.  He now preferred the Great St. Bernard, but still doubted whether, after crossing, he should make for Milan, or strike at Massena’s besiegers, in case that general should be very hard pressed.  Like all great commanders, he started with a general plan, but he arranged the details as the situation required.  In his letter of May 19th, he poured scorn on Parisian editors who said he prophesied that in a month he would be at Milan.  “That is not in my character.  Very often I do not say what I know:  but never do I say what will be.”

The better to hide his purpose, he chose as his first base of operations the city of Dijon, whence he seemed to threaten either the Swabian or the Italian army of his foes.  But this was not enough.  At the old Burgundian capital he assembled his staff and a few regiments of conscripts in order to mislead the English and Austrian spies; while the fighting battalions were drafted by diverse routes to Geneva or Lausanne.  So skilful were these preparations that, in the early days of May, the greater part of his men and stores were near the lake of Geneva, whence they were easily transferred to the upper valley of the Rhone.  In order that he might have a methodical, hard-working coadjutor he sent Berthier from the office of the Ministry of War, where he had displayed less ability than Bernadotte, to be commander-in-chief of the “army of reserve.”  In reality Berthier was, as before in Italy and Egypt, chief of the staff; but he had the titular dignity of commander which the constitution of 1800 forbade the First Consul to assume.