The allies had good grounds for confidence.  Though Russia had withdrawn from the Second Coalition yet the Austrians continued their victorious advance in Italy.  In April, 1800, they severed the French forces near Savona, driving back Suchet’s corps towards Nice, while the other was gradually hemmed in behind the redoubts of Genoa.  There the Imperialist advance was stoutly stayed.  Massena, ably seconded by Oudinot and Soult, who now gained their first laurels as generals, maintained a most obstinate resistance, defying alike the assaults of the white-coats, the bombs hurled by the English squadron, and the deadlier inroads of famine and sickness.  The garrison dwindled by degrees to less than 10,000 effectives, but they kept double the number of Austrians there, while Bonaparte was about to strike a terrible blow against their rear and that of Melas further west.  It was for this that the First Consul urged Massena to hold out at Genoa to the last extremity, and nobly was the order obeyed.

Suchet meanwhile defended the line of the River Var against Melas.  In Germany, Moreau with his larger forces slowly edged back the chief Austrian army, that of General Kray, from the defiles of the Black Forest, compelling it to fall back on the intrenched camp at Ulm.

On their side, the Austrians strove to compel Massena to a speedy surrender, and then with a large force to press on into Nice, Provence, and possibly Savoy, surrounding Suchet’s force, and rousing the French royalists of the south to a general insurrection.  They also had the promise of the help of a British force, which was to be landed at some point on the coast and take Suchet in the flank or rear.[139] Such was the plan, daring in outline and promising great things, provided that everything went well.  If Massena surrendered, if the British War Office and Admiralty worked up to time, if the winds were favourable, and if the French royalists again ventured on a revolt, then France would be crippled, perhaps conquered.  As for the French occupation of Switzerland and Moreau’s advance into Swabia, that was not to prevent the prosecution of the original Austrian plan of advancing against Provence and wresting Nice and Savoy from the French grasp.  This scheme has been criticised as if it were based solely on military considerations; but it was rather dictated by schemes of political aggrandizement.  The conquest of Nice and Savoy was necessary to complete the ambitious schemes of the Hapsburgs, who sought to gain a large part of Piedmont at the expense of the King of Sardinia, and after conquering Savoy and Nice, to thrust that unfortunate king to the utmost verge of the peninsula, which the prowess of his descendants has ultimately united under the Italian tricolour.

The allied plan sinned against one of the elementary rules of strategy; it exposed a large force to a blow from the rear, namely, from Switzerland.  The importance of this immensely strong central position early attracted Bonaparte’s attention.  On the 17th of March he called his secretary, Bourrienne (so the latter states), and lay down with him on a map of Piedmont:  then, placing pins tipped, some with red, others with black wax, so as to denote the positions of the troops, he asked him to guess where the French would beat their foes: