Suwarrow, satisfied with his dearly-bought victory, for he had lost ten thousand men in the conflict, did not venture to pursue the retiring foe, but with his bleeding and exhausted army fell back to Coni; and thence established garrisons throughout Piedmont and Lombardy.  Paul was almost delirious with joy at this great victory.  He issued a decree declaring Suwarrow to be the greatest general “of all times, of all peoples and of all quarters of the globe.”  In his pride he declared that republican France, for the crime of rebelling against legitimate authority, should receive punishment which should warn all nations against following her example.  The Russian squadron combined with that of the Turks, formed a junction with the victorious fleet of Nelson, and sailing from the bay of Aboukir, swept the French fleet from the Mediterranean.

The Austrians and Russians, thus victorious, now marched to assail Massena at Zurich on the Rhine, intending there to cross the stream and invade France.  For a month, in September and October, 1799, there was a series of incessant battles.  But the republican armies were triumphant.  The banners of France struggled proudly through many scenes of blood and woe, and the shores of Lake Zurich and the fastnesses of the Alps, were strewed with the dead bodies of the Russians.  In fourteen days twenty thousand Russians and six thousand Austrians were slain.  Suwarrow, the intrepid barbarian, with but ten thousand men saved from his proud army, retreated overwhelmed with confusion and rage.  Republican France was saved.  The rage which Suwarrow displayed is represented as truly maniacal.  He foamed at the mouth and roared like a bull.  As a wounded lion turns upon his pursuers, from time to time he stopped in his retreat, and rushed back upon the foe.  He was crushed in body and mind by this defeat.  Having wearied himself in denouncing, in unmeasured terms, all his generals and soldiers, he became taciturn and moody.  Secluding himself from his fellow-men he courted solitude, and surrendered himself to a fantastic and superstitious devotion.  Enveloped in a cloak, and with his eyes fixed upon the ground, he would occasionally pass through the camp, condescending to notice no one.

Paul had also sent an army into Holland, against France, which had been utterly repulsed by General Brune, with the loss of many slain and taken prisoners.  The tidings of these disasters roused, in the bosom of Paul, fury equal to that which Suwarrow had displayed.  He bitterly cursed his allies, England and Austria, declaring that they, in the pursuit of their own selfish interests, had abandoned his armies to destruction.  Suwarrow, deprived of further command, and overwhelmed with disgrace, retired to one of his rural retreats where he soon died of chagrin.