Bonaparte's own army was now in motion. Its destination was still secret; its very existence was doubted by the Austrian generals. On the 8th of May the First Consul himself arrived at Geneva, and assumed the command. The campaign upon which this army was now entering was designed by Bonaparte to surpass everything that Europe had hitherto seen most striking in war. The feats of Massena and Suvaroff in the Alps had filled his imagination with mountain warfare. A victory over nature more imposing than theirs might, in the present position of the Austrian forces in Lombardy, be made the prelude to a victory in the field without a parallel in its effects upon the enemy. Instead of relieving Genoa by an advance along the coast-road, Bonaparte intended to march across the Alps and to descend in the rear of the Austrians. A single defeat would then cut the Austrians off from their communications with Mantua, and result either in the capitulation of their army or in the evacuation of the whole of the country that they had won, Bonaparte led his army into the mountains. The pass of the Great St. Bernard, though not a carriage-road, offered little difficulty to a commander supplied with every resource of engineering material and skill; and by this road the army crossed the Alps. The cannons were taken from their carriages and dragged up the mountain in hollowed trees; thousands of mules transported the ammunition and supplies; workshops for repairs were established on either slope of the mountain; and in the Monastery of St. Bernard there were stores collected sufficient to feed the soldiers as they reached the summit during six successive days (May 15-20). The passage of the St. Bernard was a triumph of organisation, foresight, and good management; as a military exploit it involved none of the danger, none of the suffering, none of the hazard, which gave such interest to the campaign of Massena and Suvaroff. [Bonaparte cuts off the Austrian army from Eastern Lombardy.]