He quelled insubordination in the ranks by quick, severe punishment, but it was not long that he had insubordination. The army asked nothing but to act, and immediately they saw that they were to move. He had reached his post on March 22d; nineteen days later operations began. The theatre of action was along that portion of the maritime Alps which runs parallel with the sea. Bonaparte held the coast and the mountains; and north, in the foot-hills, stretched from the Tende to Genoa, were the Austrians and their Sardinian allies. If the French were fully ten thousand inferior in number, their position was the stronger, for the enemy was scattered in a hilly country where it was difficult to unite their divisions. As Bonaparte faced his enemy, it was with a youthful zest and anticipation which explains much of what follows. “The two armies are in motion,” he wrote Josephine, “each trying to outwit the other. The more skilful will succeed. I am much pleased with Beaulieu. He manœuvres very well, and is superior to his predecessor. I shall beat him, I hope, out of his boots.” The first step in the campaign was a skilful stratagem. He spread rumors which made Beaulieu suspect that he intended marching on Genoa, and he threw out his lines in that direction. The Austrian took the feint as a genuine movement, and marched his left to the sea to cut off the French advance. But Bonaparte was not marching to Genoa, and, rapidly collecting his forces, he fell on the Austrian army at Montenotte on April 12th, and defeated it. The right and left of the allies were divided, and the centre broken. By a series of clever feints, Bonaparte prevented the various divisions of the enemy from reënforcing each other, and forced them separately to battle. At Millesimo, on the 14th, he defeated one section; on the same day, at Dego, another; the next morning, near Dego, another. The Austrians were now driven back, but their Sardinian allies were still at Ceva. To them Bonaparte now turned, and, driving them from their camp, defeated them at Mondovi on the 22d. It was phenomenal in Italy. In ten days the “rag heroes,” at whom they had been mocking for three years, had defeated two well-fed armies ten thousand stronger than themselves, and might at any moment march on Turin. The Sardinians sued for peace. The victory was as bewildering to the French as it was terrifying to the enemy, and Napoleon used it to stir his army to new conquests. “Soldiers!” he said, “in fifteen days you have gained six victories, taken twenty-one stands of colors, fifty-five pieces of cannon, and several fortresses, and conquered the richest part of Piedmont. You have made fifteen hundred prisoners, and killed or wounded ten thousand men.