The true tactique of an Italian invasion is a succession of rapid, daring, and _hazardous_ attacks. This is the dictate of experience in every example of Italian conquest. A bold rush into the interior, leaving all fortresses behind, despising the obstacles of rivers, lakes, and mountains, and only hurrying on to meet the enemy in line, has been the principle of success from the first days of the French assaults on Italy to the last. _Their_ war was an incursion, their marches were a headlong charge, their battles were outbursts of furious force; and, if their triumphs were transient, they failed merely from the national caprice which tires of every thing, and from the exhaustion of an ill-regulated finance. The French, even under the old Bourbons, never descended the Alps without sweeping all resistance before them. The campaigns of Napoleon in 1796, and the following year, were on the same principle. He plunged into Italy at the head of 50,000 troops, ragged, hungry, and in beggary, but the first robbers in Europe. He told them that, by beating the Italians, they should get clothes, food, and money. As a strategist, he probably committed a thousand faults, but he did not commit the grand fault of all, that of giving the enemy time to recover his senses. He fought every day,--he fought by night as well as by day. At Montenotte, he fought for twelve hours, and was beaten; he again mounted his horse at midnight, attacked the victor in his first sleep, and, before morning, was master of the mountains, with the Austrian army in full flight, and the gates of Turin open before him. The Russian campaign in Italy was on the same principle. "When you are not fighting, march; when you are not marching, fight." When the Austrian generals advised Suwarrow to manœuvre, he laughed, and told them that tactics were only trifling. "Make reconnoissances," said the greybeard pupils of the Aulic Council. "My reconnoissances," said the great Russian, "are of 10,000 men. Form column, charge bayonet, plunge into the enemy's centre. These are my only reconnoissances." In three months he drove the French, under their two best officers, Macdonald and Moreau, across the Alps, and cleared Italy. A lingering Italian campaign is always a campaign thrown away, or a country lost. It is the work of a military gambler. Napoleon's invasion of Italy, in his consulate, was one of the most desperate hazards ever ventured in war. He might have been defeated, and, if defeated, he must have been utterly ruined. But he attacked the Austrians, was repulsed, renewed the attack in desperation, repulsed the enemy in turn, and next day saw all Italy capitulate to him.