We have seen the Austrians fighting and suffering defeat from France in the Netherlands. There was another battle ground where these two had now to meet, and that was in the beautiful country of Northern Italy where the Austrian Habsburgs and the Bourbons of France and Spain had met many a time. Of all the Allies, Austria had the right to feel most bitterly towards the French, for the queen whom the French had beheaded was daughter of the Austrian Empress. [Sidenote: Napoleon I] As early as 1792 the armies of revolutionary France had swept over Savoy--at that time an independent State with which Sardinia was conjoined. Sardinians were now in the coalition against France, and there was a Sardinian army co-operating with the Austrians in North Italy. In 1796 Napoleon was put in command of the Army of Italy, and at once he gave evidence of those qualities which made him the master mind in war. [Illustration: THE GREAT NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. (From an Engraving after a Portrait by Paul Delarothe.)] It is impossible here even to touch on his campaigns in any detail; nor is it possible to select any one campaign or a single battle as a type of his generalship or his tactics, because perhaps the chief reason of all his success is that he was so very able to vary them according to the needs of each case. It was this, that there was no reckoning what he was likely to do, that confused his enemies so greatly. But in all his campaigns we find a common point, {167} that he realised probably more fully than any of his opponents the value of time, and had so masterly a power of organisation that he nearly always arrived at the place where he had determined to give battle before his enemies were ready for him. {168} It was just so with this his first campaign in Italy. He was across the Alps, with his army, and into Milan and the Austrian dominions far quicker than he had been expected; and here he did execute one of his most favourite manœuvres, which, at all events, might always be foreseen if the opportunity for it were given him. He thrust his army in between the armies of the Austrians eastward and the Sardinians westward and so disabled the latter, and less powerful, foe from any valuable co-operation at the very outset. Then, turning eastward, he defeated the Austrians again and again, driving them from Italy and pursuing them far along the road to Vienna. He turned southward thence and seized the lands of Venice. In the treaty which ended this campaign, in 1797, France gained the Netherlands, the Ionian Islands, and territory along the Rhine and in Albania. The following year the French were in Rome, which they captured, making the Pope a prisoner and establishing what was called the Tiberine Republic.