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of propaganda than had ever been the case before. Although the French ruler hid behind the fact that it coincided with the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, his return to Paris was celebrated with great pomp and ceremony, while the campaign had already been marked by the creation of an entirely false image of Napoleon as romantic hero doing personal battle with the forces of nature. As a bulletin of 24 May proclaimed, ‘The First Consul descended from the top of the St Bernard by sliding on the snow . . . and leaping over precipices.’21 In reality, Napoleon had made the crossing in much more prosaic fashion, mounted on a mule, just as his troops trudged along not precipitous goat-tracks but a reasonably serviceable highway. Yet such details did not stop him from embellishing his alpine adventure still further. Thus, in one of a series of paintings commissioned after Marengo, the First Consul is depicted by David in the act of waving on his troops while mounted on a mettlesome charger. Carved on the rocks in the foreground, appear three names: Bonaparte, Hannibal and Carolus Magnus (i.e. Charlemagne). As for the forces of nature, they remain present in the vicious wind that is whipping Napoleon’s voluminous cloak from around his body. Implicit in this image are a variety of claims: next to Alexander the Great, Hannibal was the greatest hero of the ancient world, while Charlemagne’s kingdom encompassed both France and Italy. Less well known but just as interesting is the painting that was produced of Marengo by Lejeune: Desaix is present in the picture - indeed, he is shown in the act of falling dead at the head of his victorious troops - but he is portrayed as a tiny figure deep in the middle distance, whereas the chief focus of the picture is Napoleon, who is pictured riding forward with his staff and directing operations. Nor is this an end to the story: at first sight, the First Consul appears to be riding to the rescue of his subordinate rather than the other way about.

A fresh campaign on the Continent, then, was not unwelcome to Napoleon. But on this occasion he was denied the glory to which he so aspired. Still in Paris when hostilities broke out on 22 November, Napoleon seems to have intended to head for Italy and take control of the 90,000 French troops concentrated on the river Mincio under General Brune. In the event there was to be no third Italian campaign, for the Austrians again seized the initiative and thereby precipitated a chain of events that left the First Consul out in the cold. This time, however, the onslaught came in Bavaria, where the forces of the Archduke John turned Moreau’s left flank and launched a drive on Munich. In theory, the plan was a good one, for the French might have been trapped against the Bavarian Alps, but John was an inexperienced commander while the French had the advantage of interior lines. The result was disaster for the allied cause. Pouncing on the Austrians at the village of Hohenlinden on 3 December, Moreau shattered John’s army beyond repair, before breaking through to the Danube and marching deep into Austria. With Hohenlinden in some respects a greater victory than Marengo - in the earlier action the Austrians lost thirty-three guns whereas at Hohenlinden they lost fifty - Napoleon was furious at being deprived of his share of the glory, all the more so as Moreau was a staunch Republican as well as a long-term rival. Years afterwards he was still inclined to run down the general’s achievement:

[Hohenlinden] was one of those great battles that are born of chance and won without any planning. Moreau did not show enough decision: that was why he chose to remain on the defensive. In the end it was a mere scuffle: the enemy was struck in the very midst of his operations and defeated by troops they had cut off and should have destroyed. All the merit belonged to the ordinary soldiers and to the commanders of the divisions which found themselves in most danger, all of whom fought like heroes.22

Yet, however irritated the First Consul may have been, Hohenlinden secured