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Battle of Rivoli

The Battle of Rivoli (14 January 1797) was a key military engagement during the War of the First Coalition in the vicinity of the village of Rivoli, then part of the Republic of Venice. The outnumbered French Army of Italy commanded by General Napoleon Bonaparte decisively defeated the attacking Austrian army commanded by General of the Artillery Jozsef Alvinczi, who was attempting to march south in a fourth and final attempt to relieve the siege of Mantua. Rivoli further demonstrated Napoleon's capability and deftness as a military commander and led to the Austrian surrender of Mantua in February and French consolidation of northern Italy, ultimately resulting in France's victory over Austria in the war later that year.

Prelude[edit]

Alvinczi's plan was to rush and overwhelm Barthélemy Joubert in the mountains east of Lake Garda by concentrating 28,000 men in five separate columns, and thereby gain access to the open country north of Mantua where Austrian superior numbers would be able to defeat Bonaparte's smaller Army of Italy. Alvinczi attacked Joubert's 10,000 men on 12 January. However Joubert held him off and was subsequently joined by Louis-Alexandre Berthier and, at 2 am on 14 January, by Bonaparte, who brought up elements of André Masséna's division to support Joubert's efforts to form a defensive line on favorable ground just north of Rivoli on the Trambasore Heights. The battle would be a contest between Alvinczi's efforts to concentrate his dispersed columns versus the arrival of French reinforcements.

Legacy[edit]

The Rue de Rivoli, a street in central Paris, is named after the battle.

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Militär-historisches Kriegs-Lexikon (1618-1905)

Boycott-Brown, Martin (2002). The Road to Rivoli. Cassell; New Ed edition.  0-304-36209-3.

ISBN

Burton, Reginald George (2010). Napoleon's Campaigns in Italy 1796–1797 & 1800.  978-0-85706-356-4.

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(1979). Dictionary of the Napoleonic Wars. New York: Macmillan. ISBN 0-02-523670-9.

Chandler, David

Forrest, Alan (2011). . Quercus Publishing. ISBN 978-0-85738-759-2. Retrieved 23 April 2013.

Napoleon

(1980). The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-31076-8.

Rothenberg, Gunther E.

Grant, R. G. (2017). . Chartwell Books. ISBN 978-0785835530.

1001 Battles That Changed the Course of History

(1998). The Greenhill Napoleonic Wars Data Book: Actions and Losses in Personnel, Colours, Standards and Artillery, 1792–1815. Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books. ISBN 1-85367-276-9.

Smith, Digby

Clodfelter, M. (2017). Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492-2015 (4th ed.). Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland.  978-0-7864-7470-7.

ISBN

Photographs of the battlefield of Rivoli

Media related to Battle of Rivoli at Wikimedia Commons