The battle of Marengo (14 June 1800) was a major French victory that helped to secure Napoleon's power as First Consul as well as expelling the Austrians from most of Italy. The battle came at the end of a month long campaign that began when Napoleon led his army across the St. Bernard Pass in mid May. The French advanced towards Turin, before turning east, entering Milan on 2 June. Napoleon then turned south to the Po, occupied a key chokepoint on the road between Turin and Mantua at Stradella. Napoleon hoped that the Austrians would be forced to attack him in this position in an attempt to re-open their supply lines.
For most of this period the Austrians were distracted by the siege of Genoa, which finally fell on 4 June. This meant that the Austrian commander, Michael Friedrich Freiherr von Melas, was able to concentrate a sizable army at Alessandria. It also meant that he no longer needed to attack the Stradella position, but instead could either break out to north-east, past Milan, to rejoin the Austrian armies forced east by Napoleon, or move south to Genoa and the sea. On 8 June Napoleon ordered his army to move west from Stradalla, in an attempt to catch the Austrians before they escaped. This brought on a battle between the French advance guard under Lannes and an Austrian force under Ott, which had been heading east in an attempt to defend Piacenza. The resulting battle of Casteggio-Montebello (9 June 1800) ended in a French victory. Ott was forced back towards Alessandria, while Napoleon continued to advance west (see Marengo Campaign for more details)
Marengo was the subject of more propaganda than just about any other Napoleonic battle. The original Army Bulletin was followed by three Official Reports, each less reliable than the last. By the time of the third report the Austrian breakthrough had been turned into a planned fighting retreat carried out by Napoleon simply to increase the size of a victory he had already won. The reason for this was quite simple - Napoleon had come to power claiming that he was the only man who could save France from a military disaster. Although he had indeed won a victory at Marengo, the most significant victory during the War of the Second Coalition was won by Moreau at Hohenlinden on 3 December 1800. Napoleon's propaganda was designed to increase the scale and significance of his own victory, and thus his own claim to be the greatest general in France. Austrian accounts were often no more accurate, so although the basic outline of events is clear, the details are not always so certain, and a very wide range of casualty figures can be found.
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