Such was the barrier which Napoleon intended to surmount, that
he might fall upon the rear of the Austrians, who were battering
down the walls of Genoa, where Massena was besieged, and who were
thundering, flushed with victory, at the very gates of Nice. Over
this wild mountain pass, where the mule could with difficulty
tread, and where no wheel had ever rolled, or by any possibility
could roll, Napoleon contemplated transporting an army of sixty
thousand men, with ponderous artillery and tons of cannon balls,
and baggage, and all the bulky munitions of war. England and Austria
laughed the idea to scorn. The achievement of such an enterprise
was apparently impossible. Napoleon, however was as skillful in
the arrangement of the minutest details, as in the conception of
the grandest combinations. Though he resolved to take the mass of
his army, forty thousand strong, across the pass of the Great St.
Bernard, yet to distract the attention of the Austrians, he arranged
also to send small divisions across the passes of Saint Gothard,
Little St. Bernard, and Mount Cenis. He would thus accumulate
suddenly, and to the utter amazement of the enemy, a body of sixty-five
thousand men upon the plain of Italy. This force, descending, like
an apparition from the clouds, in the rear of the Austrian army,
headed by Napoleon, and cutting off all communication with Austria,
might indeed strike a panic into the hearts of the assailants of
France.

The troops were collected in various places in the vicinity
of Dijon, ready at a moment's warning to assemble at the point of
rendezvous, and with a rush to enter the defile. Immense magazines
of wheat, biscuit, and oats had been noiselessly collected in
different places. Large sums of specie had been forwarded, to hire