Marengo Page 3
Believing he was about to be rescued by MacDonald in a matter of weeks, Foissac-Latour’s reply was extremely optimistic. It was perhaps over-optimistic, as Foissac-Latour suspected the letter might fall into enemy hands one way or the other and he wanted to play up his strengths. There were hardships of course; they had been on awful biscuits for a month and meat rations were limited to twice every ten days. There had been desertions – about sixty Italians - but the Polish and Swiss troops were doing well, albeit pay had been cut by a third. There was also sickness, with around 500 men in hospital, and this had been made much worse by the heavy rains and the putrid emanations from the surrounding swamps. However, he and his commanders and staff were going to drink a toast to the junction of the Armies of Naples and Italy and their arrival at Mantua. If MacDonald could get word to him of his approach, Foissac-Latour offered to march out with five to six thousand men and a large artillery park. However, he would need certain reassurances if he were not to walk into a trap. ‘If your spy was double,’ Foissac-Latour cautioned, ‘he could bring me down.’
Gioelli used hollow compartments in his heels to hide this message. He exited the city and headed straight for Roverbella, where he handed the message to Zach. The Austrian chief of staff was extremely pleased the spy had come back, and was equally pleased with sight of the hidden message. He awarded Gioelli 50 Ducats from his secret expenditure fund and promised the delivery of further intelligence would be similarly rewarded. Gioelli was sent back to MacDonald with the letter and ‘with false intelligence’.10 This misinformation probably underplayed the Austrians’ strength and determination to escalate the blockade into a full-blown siege. In any case, a combination of the letter and the falsehoods Gioelli delivered caused MacDonald to renounce for the foreseeable future his attempts to relieve Mantua, and instead to march off towards Genoa to join with Moreau. This delay proved fatal for the defenders.
Would Foissac-Latour have ever written that letter with full knowledge of events? No. If Gioelli had not been so convincing and upbeat about MacDonald’s chances, if Foissac-Latour had known about the Battle of the Trebbia, he would have likely given a more cautious appraisal and a sense of urgency. Instead, his message gave MacDonald a false sense of security. Foissac-Latour’s attempt at a ruse backfired. After Marengo, it became common knowledge that Zach had indeed read Foissac-Latour’s letter to MacDonald, and this confirmed Gioelli’s treachery. However, without a court martial, Foissac-Latour could never hope to clear his name, and he went to an early grave cursing the day he met the Piedmontese spy.
And of course it did not end there. Gioelli became a frequent visitor to Zach, who after Mantua became chief of staff to the Austrian army in Italy. It is almost certain Gioelli was the trustworthy ‘private means’ by which MacDonald learned of Mantua’s fall. When MacDonald and Moreau prepared to leave Italy for Paris, they handed over their commands to Generals Joubert and Championnet respectively. It appears MacDonald handed over Gioelli to Championnet, and so the Italian was therefore free and well-placed to continue his treacherous trade. And so he did. Every time the French attempted a new initiative, the Austrians somehow had the upper hand. Their final attempt to push back the Austrians and retain a foothold in Piedmont came at the Battle of Genola on 4 November. Here again General Championnet was bested by Melas. Of course, he had no idea Gioelli had delivered his battle plan to Zach.
After the victory at Genola, the Austrians pushed on and laid siege to the fortress of Cuneo, an important stronghold in south-west Piedmont on the confluence of the Stura and Gesso rivers. This was the last French foothold in Piedmont, and although late in the season for launching military operations, Zach was convinced its capture would crown an already successful year. The loss of Cuneo would consign the French to the Ligurian Riviera and deny them control of the main road from Turin to Nice over the Col di Tenda. The siege commenced on 7 November.
Behind the scenes, Championnet had fallen ill and would die in a matter of weeks. Command of the French Army of Italy passed to 29-year-old Louis-Gabriel Suchet, previously Joubert’s chief of staff. With the command of the new army came the services of the agent Gioelli. Suchet despatched the Italian to Cuneo with an urgent message for the besieged commander, General Claude Clement. As he left Suchet’s headquarters at Finale, Gioelli started to suspect his luck was running out and his duplicity was about to be exposed. The spy was somewhat jittery, therefore, when he arrived in the Austrian headquarters at Borgo San Dalmazzo at noon on 2 December. Cunningly disguised as a lemon seller, Gioelli was carrying several documents, including a large, folded Army of Italy proclamation to be read to the besieged troops and a small format, eight-page Order of the Day dated 29/30 Brumaire (20/21 November), which included the announcement of a new government under Bonaparte, recently returned from Egypt. Gioelli was given a verbal instruction from Suchet to Clement that a relief force would arrive on 5 December and he was to hold out determinedly until relieved. Having delivered this information, the spy produced a small message hidden in the hollow heel of his boot. It was just 6cm square and sealed with red wax to make it waterproof. Suchet’s message was dated Pietra, 5 Frimaire, Year 8 (26 November 1799) and read:
‘Listen to the man who hands you this note; welcome him; however watch him. Give us your news and reckon that you will soon hear news of us.’11
Suchet’s warning to watch Gioelli confirmed the French were suspicious of him, but this did not prevent him from carrying out one last service for Zach. In return for the sum of 1,000 Ducats, an enhanced pension and the right to refuse future missions, Gioelli theatrically made his play.12 He said:
‘I leave myself in your hands. Dispose of my life, either take it from me or allow me to pull off a major service. Here is what I propose to you: I will enter this place; I am, as you know, known to the commanders.’
The spy pulled out another small piece of paper, which was blank, except for Suchet’s signature. It was in effect a blank cheque. He continued:
‘The signature that I am showing you will make the order, which I am going to fill in before your very eyes, seem completely genuine. This order will instruct the commander of the place to yield it to you on the most advantageous conditions he can obtain. I will justify this order and the impossibility of raising the siege, due to the blockages caused by the heavy snow and the wretched state of the army.’
Knowing Suchet was only a few days away from marching to the relief of Cuneo, and with the siege still in its early days, Zach eagerly agreed to the spy’s proposal. However, instead of having Gioelli write the order, Zach called for Captain Englebert, an expert in handwriting who could write in a style indistinguishable from Suchet’s own hand. The new message read:
‘Listen to the man who brings you this note and Order of the Day. If he can, he will tell you of the situation of the republic and of ourselves; receive it and give us your news; the weather is against us.’
Gioelli agreed that, as he handed over the note, he would tell Clement the army was in no condition to come to his relief. He was also to describe the chaos into which the republican army had fallen, with desertions, revolts in Genoa and, finally, that a recent coup d’état in Paris had disrupted everything, leaving the capital in chaos. In short, Gioelli was to paint an utterly bleak picture to the commander of the French garrison.
The spy quit headquarters just after dark and was escorted through the trenches before Cuneo as far as the third siege parallel. From there, Gioelli ran out into the open ground, heading straight at the French outposts. To make the scene more believable, several Austrian soldiers were ordered to fire at Gioelli with blank cartridges. As the musketry crackled into life, the French troops hastily opened the barricades to allow Gioelli through. Establishing his identify with the outpost commander, the spy was immediately escorted to Clement at his headquarters, where the next stage of the deception began.13
Until now Zach had retained a healthy scepticism about Gioelli. The spy had proven useful, and his infor
mation had prevented the Austrians from making some imprudent moves in the latter half of the year. With the Italian safely delivered to Cuneo, there was nothing for it but to wait and see what, if anything, the outcome of the mission would be. They did not have to wait very long. At seven o’clock that same evening, word arrived that General Clement wished a meeting place for a parley. A rendezvous was arranged at a place named St Angeli at one o’clock in the morning. Sure enough, a French messenger arrived out of the darkness and announced that Clement would send a fully empowered emissary at 8.00 am to negotiate surrender terms. By noon the following day, the capitulation of Cuneo was agreed. Twenty-four hours after his arrival carrying Suchet’s message, Gioelli returned to Zach and announced he had delivered the surrender of Cuneo as promised.
By now, Zach was working directly for the Austrian commander-in-chief, General der Kavalerie (GdK) Michael Melas. When he learned of Gioelli’s claim to have delivered the surrender of Cuneo, Melas was stupefied at the news. In all his seventy years, Melas had not seen the like. He’d fought the armies of Frederick the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte in his time, but never had he seen an unarmed man walk into a city – a well-provisioned and strongly garrisoned city – and make them lay down their arms as Gioelli claimed to have done. There must have been some other factor, as yet unknown, which had caused Clement to seek the surrender terms. Melas wanted to get to the bottom of the business and instructed Zach to send for Clement’s adjutant, Captain Carlo Falletti. Zach sent staff officer Major Daniel Mecséry to find Falletti and establish the events leading up to the surrender.
Falletti was reportedly something of a chatterbox. He almost bragged to Mecséry that the surrender was nothing to do with cowardice. Despite the Austrian blockade, a confidant had arrived in the city with news of the events in Paris and a verbal order to surrender. Falletti then pulled out the very same Order of the Day Gioelli had carried into the city, citing this as proof of the story. Following the arrival of the confidant, Clement had called a council of war. With the city now under Austrian bombardment and the hopelessness of them being relieved, Clement recommended they seek terms. So it was all true - everything. Gioelli had indeed pulled off an astonishing coup.
Those in the Austrian command who knew the true story of Gioelli’s intervention (the group appears limited to Melas, Zach, Radetzky and several of the staff officers) actually felt sorry for Clement when they heard some of the junior French officers calling him a coward as they filed out of the city. The better-informed blamed the arrival of one of General Championnet’s spies for the disaster. As the troops piled their arms and marched off, a rumble of guns could be heard in the distance. It was the relief column battling its way to save them, alas too late.
Finally satisfied with the loyalty of the spy, Melas wrote to Graf Tige, president of the Hofkriegsrat (high military council), the body which set military policy on behalf of Emperor Francis II. Melas’ long letter detailed Gioelli’s colourful exploits since arriving in Roverbella in June. In reward for his services, Melas recommended Gioelli be paid an annual pension of 200 Florins in addition to the 1,000 Ducats already advanced. Concluding his letter, he added, ‘Gioelli must be thanked, amongst other important services, for the fall of Cuneo, together with the favourable outcome of the battle of the 4th.’14
As the army went into winter quarters, Zach also considered what he ought to do with Gioelli. Although he had promised him the right to refuse future missions, the quartermaster general was reluctant to dispense with the spy’s services completely. Gioelli could not be sent back to Suchet’s army without risking him being unmasked as a double spy and a traitor, but missions elsewhere in Italy might require his special talents. In the interim, Zach persuaded Gioelli to remain with him in the capacity of a spy-master, responsible for the recruitment and training of new scouts. He appears to have become something of a minor celebrity in closed circles. Radetzky claims Zach took him to Vienna. Elsewhere, it is claimed Gioelli even became known to the King of Sardinia after the Cuneo episode. He also became something of a marked man among the pro-French partisans of Piedmont.15
There is a fairly detailed description of Gioelli in the memoirs of Jean-Baptiste Louis Crossard, a French émigré in Austrian service, assigned to the staff of the army in Italy. Crossard identifies Gioelli as a young advocate (lawyer) from Turin excited by the philosophical debates provoked by a new interpretation of Plutarch’s work, Greek Lives. He was inflamed by republican ideals exported by the French Revolution and quickly became a leading exponent of the cause. On 12 December 1798, the French seized Turin and forced King Charles Emmanuel IV to take refuge in Sardinia. Enthusiasm for the new republican regime quickly waned on the approach of the Austro-Russian army under Suvorov. On 26 May 1799, coalition troops entered Turin and Gioelli found himself at odds with the majority of his compatriots. Narrowly evading the scaffold, Gioelli said he sought salvation in the French army, where he was employed in the offices of the French staff in the section responsible for intelligence. There, Crossard wrote, Gioelli’s ‘skill, the language which he was natural with, the relations that he had struck up with the different Italian parties, made him precious, and brought him to the attention of headquarters’. However, when the war in Italy went badly for France in 1799, Gioelli began to realize he faced the prospect of exile. If the Austro-Russians could not be defeated, he would never be able to return home. This ‘heartbreaking’ prospect compelled Gioelli to commit ‘a new treason’, hoping to redeem the crime of having betrayed his king. Likening Gioelli to Sinon, the Greek who convinced the Trojans to accept the gift of a wooden horse, Crossard described how Gioelli masterfully convinced the members of the council of war in Cuneo that the signed order he bore was genuine and there was no hope of them being saved.
We should urge caution from reading Crossard’s account. It is too neat. Spies are by their very nature duplicitous, and as we have already seen, Gioelli was a master of his craft, employing disguises, secret compartments in his heels and so on. He could also be ruthless, as we have seen with his denouncement of the French informant, Carlo Speranza, in Mantua. We must therefore take the tale given to Crossard with a pinch of salt. The secret of imparting a lie or deception is to shroud it in sufficient truth for it to appear plausible. Equally, the falsehood ought to be tailored to the recipient’s character, so it reinforces a belief they already held firmly or at least entertained. Crossard was drawn to Gioelli and compelled to record his story because the Italian portrayed himself as an exile, desperate to do anything that might allow him to return home. Although repelled by Gioelli’s dishonourable profession, Crossard saw something of himself in the spy, a fellow exile who yearned to return to his native lands. Gioelli therefore played up these similarities. Under scrutiny, there are subtle differences in the tale told to Zach, such as the home of Turin, rather than Alba; Gioelli would also have been hard-pressed to have fled Turin and arrived at Mantua as MacDonald’s chief of secret correspondence as recounted by Radetzky. Clearly Gioelli was holding back the full story.
In his memoirs, Radetzky was far less charitable about the Piedmontese agent. Having first brought Gioelli into Austrian headquarters six months earlier, he clearly distrusted him. In later years, Radetzky would write that Gioelli ‘was a professional gambler, debauched and set little value on money and sacrificed everything to fulfilling his desires’.16 Radetzky considered the pension of 200 Florins (then about £45) to be a paltry amount, concluding that spies should either be paid a fortune or hung before they turned upon their masters. Although Radetzky wrote this many years after the event, and with the benefit of hindsight, we detect a certain meanness of spirit against a man who had delivered to the Austrians a string of spectacular successes, and also against Zach, the spy’s principal controller. In fact, if it did not exist before, after the fall of Cuneo we detect at this time a distinct hostility towards Zach on the part of Radetzky. This clash of personalities is recorded in many of the Austrian accounts, and one might even su
ggest this growing conflict would become the undoing of Melas’ army in the months ahead.
Chapter 2
Brumaire
It was the seventeenth of Vendémiaire in the eighth year of the French Republic. This was the septidi, or seventh day of the second decade of the month named after vine harvests; the first month in the year of the French republican calendar, and the name day of the citrouille – the pumpkin. The inhabitants of the small Provençal fishing village of Saint-Raphael stood on the pebbly beach and watched with some sense of excitement as General André Thomas Perreimond was rowed out to one of the four ships in the harbour. The French soldiers on board these ships had announced to the gunners manning the coastal artillery that General Bonaparte was with them and wanted to come ashore. The arrival of such an illustrious visitor was perhaps the greatest thing to have ever occurred to Saint-Raphael, before or since, and such was the sense of excitement that Perreimond waived the usual quarantine restrictions; after all, no one on board appeared to be dying of bubonic plague, despite having just arrived from Egypt. In an eerie dress rehearsal of his return from exile in Elba fifteen-and-a-half years later, Napoleon Bonaparte was literally carried ashore and mobbed by well-wishers. It was not every day the conqueror of Italy and Egypt landed on one’s doorstep. For his part, Bonaparte was impatient and full of questions. He had heard things were bad in Italy. How bad? What about Paris? He thirsted for news, having been away from France for more than a year and a half. Impatient to get going, to whatever end, at 6.00 pm he set out in a coach in the direction of Lyons, and from there to Paris, where his destiny awaited him. As the coach trundled off, the inhabitants walked alongside it, burning torches held aloft to light the returning conqueror’s way.