About this time he made the acquaintance of Josephine Beauharnais, to whom he proposed marriage and was accepted. The cerbmony took place 9 March 1796, and less than a week afterward he had to depart to assume the com mand of the Army of Italy, which for three or four years had been carrying on a desultory warfare against the Sardinians and the Austrians amid the defiles of the Alps and the Ligurian Apennines. His army consisted of only 40,000 men, and even those were badly fed and clothed, while the Allies could oppose him with a much larger force. In the end, of March he set out from Nice and came up with the Allies at Montenotte, and inflicted on them a disastrous defeat (11 April). This victory separated the Sardinian from the Austrian army, and Napoleon, determined to crush them in detail, pursued the former and beat them at Millesimo (13th and 14th), and then fell on the latter at Dego (14th and 15th).
This opened LID for him both the route to Turin and to Milan. Napoleon lost no time; the Sardinians who were retiring upon Turin, were overtaken and beaten at Mondovi (22d), and compelled to sue for peace; and the Austrians, who were falling back on Milan, were signally defeated at the battle of Lodi (10 May). On the 15th he entered Milan. where heavy contributions were levied on the state, and the principal works of art were seized and sent to Paris. Naples, Modena and Parma hastened to conclude a peace; the Pope was compelled to sign an armistice; and the whole of northern Italy was in the hands of the French. Mantua was the next object of attack. Wurmser, at the head of large Austrian rein forcements, advanced through the Tyrol to its defense; he was defeated at Castiglione 5 August and again at Bassano 8 September, which compelled him to take refuge behind the walls of Mantua. Not yet disheartened, Austria sent a third army in two divisions under Mar shal Alvinczy and General Davidovich. This for a while held the French in check, but on 15 November a battle was begun at Arcole, which, after three days of hard fighting, gave the vic tory again to the French, and decided the result of the campaign. In January 1797, Alvinczy opened a fresh campaign by advancing at the head of 50,000 troops from Roveredo to the relief of Mantua, but was completely routed by Napoleon on the 14th at Rivoli and on 2 Feb ruary Wurmser was compelled by famine to surrender at Mantua. On the same day Na poleon put an end to the armistice with the Pope, and invaded the states of the Church, beat the pawl troops on the Senio, and took in quick succession the towns of Faenaa, Ancona, Loretto and Tolentino: On the 19th the Pope was compelled to conclude a peace by which he surrendered Avignon, Bologna, Ferrara and the Rcima_gua to France. Napoleon next entered
the Tyrol, driving before him the Archduke Charles, who had undertaken another invasion of Italy. An armistice was agreed upon, 7 April, and Austria gave territory and indemnity to France, receiving Venetia in return. This closed the great Italian campaigns, in which Napoleon, by ingenuity of plan, celerity of movement and audacity in assault, far out generaled all his antagonists.
In December 1797 Napoleon returned to Paris; the enthusiasm of the Parisians was immense, and the festivals in his honor innu merable. About this time the Directory seems to have had the intention of invading England, and had brought an army together for that pur pose. The command was conferred on Napo leon, who at first professed to favor the design, but who well knew its impracticability. It has been thought by many that this proposal was merely a feint to cover the real design of the Directory, namely, the invasion of Egypt, as a preliminary step to the conquest of British India. By 10 May 1798 an army of 36,000 men was collected and embarked at Toulon in a fleet commanded by Brueis (q.v.). A body of scientific and artistic explorers accompanied it. On 9 June the French landed at Malta, and the next day took possession of the island, in which they left a garrison. Ten days after the fleet resumed its voyage, reaching Alexandria on 1 July, and that city being taken, Napoleon and the army advanced on Cairo. Here they en countered a large body of Mamelukes, which, after a long and bloody struggle, known as the battle of the Pyramids, they repulsed. Many of the surrounding tribes thereupon submitted to the French, who thus for a while held a seeming possession of the whole of Egypt. Thinking himself secure in his conquest Napo leon immediately set about reorganizing the civil and military government of the country; but fortune was preparing for him a terrible reverse. The English admiral Nelson, who had long been in pursuit of his fleet, found it moored in the Bay of Abukir. and, with the ex ception of four vessels which contrived to es cape, utterly destroyed it.