Suvorov's Italian campaign

Suvorov's Italian campaign took place in Northern Italy between April and September 1799 and pitted the Russian and Imperial (Austrian) armies led by the Russian Field Marshal Count Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov-Rymniksky (the future generalissimo and prince "of Italy") against the French Revolutionary Army. The campaign was part of the War of the Second Coalition and ended with the temporary victory of the coalition and the fall of the pro-French sister republics.

Following the 1798 French invasion of Switzerland, Russia, an ally of the Austrians, sent an army to liberate the Swiss territories occupied by the French, who controlled the Alpine passes to Italy from that country and directly threatened the Habsburg Empire. The allies insisted that the Austro-Russian troops be led by Field Marshal Suvorov, who, however, had fallen into disgrace at home for having criticized Emperor Paul I; the latter therefore decided to rehabilitate him and sent him with 20,000 men to Italy, where the Austrians appointed him Field Marshal of the Holy Roman Empire.

Field Marshal Suvorov's participation was decisive: the Russians emerged victorious in the decisive battles, defeating and forcing two French armies to retreat to the hills around Genoa, and causing the collapse of French predominance in Italy. With his Austro-Russian army of 48,500 men (in the vicinity of the Adda River), attacking a strong position in numerical superiority compared to the approximately 27,000–28,000 French available on the Adda, as part of the Army of Italy, Suvorov first forced generals Barthélemy Louis Joseph Schérer and Jean Victor Marie Moreau to abandon the defence of the Adda and retreat westwards; the French evacuated the Milanese area and concentrated the remains of their forces in Alessandria, while the Austro-Russians re-invaded the Cisalpine Republic and entered Milan on 29 April. Meanwhile, the French Army of Naples led by General Étienne Macdonald was approaching from the south, in an attempt to rejoin General Moreau; Suvorov managed to block his path in the Battle of the Trebbia (17–20 June 1799), forcing him to retreat along the coast and reach Genoa, where the forces of General Moreau soon converged, who, having learned of Macdonald's defeat, had also retreated. It was for the Battle of the Trebbia that Suvorov received the title князь Италийский, 'Prince of Italy (Knyaz of Italia)'.

Having also occupied Turin and defeated the last French army in the subsequent Battle of Novi, Suvorov remained at a certain point in control of the situation in northern Italy and even decided to march towards France, but the divisions and rivalries of the coalition powers would soon favour a recovery of the revolutionary armies: fearing that Russian influence in Italy would become excessive, the allies, also taking advantage of Paul I's ambitions to present himself as the liberator of Switzerland, obtained that the Tsarist troops interrupted their operations and were redeployed in the Helvetic Republic, leaving the initiative in the peninsula to the Austrians. Charles Emmanuel IV named Suvorov Grand Marshal of the Piedmontese Troops. Suvorov was then ordered to march north, through the St. Gotthard Pass to meet up with the other body of Russian troops just led across the Limmat by General Alexander Mikhailovich Rimsky-Korsakov and then face the army of General André Masséna.