"The thing is barely possible," answered Marescot.

"Very well," said the Chief Consul, "_en avant_--let us proceed." While the Austrians were thinking only of the frontier where Suchet commanded an enfeebled and dispirited division,--destined, as they doubted not, to be reinforced by the army, such as it was, of Dijon,--the Chief Consul had resolved to penetrate into Italy, as Hannibal had done of old, through all the dangers and difficulties of the great Alps themselves.

The march on the Var and Genoa might have been executed with comparative ease, and might, in all likelihood, have led to victory; but mere victory would not suffice.

It was urgently necessary that the name of Buonaparte should be surrounded with some blaze of almost supernatural renown; and his plan for purchasing this splendour was to rush down from the Alps, at whatever hazard, upon the rear of Melas, cut off all his communications with Austria, and then force him to a conflict, in which, Massena and Suchet being on the other side of him, reverse must needs be ruin.
For the treble purpose of more easily collecting a sufficient stock of provisions for the march, of making its accomplishment more rapid, and of perplexing the enemy on its termination, Napoleon determined that his army should pass in four divisions, by as many separate routes.

The left wing, under Moncey, consisting of 15,000 detached from the army of Moreau, was ordered to debouch by the way of St.Gothard.The corps of Thureau, 5000 strong, took the direction of Mount Cenis: that of Chabran, of similar strength, moved by the Little St.Bernard.Of the main body, consisting of 35,000, the Chief Consul himself took care; and he reserved for them the gigantic task of surmounting, with the artillery, the huge barriers of the Great St.Bernard.Thus along the Alpine Chain--from the sources of the Rhine and the Rhone to Isere and Durance--about 60,000 men, in all, prepared for the adventure.