It must be added, if we would form a fair conception of the enterprise, that Napoleon well knew not one-third of these men had ever seen a shot fired in earnest.
The difficulties encountered by Moncey, Thureau, and Chabran will be sufficiently understood from the narrative of Buonaparte's own march.
From the 15th to the 18th of May all his columns were put in motion; Lannes, with the advanced guard, clearing the way before them; the general, Berthier, and the Chief Consul himself superintending the rear guard, which, as having with it the artillery, was the object of highest importance.

At St.Pierre all semblance of a road disappeared.
Thenceforth an army, horse and foot, laden with all the munitions of a campaign, a park of forty field-pieces included, were to be urged up and along airy ridges of rock and eternal snow, where the goatherd, the hunter of the chamois, and the outlaw-smuggler are alone accustomed to venture; amidst precipices where to slip a foot is death; beneath glaciers from which the percussion of a musket-shot is often sufficient to hurl an avalanche; across bottomless chasms caked over with frost or snow-drift; and breathing "The difficult air of the iced mountain top, Where the birds dare not build, nor insect's wing Flit o'er the herbless granite."[34] The transport of the artillery and ammunition was the most difficult point; and to this, accordingly, the Chief Consul gave his personal superintendence.

The guns were dismounted, grooved into the trunks of trees hollowed out so as to suit each calibre, and then dragged on by sheer strength of muscle--not less than an hundred soldiers being sometimes harnessed to a single cannon.

The carriages and wheels, being taken to pieces, were slung on poles, and borne on men's shoulders.

The powder and shot, packed into boxes of fir-wood, formed the lading of all the mules that could be collected over a wide range of the Alpine country.