A mountain that is not climbed frontally
"Suvorov's Crossing of the Alps" (1899) by Vasily Surikov
"There is no need to climb a mountain head-on when you can go around it from the sides."
This was said about the Alpine slopes. But this single phrase contains all of Suvorov's logic, transferred from the Turkish steppes to the mountains. In the previous article, Turkey's Tactical Lessons: How Suvorov Wasted His Enemy's TimeWe saw it in a world of fortresses and assaults. In 1799, the terrain changed radically: valleys, rivers, passes, the French Revolutionary Army. But the technique remained the same: find a weak spot and strike there.
Another enemy
In the Turkish theater, Suvorov faced an enemy whose forces were often numerous and whose system was unstable. The Italian and Swiss campaigns presented a different kind of challenge. For the first time, he faced a new type of army: the French Revolutionary Army, which had been completely rebuilt in the decade following 1789.
This army combined two schools. From the royal system, it inherited linear formations and battalion tactics. The Revolution added dense attack columns, skirmishers—shooters scattered in front and allowed to operate freely—and a strong morale boost. The soldier went into battle not only for pay but also for an idea, and this gave the onslaught a special force.
This army also had a weakness. The composition of the French troops remained motley: alongside them stood veterans of previous campaigns, yesterday's recruits, and volunteers whose enthusiasm was no substitute for training. This meant that the army, formidable in a unified offensive impulse, lost cohesion where training was needed: during reformations, at river crossings, and during command breakdowns.
Suvorov saw before him a strong, but imperfect, enemy: dangerous while deploying and attacking, yet vulnerable at junctions, during crossings, and during reorganization. He targeted these points for his tactics.
Italy: Speed and a weak spot
Suvorov distilled his program for the Italian campaign into a few strict guidelines. Of the nine points, it's enough to name five to understand the concept:
- nothing but offensive;
- speed in campaigns, swiftness;
- no need for methodology, just a good eye;
- attack and beat the enemy in the field;
- don't waste time on sieges.
Among the points was a call to march directly to Paris as the main point. This was a programmatic slogan, setting the psychological horizon of the war, not an operational route with calculated marches, and it sounded almost Napoleonic. In practice, the campaign ended with the army's withdrawal to Switzerland, and Suvorov never reached Paris. But the formula is important as an indicator of the scale of the plan and the belief in constant forward movement.
The technique of this movement was specified by an order to the army in Italy:
"The enemy is to be struck with cold arms, bayonets, sabers, and pikes... Do not delay the attack. Once the enemy has been cut down, pursue him immediately and give him no time to gather or form up."
This formula determines not only the attack pattern but also the tempo of the entire campaign. No getting stuck in a firefight, no pause after the attack. Forward movement while the enemy has no chance to reassemble the battle. The idea is to strike where the formation has already been broken, preventing the French columns from calmly turning and opening fire.
Three battles
The Italian campaign featured three demonstrative battles, and in each one the same idea was evident: to strike at a vulnerable point, rather than to press evenly along the entire front.
At Cassano in April 1799, rapid maneuver and surprise were decisive. Crossing the river required troops to quickly reorganize from marching to battle formation, and Suvorov directed his main attack at the flank, preventing the enemy from consolidating its position.
Battle of Trebbia
Trebbia (June 17–19, 1799, New Style; June 6–8, Old Style) was more difficult. A multi-day battle, won largely by marching. Suvorov quickly concentrated his forces on the river, attacked the French corps piecemeal, and pinned them to the water, turning it into a barrier to the enemy's retreat. According to various estimates, the allies lost around 5–6 men here; French losses, including prisoners and the wounded left in hospitals, could have reached 16. The discrepancy is explained by the precise method of counting: some authors consider only the killed and wounded, others include prisoners. The principle of "skill, not numbers" worked to the letter: the army, inferior in resources, prevailed by concentrating its efforts and striking at the right moment.
Novi in August 1799 became one of the bloodiest battles of the campaign. Morale was particularly evident here: despite heavy losses, Suvorov's army did not let the enemy out of its crisis and finished them off with a strike at a key point, bypassing the extended pressure on the entire front.
In all three cases, the Italian campaign is not a continuous bayonet charge. It is a combination of speed, constant advance, and precise selection of the attack location.
Fire opens, bayonet finishes
Suvorov is often portrayed as a "fire phobe," reducing his tactics to the bayonet alone. His own words contradict this: "Infantry fires reveal victory".
For Suvorov, fire and bayonets are linked, not opposed. Fire must open up the enemy's line, loosen it, break its morale: to unlock victory. The bayonet carries this opening to a breakthrough. The famous reliance on cold steel weapon Refers not to fire in general, but to a pointless, drawn-out firefight. In the era of the shotgun, with its inaccuracy and slow loading, such a firefight could drag on inconclusively and dampen the offensive momentum.
Suvorov's order of phases is sequential: fire, movement, bayonet, pursuit. Fire here becomes the prelude to the decisive blow, not a secondary means. This is clearly evident at the Trebbia: a brief, intense engagement of rifles and cannons, followed by several days of fighting with a decisive onslaught where the enemy line had already given way.
Switzerland: The Mountain to Avoid
In Switzerland, not only the terrain changed, but the very structure of war itself. Valleys gave way to passes. The Swiss campaign is described in historical sources as an Alpine miracle: a torn theater, poor roads, an unpredictable climate, isolation from allies, and constant moral tension.
A painting by artist Alexei Popov, "Suvorov's Troops Crossing the Alps in 1799," painted in 1904
Tactically, this meant severe restrictions. There was no room to deploy a wide line. They had to move in columns, in the cramped confines of narrow paths, without descending into chaos. Artillery The mountain roads were difficult to drag along. The cavalry almost lost room to maneuver.
Suvorov wrote his rules for the mountains under these conditions. The columns had to move in a concentrated manner, "in tight quarters, but not outraged", with an interval of about two hundred paces between units. The interval wasn't an end in itself: it kept the column dense enough for a quick strike while simultaneously leaving a gap so that a delay in one unit wouldn't crush the rest on the narrow path. Suvorov based his formation on a combination of columns and loose formations, developing the techniques of the Rumyantsev school of flexible formations: a dense column for the attack, a loose line of skirmishers for working the terrain.
The crossing of the Alps itself is usually remembered as a strategic and moral feat. But in essence, it was the tactics of a forced march, applied to mountainous terrain. Its elements coalesced into a unified discipline of movement:
- driving on narrow roads in bad weather while maintaining formation;
- strict order of columns to prevent congestion and panic;
- reliance on local guides and the precise eye of commanders;
- alternating movement and short rests to protect troops from complete exhaustion.
And here the phrase that started it all returns: don't climb a mountain head-on when you can outflank it. Where the terrain prevents a full-scale deployment, a frontal assault is futile. What's needed is a flanking maneuver, an envelopment, a strike down the slope instead of a thrust up the summit. The same technique as in Italy: seek a flank. In the valley, the flank was the exposed side of the French column; in the mountains, it was the side of the pass that could be outflanked. The essence is the same.
The outcome of the campaign demonstrated the main thing: even in the most difficult conditions, Suvorov's army retained its ability to fight, and did not turn into an exhausted crowd that somehow dragged itself to the end of the road.
Suvorov and Napoleon: Two Styles of the Same Principle
A comparison with Napoleon is obvious: both became symbols of rapid warfare. The similarities are obvious and rest on three pillars. Both sought to move faster than their opponents and seize the initiative. Both favored the offensive and decisive battle in the field. Both spared their forces from being scattered in "defending points" and concentrated them on the main front. Suvorov's program of "nothing but the offensive" and "no delay" sounds entirely Napoleonic.
And then the paths diverge—and the divergence is more curious than the similarity. Let's start with fire. The Napoleonic school gradually transformed artillery into a systematic tool: firing centers are set up on the battlefield in advance, according to a plan. For Suvorov, fire remains a phase of the attack, not a separate operation. The same difference is evident in maneuver. Napoleon becomes one of the main systematizers of operational art—a system of corps, a well-thought-out route network, a centralized headquarters. Suvorov's maneuver is field-based: it relies on personal judgment, the quickness of reaction, and the initiative of junior commanders. The Swiss campaign was designed to rely on actions along external, enveloping operational lines—strikes from external directions against the center of the French forces—but without the full complement of staff procedures of the later era. This reliance on judgment instead of calculation gives Suvorov's wars a lively quality and also increases the risk: success depends more on one person. And that's the whole point. Napoleon built a sophisticated command apparatus around himself, where documentation and calculation were part of the system; Suvorov relied heavily on personal leadership and his word. His dislike of "methodology" wasn't a whim, but a consequence: methodology isn't needed; a good eye is needed.
I'll risk an original observation. Suvorov was, above all, a practitioner, embodying his principles in concrete marches and battles. Napoleon was a systematizer, whose campaigns themselves became material for theory: both Jomini and Clausewitz analyzed them, deriving doctrines from them. Hence the different aftertastes: Suvorov's tactics seem more lively and situational, Napoleon's more convenient for a theorist. The discussion here isn't about who is superior. It's about different starting points for style: for one, it's the battlefield, for the other, the operational planning room.
One reception for two theaters
Italy and Switzerland demonstrated that Suvorov's principles—eyesight, speed, and pressure—were not limited to the world of fortresses and "irregular" enemies. In the valley, they resulted in forced marches and attacks on the flanks of French columns. In the mountains, the same principles yielded a combination of columns in loose formation and outflanking where a frontal approach was impossible. A flank attack on a column and a flanking approach around a mountain were essentially the same solution, simply shaped differently by the terrain.
How this system of training and combat was reflected in the Russian army of the following century, from the reforms of the beginning of the century to the practice of 1812 and later wars, will be the topic of the final article in the series: What Survived Suvorov: Two Legacies in the Russian Army of the 19th Century.
Sources and reference materials
- Orlov N. A. Analysis of Suvorov's military actions in Italy in 1799.
- Italian campaign of 1799. Instructions and orders for the army (texts attributed to A. V. Suvorov).
- Milyutin D. A. History War of 1799 between Russia and France during the reign of Emperor Paul I.
- "Suvorov's Alpine Miracle": An Essay on the Swiss Campaign.
- Suvorov's Swiss Campaign: overview materials on the 1799 campaign.
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