Battle of Millesimo

Part of the French Revolutionary War

Date	13–14 April 1796
Location	Millesimo, present-day Italy
Result	Pyrrhic French victory

Belligerents

First French Republic

Habsburg Austria

Kingdom of Sardinia

Commanders and leaders

Pierre Augereau

Giovanni di Provera

Strength

9,000
23 guns

988
2 guns

Casualties and losses

700 killed and wounded

96 killed and wounded
892 captured
2 guns

The Battle of Millesimo, fought on 13 and 14 April 1796, was the name that Napoleon Bonaparte gave in his correspondence to one of a series of small battles that were fought in Liguria, Northern Italy between the armies of France and the allied armies of Austria and of the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont.

In late March 1796, General Bonaparte took command of the French Army of Italy, which consisted of around 40,000 men under arms. After being attacked near Genoa on 10 April by the left wing of the Austrian army, under Feldzeugmeister Johann Beaulieu, Bonaparte initiated the Montenotte Campaign. The French advanced through the Cadibona Pass to defeat the isolated right wing of the Austrian army, commanded by Feldmarschal-Leutnant (FML) Eugène-Guillaume Argenteau, at the Battle of Montenotte on 12 April. The French then moved further inland, intending to capture Dego and increase the separation between the Austrian army and that of its ally, Piedmont-Sardinia.

After his victory at Montenotte, Bonaparte swung the main weight of his offensive to the west against FML Michelangelo Colli's 21,000-strong Sardinian army. To keep Beaulieu's Austrian army from interfering, the French commander sent André Masséna's division to seize Dego to the north. On 13 April, General of Division Pierre Augereau attacked FML Giovanni di Provera's weak Austrian Auxiliary Corps east of Millesimo and defeated him.

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