Even in the campaign of 1866 the greatest commander of this generation carried out his maxim, "March in separate columns: unite for fighting." But Wuermser and the Aulic Council[57] at Vienna neglected to insure that reunion for attack, on which von Moltke laid such stress in his Bohemian campaign.

The Austrian forces in 1796 were divided by obstacles which could not quickly be crossed, namely, by Lake Garda and the lofty mountains which tower above the valley of the Adige.

Assuredly the Imperialists were not nearly strong enough to run any risks.

The official Austrian returns show that the total force assembled in Tyrol for the invasion of Italy amounted to 46,937 men, not to the 60,000 as pictured by the imagination of Thiers and other French historians.

As Bonaparte had in Lombardy-Venetia fully 45,000 men (including 10,000 now engaged in the siege of Mantua), scattered along a front of fifty miles from Milan to Brescia and Legnago, the incursion of Wuermser's force, if the French were held to their separate positions by diversions against their flanks, must have proved decisive.