I gave Melas permission to return to Mantua, on condition of his surrendering all these fortresses." He now directed Chasseloup de Laubat and his engineers to repair and remodel the fortifications of Verona, Legnano, Pechiera, Mantua, the line of the Adda, Milan, Alessandria,[5] Roco d'Aufo, Genoa, and several smaller works; thus forming a quadruple line of defence against Austrian aggression in Italy.

These works were of great service to the French in 1805, enabling Massena with fifty thousand men to hold in check the Archduke Charles with more than ninety thousand, while Napoleon's grand army, starting from the solid base of the Rhine, traversed Germany and seized upon the capital of Austria.
[Footnote 5: More than twenty millions of money were appropriated for this place alone.] The neglect of the Prussians to place their country in a state of military defence, previous to declaring war against Napoleon in 1806, had a most disastrous influence upon the campaign.

Napoleon, on the other hand, occupied and secured all the important military positions which he had captured in the preceding campaign.

"The Prussians," said he, "made no preparations for putting into a state of defence the fortifications on their first line, not even those within a few marches of our cantonments.

While I was piling up bastion upon bastion at Kehl, Cassel, and Wesel, they did not plant a single palisade at Magdeburg, nor put in battery a single cannon at Spandau." The works on the three great lines of the Oder, the Elbe, and the Weser, had they been properly repaired, garrisoned, and defended, were sufficient to have held in check the French, even after the great victory of Jena, till the newly-organized forces, acting in concert with the Russian army, could re-establish the Prussian monarchy in its ancient greatness.