In the course of a campaign of twenty days, the Austrians fought Buonaparte ten times, but the overthrow on the Tagliamento was never recovered; and the Archduke, after defending Styria inch by inch as he had Carinthia, at length adopted the resolution of reaching Vienna by forced marches, there to gather round him whatever force the loyalty of his nation could muster, and make a last stand beneath the walls of the capital.
This plan, at first sight the mere dictate of despair, was in truth that of a wise and prudent general.

The Archduke had received intelligence from two quarters of events highly unfavourable to the French.

General Laudon, the Austrian commander on the Tyrol frontier, had descended thence with forces sufficient to overwhelm Buonaparte's lieutenants on the upper Adige, and was already in possession of the whole Tyrol, and of several of the Lombard towns.

Meanwhile the Venetian Senate, on hearing of these Austrian successes, had plucked up courage to throw aside their flimsy neutrality, and not only declared war against France, but encouraged their partizans in Verona to open the contest with an inhuman massacre of the French wounded in the hospitals of that city.
The vindictive Italians, wherever the French party was inferior in numbers, resorted to similar atrocities.

The few troops left in Lombardy by Napoleon were obliged to shut themselves up in garrisons, which the insurgent inhabitants of the neighbouring districts invested.