Napoleon had seen enough to know that the attack and the attempt to sneak past the fortress had failed.

‘Berthier, call your men back, and whatever is left of the supply column down there. We’ll have to try something else, or try it again tomorrow night.’

Berthier gestured towards the fort.‘We’ll never take that place by force, sir. Perhaps we should have chosen a different route.’

Napoleon’s eyes narrowed as he replied, ‘What help is that observation to me now, eh? We are here, Berthier, and we concentrate our minds on what is before us. Nothing else matters. So, pull your men back, rest them, treat their wounds, and send them back against the fort tomorrow. As for the artillery, we’ll have to try again tonight. This time with just two guns. We’ll set off at midnight.’

‘We?’ Berthier looked at him sharply, his face dimly visible by the loom of the snow.

‘Yes. I’ll be going with the guns. I have to reach the vanguard as soon as possible.’

Berthier was silent for a moment, while he considered protesting that Napoleon should not take such a risk. But he knew his commander well enough to realise any such protests were pointless. They always had been since that suicidally brave charge at Arcola. Berthier nodded wearily. ‘Yes, sir.’

Napoleon turned away and softly crunched through the snow as he made his way down to the village of Bard where a room awaited him in the modest inn by the small square in the heart of the village. He sat and warmed himself by a fire as he drank some soup and then, leaving orders that he should be called at eleven thirty, he closed his eyes and eased himself back in a chair. He did not sleep. His mind was filled with a torrent of thoughts: anxiety about the stability of the government he had left in Paris; the threat presented by General Moreau’s popularity throughout the army; Josephine, naked, with arms outstretched towards him, then a fleeting image of her in another man’s arms; he banished the image from his mind and hurriedly concentrated on the current campaign.

Napoleon pictured the map of the Alps and northern Italy, superimposing his forces on the landscape, and those of the enemy gleaned from the latest intelligence reports. He shook his head as he saw that the delay at Bard would give the enemy plenty of warning that the French army was attempting to cut across their communications with Austria. If they moved as slowly as they had done in the past, then there would still be time for Napoleon to concentrate his army and face the enemy on favourable terms. If, however, General Melas seized his chance, he could defeat the French forces piecemeal. The spectre of defeat haunted his thoughts and made rest, let alone sleep, impossible over the following hours.