This was also posted on another forum. I posted the following in reply to it, as some of the dates and significant events are not in the article:
From the Memoirs of Marshal Bugeaud, Volume I, Count H. d'Ideville, editor adapted for the volume Bugeaud: A Pack with a Baton-The Early Campaigns of a soldier of Napoleon's Army who would become a Marshal of France, 116-122:
‘The commencement of hostilities had been fixed for the 15th of June. The 14th [Ligne], which was stationed at Chatelard, among the mountains of Banges, in Savoy, had received orders to descend into the valley of Tarentaise, guarded by a Piedmontese corps, and to take possession of the small towns of Conflans and l'Hopital.'
‘It was then that Colonel Bugeaud, in conformity with orders received, attempted one of those bold strokes in which he had so often succeeded in Spain. A battalion of the enemy (bataillon Comte Robert), was established as advanced picket at Saint Pierre d'Albigny. Colonel Bugeaud resolved to surround it, and make it prisoner with hardly a blow. With this object he despatched three companies by a mountain path that came out about half a league in rear of the village, and ordered them to lay in wait. Then he attacked in front with the rest of his force. One part of the enemy's detachment was captured or killed, the rest ran away and fell into the ambuscade prepared; not a man escaped, and by four in the morning the whole Piedmontese battalion was captured.'
‘In this combat Colonel Bugeaud himself made two prisoners, who turned out to be two Frenchman…commissioners of Louis XVIII, with the Austro-Sardinian army.'
‘…A Piedmontese brigade, 3,000 men strong, had come in haste to support its advanced picket, getting no communications from it. It came in contact with the victorious 14th, was routed after a pretty sharp conflict, and retired, leaving with its opponent, 200 prisoners, its wounded, its dead, and the possession of the towns of Conflans and l'Hopital, not even attempting to defend the approaches, which the 14th occupied conformably to orders received.'
‘Some days later Colonel Bugeaud, seeing that the enemy continued to commit the same blunder, and that their advanced posts did not sufficiently guard their lines of communication with the main body of their troops, again gave himself the pleasure of capturing a battalion posted at Moutiers as an outlying picket. He employed the same method that had previously been successful, brought upon the enemy's line of retreat a detachment which had to march for eleven hours by horrible roads, then attacking the picket line in front, took it between two fires, and forced it to surrender.'
‘…This was a happy commencement for the army of the Alps; to be followed by a combat still more glorious, that might have gained a great reputation, had not at the very moment the bloody day of Waterloo absorbed the attention of France and the whole of Europe by the vastness of strife of which it was the turning point, and the incalculable consequences that followed it. But it does not displease us, while turning over this grand page of history, to tarry, in company with the valiant man of war whose life we are endeavoring to describe, among those combats obscure, but deserving illustration, that so honorably terminated the war upon our Alpine frontiers. Besides, there can be no doubt that the remembrance of this success was especially valued by the Marshal when he reached an advanced age, full of honors, for he gave a very full account of it in an anonymous pamphlet printed, in 1845, at the Government press at Algiers, from which we take some of the details that follow.'
‘In the last days of the month of June, 1815, the 14th [Ligne], reinforced by a battalion of the 20th [Ligne], still held the towns of Conflans and l'Hopital, washed by the stream of the Arly, a small tributary of the Isere. Some prisoners, made on the 26th, informed Colonel Bugeaud that he was to be attacked two days afterwards by 10,000 Austrians under the orders of General Trenck, coming down the Little Saint Bernard, while General Bubna, coming from Mount Cenis with 20,000 men, was to advance by the valley of Maurienne, held on one side by the brigade of General Mesclop.'
‘Colonel Bugeaud lost no time in forwarding this information to the General-in-chief, and judiciously requested that Mesclop's brigade might come and join him without delay in the valley of the Tarentaise, so as to combine their efforts to crush General Trenck, while Bubna's column ‘should strike at nothing, and run its head against the tete-de-pont of Montmeillan.' But Marshal Suchet had already received intelligence of the disaster at Waterloo, and, considering it useless to prolong hostilities, had sent a proposal for an armistice to General Bubna. Being convinced that this proposal would be accepted, and the forward march of the Austrian corps stopped, he gave no orders to the 14th [Ligne] or to Mesclop's brigade.'
‘On the morning of the 28th…Colonel Bugeaud, received the official bulletin of the battle of Waterloo, and,…the deputation of the regiment which had been sent to the Champ de Mars for the distribution of the eagles…bringing the eagle for the regiment, together with the account of the Emperor's abdication.'
‘…Forming his regiment in close column, he himself read the bulletin of Waterloo, and received the eagle in the name of the country…'Soldies of the 14th…here is your eagle. It is in the name of the country that I present it to you, for if the Emperor…is no longer our sovereign, France remains. She it is who confides this standard to you; it will always be your talisman of victory. Swear that as long as a soldier of the 14th exists no enemy's hand shall touch it!'
‘We swear!…'
‘It was in this mood that the 14th was going to meet the enemy.'
‘In order the better to resist such superior forces, Colonel Bugeaud proposed only to defend the right flank of the Arly, and to allow the enemy to pass the stream in small bodies, so as to have them on easier terms, and crush them in detail. He began by a slack defense of the positions on the left bank, so as to prevent the enemy from adopting a plan that they might have conceived if they had met with an energetic resistance, that of crossing the Arly at some distance and turning the position. With the same view he prevented the destruction of the bridge that unites Conflans and l'Hopital. The event was as he had foreseen. When the Austrians made themselves master of the left bank, which had so easily been abandoned to them, they several times endeavored to debouch from the bridge.'
‘Every time they were received by a sharp fire from a short distance; then our troops quitting their shelter advanced upon the enemy with the bayonet, and thrust them back to the other side of the stream with considerable loss.'
‘Despairing of forcing the passage in this manner, the Austrians passed a column of two thousand men over a ford below the town, intending to cut the line of retreat of the defenders of l'Hopital. Colonel Bugeaud, not choosing to empty the little town, only made use of six companies of the center to meet this movement. Though numerically inferior, the want of numbers was compensated for by an excess of audacity, and he flung these few men, with himself, upon the rear of the enemy's column, so that they, thinking themselves were threatened from being cut off from the ford where they had crossed the river, became demoralized, gave back, and were flung in disorder into the Isere and the Arly, having sustained a considerable loss by a well-sustained and well-directed fire. A second attempt of the same kind on another point was not more successful.'
‘However, cartridges began to fail, and the Colonel would perhaps have decided upon retiring, if he had not been reluctant to leave to the enemy's mercy a battalion of the 67th that had on the sound of the engagement made its way by the valley of Unide and had just communicated with him.'
‘Not being able to maintain himself any longer in l'Hopital without ammunition, Colonel Bugeaud rallied his men, and made them take up positions on the hills in the rear. The Austrians entered the deserted town and pillaged it. Meanwhile a detachment of twenty mules loaded with cartridges had been brought up; the pouches were filled, and the battalion of the 67th came up with some pieces of artillery. Their arrival was a signal to take the offensive; the 14th again rushed forward, killed or captured 1,500 Austrians who occupied l'Hopital, and effected its junction with the battalion of the 67th over a heap of corpses.'
‘At the same moment a battalion of the 20th [Ligne] arrived by the Chambery road. Colonel Bugeaud, seeing his force augmented by two battalions, prepared to cross the Arly in his turn, and to complete the destruction of the Austrian division, when an officer from the headquarters' staff arrived with the information that the armistice was signed, and, to his great regret, the intrepid Bugeaud had to break of the movement just begun. But he gave himself the pleasure of waiting till the enemy themselves sent him information of the armistice, and thus had the well-deserved satisfaction of not leaving the field of battle until the next day.'
‘So terminated this combat in which 1,750 French fought for ten hours against nearly 10,000 Austrians, killed 2,000 men of them, and made 960 prisoners.'
‘After the disaster of Waterloo, 18th June 1815, and the second abdication of the Emperor Napoleon I, 23d June, 1815, according to the conventions with the allied armies, the French forces were to retire behind the Loire, and Marshal Suchet's corps to quit Savoy.'
Another good source for Suchet's operations in 1815 is Napoleon's Italian Campaigns 1805-1815 by Rick Schneid. He is the head of the history department of Highpoint University in North Carolina.
Suchet began offensive operations on 14 June, entering Savoy by crossing the Iser River. The French were progressing well by 22 June, but Austrian superior numbers began to tell in the last week of June. Dessaix's French division was pushed back to Bonneville and St Julien from Thonon and Curial's division was driven from Maurienne. Albertville was attacked and the French fell back to Conflans.
On 27 June Suchet received word of Waterloo and Napoleon's abdication. The French provisional government ordered him to negotiate an armistice with the Austrians. The armistice was signed on 28 June and by its provisions Suchet abandoned Savoy.
The Austrians violated the armistice and continued into France taking Grenoble and Lyon by 11 July. The Convention of Paris was signed that day, ending the war.
The bottom line is that Suchet's delaying action was successful. His orders from Napoleon on 11 June when he assumed command of his corps was to delay as long as he could any enemy movement into France. That was accomplished. For that purpose he had 23,000 infantry, 900 cavalry, and 28 guns. Of that total, only 8,600 were regulars, the rest were national guard. At the beginning of the campaign Suchet's troops were concentrated opposite the Savoy border at Chambery and Grenoble. His area of responsibility ran from Geneva to the Mediterranean.
I highly recommend this work, Rick Schneid being an excellent historian.
Facing Suchet were 15,000 Piedmontese and 48,000 Austrians.
paints brigs for the British fleet.
