Following Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813, French armies retreated westwards in a bid to save the Empire from the main Allied thrust.

The battlefield was highly awkward for the armies involved; roughly 70,000 men would be fighting on a north-south axis of 20 miles that stretched from Lake Garda all the way down to the fortress of Mantua.

His army consisted of the Italian Royal Guards, a cavalry division, and two pseudo-corps (not at full strength) under generals Paul Grenier and Jean-Antoine Verdier.

Eugène's plan called for a double envelopment that would eventually unite Grenier's and Verdier's forces and allow them to drive the Austrians from the field.

Bellegarde initially assumed the French would be retreating, but when Austrian patrols spotted a strong 'rearguard' presence across the Mincio, he decided not to commit as many troops as originally planned and ordered the reserve division under General Franz von Merville to remain on the east bank at Pozzolo, a decision which probably saved his army from disaster.

So when the battle did start, Bellegarde discovering that his southern flank was collapsing and Eugène noticing his weakened center had disintegrated, both sides were stunned.

Eugène now made the critical and correct decision to keep pressing the attack and hope that his onrushing columns would scare the main Austrian army across the Mincio once more.

He detached the Italian Royal Guard back to Goito in order to secure the bridge, reinforced his eastern flank against Mayer, and, with 13,000 men and 30 guns, advanced north to the village of Valeggio, hoping to cut his enemy's line of retreat.

Meanwhile, Verdier's men to the north had been barely hanging on, but once the sounds of Eugène's guns were manifest, they became emboldened and managed to defeat the Austrian charges.

But, once again, Bellegarde misjudged, since Eugène wanted to establish contact with his northern wing and quickly pulled his forces back to where they'd come from: Goito and Mantua.