Russo-Austrian troops, who had already repeatedly defeated the French in Italy between April and August, crossed St. Gotthard under the command of Field Marshal Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov-Rymniksky, with orders to march against General André Masséna to drive him out of the Helvetic Republic.

After the important victories of the previous months during the campaign in Italy, Suvorov had remained in control of the situation in the northern part of the Peninsula and a final defeat of the French seemed imminent with the Russian general determined to march even to France,[5] but the divisions and rivalries of the coalesced powers would soon favor the resurgence of the revolutionary armies: fearing that Russia's influence would become too great, the Allies, also leveraging Tsar Paul I's ambitions to present himself as the liberator of Switzerland,[6] succeeded in getting Russian troops to halt their operations in Italy and be redeployed to the Confederation, leaving the initiative in the Peninsula to the Austrians.

[13] Between the end of April and mid-August 1799, Field Marshal Aleksandr Vasilyevich Suvorov had routed French revolutionary troops in northern Italy, caused the collapse of the sister republics in the Peninsula, and taken de facto control of Lombardy and Piedmont.

Thanks to his brilliant victories, he had received from the tsar the title of "Prince of Italy" (Knjaz Italijski - Russian: Князь Италийский,[14] hence the nickname Italiskij, "the Italic")[15][16] and was now close to finally crushing the last French resistance in Piedmont and then invading the Ligurian Riviera; Suvorov had also declared himself ready to even march to Paris as he had promised General Jean Mathieu Philibert Sérurier before releasing him[note 2].

[19] Although in theory Suvorov answered directly to the tsar, the Austrian court council and Chancellor Thugut ordered him to abandon Italy and move toward Switzerland, where his army was to join a second Russian contingent under the command of General Aleksandr Mikhailovich Rimsky-Korsakov, arriving with 30,000 men from Galicia.

[3][18] General Michael von Melas's Austrian army was to garrison Piedmont and seize Cuneo;[3][20] at the same time Archduke Charles was to move from Switzerland to Germany along the Rhine so that Austria would also have a chance to oust the Elector of Bavaria Maximilian I.

[18][23] Beyond the decisions of what Carl von Clausewitz later termed a "narrow-minded policy" on the part of the British and Austrians, aimed simply at avoiding an inconvenient Russian presence in Italy and the Mediterranean and meeting special needs, modern historiography has seen clear military advantages in these plans.

[21] On September 4, Suvorov informed the tsar that he was about to move to Switzerland, not failing to lament how from the beginning of the campaign the Austrians had been consistently reluctant to support him, slow to respond to his orders and utterly inefficient in meeting his demands for supplies and ammunition.

[28] The initial astonishment was succeeded by outrage and then anger: before a contrite General Weyrother, an Austrian liaison officer, he explicitly accused Melas and the Viennese court of having hatched a treason "which the tsar will know how to punish.

By this time, however, the damage was done: only six hundred and fifty mules arrived, which was absolutely insufficient, and Suvorov, at Prince Konstantin's suggestion, decided to use the horses of the Cossacks to transport sufficient provisions and ammunition for the next eight days[30][note 4].

[37] Here another Lecourbe contingent, under the orders this time of Louis Henri Loison, laid an ambush that cost the lives of more than nine hundred Russians before they managed to repair the bridge by makeshift means and cross to the other side, under constant enemy artillery and musket fire, finally forcing the French to retreat.

[38][39] In contrast to the Russians, Lecourbe's troops were highly specialized in mountain warfare to the extent that they "marched even where chamois hunters would give up," "used to sleeping in the snow and under the stars, bitten by the wind, on the rags they used as uniforms," and venturing "without [alpine] guides on paths over sheer chasms.

Continuing to move to the right along the Reuss valley, Suvorov nonetheless seized the Gotthard Pass by repelling General Lecourbe, and on the evening of September 26 his troops reached Altdorf near the southern end of Lake Lucerne.

[39] Suvorov's troops were at their wits' end: marching over rocks had worn out the soldiers' inadequate footwear, of which many were now even deprived, uniforms were often in tatters, rifles and bayonets were rusting from the constant dampness, and the men were starving for lack of adequate supplies.

[50] Bagration and Franz Xaver von Auffenberg were positioned in the vanguard; Andrey Rosenberg's troops, placed in the rear, were ordered to protect the army from attacks that might come from the west, from Schwyz across the Muotathal, while the main force marched east through the Pragel Pass.

At the same time Bagration reestablished a bridge at Netstal and, organizing his forces into two columns, marched along both banks of the Linth toward Näfels, which was held firmly by Molitor with three battalions and four cannons and whose positions were protected on the right flank by cliffs and on the left by the river.

[64]" Opting for such a decision, i.e., a march along a route devoid of enemy troops, did not suit the Russian field marshal's temperament, but his assent perhaps provides an idea of what must have been, even in his eyes, the poor conditions in which his men, who, despite the extreme sacrifices he constantly demanded, used to call him "little father,[15][50][66]" were living.

The Mother Superior of the Mutten convent, where Suvorov's staff had spent the night, testified, "It was pathetic to see how these people were forced to march so hard and barefoot across the Pragel, under a heavy rain mixed with snow.

Bagration was able to tally the losses, which he found amounted to about eight hundred men taken prisoners, four cannons, a treasure chest containing twenty thousand francs, which the French commander Lenard later distributed to his battalion,[75] and numerous horses and mules; he had, however, managed to protect the army's rear.

The grueling march was carried out almost continuously, even at night, and cost the lives of those who, exhausted, sick or wounded, were no longer able to stand on the narrow path, made invisible by snow and slippery by ice.

These are the same men who also praised me like this in Turkey and Poland.As soon as the vanguard reached the pass's ridge, it was hit by a very violent blizzard of hail and frozen snow that prevented the scouts from getting their bearings, causing them to risk falling into cliffs and precipices.

[84] On October 25, the forces of Suvorov, Korsakov, and the Prince of Condé gathered at Landau and began small marches back to winter quarters in Bohemia, where they arrived in January 1800, finally concluding the Swiss campaign.

As early as October 22, Tsar Paul I, in his letter to Emperor Francis II officially announcing Russia's exit from the coalition, focused the main reasons for the Russian defeat on the removal of Archduke Charles from Switzerland before the reunification of Suvorov's army with Korsakov's had been completed: "Your Majesty must already be aware of the consequences that resulted with the removal from Switzerland of the army under the command of Archduke Charles, which was done in opposition to all the reasons for which it was to remain there until the conjunction of the Field Marshal Prince Italysky with Lieutenant-General Rimsky Korsakoff had been carried out.

[94] On September 20 Suvorov had approved General Hotze's operational proposal to join him, moving from the St. Gotthard by forced marches on narrow mountain routes along the Reuss valley, to bypass Masséna from Schwyz and liberate Lucerne.

[92] And that was what precisely happened and on which all subsequent criticism of the old general focused: the Russians had to wait four days for Austrian supplies, which arrived late and proved insufficient; weather and environmental conditions were almost always unfavorable when not prohibitive; his decision to march along the Reuss did not take into account the resilience of the French troops, who on the one hand harshly contested every inch of territory forcing him in several battles into fierce fighting that further slowed him down, and on the other hand constantly threatened his supply line, for which he was totally dependent on the Austrians, interrupting it often even with attacks from reduced forces.

His greatest detractors later proved to be precisely Archduke Charles, to whose premature retreat Suvorov ascribed most of the campaign's failure, and General Korsakov, whose immediate defeat suffered at Masséna's hands nevertheless thwarted any vague hopes of possible success.

[95] It was then probably the testimony of Korsakov, who had preceded the elderly commander to St. Petersburg by immediately putting Suvorov in a bad light at the tsarist court by pointing him out as the only person responsible for the defeat, that prompted Paul I to welcome him coldly and not give the newly appointed "generalissimo"[14] and his army the honor of a triumphal entry into the Russian capital as he had previously promised him.

[10] Despite its obvious failure, the Swiss campaign would nonetheless add new posthumous prestige to Suvorov because of his dramatic and heroic character, especially in Russian culture where he is still regarded as an equal of Xenophon, Hannibal or Julius Caesar:[15] as early as 1801 Tsar Paul I ordered the first of a long series of monuments erected in his honor in his homeland.

[97] In Switzerland, where he is remembered as the liberator from French occupation, right by the Devil's Bridge in the Schöllenen Gorge below Andermatt, there has been since 1899 a large and impressive monument carved entirely out of rock dedicated to the feat of the Russian general and his men.

Recognizing the desperate situation Suvorov's army had found itself in, the famous Prussian general, writer and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz called the successful retreat "a miracle" a few years later.