French crossing of the Tagliamento
- When
- 16 March 1797
- Where
- Tagliamento River banks near Valvasone
- Part of
- Battle of Valvasone
On 16 March 1797 the French vanguard reached the Tagliamento; Bonaparte used a ruse, and Bernadotte and Guieu's columns crossed under Austrian counter-charges.
On the morning of 16 March 1797 the French vanguard reached the western bank near Valvasone. Recognizing that a direct assault against a fully alerted defender across open terrain would incur heavy losses, Bonaparte employed a tactical ruse. As Bernadotte and Guieu pushed their infantry columns across, Charles ordered his cavalry reserve, supported by battery artillery, to execute counter-charges across the plain to drive the French back into the riverbed.
Sources
- Battle of Valvasone Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-19
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.