Battle of Voltri

Battle context

The Battle of Voltri on 10 April 1796 opened the Montenotte campaign and the broader Italian campaign of 1796–1797, making it the first engagement of a sequence that would ultimately end the War of the First Coalition a year later. Two Habsburg Austrian columns under Johann Beaulieu attacked a reinforced French brigade under Jean-Baptiste Cervoni near the port approaches of Genoa. After a skirmish lasting several hours, Cervoni's force was compelled to withdraw westward along the coast to Savona. Though the Austrians held numerical superiority of roughly 7,200 to 5,200 and succeeded in pushing the French back, the engagement set in motion a campaign whose eventual outcome would decisively shift the balance of the wider Revolutionary Wars in France's favor.