Siege of Fort Bard

The Siege of Fort Bard (also known as Bard Fort) was a military action that took place during May 1800 during the second Napoleonic Italian campaign and stopped the French military leader Napoleon Bonaparte and his Armée de Reserve with approximately 40,000 men for two weeks. The Bard Fort was commanded by Captain Josef Stockard von Bernkopf with approximately 300 Austrian troops and 100 Piedmontese soldiers.

Prelude
On May 13, Napoleon entered the current Italian region of Aosta Valley from the little Swiss town of Bourg-Saint-Pierre. Until May 16, the French had not engaged the Austro-Piedmontese enem but as they entered Aosta, there was light fighting against the Austrian army.

The Siege
The problems start when Napoleon and the generals Dupont and Dufour reach the village of Bard, dominated by a small fort that covered the main routes with the exception of a mule path that was used by Napoleon's advance guard to continue on to Ivrea. On the evening of May 20 the general Dupont demanded the surrender of Stockard Von Bernkopf, commander of the Austrian company in the fort. He refuses to surrender. In the meantime the French engineers had widened and filled in the holes in the mule path to allow the rest of the army to continue with the exception of the artillery. On the night of May 21 the village of Bard is conquered by the French army, that proceeds to surround the fort.On May 22 three Austrian cannons captured after the battle of Châtillon started to fire on the fort, dealing little to no damage. In the morning of May 26 the fort gets attacked by 300 grenadiers in order to distract the garrison from a smaller crew that will try to cross the Dora river. The defenders start shooting, killing or wounding more than 200 of the grenadiers. General Dufour dies while trying to cross the river on a raft. Napoleon himself is worried of the tenacious resistance of the defenders, and the enemy army coming from Piedmont is getting close. On May 27 Napoleon orders the siege of the fort by the division commanded by Joseph Chabran and continued on with the rest of the army to rejoin the advance guard. A regiment of 1243 riflemen led by 119 officers starts to attack the fort, but the hidden French support cannons are too small to do serious damage to the building. The siege until May 29, where a 12-inch cannon named "cannone di Andreossi" (Andreossi's cannon in Italian) is positioned in the church behind the fort, where it can't be seen by the enemy. On June 1, the cannon starts shooting to the fort, destroying a part of the wall. At the end of the day, the surrender was ordered and Bernkopf raises the white flag having lost half of his forces. The Italians were allowed to leave the fort with the honours of war before being made prisoner as was custom at the time after a sieged force had surrendered.

Aftermath
The Fort, called by Napoleon "vilain castel de Bard" (evil castle of Bard in French) was destroyed completely under a Napoleon's order and it will get rebuilt only in 1830 by Charles Albert of Savoy. The surprise attack at the Austro-Piedmontese forces on the Po river in Lombardy planned by Napoleon was delayed. Napoleon will later took over the Piedmontese and Lombard area by defeating the Austrians in the Battle of Marengo.