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Although Genoa’s long-awaited decision to support the Bourbon campaign removed the last obstacle to France’s acceptance of a Ligurian entry into Italy, Paris and Madrid continued to clash over the strategic objectives of the campaign. The French still placed first emphasis on the defeat of Sardinia, while the Spanish desired an immediate drive to the east and south to support the Spanish army of Jean Thierry du Mont, Comte de Gages. The fundamental problem was that the Bourbons simply did not have the men to both invade Piedmont and march to the defense of Gages. With approximately 32,000 men[1] against some 26,000 Sardinian defenders, the united Gallispan army could turn its whole might against Sardinia and enjoy a good chance of success, but this would be of no use to Gages. Yet if the Gallispan army proceeded immediately towards central Italy, those 26,000 Sardinian troops would be left largely free to invade Liguria and cut off the Gallispan army’s supply lines. Under the circumstances the support of Genoa’s 8,000 soldiers would be of tremendous help regardless of their quality, but as long as the ambassadors prattled on at Aranjuez that force would remain an army-in-being only. The campaign could only go forward with a compromise: The French made the prioritization of Piedmont the price for their cooperation in Liguria, and with considerable resentment the Spanish were compelled to accept. They simply did not have the forces to undertake the campaign alone.

The operational plan of Marshal Daniel François de Gélas, Vicomte de Lautrec called for an advance along the coastal route to the Genoese cities of Albenga and Finale. From there, the Gallispan columns would turn inland, cresting the Apennines and using the valleys of the Tanaro and Bormida to descend upon Ceva, a key Sardinian fortress which lay only 20 miles from Finale. At the same time, a secondary French force would threaten the Sardinians at Saorgio below the Col di Tende, while a secondary Spanish force would move eastwards towards Genoa to seize the Col de Bochetta and parry any Sardinian counterattack against the Republic. Once Ceva was conquered, the Gallispan army would descend into the Piedmontese plain, targeting Mondavi and then Cherasco and bypassing the formidable fortress of Cuneo. The considerable Sardinian force at Saorgio would, as a result of this maneuver, be faced with the prospect of being cut off from the capital entirely, and as a consequence would surely withdraw, ceding the Col di Tende to the French and thus giving Lautrec an alternative (and critically, non-coastal) route into Piedmont. In any case, the fall of Cherasco would fling open the gates to Turin, forcing King Carlo Emanuele III to capitulate.

This plan suffered from a few key geographical problems. The first was that the coastal route remained seriously vulnerable to the interdiction of the British fleet. The road from Nice to Albenga was 80 miles long and rarely strayed more than a mile from the coast. Although the Gallispan forces and the Genoese controlled a few fortified points along its length, most of this route was exposed to naval bombardment. The failure of the British fleet to meaningfully support the Sardinians in the Nice-Villefranche campaign had given the Gallispan commanders a sense of security, but at that time Admiral Thomas Mathews had been stuck out in the Mediterranean trying to force his way back from Port Mahon against heavy winds. When the French crossed the Var, the British had been able to send only two 8-gun sloops to support them; now the Riviera was patrolled by Captain Temple West of the 60-gun Warwick, leading a squadron consisting of his flagship, the 50-gun Leopard, the 40-gun heavy frigate Diamond, the 20-gun light frigates Winchelsea and Dursley, the bomb vessels Terrible, Firedrake, and Lightning with their tenders, and four small ships.

The army’s difficulties with geography, however, were not restricted to the coastal road, for mainland Genoa was little better than Corsica in terms of travel and infrastructure. Liguria was not a flat coastal plain but a series of rugged valleys descending into the Ligurian Sea, and being a maritime state Genoa had never invested much in the road networks of its hinterland. This would necessarily slow the Gallispan advance, but it was particularly problematic from the perspective of moving the heavy artillery that would be necessary to capture Sardinian fortresses. Under normal circumstances the French would simply move siege guns from Toulon or Antibes to Oneglia, Albenga, or Savona by sea, but the presence of West’s squadron made this extremely risky. The Spanish had already lost fourteen xebecs laden with artillery to British interdiction, whose cargoes now languished at Bonifacio, and the artillery that had made it to Genoese territory would not be sufficient. Moving the army’s existing artillery from Villefranche to Ceva would be a time-consuming process that would seriously delay an already lamentably late campaign and would put the siege train in danger from West’s ships.

This latter problem, at least, had a possible solution. Despite their lackluster army, the Republic of Genoa possessed an impressively large artillery park with some impressively large guns. Some of these guns were near at hand at Finale and Savona, but unfortunately many of them were at Genoa itself, which is not much closer to Ceva than Villefranche. Still, this was advantageous in at least one way, for although Genoa’s shift in allegiance was unlikely to remain a secret for long, no formal treaty had been signed and no war had been declared. Mathews had proved that he was more than willing to stop Genoese ships and fire upon enemy troops using the Republic’s roads, but Lautrec guessed that he would not fire upon Genoese artillerymen moving Genoese artillery through Genoese territory. Even so, the Genoese would still have to move said artillery by land, no swift task.

In early June, West’s squadron observed a substantial movement of troops towards Oneglia, while reports from the British consul John Bagshaw indicated that the Genoese were once more building up magazines in their territory. The Genoese government, which had in the past quickly caved to British pressure to destroy such magazines, now received these requests coldly. Mathews, with his usual cavalier attitude towards Genoa’s neutrality, authorized West to make descents against Genoese territory and destroy any magazines or depots he might find if he had the men for it. This was accomplished in at least a handful of incidents, but the material effect was minor, and the political effect was to further push the Senate to reach formal accomodations with Paris and Madrid. Yet the movement of the Genoese heavy artillery from Genoa to Finale was allowed to go on wholly unmolested, as these guns were escorted by battalions of the Genoese army and the British were not yet so bold as to bombard Genoese soldiers.

The British navy was clearly suffering from overextension. By keeping the vast majority of his ships hovering outside Toulon, Mathews could effectively prevent the Spanish and French fleets from linking up and challenging him, but he had very few ships to spare for other missions which kept piling up. Most critically, Mathews was running out of food. He opined to the Sardinians in early March that the fleet’s present stores would last no longer than the end of April, and that if he did not soon acquire 120 head of cattle he would be obliged to leave Italy entirely. At that time the Sardinians were able to render him some assistance, for even after the fall of Villefranche they could move supplies through Genoese territory to the Bay of Vado, but as Genoese neutrality came into doubt in June this was no longer an option. A convoy of victualling ships had been dispatched from England months before, but they had become trapped at Lisbon by a French squadron and lacked a strong enough escort to escape the blockade. Mathews could send ships to break them out, but sending more than a few would deplete his main force by an unacceptable amount.

Under such circumstances, Captain West could perform his duty only imperfectly. On June 16th, as it was now becoming clear that Genoa was serving as a Bourbon auxiliary, Mathews ordered West to blockade the port of Genoa and intercept all ships of any nationality coming in or out of the harbor. West’s twelve vessels, however, were hard pressed to blockade the port, cruise the Ligurian Sea, and interfere with the Gallispan coastal advance all at once. An example of this difficulty was in early July, when West’s squadron encountered a large flotilla of at least 50 tartanes and other small vessels laden with corn and fodder on their way from Barcelona to Genoa. Although these boats were defenseless, he could only catch so many with the ships available to him, and many were able to slip through to their destination. This action, in turn, pulled him away from watching the coast - for his ships were so few he was using even the bomb ketches as cruisers - allowing the Gallispan army to push forward. When he returned to the coast, West found a division of the French army moving through San Remo, east of Monaco. With a hot fire of shot and shell he forced the French to retire and take a mule-track through the hills beyond, which Lautrec estimated would delay the arrival of these forces by eight days. Such service was of value to the Sardinians, but it was clear that West simply did not have the vessels necessary to be everywhere he needed to be to stop the Ligurian campaign in its tracks.

Yet another task for the British navy arose further south. The French were not the only ones who were at their wit’s end over the impractical and visionary dreams of an uncompromising allied queen; while they had Elisabetta Farnese of Spain, the Anglo-Sardinians had Maria Theresa of Hungary. Notwithstanding the warnings of her allies, the Hungarian queen was determined to conquer Naples by any means necessary. When she had given such orders to her previous commander in Italy, Otto Ferdinand von Abensberg und Traun, the general had found them so disproportionate to the means he was provided with that he resigned his post. His replacement was Georg Christian, Fürst von Lobkowitz, a man with less talent in his whole body than Traun had in one finger. Although he would do it reluctantly, at least Lobkowitz would march, and because he heavily outnumbered his enemy the Comte de Gages (20,000 Austrians to 13,000 Spaniards) he met with initial success. In March, Lobkowitz pursued Gages south through central Italy, with Gages losing a quarter of his men in the process thanks to rampant desertion and the aggressive action of Lobkowitz’s energetic vanguard commander Ulysses von Browne. But Lobkowitz himself was halting and indecisive, constantly stopping to await new orders from Vienna, and upon reaching Rome in late April the advance ground entirely to a halt. Lobkowitz took a week off to pay a visit to the Pope, while his idle officers spent their time wine-tasting and cavorting with Roman prostitutes.[A]

Whatever advantage Lobkowitz might have enjoyed soon evaporated. Since 1742, when Commodore William Martin had sailed to Naples and threatened to bombard the city unless the kingdom withdrew from the war, King Carlos had been officially neutral. Like Genoa, however, the King of Naples knew where his true interests lay. He correctly suspected that Lobkowitz’s real aim was not merely to defeat Gages but to overthrow the House of Bourbon altogether in Naples. Now emboldened by the French declaration of war and recent upgrades to his capital’s coastal defenses, the king felt secure enough to repudiate the concessions he had made to Martin under duress and declare his previous neutrality “offensive to the interests of my House.” The addition of Neapolitan soldiers to Gages’ force now gave him the advantage in numbers, and Neapolitan ships were able to resupply Gages’ forces and bring up heavy artillery along the Tyrrhenian coast. Lobkowitz had been assured that Naples was on the verge of a popular uprising against Bourbon rule, and that this would win him the victory without much effort, but if there was local discontent it was certainly not going to break out into revolution when the Austrians had not even managed to enter the country yet.[2] His prospects for a successful conquest now looked exceedingly bleak, but Lobkowitz was unwilling to admit defeat, and instead demanded that the admiral make yet another detachment from his force to stop the Neapolitan ships and support a campaign that seemed already lost.

The Gallispan thrust inland into Piedmont began in the third week of July. It had been significantly delayed, but not stopped, by the intervention of the British Navy. The main advance fell against the Tanaro. With clearly inferior numbers, the Sardinians avoided a pitched battle, withdrawing down the Tanaro while fighting a series of minor engagements with the Gallispan vanguard. By early August, Lautrec had encircled the fortress of Ceva, held by the German-born Major General Karl Sigmund von Leutrum and 4,000 Sardinians. King Carlo Emanuele concentrated his main army of at Cherasco, 27 miles from Ceva, which consisted of around 20,000 Sardinians and 4,000 Austrians (many of them Croats) on loan from Vienna. The king also had some 7,000 local militia, who were of little value in a battle but were put to excellent use as irregulars, falling upon foraging parties and raiding the supply lines and communications of the army besieging Ceva. The invading Gallispan army was now just over 30,000 strong, but 4,000 Spaniards had been diverted towards Genoa to shield the eastern flank of the advance, protect additional Genoese artillery being brought up from the capital, and defend Genoese territory as necessary.

Carlo Emanuele’s objective was simply to hold on until the Gallispan army would be forced into winter quarters. Owing to delays imposed by Franco-Spanish bickering, the hesitation of the Genoese, and the interference of the British, it was already August by the time the siege of Ceva began in earnest, giving Lautrec an uncomfortably small window of time with which to complete his objectives. It was not necessary to force the capitulation of Sardinia in a single campaign season, but the Gallispan army had to take and control enough territory upon which to subsist until the next spring. If they did not, they would either have to return to Liguria and count upon Genoese supplies - who, being net food importers, would be at the mercy of the British blockade - or withdraw back to Nice, abandoning all the progress they had made in Liguria and subjecting the army once more to naval bombardment.

It was now clear to Vienna that the threat to their Sardinian ally was deadly serious, and given Lobkowitz’s failure to accomplish anything in the south the Queen of Hungary grudgingly agreed to call off the invasion. Mathews had sent a detachment to cruise between Civitavecchia and Gaeta consisting of the 50-gun ships Newcastle and Antelope, the 40-gun heavy frigate Feversham, and the 20-gun light frigate Lowestoffe in July, but although this detachment was effective at stopping the Neapolitan supply ships running up the coast it did not greatly change the strategic balance on land. A plan to land Austrian forces behind Spanish lines, perhaps at Gaeta, was planned but never executed, and the Neapolitan insurrection against Bourbon rule never came. The British detachment did serve some purpose, for they were able to use the transport ships acquired for the abortive amphibious descent to take the Austrian sick and wounded to Livorno, although because of adverse winds this could not actually be undertaken until early September.

If there was any hope that Austria might quickly come to Carlo Emanuele’s rescue, it was dashed by a new and calamitous turn in the war in Germany. Since Prussia had withdrawn from the war in July 1742, King Friedrich II had watched with disquiet as Franco-Bavarian forces had been driven from Bohemia, Bavaria, the Palatinate, and finally out of the Empire entirely. In the summer of 1744, an Austrian army had crossed the Rhine after them and invaded Lorraine. Although Friedrich had acquired most of Silesia in the 1742 Treaty of Berlin, he knew better than most that treaties could be broken, and if Austria were to gain a total victory in the present war there would be little to stop Maria Theresa from turning her armies upon Prussia to reclaim what had been extracted from her under duress. The King of Prussia, a perfidious man who saw perfidy in everyone else, was especially worried by the terms of the 1743 Treaty of Worms which made no mention of the Treaty of Berlin or Britain’s guarantee of Prussia’s acquisition of Silesia.

Since late 1743, the King of Prussia had been in secret negotiations with France with a view towards restoring the balance of forces on the continent. In May of 1744, Friedrich had established an alliance, known as the League of Frankfurt, between Prussia, Sweden, Bavaria, Hesse-Kassel, and the Palatinate, whose stated purpose was to loyally defend the territory of the French-backed Wittelsbach Emperor Karl Albrecht, the Elector of Bavaria. Never one to offer his aid without some compensation, Friedrich secured a promise from the emperor that, in exchange for Prussia’s assistance, he would cede the northern fringe of Bohemia to Prussia. With the Austrian army of Prince Karl Alexander of Lorraine fighting on the other side of the Rhine, it seemed like a perfect moment to strike, and in August the King of Prussia and 70,000 Prussian soldiers invaded Bohemia. Clearly there would be no new reinforcements from Vienna for the Italian theater.

When the Worms alliance had been declared one year before, the prospects of the Pragmatic Allies had looked fair indeed. With the French driven entirely from Germany and the Prussians removed from the war, Maria Theresa’s once-fragile throne appeared saved, and every Spanish attempt to gain ground in Italy had been deftly thwarted by sea and land. One year on, the outlook was far more bleak. The Bourbons had bypassed the Alps and invaded Piedmont, Lobkowitz was withdrawing from Naples with his advantages squandered and his tail between his legs, and the King of Prussia was back in the fight and storming through Bohemia. Not every Bourbon endeavour had met with triumph - the attempt to invade England had ended in costly failure - but on every continental front the anti-Habsburg forces were gaining ground.

It was at last time for Genoa to acknowledge formally what had already been known informally since June. By the end of August, Genoese, Spanish, and French negotiators were putting the finishing touches on the Treaty of Aranjuez, by which Genoa would commit themselves to a formal alliance with France and Spain. The Republic would contribute 10,000 soldiers to the Bourbon cause in Italy as well as a train of artillery (much of which was already in use or on its way to Ceva). Spain would contribute a monthly subsidy to the Republic to help debt-laden Genoa pay for these forces, and the Bourbon powers together promised to protect the Republic from Sardinia, guarantee all Genoese territories including Finale and Corsica, and contribute an expeditionary force as needed to protect Corsican ports from the Worms allies and the “malcontents” acting at their bidding. The Republic would also be compensated with territorial aggrandizement, although the full extent of this was left vague, with only the Sardinian exclave of Oneglia and the Tuscan exclaves of the Lunigiana being mentioned explicitly in a secret clause.[3] Soon, the Genoese would be marching to the aid of their new allies on the front.


Footnotes
[1] The total Gallispan force in the theater was around 46,000 men, but battalions were needed for the occupation of Savoy, the protection of Nice and other coastal locales from possible amphibious descent, and the protection of the mountain passes from Sardinian counterattack, particularly the Col di Tende, where the Sardinians might descend on recently-captured Nice and cut off the invading Gallispan army from France entirely. In addition, a large part of the Gallispan cavalry was left behind, as Lautrec expected it would be of limited use owing to the terrain of Liguria and the nature of the campaign, and the need to supply a large host of cavalry with fodder and stores would strain the army’s logistics too much.
[2] Maria Theresa’s proclamation to the Neapolitans, by which she hoped to provoke a revolt in her favor, included a curious line which promised the expulsion of all Jews from the kingdom. The queen seems to have presumed that the Neapolitan people were as anti-Semitic as she herself was (they weren’t) and that they yearned to be delivered from Jewish exploitation (they didn’t). In fact Naples was a rather cosmopolitan place and the people found this “offer” perplexing.
[3] The proposal of the Tuscan Lunigiana had come about from the desire of French diplomats to avoid taking too much from Sardinia and thus forcing Carlo Emanuele to stay in the fight for fear of having his state crippled. France had accepted Genoa’s demand for the Principality of Oneglia, a coastal exclave of Sardinia entirely within Genoese territory, but attempted to satisfy the rest of Genoa’s greed with the Lunigiana instead, which had the advantage of being Tuscan territory instead of Sardinian. Tuscany had been declared neutral by the Grand Duke and Paris had been loathe to condone any hostile acts against it in previous years, as Tuscany had been swapped for Lorraine at the end of the War of Polish Succession and the French did not want to delegitimize their own claim to Lorraine. In 1744, however, the Austrians had both invaded Lorraine and attempted to invade neutral Naples, which considerably decreased King Louis’ concern for observing the sanctity of Tuscany.

Timeline Notes
[A] In fact IOTL one Austrian detachment was surprised and wiped out by the Spanish while its commanding officer was away visiting a local winery. You can’t make this stuff up.