St Bernard Pass

Massively famous painting of Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David, 1801

I'm reading The Note-Books of Captain Coignet by Captain Jean-Roch Coignet. In Chapter One he is orphaned, finds work on a farm and trains horses for the army. In Chapter Two he gets drafted into Napoleon's army. He's there when Napoleon stages a coupe and then marches to Italy via the Great St. Bernard Pass. (It's called 'great' to distinguish it from Little St. Bernard Pass.)

Napoleon crossing the Alps at the Great St Bernard Pass by Thomas-Charles Naudet

They had quite a time of it as they were dragging cannons along with them. The path over the pass was just that, a path, not a road, so they had to disassemble the cannons and carry all the pieces. You can see a horse loaded with wheels in the lower center of the above picture. It sounds like they put the cannon barrels on sledges and dragged them.

Map of St. Bernard Pass

I've been plotting the locations mentioned in the book on a Google Map (above). The blue markers indicate places mentioned in the book. The one in the lower right is Fort Bard, which was kind of a sticking point.


The Italian Job, intro, "On Days Like These" (Matt Monro) Remastered HD
Paul Middleton
Looking for more stuff about this pass, I came across this video which shows some of the terrain in the in the nearby Nivolet Pass. It's the intro to The Italian Job.

Update July 2022 replaced missing video with the intro to the original movie.