in manœuvring. Napoleon’s determination to undertake the invasion of England has often been disputed, but it is hard to imagine what other operation he contemplated, for the outbreak of hostilities with his continental enemies found him ill-supplied with intelligence as to the resources of the country he had then to traverse. To remedy this, Murat and other general officers as well as minor agents were sent ahead and instructed to travel through South Germany in plain clothes with a view to collecting information and mastering the topography. The emperor was, moreover, imperfectly acquainted with the degree of preparation of his adversaries’ designs, and when he dictated his preliminary orders he was still unaware of the direction that the allies’ advance would assume. That he foresaw the march of events which ultimately drew Mack to Ulm is inconceivable. On the 26th of August, however, he learnt that 100,000 Russians were about to enter Bohemia thence to unite with an Austrian army of 80,000 near the junction of the Inn and Danube, and this information compelled him to alter the general direction of his advance so as to traverse the defiles of the Black Forest north of the Neckar, cavalry only observing the passes to the south.
3. Austrian Army.—The Austrians after the defeats of 1800 had endeavoured to reorganize their forces on the French model, but they were soon to learn that in matters of organization the spirit is everything, the letter very little. They had copied the organization of the French corps, but could find no corps commanders fit to assume the responsibility for these commands. As always in such conditions, the actual control of the smallest movements was still centralized in the hands of the army commanders, and thus the rate of marching was incredibly slow. They had decided that in future their troops in the field should live by requisition, and had handed over to the artillery, which needed them badly, a large number of horses thus set free from the transport service, but they had not realized that men accustomed to a regular distribution of rations cannot be transformed into successful marauders and pillagers by a stroke of the pen; and they had sent away the bulk of their army, 120,000 under their best general, the archduke Charles, into Italy, leaving Lieut. Field Marshal Mack von Leiberich in Germany, nominally as chief of the staff to the young Prince Ferdinand, but virtually in command, to meet the onset of Napoleon at the head of his veterans. Mack was a man of unusual attainments. He had risen from the ranks in the most caste-ridden army in Europe, and against untold opposition had carried through army reforms which were correct in principle, and needed only time to develop. It was his fate to be made the scapegoat for the disasters which followed, though they need no further explanation than that, at the head of 80,000 men and exercising only restricted powers of command, he was pitted against the greatest strategist of all ages who was responsible to no overlord and commanded, in the fullest sense of the term, an army considerably more than twice as strong.
4. The March on Ulm.—The outbreak of the campaign was hastened by the desire of the Austrian government to feed their own army and leave a bare country for Napoleon by securing the resources of Bavaria. It was also hoped that the Bavarians with their army of 25,000 men would join the allies. In the latter hope they were deceived, and the Bavarians under General Wrede slipped away to Bamberg in time. In the former, however, they were successful, and the destitution they left in their wake almost wrecked Napoleon’s subsequent combinations. Mack’s march to Ulm was therefore a necessity of the situation, and his continuance in this exposed position, if foolhardy against such an adversary, was at any rate the outcome of the high resolve that even if beaten he would inflict crippling losses upon the enemy. Mack knew that the Russians would be late at the rendezvous on the Inn. By constructing an entrenched camp at Ulm and concentrating all the available food within it, he expected to compel Napoleon to invest and besiege him, and he anticipated that in the devastated country his adversary would be compelled to separate and thus fall an easy prey to the Russians. For that blow he had determined to make his own army the anvil. But these views obviously could not be published in army orders, hence the discontent and opposition he was destined to encounter.
5. Movements of the French.—It was on the 21st that Napoleon learnt of Mack’s presence in Ulm. On that date his army had crossed the Rhine and was entering the defiles of the Black Forest. It was already beginning to suffer. Boots were worn out, greatcoats deficient, transport almost unattainable and, according to modern ideas, the army would have been considered incapable of action.
| Sept. 28. | Oct. 6. | Oct. 9. | Oct. 16. | |
| Bernadotte | Würzburg | Anspach | Nürnberg | Regensburg |
| Marmont | Würzburg | Anspach | Nürnberg | Regensburg |
| Davout | Mannheim | Mergentheim | Anspach | Dietfurt |
| Ney | Selz | Crailsheim | Weissenburg | Ingolstadt |
| Lannes | Strassburg | Gmünd | Nördlingen | Neuburg |
| Soult | Landau | Aalen | Donauwörth |
On the 26th of September, its deployment beyond the mountains was complete, and as Napoleon did not know of Mack’s intention to stay at Ulm and had learned that the Russian advance had been delayed, he directed his columns by the following roads on the Danube, between Donauwörth and Ingolstadt, so as to be in a position to intervene between the Austrians and the Russians and beat both in detail. On the 7th of October this movement was completed—the Austrians abandoned the Danube bridges after a show of resistance, retreating westward—and Napoleon, leaving Murat in command of the V. and VI. corps and cavalry to observe the Austrians, pressed on to Augsburg with the others so as to be ready to deal with the Russians. Learning, however, that these were still beyond striking radius, he determined to deal with Mack’s army first, having formed the fixed conviction that a threat at the latter’s communications would compel him to endeavour to retreat southwards towards Tirol. Bernadotte in his turn became an army of observation, and Napoleon joining Murat with the main body marched rapidly westward from the Lech towards the Iller.
6. Austrian Plans.—Mack’s intentions were not what Napoleon supposed. He had meanwhile received (false) information of a British landing at Boulogne, and he was seriously deceived as to the numbers of Napoleon’s forces. He was also aware that the exactions of the French had produced deep indignation throughout Germany and especially in Prussia (whose neutrality had been violated, see § 14, below). All this, and the almost mutinous discontent of his generals and his enemies of the court circle, shook his resolution of acting as anvil for the Russians, of whose delay also he was aware, and about the 8th of October he determined to march out north-eastward across the French lines of communication and save his sovereign’s army by taking refuge if necessary in Saxony. Believing implicitly in the rumours of a descent on Boulogne and of risings in France which also reached him, and knowing the destitution he had left behind him in his movement to Ulm, when he heard of the westward march of French columns from the Lech he told his army, apparently in all good faith, that the French were in full march for their own country.
Actually the French at this moment were suffering the most terrible distress—up to the Danube they had still found sufficient food for existence, but south of it, in the track of the Austrians, they found nothing. All march discipline disappeared, the men dissolved into hordes of marauders and even the sternest of the marshals wrote piteous appeals to the emperor for supplies, and for permission to shoot some of their stragglers. But to all these Berthier in the emperor’s name sent the stereotyped reply—“The emperor has ordered you to carry four days provisions, therefore you can expect nothing further—you know the emperor’s method of conducting war.”
7. Action of Albeck or Haslach.—Meanwhile Murat, before the emperor joined him, had given Mack the desired opening. The VI. corps (Ney) should have remained on the left bank of the Danube to close the Austrian exit on that side, but by mistake only Dupont’s division had been left at Albeck, the rest being
