And at midnight the two monarchs proceeded together by torchlight to the hallowed grave. Uncovering when he approached the spot, the Emperor kissed the pall, and taking the hand of the King of Prussia, as it lay on the tomb, they swore an eternal friendship to each other, and bound themselves by the most solemn oaths to maintain their engagements inviolate in the great contest for European independence in which they were engaged.
It would have been well for the Allies, if, when Prussia had thus taken her part, her cabinet had possessed sufficient resolution to have taken the field instead of continuing in her old habit of temporizing, and thus permitting Napoleon to continue without interruption his advance on Vienna. But her long indecision had been her ruin. Her territory had been violated by France, who, while apparently her ally, was reserving for her only the melancholy privilege of being last destroyed.
In the meantime, a combined force of English, Russians, and Swedes, thirty thousand strong, had been landed in Hanover, and the Prussian troops occupying that Electorate had offered no resistance—a sure proof to Napoleon of a secret understanding between the Cabinet of Berlin and that of London.
While she was thus giving daily proofs of her indecision and treachery, the ever-vigilant Bonaparte was pouring his armies through Bavaria into Austria and concentrating his divisions for the sweeping victory which was so soon afterwards destined to scatter to the winds the opposing allies.
We now come to the campaign of Austerlitz; the most remarkable, in a military point of view, which the history of the war afforded.
In the beginning of August the French army was cantoned on the heights of Boulogne; and by the first week of December, Vienna was taken, and the strength of Austria and Russia prostrated.
The allied armies presented a total of 80,000 men, including a division of the imperial guard under the Grand Duke Constantine, brother of the Emperor of Russia.
The forces which Napoleon had to resist this great array hardly amounted to 70,000 combatants.
On the 30th November, 1805, the light troops of the Allies were seen from the French outposts marching across their position towards the right of the army. Napoleon spent the whole of both days on horseback at the advanced posts watching their movements. At length on the morning of the 1st Dec. the intentions of the enemy were clearly manifested, and Napoleon beheld with “inexpressible delight” their whole columns dark, and massy, moving across his position at so short a distance as rendered it apparent a general action was at hand. Carefully avoiding the slightest interruption to their movement, he merely watched with intense anxiety their march, and when it became evident that the resolution to turn the right flank of the French army had been decided upon, he exclaimed, prophetically—“To-morrow, before night-fall, that army is mine.”
At four in the morning the Emperor was on horseback. All was still among the immense multitude concentrated in the French lines. Buried in sleep the soldiers forgot alike their triumphs and the dangers they were about to undergo. Gradually, however, a confused murmur arose from the Russian host, and all the reports from the outposts announced that the advance had already commenced along the whole line.