Along the lower slopes of the high ground to the north and east of Ulm, drawn up in lines and columns over a wide semi-circle, stood the victorious army; massed round, as it were, in a vast amphitheatre. They formed up by army corps, and took post grim and silent, drawn up in battle array, with muskets loaded and bayonets fixed. The Cavalry with sabres drawn were on one side; the Infantry on the other, facing them and leaving a space between, along which the Austrians were to pass. Fifty loaded cannon, in line along one ridge, pointed down on the city. In front, towards the river, there rose a small knoll, an outlying spur of rock. On that Napoleon took his station beside a blazing watchfire which marked the spot from far. Accompanying him were most of the marshals and the assembled Etat-Major of the Grand Army, a numerous and brilliant gathering. Immediately in rear stood massed the 10,000 men of the Imperial Guard.
Two army corps, a little way from the rest, had a special post of honour. They were drawn up at the end of the wide semi-circle of the main army nearest the Augsburg gate of Ulm; immediately where the defilading column of captives would present themselves before passing Napoleon to lay down their arms and standards. The two corps were: that on the right, Ney’s, the Sixth Army Corps, the heroes of the day par excellence; on the left, the Second Corps, Marmont’s, who had been doing notable work elsewhere in the neighbourhood of Ulm. Ney, with his personal staff beside him, was on horseback in front of the centre of his corps; Marmont had his post in like manner in front of his men. As his personal reward for the leading part Ney and the Sixth Corps had had in bringing about the triumph, that marshal had the special honour of being designated to superintend the surrender.
A few minutes before ten o’clock the French drums began to beat, and the regimental bands to play. Immediately after that the long-drawn-out procession of sullen and woebegone-looking Austrian captives began silently to trail its way out of the Stuttgart gate of the fortress. “Suddenly we saw an endless column file out of the town and march up in front of the Emperor, on the plain at the foot of a mountain.”
MACK SURRENDERS HIS SWORD
General Mack himself headed it, wan-faced and pale as the white uniform coat he wore, his eyes filled with tears, his head bowed, a pitiful and abject figure to behold. After him followed eighteen Austrian generals—a surprising number—most of them as wretched and downcast-looking as their chief. “Behold, Sire, the unfortunate Mack!” was the ill fated leader’s address to Napoleon, as he formally presented his sword. Napoleon, in a mood—as well he might be—in that hour of unparalleled triumph, to show courtesy to the fallen foe, desired Mack to keep his sword and remain at his side. He said the same to the eighteen other generals as, one by one, they came up in turn to tender him their swords. He returned each his sword and bade them all place themselves near their chief. When all the swords had been presented and returned, Napoleon made the Austrian generals collectively a short harangue. “Gentlemen,” he began, “war has its chances! Often victorious, you must expect sometimes to be vanquished!” He did not really know, Napoleon went on, why they were fighting. Their master had begun against him an unjust war. “I want nothing on the Continent,” said Napoleon in conclusion, “only ships, colonies, and commerce!” It was on the day before Trafalgar that these memorable words were spoken. The Austrian generals stared at Napoleon blankly, but not one uttered a word. “They were all very dull; it was the Emperor alone who kept up the conversation.” Then they took their stand beside their conqueror and looked on at the bitterly humiliating scene of the defilade of their fellow soldiers.
THE PARADE OF THE VANQUISHED
In an almost incessant throng the columns of the Austrian army streamed by: white-clad cuirassiers; hussars in red and blue and grey; battery after battery of cocked-hatted, brown-garbed artillerymen, riding with or on their rumbling dull-yellow wheeled guns; battalion after battalion of white-coated linesmen; dark-green coated jägers; Hungarian grenadiers, and so on. Twenty-seven thousand officers and men and sixty field-guns in all defiled past the Eagles, proudly arrayed there above them, in front of the serried lines of glittering French bayonets along the hillsides. For five hours on end the host of captives plodded on before the rocky brow from which Napoleon surveyed the spectacle; tramping by, their muskets without bayonets and unloaded, their cartridge-boxes emptied. In several regiments the men maintained a fair semblance of discipline and military order; but the ranks of all were sadly bedraggled-looking, the white uniforms torn and soiled and besmirched with powder-smoke, with many of the men hatless, or limping from wounds, or with bound-up heads, and their arms in bloodstained slings. As had been ordered by Napoleon, they carried with them their standards; no fewer than forty silken battle-flags—for the most part cased, but here and there was to be seen one not furled, displaying, as though in futile defiance, its flaunting yellow folds with the double-headed Black Eagle.
As the Austrian linesmen came abreast of where Napoleon stood, the pace of the men slackened. Every eye was turned to look at “him”; at the small grey-coated figure on foot beside the watchfire, standing near the crestfallen group of their own generals, a few paces from the bright and brilliant-hued cavalcade of French marshals and the staff. All stared at Napoleon, gazing as if under a spell. Then, in the midst of it all, this happened. Suddenly, as they passed Napoleon, a shout rose from among the ranks of the defeated army: “Es lebe der Kaiser!” (“Long live the Emperor!”) The cry burst forth with startling effect. It was repeated, and then several men took it up. But what did it mean? “Es lebe der Kaiser!” was the national German greeting in salute to their own Austrian sovereign as Head of the Empire, to the Kaiser at Vienna, the Emperor of Germany. Did the soldiers who first raised the cry intend it for that, or to hail Napoleon, as his own men did, with a “Vive l’Empereur!”? The words bore the same meaning. Or did the men fling the words at Napoleon in a sort of bravado, as a show of defiance? Some of the Austrians assuredly did mean them so; to relieve the breaking strain, the terrible tension of the ordeal. At least some of the French officers near Napoleon took that view of it. “As they passed by,” describes one, “the prisoners, seized with wonder, with admiration, slowed down in their march to gaze at their conqueror, and some cried out ‘Long live the Emperor!’ but no doubt under very different emotions; some with evident mortification.”
GIVING UP THE GUNS AND HORSES
From the presence of Napoleon the captive army passed to the scene of the act of final humiliation: to the place where, midway between the lines of bayonets of the troops of Ney and Marmont, they were to lay down their colours and ground their arms.