“This army, the most beautiful that was ever seen, was less redoubtable from the number of its soldiers than from their nature. Almost all of them had carried on war and had won victories. There still existed among them something of the enthusiasm and exaltation of the Revolutionary campaigns; but this enthusiasm was systematized. From the supreme chief down—the chiefs of the army corps, the division commanders, the common officers and soldiers—everybody was hardened to war. The eighteen months in splendid camps had produced a training, an ensemble, which has never existed since to the same degree, and a boundless confidence. This army was probably the best and the most redoubtable that modern times have seen.”
The force responded to the imperious genius of its commander with a beautiful precision which amazes and dazzles one who follows its march. So perfectly had all been arranged, so exactly did every corps and officer respond, that nine days after the passage of the Rhine, the army was in Bavaria, several marches in the rear of the enemy. The weather was terrible, but nothing checked them. The emperor himself set the example. Day and night he was on horseback in the midst of his troops; once for a week he did not take off his boots. When they lagged, or the enemy harassed them, he would gather each regiment into a circle, explain to it the position of the enemy, the imminence of a great battle, and his confidence in his troops. These harangues sometimes took place in driving snowstorms, the soldiers standing up to their knees in icy slush. By October 13th, such was the extraordinary march they had made, the emperor was able to issue this address to the army:
“Soldiers, a month ago we were encamped on the shores of the ocean, opposite England, when an impious league forced us to fly to the Rhine. Not a fortnight ago that river was passed; and the Alps, the Neckar, the Danube, and the Lech, the celebrated barriers of Germany, have not for a minute delayed our march.... The enemy, deceived by our manœuvres and the rapidity of our movements, is entirely turned.... But for the army before you, we should be in London to-day, have avenged six centuries of insult, and have liberated the sea.
“Remember to-morrow that you are fighting against the allies of England.
“Napoleon.”
Four days after this address came the capitulation of Ulm—a “new Caudine Forks,” as Marmont called it. It was, as Napoleon said, a victory won by legs, instead of by arms. The great fatigue and the forced marches which the army had undergone had gained them sixty thousand prisoners, one hundred and twenty guns, ninety colors, more than thirty generals, at a cost of but fifteen hundred men, two-thirds of them but slightly wounded.
But there was no rest for the army. Before the middle of November it had so surrounded Vienna that the emperor and his court had fled to Brünn, seventy or eighty miles north of Vienna, to meet the Russians, who, under Alexander I., were coming from Berlin. Thither Napoleon followed them, but the Austrians retreated eastward, joining the Russians at Olmütz. The combined force of the allies was now some ninety thousand men. They had a strong reserve, and it looked as if the Prussian army was about to join them. Napoleon at Brünn had only some seventy or eighty thousand men, and was in the heart of the enemy’s country. Alexander, flattered by his aides, and confident that he was able to defeat the French, resolved to leave his strong position at Olmütz and seek battle with Napoleon.
NAPOLEON, 1805.
Engraved in 1812 by Massard, after Bouillon.