So evident was all this to the world that early in May the provisional treaty between England and Russia was already rumored to have been made binding. The French papers denounced the report as another English snare; their St. Petersburg correspondence, written, of course, in their own Paris offices, declared that the coalition had collapsed. The Emperor lingered in Italy, carefully noting the Italian and Austrian dispositions, until July, when at last he hastened to Paris, leaving his stepson Beauharnais, the "Prince Eugène," as viceroy at Milan. There was no longer any doubt as to the existence of the new coalition. England had failed in winning Prussia, for Hardenberg desired, by observing the old neutrality, to secure the consolidation of the Prussian territory through the acquisition of Hanover from the French.
Austria was in a serious dilemma. Relying first on the treaty of Lunéville, then on the preparations at Boulogne, as likely to assure a long peace, she had fallen into Napoleon's trap, and had begun a series of important army reforms. Her new system, modeled on that of France, had not yet been perfected. There were only forty thousand men under arms, and there was no artillery. The Archduke Charles might well shrink from taking the field with such an insignificant armament. But England promised cash and Russia offered men; it was no slight inducement that Italy and perhaps Bavaria were to be won. Should Prussia fail to assert her neutrality, and declare for France, the house of Austria might even recover Silesia. On July seventh the cabinet yielded, and orders were given to mobilize the troops. General Mack, who enjoyed a swollen reputation as an organizer, was intrusted with the task of making ready.
This was the condition of affairs, almost certainly known to Napoleon through his emissaries, at the time when he thought best to announce with unusual emphasis that the invasion of England was fixed for the middle of August. In April Nelson had finally been enticed to the West Indies, and Villeneuve, eluding him, had returned in May to European waters. Nelson, mistaking his enemy's destination, sailed in pursuit to Gibraltar; but one of his detached cruisers learned that the united French and Spanish squadrons were to meet at Ferrol, and by the middle of July the English admiralty was fully informed as to the whereabouts and plans of the French fleet. On the sixteenth of that month the Emperor issued orders for Villeneuve to unite the Spanish vessels with his own, and then to reinforce himself with the French squadrons of Rochefort and Brest, and appear in the Channel. On July twenty-second a British fleet under Calder met Villeneuve off Cape Finisterre in a dense fog, but the latter was not checked in his passage to Vigo. By August second he found himself at the head of a Franco-Spanish fleet numbering no fewer than twenty-nine ships of the line, which were assembled in the harbors of Ferrol and Corunna. He complained, however, that he had "bad masts, bad sails, bad rigging, bad officers, bad sailors." Conceiving himself in all probability to be only the tool of a feint, he lost the little enthusiasm he had, and became sullen. Nelson had joined Admiral Cornwallis before Brest, and, leaving his best eight ships to strengthen both the guard and the blockading fleets, made for Portsmouth. Calder, too, had reinforced the blockaders, so that by August seventeenth there would be eighteen vessels before Ferrol; eighteen remained before Brest, while a third squadron, under Sterling, was cruising with five more, prepared to join either. Villeneuve was not ready for sea until the thirteenth. Were his orders, in view of the changed situation, still valid? After an effort to beat northward against a violent storm, the French admiral received false news from a Danish merchant vessel that an English fleet of twenty-five sail was approaching. He thought himself in the exercise of due discretion when he turned and made for Cadiz, especially as the Emperor's orders contained a clause authorizing him, in case of unforeseen casualties which materially altered the situation,—"which with God's help will not occur,"—to anchor in the harbor of Cadiz after liberating the squadrons of Rochefort and Brest.
It was no feigned anger with which Napoleon received this news. What a contrast between the efficiency of his land force and the utter incompetency of his shipbuilders, sailors, and naval officers! If he had really hoped to throw an army on English soil under the momentary protection of his fleet, that project was ended: but if at heart he despised that Revolutionary legacy, the "freedom of the seas and the invasion of England," if he always intended to destroy Great Britain, not by direct attack on land or sea, but by isolating her through the destruction of her continental allies, he might still be furious that his best efforts had resulted in so trivial a display, and that this fiasco by sea might be considered as a presage of similar results in the coming land campaign. History must accept this dilemma: either England or France was the author of the Russian and Austrian alliance which brought in those wars that drenched European soil with human blood. Either Pitt, by his subsidies and diplomacy, turned an army intended for the invasion of England against his continental allies, or else Napoleon taunted and exasperated them into a coalition for his own purposes. If the latter be true, then all the thousand indications that the French Emperor was never serious about the invasion are trustworthy.
The first distribution of crosses after the institution of the Legion of Honor had taken place in July, 1804, with great pomp, at the Hospital of the Invalides; the second occurred at Boulogne just a year later, when the "Little Corporal" appeared among his men to distribute the coveted decorations with his own hands. So skilfully was the distribution managed that no man, however illiterate or mean, despaired of one day attaining the distinction of his favored comrades. The common soldiers and officers alike were thenceforward the Emperor's devoted slaves, and obeyed without question or murmur. Glory or profit, or both, were to be had in his service everywhere. They were consequently neither eager for the particular duty they believed was before them, nor the reverse, but, like fine machines, fit for anything.
Meanwhile Napoleon's purposes were steadily realizing themselves. By the middle of July the King of Prussia agreed that the French army of occupation in Hanover should be relieved by Prussian troops. This removed all fear of the two hundred and fifty thousand soldiers which Frederick the Great's successor could put into the field, a force considered throughout Europe to be quite equal in efficiency to that of France. On the thirty-first the Emperor wrote to Talleyrand that the Italian news was all for war; on August second the Paris newspapers began to abuse Austria and Russia in unmeasured terms; on the twelfth the "Moniteur" summoned Austria to desist from arming, and threatened an advance from the ocean to Switzerland of the great army at Boulogne. Next day the Emperor wrote to Talleyrand that if the court at Vienna gave no heed to his demand, he would attack Austria, be in her capital by November, and thence advance against Russia.
On August twenty-third the declaration of war was composed and held in readiness. The same day Napoleon wrote to Talleyrand that his resolution was taken: if the fleet appeared in the Channel there was still time, and he would be master of England; if not, he would start for Germany. "I march to Vienna, and do not lay down my arms until I have Naples and Venice, and have so enlarged the territories of the Elector of Bavaria that I have nothing more to fear from Austria." Two days later in the same correspondence he wrote, "The Austrians have no idea how quickly my two hundred thousand will pirouette." On the twenty-fourth, Marmont received orders to hasten by forced marches from the Texel to Mainz; on the twenty-seventh, marching orders were issued to the Army of England, otherwise the Army of the Coasts of the Ocean, and after August twenty-sixth down to the end the Grand Army; the swift columns were hurrying eastward before Europe understood what had happened. Duroc was already on his way to offer Hanover to Prussia as the price of a threatening demonstration against Austria. Bernadotte was to mass the army of occupation at Göttingen. Eugène was instructed to collect the troops from northern Italy under Masséna on the banks of the Adige, and Saint-Cyr to make ready for the occupation of Naples.
The merest layman can not only see the colossal proportions of this plan, but he must recognize as well the symmetry of its parts. It is a matter of opinion whether Napoleon devised it in the few days between the receipt of news that Villeneuve had failed him and the departure for Germany, or whether its combination was the result of a long-studied and carefully concealed design. Either hypothesis borders on the miraculous, and yet, paradoxical as it may appear, it requires less strain on one's reason to believe that both are in a measure correct; the test imposed on the navy having failed, the alternative which was long foreseen and always preferred became imperative. So rapid was the wonderful march that scouts could scarcely outrun it with reports, and the newspapers were either without information or dared not print what they knew. It was a force of about two hundred thousand men which crossed the Rhine, and, passing through Hesse, Baden, and Würtemberg to crush the utterly disproportionate and feeble Austrian army, reached the Danube valley near Ulm early in October. It was the third of September before Francis declared war; on the twenty-first, his forces, sixty thousand strong, were on the Iller in sight of Ulm. It was not so much Bavaria that he had in mind; it was Italy for which he was concerned. Austria's weight in the balance now depended upon her keeping the Venetian lands, and her generals made no haste in an advance which would not only put the Alps between her own two armies, but separate her van from her approaching auxiliaries.
The agreement with Russia was that her army, now on the borders of Galicia, and eighty thousand strong, should enter Austria in three divisions, the first of which should reach the Inn on October sixteenth. The Archduke Charles was to command the main force in Italy; the youthful Archduke Ferdinand, under the direction of Mack as quartermaster-general, that in Germany. Napoleon had made the acquaintance of this officer six years before while he was a prisoner of war at Paris, and considered him entirely mediocre—"likely to get a lesson if ever opposed to a first-rate French general." Now that the two were matched the Emperor must have laughed in his sleeve, for he played with his adversary in a spirit of confident and amused assurance.
In order to apprehend Napoleon's supernal greatness it is essential at this period of his life to shut out of view the politician, and fix the eye again on the general; to see him, moreover, solely as a strategist. It may be said that he was for the first and last time unhampered. His political independence and personal popularity were alike secure. His army was the best in Europe, composed of young and well-drilled conscripts, who had been eighteen months under arms, with a large nucleus of trained veterans. Of the generals who commanded the seven corps destined for Germany only two, Augereau and Bernadotte, were over forty years of age. The Emperor himself, Soult, Lannes, and Ney were thirty-six, Davout was thirty-five, and Marmont only thirty-one. Of the division commanders one half were between thirty and forty, while only a single one was fifty. Not one of these men was commonplace. They knew their profession, and had practised it with success; they were without an exception self-reliant and enterprising, familiar with their leader's methods and requirements.