And yet there was the imperfection of all human arrangements even in this masterful and stupendous campaign. An inferior commander might easily have pleaded one of many excuses for failure in such an enterprise. The Rhine crossing was delayed by insufficiency of transport carriages and pontoons, though the further advance was amply arranged. There were many desertions from the ranks, there was an insufficiency of officers, the artillery force was unduly delayed in coming up, the subsistence was scanty and imperfect, and the supply of clothing, especially shoes, was a source of anxiety. Most of all, the French treasury was utterly disorganized, pay was in arrears, no ready money was forthcoming for either ordinary or extraordinary expenses, there was slackness and distrust among the civil officials, and Mollien declares that the situation was so desperate that "in victory alone" Napoleon "saw and sought the remedy."
These facts shed a bright light on the course of affairs throughout the autumn. They explain why Napoleon forgot entirely that he was an emperor, and was first and last throughout the campaign a general. Every highway and cross-road from Boulogne to the Danube had been surveyed by his confidential officers and circumstantially described to him; and out of these reports he evolved a plan for the march which in the teeth of every hindrance was executed to the letter. The order for crossing the Rhine is a classic in military literature. No sooner was the advance from one line to another complete than reserve camps were established in the rear, the strong places fortified, and depots of munitions established. The Austrians had chosen for defense the line of the Iller. In addition to their main force of sixty thousand, there were twelve thousand in the fortified camp at Braunau, which contained their stores, and fifteen thousand on Lake Constance. They had not compelled Bavaria either to disarm or to accept their alliance, and the Elector had consequently gathered an army at Bamberg. Such was the situation when the French and Austrians came within striking distance of each other. The latter did not know that their foe was so near, for by a masterly and seemingly reckless use of his cavalry Napoleon had temporarily misled them as to the true position of his columns, which had flanked the Black Forest, and were holding the northeast line from Weissenburg southwesterly to Ulm by Nördlingen and Aalen, being actually in the rear of their enemy.
The next move of Napoleon was one of daring genius. By a series of carefully prescribed marches, continuing for a week, the seven corps were all thrown northward to the left as if to surround the enemy. Bernadotte, violating the Prussian neutrality, crossed the duchy of Ansbach to Ingolstadt; Marmont was at Neuburg; the other five held the line from Heidenheim to Offingen. Mack learned the facts, and believing, like every Austrian, that the French people hated Napoleon, concluded that his enemy was facing about in order to retreat by the southerly line to France! The French people, he thought, were threatening revolution and causing anxiety; the English, he was positive, were about to make a landing. So he stood still and waited until, on October seventh, the French, instead of marching for home, began to cross the Danube.
Three weeks after the passage of the Rhine, the Emperor wrote to Josephine: "I have destroyed the enemy merely by marches." It was literally true. On October ninth, the French, having beaten the parties sent out to harry them, had crossed the Danube also. Soult seized Memmingen and cut off the retreat to the Tyrol; Bernadotte and Davout remained to observe the Russians, whom they expected to see at any moment. In a sort of dazed uncertainty Mack finally marched out from Ulm to cross the Danube at Günzburg; but he found Ney in possession of the bridge, and in the night of the tenth he returned to the city. Two days were spent in discussions as to the probable course of the French, Mack persisting in the hallucination that they had retreated, the archduke, with better sense, perceiving that the toils were ever drawing closer about his army.
On the twelfth Napoleon moved with his whole force. The Archduke Ferdinand escaped into Bohemia with three battalions of infantry and eleven cavalry squadrons; but Mack, now stubbornly insisting that the Emperor was going to attack the Russians, remained, as he said, to strike the passing columns of the French on their flank! On the thirteenth it became clear that the goal of the enemy was Ulm; on the fourteenth they had virtually beset the town; and on the sixteenth the mortified commander opened negotiations for surrender, which were completed the following day. "If within a week," ran the stipulations, "the auxiliary forces do not appear, the army of Ulm are prisoners of war: except the officers, who march out on parole." On the eighteenth, Murat captured the division of Werneck at Nördlingen. In a personal interview between the Emperor and Mack on October twentieth, three days before the expiration of the limit, the latter was wheedled into admitting the terms as already complete, and twenty-three thousand Austrians laid down their arms. During the scene, according to the journal of one of Mack's officers, Napoleon, "in the uniform of a common soldier, with a gray coat singed on the elbows and tails, a slouch hat, without any badge of distinction, on his head, his arms crossed behind his back and warming himself at a camp-fire, conversed with vivacity and made himself agreeable." An Austrian corps had started from Vienna to guard the crossing of the Inn; the Archduke John was advancing from the Tyrol; the Archduke Charles was holding the Adige. A month later all these were able to unite at Marburg in Styria; but they were too few to assume the offensive, and Mack's capitulation at Ulm was the virtual destruction of Austria's power. The safety of Vienna depended not on its feeble garrison, but on the Russians, who had gathered on the Inn at Braunau and on the Enns at Wels. Almost immediately the French, who had been "gathered to strike," were "separated to live," as their commander's motto ran. Ten days later Braunau with all its stores fell into the hands of Lannes without a blow, and the van of the allies began a somewhat precipitate retreat toward the river Enns, the line which the Aulic Council at Vienna had determined to defend.
But Kutusoff, the Russian general, was not of the same mind, and in order to secure, if possible, the support of the second division of his emperor's army, which was advancing under Buxhöwden from the frontier, crossed to the left bank of the Danube at Krems, and hastened northeastward by Znaim toward Brünn, the capital of Moravia. Murat had been instructed to hang on the enemy's skirts and harass his retreat. Instead, he kept down the right bank of the Danube, hastening toward Vienna for the laurels he hoped to seize in occupying that undefended capital. "I cannot explain your behavior," wrote Napoleon to his brother-in-law; "you have lost me two days, and thought only on the glory of entering Vienna." In fact, an unsupported division under Mortier was caught by the Russians at Dürrenstein on the left bank and utterly destroyed. A victory won at Leoben by Ney over the Austrian division of Merveldt was unfortunately productive of no results and left Napoleon's situation very difficult. There was nothing now possible but for Murat to secure the river at Vienna, cross with two army corps, and hurry backward toward the northwest to prevent Kutusoff from reaching Moravia. This was possible only if the Austrians had not yet destroyed the bridges over the Danube. It was their bad habit, as Marmont has remarked, when defending the passage of a river to leave the bridge intact to the last moment for the sake of a counter-attack. This they had done at both Lodi and Arcola in Italy, and they had done it once again, all three times to their utter undoing.
Entering Vienna on the twelfth, Murat hastened to the Tabor bridge, which, as had been his hope and expectation, he found all laid with combustibles ready to be set on fire by a garrison troop of Austrians who had retreated to the opposite shore, but had not destroyed the bridge. The danger was real and the crisis imminent. Taking advantage of the fact that on the third the Emperor Francis had vainly endeavored to open negotiations with Napoleon, Murat declared to the Austrian commander what he knew to be an untruth—that an armistice had been concluded, and that there was still some prospect of peace. Bertrand fortified the statement by his word of honor; the Austrians withheld their torches, and the French crossed the bridge, while the victimized garrison drew back in the direction of Brünn. The union of the two Russian divisions with the remnants of the Austrian army was thus rendered doubtful, and their chances of defeating the reunited French were doubly uncertain. Napoleon's reputation as a strategist was saved in extremity. By another series of almost superhuman marches his main army reached Vienna on the next day, ready to follow on Murat's heels. On the fourteenth Napoleon's headquarters were established in the palace of Schönbrunn.
CHAPTER XXXII
Trafalgar and Austerlitz[33]
The English Navy — Villeneuve's Plight — Preliminary Manœuvers — The Attack off Trafalgar — Victory of the English — Suicide of Villeneuve — The Effects of the Battle — Prussia and the Continental Campaign — Napoleon's March to Vienna — The Combat near Hollabrunn — Napoleon's Situation — The Czar Decides for Battle — The Struggle for Position — Plans of the Antagonists — The Eve of Conflict — The Battle-field of Austerlitz — The Struggle for Pratzen — The Allies Overwhelmed — Napoleon and Francis — Conduct of the Czar — The Fighting at Austerlitz — The New Tactics.