Chapter 32

THE THIRD COALITION[32]

[Footnote 32: Mahan: Life of Nelson and other writings; Jurien de la Gravière: Guerres Maritimes; Rousset: L'Art de Napoléon; Alembert et Colin: La Campagne de 1805 en Allemagne; Huidekoper: Seizure of the Tabor Bridge, Napoleon's Concentration on the Rhine and Main in 1805 (Journal of the Military Service Institution, May-June, 1905; and for September, 1907); the collections of Bailleu, Martens, Leclercq, Garden, and Tratchefski; the Memoirs of Mollien, Méneval, Dumas, Marmont, Ségur, Rapp, Lannes (ed. Thomas), Savary, Oudinot, Hardenberg, Czartoryski, and the Countess Potocka; the works of Hüffer, Ranke, and Oncken, and the correspondence of Napoleon in both Lefebvre and the official publication. For the Austrian sources see von Angeli in the Mittheilungen des K. K. Archivs, Ulm and Austerlitz. The first coalition of more than two powers against France was in 1793, the second in 1798; the war of 1792 was against Austria and Prussia, that of 1795 against England and Austria.]

The Expansion of Empire -- Great Britain and Russia -- Napoleon's Attitude -- Russia and Austria -- The New Coalition -- Weakness of Austria -- Nelson and Villeneuve -- The French Fleet at Cadiz -- Responsibility for the Napoleonic Wars -- The Grand Army of France -- The Menace of War -- Declaration of Hostilities -- From Boulogne to Ulm -- Napoleon and Mack -- Their Respective Plans -- Victory Won by Marching -- Surrender of Ulm -- Failure of Murat -- A Dishonorable Ruse.

The coronation at Milan was startling to cabinets and kings; but the sequel was in their eyes a downright menace. Piombino and Lucca were given to the Bonaparte sisters; Parma and Piacenza were endowed with the new French code, and as the climax of audacity the entire Ligurian Republic was incorporated, with France. Only a short time since, Napoleon had informed the world through an allocution to the legislature that Holland, Switzerland, and three fourths of Germany belonged to France by right of conquest, but that, such was his moderation, the two former lands would be left independent. The partition of Poland and the conquest of India, as he had previously remarked, prejudiced France in the European balance; but again, such was French moderation, Italy was to have remained independent, the two crowns separate, and no new province was to have been annexed to the Empire. But now it was otherwise ordered, and by no fault of his he had been forced to unite the two crowns; this being so, Genoa had become essential to the unity of the Empire. Austria might well ask what the word "Italy" in the royal title was intended to mean. No sooner were the coronation ceremonies ended than half of the sixty thousand troops which had either accompanied Napoleon or had been summoned from near were stationed on the so-called sanitary cordon of Austria, the old Venetian boundaries. Wearing the worm-eaten coat and battered hat which he had worn at Marengo, and on the memorable field which had witnessed his agony of doubt, fear, and joy, the King of Italy rehearsed with the remaining thirty thousand the events of that decisive day. Later, at Castiglione the other contingent gave a similar exhibition.

[Sidenote: 1805]

It is now known, and probably Napoleon suspected at the time, that Pitt's exertions had already been half successful. On November sixth, 1804, Austria and Russia had signed a defensive treaty like that already concluded between Russia and Prussia. Then, as now, the cabinets and peoples of the former lands heartily disliked each other. But Alexander was a dreamer. His notorious scheme for the redistribution of European territory, printed only a few years ago for the first time in the memoirs of Czartoryski, his minister for foreign affairs, is conclusive evidence of his character. By this plan he himself was to have the whole of Poland, together with the provinces from which the kingdom of Prussia takes its name; and besides, Moldavia, Cattaro, Corfu, Constantinople, and the Dardanelles! Austria was to get Bavaria, France the Rhine frontier, Prussia a slight compensation in Germany, and so forth. Great Britain was clever enough to use this dreamer, leading him to hope for some concessions to such of his visionary schemes as were known to her, but putting her propositions in such a form as would to a certainty be unacceptable to Napoleon: for example, she would not promise to evacuate Malta. The Czar accordingly proposed to mediate with the Emperor of the French for peace, not now as a solitary rival, but in the name of all Europe, except, of course, Prussia, which was negotiating with France for Hanover.

In May, therefore, Alexander's envoy asked from the court at Berlin a safe-conduct into France, with which Russia had broken off diplomatic relations. Napoleon received at Milan a letter from Frederick William notifying him of the circumstance. He replied in what appeared a conciliatory tone; but declared that any peace with England must bind her cabinet not to give asylum to the Bourbons, and must compel them likewise to muzzle their wretched writers. "I have no ambition," ran one clause; "twice I have evacuated the third of Europe without compulsion. I owe Russia no more explanation concerning Italian affairs than she owes to me concerning those of Turkey and Persia." The news of what had been done with Genoa, Lucca, and Piombino reached St. Petersburg in due time, and emphasized the grim sincerity of the French Emperor.

As time passed Napoleon also claimed that the city of Naples was a focus of anti-French conspiracies, and that by the queen's influence Russia had occupied Corfu. The independence of Etruria, under the so-called protection of the French troops quartered in the kingdom, was already a phantom; that of Naples was, in spite of existing treaties, not really more substantial. The King was the obedient servant of his masterful Austrian consort, Maria Carolina, who was the real ruler. She had been told in January that the existence of her power depended upon her attitude. If she would dismiss her minister, Acton, expel the French emigrants, send home the English resident, recall her own from St. Petersburg, and muster out her militia,--in short, "show confidence in France,"--she might continue to reign. No one could doubt that this foretold the speedy end of the Italian Bourbons. The Czar at once recalled his peace envoy from Berlin, for he had not journeyed farther, and immediately Russia and Austria put aside their conflicting ambitions. They could look on at all Napoleon's aggressions, they could even condone the murder of Enghien, and continue their rivalry; but they could no longer do so when Austria felt Venice slipping from her grasp, and Alexander saw his Oriental ambitions forever defeated, as would be the case if the western shore of the Adriatic should fall into his great rival's hands.

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.

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 (p.~365) 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 (p.~367) 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.