coalition. Perhaps this new alliance will strangle the coalition at its birth; at any rate it will paralyze Austria. Accordingly, he despatches to Berlin his favourite aide-de-camp, General Duroc, to persuade the King that his alliance will save the Continent from war.[21]

Meanwhile the Hapsburgs were completely deceived. They imagined Napoleon to be wholly immersed in his naval enterprise, and accordingly formed a plan of campaign, which, though admirable against a weak and guileless foe, was fraught with danger if the python's coils were ready for a spring. As a matter of fact, he was far better prepared than Austria. As late as July 7th, the Court of Vienna had informed the allies that its army would not be ready for four months; yet the nervous anxiety of the Hapsburgs to be beforehand with Napoleon led them to hurry on war: and on August 9th they secretly gave their adhesion to the Russo-British alliance.

Then, too, by a strange fatuity, their move into Bavaria was to be made with a force of only 59,000 men, while their chief masses, some 92,000 strong, were launched into Italy against the strongholds on the Mincio. To guard the flanks of these armies, Austria had 34,000 men in Tyrol; but, apart from raw recruits, there were fewer than 20,000 soldiers in the rest of that vast empire. In fact, the success of the autumn campaign was known to depend on the help of the Russians, who were expected to reach the banks of the Inn before the 20th of October, while it was thought that the French could not possibly reach the Danube till twenty days later.[22] It was intended, however, to act most vigorously in Italy, and to wage a defensive campaign on the Danube.

Such was the plan concocted at Vienna, mainly under the influence of the Archduke Charles, who took the command of the army in Italy, while that of the Danube was assigned to the Archduke Ferdinand and Mack, the new Quarter-Master-General. This soldier had hitherto enjoyed a great reputation in Austria, probably because he was the only general who had suffered no great defeat. Amidst the disasters of 1797 he seemed the only man able to retrieve the past, and to be shut out from command by Thugut's insane jealousy of his "transcendent abilities."[23] Brave he certainly was: but his mind was always swayed by preconceived notions; he belonged to the school of "manoeuvre strategists," of whom the Duke of Brunswick was the leader; and he now began the campaign of 1805 with the fixed purpose of holding a commanding military position. Such a position the Emperor Francis and Mack had discovered in the weak fortress of Ulm and the line of the River Iller. Towards these points of vantage the Austrians now began to move.

The first thing was to gain over the Elector of Bavaria. The Court of Vienna, seeking to persuade or compel that prince to join the Coalition, made overtures (September 3rd to 6th) with which he dallied for a day or two until an opportunity came of escaping to the fortress of Würzburg. Mack thereupon crossed the River Inn and sought, but in vain, to cut off the Bavarian troops from that stronghold. Accordingly, the Austrian leader marched on to Ulm, where he arrived in the middle of September; and, not satisfied with holding this advanced position, he pushed on his outposts to the chief defiles of the Black Forest, while other regiments held the valley of the River Iller and strengthened the fortress of Memmingen. Doubtless this would have been good strategy, had his forces been equal in numbers to those of Napoleon. At that time the Black Forest was the only physical barrier between France and Southern Germany; the Rhine was then practically a French river; and, only by holding the passes of that range could the Austrians hope to screen Swabia from invasion on the side of Alsace.

[Illustration: BATTLE OF ULM]

But Mack forgot two essential facts. Until the Russians arrived, he was too weak to hold so advanced a position in what was hostile ground, now that Bavaria and the other South German States obeyed Napoleon's summons to range themselves on his side. Further, he was dangerously exposed on the north, as a glance at the map will show. Ulm and the line of the Iller formed a strong defence against the south-west: but on the north that position is singularly open: it can be turned from the valleys of the Main, the Neckar, and the Altmühl, all of which conduct an invader to the regions east of Ulm. Indeed, it passes belief how even the Aulic Council could have ignored the dangers of that position. Possibly the fact that Ulm had been stoutly held by Kray in 1796 now induced them to overrate its present importance; but at that time the fortified camp of Ulm was the central knot of vast operations, whereas now it was but an advanced outpost.[24] If Francis and his advisers were swayed by historical reminiscences it is strange that they forgot the fate of Melas in Piedmont. The real parallel had been provided, not by Kray, but by the general who was cut off at Marengo. Indeed, in its broad outlines, the campaign of Ulm resembles that of Marengo. Against foes who had thrust their columns far from their base, Napoleon now, as in 1800, determined to deal a crushing blow. On the part of the Austrians we notice the same misplaced confidence, the same lack of timely news, and the same inability to understand Napoleon's plan until his dispositions are complete; while his strategy and tactics in 1805 recall to one's mind the masterly simplicity of design, the subtlety and energy of execution, which led up to his triumph in the plains of Piedmont.

Meanwhile the allies were dissipating their strength. A Russian corps, acting from Corfu as a base, and an English expedition from Malta, were jointly to attack St. Cyr in the south of Italy, raise the country at his rear and compel him to surrender. This plan was left helplessly flapping in the air by a convention which Napoleon imposed on the Neapolitan ambassador. On September 21st Talleyrand induced that envoy to guarantee the neutrality of the kingdom of Naples, all belligerents being excluded from its domains. Consequently St. Cyr's corps evacuated that land and brought a welcome reinforcement to Masséna on the Mincio. Equally skilful was Napoleon's action as regards Hanover. On that side also the allies planned a formidable expedition. From the fortress of Stralsund in Swedish Pomerania, a force of Russians and Swedes, which Gustavus burned to command, was to march into Hanover, and, when strengthened by an Anglo-Hanoverian corps, drive the French from the Low Countries. It is curious to contrast the cumbrous negotiations concerning this expedition—the quarrels about the command, the anxiety at the outset lest Villeneuve should perhaps sail into the Baltic, the delays of the British War Office, the remonstrances of the Czar, and the efforts to avert the jealousy of Prussia—with the serene indifference of Napoleon as to the whole affair. He knew full well that the war would not be decided by diversions at the heel of Italy or on the banks of the Ems, but by the shock of great masses of men on the Danube. He denuded Hanover of French troops, except at its southern fortress of Hameln, so that he could overwhelm the levies of Austria before the Russians came up. In brief, while the Coalition sought, like a Briareus, to envelop him on all sides, he prepared to deal a blow at its heart.

As the first part of the campaign depended almost entirely on problems of time and space, it will be well to follow the chief movements of the hostile forces somewhat closely. The Austrian plan aimed at forestalling the French in the occupation of Swabia; and its apparent success puffed up Mack with boundless confidence. At Ulm he threw up extensive outworks to strengthen that obsolete fortress, extended his lines to Memmingen far on the south, and trusted that the Muscovites would come up long before the French eagles hovered above the sources of the Danube. But at that time the Russian