The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0004/00045.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob00045}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Chapter XII}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Tarbell, Ida M.}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{napoleon
army
french
battle
enemy
thousand
allies
england
first
prussia}
$Date{1906}
$Log{}
Title:       Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Book:        Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte
Author:      Tarbell, Ida M.
Date:        1906

Chapter XII

Campaign Of 1805 - Campaign Of 1806-1807 - Peace Of Tilsit

     Austria looked with jealousy on this increase of power, and particularly
on the change in the institutions of her neighbors.  In assuming control of
the Italian and Germanic States, Napoleon gave the people his code and his
methods; personal liberty, equality before the law, religious toleration, took
the place of the unjust and narrow feudal institutions.  These new ideas were
quite as hateful of Austria as the disturbance in the balance of pewer, and
more dangerous to her system. Russia and Prussia felt the same suspicion of
Napoleon as Austria did. All three powers were constantly incited to action
against France by England, who offered unlimited gold if they would but
combine with her. In the summer of 1805 Austria joined England and Russia in a
coalition against France.  Prussia was not yet willing to commit herself.

     The great army which for so many months had been gathering around
Boulogne, preparing for the descent on England, waited anxiously for the
arrival of the French fleet to cover its passage.  But the fleet did not come;
and, though hoping until the last that his plan would still be carried out,
Napoleon quietly and swiftly made ready to transfer the army of England into
the Grand Army, and to turn its march against his continental enemies.

     Never was his great war rule, "Time is everything," more thoroughly
carried out.  "Austria will employ fine phrases in order to gain time," he
wrote Talleyrand, "and to prevent me accomplishing anything this year; . .
. and in April I shall find one hundred thousand Russians in Poland, fed
by England, twenty thousand English at Malta, and fifteen thousand Russians at
Corfu.  I should then be in a critical position.  My mind is made up." His
orders flew from Boulogne to Paris, to the German States, to Italy, to his
generals, to his naval commanders.  By the 28th of August the whole army had
moved.  A month later it had crossed the Rhine, and Napoleon was at its head.

     The force which he commanded was in every way an extraordinary one.
Marmont's enthusiastic description was in no way an exaggeration:

          "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 manoeuvres 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 Brunn, 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 Olmutz.  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 Brunn 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 Olmutz and seek battle with Napoleon.

     The position the French occupied can be understood if one draws a rough
diagram of a right-angled triangle, Brunn being at the right angle formed by
two roads, one running south to Vienna, by which Napoleon had come, and the
other running eastward to Olmutz.  The hypotenuse of this angle, running from
northeast to southwest, is formed by Napoleon's army.

     When the allies decided to leave Olmutz their plan was to march
southwestward, in face of Napoleon's line, get between him and Vienna, and
thus cut off what they supposed was his base of supplies (in this they were
mistaken, for Napoleon had, unknown to them, changed his base from Vienna to
Bohemia), separate him from his Italian army, and drive him, routed, into
Bohemia.

     On the 27th of November the allies advanced, and their first encounter
with a small French vanguard was successful.  It gave them confidence, and
they continued their march on the 28th, 29th, and 30th, gradually extending a
long line facing westward and parallel with Napoleon's line.  The French
emperor, while this movement was going on, was rapidly calling up his reserves
and strengthening his position.  By the first day of December Napoleon saw
clearly what the allies intended to do, and had formed his plan.  The events
of that day confirmed his ideas. By nine o'clock in the evening he was so
certain of the plan of the coming battle that he rode the length of his line,
explaining to his troops the tactics of the allies, and what he himself
proposed to do.

     Napoleon's appearance before the troops, his confident assurance of
victory, called out a brilliant demonstration from the army.  The divisions of
infantry raised