The chance which their courage and exertions had won had been lost almost before the British people knew of its existence. It had only been in the third week of September that they had learnt that Austria and Russia were about to enter the field by their side. The former, they were told, had taken their adversary by surprise, while the immense armies of the latter were rolling up in irresistible strength from the east to complete his doom. Though Windham
1 "My people so worn down as to be absolutely indifferent to my orders—neither my officers or myself able scarcely to produce more voice than a whisper." Codrington to Mr. Bethell. Codrington, 75.
and the embittered Grenvilles as usual prophesied disaster, every one else was delighted. A report from Strassburg that Bonaparte had had an epileptic fit on his way to the front naturally increased the general joy. The news, therefore, which arrived so unexpectedly on October 20th, that Napoleon was on the Danube, harrying the Austrians from pillar to post, came as a stunning blow.1
For Nelson's predictions about General Mack had been swiftly and terribly fulfilled. While the Grand Army was pouring southwards across France and Westphalia in fierce, dusty columns at the rate of from fifteen to twenty miles a day, the Austrian Commander was leisurely moving westwards under the assumption that it was still at Boulogne. He did not wait for his Russian allies whom, in common with all his people, he regarded as unwanted and rather dangerous savages. He went ahead and left them to follow. On September 8th, having failed either to coax or intimidate the Elector of Bavaria into doing his duty,2 he crossed over the Inn into his territories. On the 14th he reached Ulm and, pushing outposts forward into the defiles of the Black Forest, threw up entrenchments along .the line of the Iller to bar a French advance from the west. He thus covered the Brenner Pass and his communications with the Archduke Charles in Venetia. He also covered the maximum extent of Imperial territory. The only thing he failed to cover was his own flank.
The Austrians were brave and well-disciplined troops, but their limitations in the field were manifold. They were the subjects of a highly-civilised State which viewed war as a professional activity to be performed, like music, according to clearly recognised rules and conventions. One of them was that an army paid for what it ate; war in eighteenth-century Germany with its innumerable frontiers, dynastic armies and local rights could scarcely be tolerated on any other basis. This meant that unless it travelled with an immense number of carts and wagons, an Austrian army starved. As the commissariat was considered beneath the attention of an Austrian officer, it was left to an inferior class, with the result that it was rotten with corruption. Any journey of more than ten miles a day invariably ended in disaster. It was, therefore, seldom or never attempted.
1 "I know how very rude and troublesome I must appear," wrote the poet Campbell, " to send for a sight of to-day's paper instead of waiting your convenience to send it. Our minds arc now in such a state as to be grasping at straws for relief." Campbell, II, 130. See also H. M. C. Bathurst, 50; Colchester, II, 21; H. M. C. Dropmorc, VII, 308; Malmesbury, IV, 339; Horner, I, 311; Wynne, III, 216; Paget Brothers, 42; Castlereagh, V, 108; Windham Papers, II, 272; Auckland, IV, 208, 250-1; Granville, II, 123, 125.
2 He had been bribed in advance by Napoleon with the promise of a crown.
There were other reasons why speed was foreign to the Austrian Army. Recruited on a feudal basis, its officers were intensely jealous of their authority. No permanent military organisation higher than the regiment was tolerated. Large-scale operations were thus handicapped by excessive centralisation, since every order, however trifling, had to pass through the Commander-in-Chief's personal staff and be duplicated many times over. Nor was the Austrian officer class, though smart and brave, efficient. It possessed charm and culture, but was apt, like most well-established aristocracies, to be idle, complacent and easy-going. Such efficiency as it had was purely bureaucratic and ran to red tape.
In other words, an Austrian army disliked movement, preferred the defensive to the offensive and had a strong leaning to impregnable—and therefore comfortable—positions. It was just such a position that Mack had chosen at Ulm. Its weakness was that there was nothing, except a convenient island of Prussian territory at Ansbach, to prevent an enemy from crossing the line of the Danube to the north-east, cutting its communications and taking it in rear. And this was precisely what Napoleon was preparing to do.
He relied on three assets—speed, secrecy and numbers. As, for political reasons, the Austrians had chosen to concentrate their main force in Italy and had pushed the remainder into Bavaria without waiting for the Russians, Napoleon had a momentary chance to throw 200,000 men against 70,000. To do so he had to move five hundred miles from the Channel to the Danube at least half as fast again as Kutusof's Russians could cover a similar distance from Cracow to Ulm. And he had to do so before Mack took alarm and withdrew from his exposed position.
Napoleon's Army, like its master, understood the value of time. It did not pay for what it ate nor abide by recognised rules of war. It was a revolutionary force, founded on a principle of confiscation and repudiation. It did not respect established rights at home and it did not do so abroad. It lived by plunder and moved as fast as it could ravage. It was organised, not on an ancient proprietary system, but on the rational basis rendered fashionable by the Revolution. Its sole end, in peace as in war, was battle. Efficiency and not prescription was its measuring rod. It acted not in regiments nor even divisions but in army corps, each with its own staff and independent organisation. Its orders were transmitted swiftly and automatically, and the supreme command was left free to plan major instead of minor decisions. Its officers were young veterans who had won their rank, not by birth, but by resolution, initiative and natural skill in leadership. Above all it was directed by a soldier who was also untrammelled head of the State. France at war acted solely from military considerations. She put victory before the fruits of victory.
Though it had not fought for nearly five years, and though there was some loss of horses and wagons on the rough, muddy roads of western Germany, the Grand Army did not disappoint Napoleon. By October 5th, a week after Nelson arrived off Cadiz, it was grouped in five columns all within twenty miles of the Danube, ready to strike like a closing hand at Mack's communications. To reach its position in time the easternmost column under Bernadotte had two days earlier broken through Prussian Ansbach, thus outraging the territory of the last remaining neutral Power. With Prussia hesitating between war and peace, Napoleon relied on Mack's dependence on this to surprise him and on the irresolution of the Prussian King to exploit the consequences. He never hesitated.
On October 7th he struck, capturing Donauworth on the Danube. Another French column drove southward across the river towards Augsburg fifty miles in the Austrian rear. Only then did Mack realise his peril. But with Teutonic phlegm and Austrian casualness, and perhaps through sheer incapacity to cope with such rapidity, he did nothing. So impassive was he that, never imagining that he would make no attempt to evade the net thrown round him, the French overshot their mark and exposed their own communications. Even when he at last realised his opportunity Mack threw it away. For, as he was moving out of Ulm to attack, he was brought to a halt by a cock and bull tale—skilfully put out by Napoleon's spies in the town—that British troops had landed at Boulogne and provoked a revolution. Next day he was routed by Ney at Elchingen, and on the 17th, hemmed in on every side, he agreed to capitulate within eight days unless relieved. He did not even await the expiry of the armistice, but on October 20th—the day Kutusof's Russians would have joined him on the Inn had he remained—weakly laid down his arms and released Napoleon's columns for an immediate advance on Vienna. In ten days' fighting 70,000 Austrians had been routed and all but 20,000 killed or made prisoners.
The news of the capitulation was brought to England on October 29th by a French fishing smack. Though still seething with indignation at Mack's folly in advancing without his allies,1 the public
<
br /> 1 "Any man of common sense, knowing that 80,000 or 100,000 Russians were coming to his aid, would have made the junction of his forces with them as clear as possible." Wm. Wilberforce to Henry Banks, 25th Oct., 1805. Wilberforce, II, 50. Lord Auckland declared that a Captain of London Volunteers, taken at hazard, would have done better than Mack. Colchester, II, 21.
at first refused to credit it. Pitt scoffed at the idea that Mack could have done anything so craven as surrender. But on Sunday, November 3rd, a Dutch newspaper arrived with a full account which, since the Public Offices were closed for the day, the Prime Minister carried to Lord Malmesbury to translate. There, looking out of Spring Gardens over the falling leaves in the Mall, he learnt of the shipwreck of his hopes.
"You have no idea of the consternation here," Lady Bessborough, writing on Guy Fawkes Day, told Gower. "I am so terrified, so shocked with the news I scarcely know what to wish. This man moves like a torrent." "One's mind is lost in astonishment and apprehension," wrote Lord Grenville on the same day. "An army of 100,000 men, reckoned the best troops in Europe, totally destroyed in three weeks. . . . Yet even this, I am afraid, is only the beginning of our misfortunes. We are plunging into a sea of hitherto un-thought of difficulties. . . . Time and reflection may suggest topics of confidence which I have hitherto looked for in vain."1
That night, amid thick fog, blazing flambeaux and shouting coachmen, the news of Trafalgar reached London. Woken at two o'clock on the morning of November 6th by Collingwood's dispatches, Pitt could not compose himself to sleep again, but rose for the day's work. Outside, as the whisper spread, men recoiled from the shock; the turnpike keepers called out to early travellers to ask whether they had heard the bad news. "The Combined Fleet is defeated," was the universal cry, "but Nelson is no more!" Down at Swanbourne the Fremantle household was startled from its rustic calm by the maid Nelly's ghastly look as she came in with the tale; little Emma Edgcumbe, at the words, fell senseless at her nurse's feet as though shot. The Prince of Wales was so affected that he could not leave the Pavilion. Even the hard-boiled underwriters at Lloyds burst into tears when the proclamation was read.2
Thus it was that the greatest naval victory of all time was not so much celebrated as mourned. It took time before men could realise its meaning. The very mob forswore its customary night of jubilation and blazing windows. "What," they cried, "light up because Nelson is killed!" "This glorious dear-bought victory," ran the typical comment in a young lady's diary, " twenty ships for
1 Granville, II, 120, 128-9; Dropmore, VII, 311-12.
2 Granville, II, 134; Malmesbury, IV, 341; Barrow, 285; Barham, III, 329; Hary-O, 127; Nugent, 330; H. M. C. Dropmore, VII, 312; Two Duchesses, 252; Tucker, II, 253; Holland Rose, Pitt and Napoleon, 313; Wynne, III, 217; The Times, 7th Nov., 1805; Paget Brothers, 44; Creevey, I, 70; Brownlow, 12; Memoirs, Miscellanies and Diaries of Lucy Aikin (1864).
a hero!" Only a few saw from the first what the great Admiral had achieved in his death. "How truly he has accomplished his prediction that when they met it must be to extermination," wrote Lady Bessborough. "He could not have picked out a finer close to such a life. Do you know, it makes me feel almost as much envy as compassion; I think I should like to die so." "He was above pity!" wrote another, "he died as he always wished to do in the arms of Victory after driving our Foes by the bare sound of his name from the farthest parts of the earth back to their own ports." To his old friend Minto, his splendid- death seemed indeed the last favour Providence could bestow—a seal and security for all the rest.
Within a few days, too, men with their minds set on the ephemeral were seeing in Trafalgar a quick way to liberate Europe. "The news from Cadiz," wrote Lord Auckland, "came like a cordial to fainting men"; old Admiral Roddam declared that it made every one alive again. A week later England learnt how on November 4th Richard Strachan, searching for Allemand off the Spanish coast, had encountered Dumanoir's four battleships flying from Trafalgar and captured all by nightfall. As Charles Paget wrote, it made the smash complete. Patriots began to pore over the map of Europe as they marked the progress of the armies with wafers stuck on pins; good wives reckoned that they might yet live to see "that monster humbled in the dust."1
For the tide of defeat, it was felt, had been turned; courage could still redeem all things. On November 9th, after an unwonted popular triumph in which his carriage was drawn by cheering crowds through the streets, the Prime Minister spoke at the Lord Mayor's Banquet. Toasted as the saviour of Europe, he replied in the shortest speech of his career. " Europe," he told that glittering audience, "is not to be saved by any single man. England has saved herself by her exertions and will, I trust, save Europe by her example."
Though Napoleon was advancing on Vienna, a union between the Russian and Austrian forces was known to be imminent, and the French communications were lengthening dangerously. Everything turned on Berlin; could the Prussians be made to feel like men, wrote Lord Uxbridge, the Corsican rascal might still be crushed by a new army striking at his flank from the north. Roused by Napoleon's violation of his territory, King Frederick William was still balancing precariously between war and peace, inclining to the former with British promises of gold and receding with news
1 Colchester, II, 23; Barham, HI, 336; Holland Rose, Pitt and Napoleon,314; H. M. C. Dropmore, VII, 313; Granville, II, 120; Paget Brothers, 44.
of each Austrian reverse. To stiffen him the Czar of Russia and a former British Foreign Secretary, Lord Harrowby, had both set out for Berlin in the middle of October. The latter was empowered to offer subsidies for 180,000 troops at an annual rate of £12 10s. a man together with a Prussian occupation of the former Austrian Netherlands. Since Russia was inexorably opposed to any expansion of Prussia towards the east there seemed no other way by which England could satisfy the latter's craving for land 1 and outbid Napoleon's bribe of Hanover. For the latter did not lie within its disposal. It was the property of the King—the patrimony of his family for a thousand years—and nothing would induce the old man to relinquish it.
To bring Berlin to the striking point Pitt prepared to send a British army to the Continent. Just as to encourage Russia he had despatched Craig's expedition—now on the point of landing in Italy—to menace Napoleon's southern flank, he now launched another force to the northward. As soon as he saw a reasonable chance of forcing Prussia's hand, he ordered Lieutenant-General Don to the Elbe with 6000 of the King's German Legion, a corps of first-class Hanoverian troops embodied in the British Army after Napoleon's invasion of the Electorate two years before. The Guards and a Brigade of the Line under Major-General Edward Paget were to follow. With the news that the Czar had induced Frederick William to sign a provisional alliance at Potsdam on November 3rd, the Government decided to hurry over every mobile soldier the country possessed. With Napoleon committed to a campaign in central Austria, a Prussian army threatening his flank, and Hanover and Holland almost denuded of French first-line troops, the risk seemed worth taking. The stakes were the liberation of northern Germany and the Dutch coast and the invasion of Napoleon's overgrown Empire at its weakest point by a British-Russian-Prussian-Swedish force. " We shall see Bonaparte's army either cut off or driven back to France, and Holland recovered before Christmas," declared Pitt.
Yet everything turned on Prussia. Despite the hopes of Ministers and the anxious expectations of the public that there would be no more shuffling and that Bonaparte would be caught in a trap, the Prussians continued to sit on the fence. The Treaty of Potsdam had
1 It was popularly—though wrongly—supposed that Holland also figured in the arrangement. Even Wilberforce, who did not like the idea, thought it necessary. "Any arrangement," he wrote, " by which Prussia should be out in possession of Holland would tend much, as matters now stand, to the security of this country, though somehow I feel a repugnance to our being parties to any of those arrangements which have the air of partitioning the territories of weaker States."—Wilberforce, II, 49.
provid
ed for the dispatch of a Prussian emissary to the French camp with the terms for a European settlement, and a declaration of war within four weeks if Napoleon refused to accept them. But the envoy chosen was the notorious Francophil, Count Haugwitz, and the length of the time-limit seemed designed to play into the enemy's hand. When Harrowby reached Berlin in the middle of November with an urgent request for military collaboration on the Weser, he was met with long explanations about the need for mobilising every available soldier on the Moravian frontier and the impossibility of an advance into Holland until adequate forces could be spared from the south. Simultaneously he was told that Prussian troops were taking the place of the former French garrisons in Hanover. A few days later he found that the Czar had offered Berlin the Electorate in a secret clause behind England's back.
While the Prussian King continued to wobble and make excuses —"I wish I was by him sticking a spur into his side," wrote one angry lady—it became known, on November 29th, that the French had entered Vienna. " It now seems all is over as I had long feared," Thomas Grenville confided to his gloomy brother on the same day; "Bonaparte will force Austria to a separate peace first, and Russia next, and we shall be the third." The Marquis of Buckingham thought that Trafalgar had been fought in vain.
Yet though there were rumours of Austria's having capitulated —put about, it subsequently appeared, by Stock Exchange operators —the country refused to consider any compromise or surrender. "For God's sake," wrote Lord Paget,1 "don't make peace on any terms. Believe me there can be no peace but by beating these vagabonds into it. Face them, and they are beat." The national reply to the continued tale of disaster on the Danube was to send more troops to the Elbe. "What madness is this," asked the lord of Stowe to his brother Grenville, "if the Ministers are not sure of Prussian co-operation?" But the wisdom of the English was greater than the wisdom of the Grenvilles. Sir Arthur Wellesley, nominated to command a Brigade in the Expeditionary Force and asked on a Saturday when he would be ready to sail, replied, "Next week."2
Years of Victory 1802 - 1812 Page 26
