Array Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - The Collected Works of Napoleon Bonaparte

There were other causes of friction between the two countries which rendered peace most unstable. With both nations ready for war, though not eager for it, causes for rupture were not hard to find. War broke out between them in May, 1803. Napoleon immediately seized Hanover, a possession in Germany of the English king. He declared the long coast of Europe from Hanover southward and eastward to Taranto in Italy blockaded, that is, closed to English commerce, and he began to prepare for an invasion of England itself. This was a difficult task, requiring much time, for France was inferior to England on the seas and yet, unless she could control the Channel for a while at least, she could not send an army of invasion. Napoleon established a vast camp of 150,000 men at Boulogne to be ready for the descent. He hastened the construction of hundreds of flat-boats for transport. Whether all this was mere make-believe intended to alarm England, whether he knew that after all it was a hopeless undertaking, and was simply displaying all this activity to compel England to think that peace would be wiser than running the risk of invasion, we do not positively know.

At any rate England was not intimidated. She prepared for defense, and she also prepared for offense by seeking and finding allies on the Continent, by building up a coalition which might hold Napoleon in check, which might, it was hoped, even drive France back within her original boundaries, taking away from her the recent acquisitions of Belgium, the left bank of the Rhine, and the Italian annexations and protectorates. England made a treaty to this new effect with Russia, which had her own reasons for opposing France - her dread of his projects in the Eastern Mediterranean at the expense of the Turkish Empire. For if any one was to carve up the Turkish Empire, Russia wished to do it herself. The English agreed to pay subsidies to the Czar, a certain amount for every 100,000 men she should furnish for the war.

Finally in 1805 Austria entered the coalition, jealous of Napoleon's aggressions in Italy, anxious to wipe out the memory of the defeats of the two campaigns in which he had conquered her in 1796 and 1800, eager, also, to recover the position she had once held as the dominant power in the Italian peninsula.

Such was the situation in 1805. When he was quite ready Napoleon struck with tremendous effect, not against England, which he could not reach because of the silver streak of sea that lay between Napoleon's them, not against Russia, which was too remote for immediate attention, but against his old-time enemy, Austria, and he bowled her over more summarily and more humiliatingly Austria than he had ever done before.

The campaign of 1805 was another Napoleonic masterpiece. The Austrians, not waiting for their allies, the Russians, to come up, had sent an army of 80,000 men under General Mack up the Danube into Bavaria. Mack had taken his position at Ulm, expecting that Napoleon would come through the passes of the Black Forest, the most direct and the usual way for a French army invading southern Germany. But not at all. Napoleon had a very different plan. Sending enough troops into the Black Forest region to confirm Mack in his opinion that this was the strategic point to hold, and thus keeping him rooted there, Napoleon transferred his Grand Army from Boulogne and the shores of the English Channel, where it had been training for the past two years, across Germany from north to south, a distance of 500 miles, in twenty-three days of forced marches, conducted in astonishing secrecy and with mathematical precision. He thus threw himself into the rear of Mack's army, between it and Vienna, cutting the line of communication, and repeating the strategy of the Great Saint Bernard and Marengo campaign of 1800. Mack had expected Napoleon to come from the west through the Black Forest. Instead, when it was too late, he found him coming from the east, up the Danube, toward Ulm. Napoleon made short work of Mack, forcing him to capitulate at Ulm, October 20. "I have accomplished what I set out to do," he wrote Josephine. "I have destroyed the Austrian army by means of marches alone." It was a victory won by legs - 60,000 prisoners, 120 guns, more than thirty generals. It had cost him only 1,500 men.

The way was now open down the Danube to Vienna. Thither, along poor roads and through rain and snow Napoleon rushed, covering the distance in three weeks. Vienna was entered in triumph and without resistance as the Emperor Francis had retired in a northeasterly direction, desiring to effect a junction with the oncoming Russian army. Napoleon followed him and on December 2, 1805, won perhaps his most famous victory, the battle of Austerlitz, on the first anniversary of his coronation as Emperor. All day long the battle raged. The sun breaking through the wintry fogs was considered a favorable omen by the French and henceforth became the legendary symbol of success. The fighting was terrific. The bravery of the soldiers on both sides was boundless, but the generalship of Napoleon was as superior as that of the Austro-Russians was faulty. The result was decisive, overwhelming. The allies were routed and sent flying in every direction. They had lost a large number of men and nearly all of their artillery. Napoleon, with originally inferior numbers, had not used all he had, had not thrown in his reserves. No wonder he addressed his troops in an exultant strain. "Soldiers, I am satisfied with you. In the battle of Austerlitz you have justified all my expectations by your intrepidity; you have adorned your eagles with immortal glory." No wonder that he told them that they were marked men, that on returning to France all they would need to say in order to command admiration would be: "I was at the battle of Austerlitz."

The results of this brief and brilliant campaign were various and striking. The Russians did not make peace but withdrew in great disorder as best they could to their own country. But Austria immediately signed a peace and a very costly one, too. By the Treaty of Pressburg, dictated by Napoleon, who now had beaten her disastrously for the third time, she suffered her greatest humiliation, her severest losses. She ceded Venetia, a country she had held for eight years, since Campo Formio, to the Kingdom of Italy, whose king was Napoleon. Istria and Dalmatia also she ceded to Napoleon. Of all this coast line of the upper Adriatic she retained only the single port of Trieste. Not Austria but France was henceforth the chief Adriatic power. The German principalities, Bavaria and Baden, had sided with Napoleon in the late campaign and Austria was now compelled to cede to each of them some of her valuable possessions in South Germany. Shut out of the Adriatic, shut out of Italy, Austria lost 3,000,000 subjects. She became nearly a land-locked country. Moreover she was compelled to acquiesce in other changes that Napoleon had made or was about to make in various countries.

Napoleon began now to play with zest the congenial role of Charlemagne, about which he was prone to talk enthusiastically and with rhetorical extravagance. Having magically made himself Emperor, he now made others kings. As he abased mountains so he exalted valleys. In the early months of 1806 he created four kings. He raised Bavaria and Wurtemberg, hitherto duchies, to the rank of kingdoms, which they have since held, "in grateful recompense for the attachment they have shown the Emperor," he said. During the campaign the King of Naples had at a critical moment sided with his enemies. Napoleon therefore issued a simple decree, merely stating that "The House of Bourbon has ceased to rule in Naples." He gave the vacant throne to his brother Joseph, two years older than himself. Joseph, who had first studied to become a priest, then to become an army officer, and still later to become a lawyer, now found himself a king, not by the grace of God, but by the grace of a younger brother.