Dennis Wheatley - The wanton princess

That night, before he went to sleep, Roger felt happier about the European situation than he had done for a long time. It was certain now that Mr. Pitt had succeeded in his great undertaking of welding together a Third Coalition against France. In whichever direction the Grande Armee was marching it could not be in two theatres of war at once. So even if the Austrians were defeated between the Rhine and the Danube they might hope to be victorious in Italy; or vice versa. And behind Austria was ranged Sweden and the might of Russia, last, but not least, much against his will Villeneuve was being forced to come out of Cadiz. If he could be intercepted and his fleet destroyed that would put an end for years to come of any fear of England being invaded.

Next day Roger pressed on, covering over a hundred miles, and reached Bordeaux. There nothing more was known than he had learned in Bayonne. Early the following morning he set out for Angouleme. But when he was a little more than half way there, disaster overtook him.

Shortly after he had passed through the little town of Chalais the road ran through a wood and stretches of the highway were covered with long drifts of fallen autumn leaves. Beneath a drift there lay a deep pothole. The off fore hoof of his horse plunged into it and he was flung from the saddle to crash heavily on the same shoulder he had injured in his fall on the night he had had his vision of Georgina drowning.

Half dazed, he stumbled to his feet, to find that his mount had broken a leg. There was nothing to be done but take one of his pistols from a holster and shoot the animal; then, in great pain, walk back to Chalais.

The inn there might have been worse. The local sawbones was called in to set his broken collar bone and the landlady proved to be a kindly body who did her best to make him comfortable. But he was delayed there six days before, having bought another horse, he felt fit enough to continue his journey; and, even then, his injury compelled him to go by easy stages.

It was not until the 18th that he reached Poitiers, where rumour had it that the Grande Armee had crossed the Rhine and that the Emperor was commanding it in person. At Tours reports were conflicting, but at Orleans on the 21st it was said that he had gained a great victory somewhere in Bavaria.

As Roger's shoulder was still paining him it took him two days to cover the last eighty miles to Paris. After a happy reunion with his old friends the Blanchards and an excellent dinner with them in their parlour, he went to bed greatly relieved to think that his seemingly endless ride was over.

First thing next morning he hurried round to the Tuileries to get authentic news of what had been happening. There, to his surprise, he found Duroc; as it was unusual for Napoleon to set off on a campaign without this faithful friend. But Duroc explained that he had only recently returned from his mission to Berlin, which had been only partially successful. The avaricious but cowardly Frederick William had agreed to accept Hanover from France, not as a fee for becoming an ally, but as the price only of maintaining a benevolent neutrality. Duroc then gave Roger such intelligence as was known about the enemy and an account of the great battle that had taken place between the 12th and 17th of the month.

From captured despatches and the reports of spies it had emerged that the Emperor Francis had decided to despatch into Italy his largest army, some ninety thousand strong, under his ablest General, the Archduke Charles; while a smaller one of about thirty thousand, under the Archduke Ferdinand, with the veteran General Mack as his adviser, stood on the defensive to cover Austria; on the assumption that, before it could be attacked, it would be reinforced by a Russian army, also thirty thousand strong, that was advan­cing under Kutusoff.

Meanwhile the Coalition had in preparation two other offensives. In the north, from Swedish Pomerania, a combined Swedish and Russian army was to strike at Hol­land with the object of freeing that country from French domination, and a joint expedition of Russians from Corfu and English from Malta was to land in the south of Italy.

Napoleon had ignored these threats to the extremities of his dominions, left Massena to do the best he could in northern Italy and decided to concentrate the maximum possible strength against Austria. Only skeleton forces had been left in Holland and on the Channel coast. The rest, by swift night marches, undetected by the enemy, had passed the Rhine and penetrated the Black Forest.

Although the movement had begun towards the end of August, in order to mask his intentions the Emperor himself had remained in Paris right up to September 23rd and, to publicise his presence there, had issued a decree that had set all Europe talking—no less than the abolition of the Revolutionary calendar and a reversion to the old Gregorian one.

It appeared that the Austrians, presumably on Mack's advice, had decided to march through Bavaria and take their stand on the line of the river Uler thereby having the great fortress of Ulm, where the Iller flowed into the Danube, as a buttress to their northern flank and some fifty miles south another considerable fortress, Memmingen, to buttress their southern flank.

Totally unaware that a great French army was approach­ing, Mack had advanced from the line of the Iller into the Black Forest, possibly with the idea, if he met no resistance, of invading Alsace. The Emperor, playing for time, had opposed him only with light troops and led him on. Meanwhile, the Corps of Bernadotte, Ney, Soult and Lannes were coming down from the north-west towards the Danube and, on the 6th, the troops of the two last, with the help of Murat's cavalry, captured Donauworth, fifty miles down the river from Ulm.

By the 13th, while the advance guard of the Russian army was only just crossing the river Inn and still a hundred and fifty miles away, the French were already far to the south behind the Austrian lines and Soult had cut off the big garrison in the fortress town of Memmingen. On the same day Ney, by a brilliant dash across the Danube from Elchingen, inflicted a severe defeat on the Austrians outside Ulm. Having encircled both wings of Mack's army, the Emperor had then ordered his whole force to go in for the kill. Ney, the hero of the campaign, had stormed the Michaelsberg, the key position in the Ulm defences, and the Austrians had asked for an armistice.

Having been in Naples when Mack, lent by the Austrians to the Neapolitans, had made a hopeless mess of their cam­paign and lost their country for them to a mere two divisions of French troops, Roger thought the Emperor Francis must be crazy to have entrusted another army to such an aged and incompetent General. But the damage was now done. While displaying for the benefit of Duroc enthusiastic delight at Napoleon's triumph, he could only secretly bemoan the fact that the new war on the Continent had opened so badly for the Coalition.

His next visit was to Decres; for. although he would have taken Villeneuve's despatch direct to the Emperor had he been in Paris, it was obviously a matter for the Minister of Marine. After glancing through the document, Decres said:

'Poor Villeneuve; fortune has been most unkind to him. He is a good and courageous sailor. Through no fault of his, the tools he has been given to work with are only third-rate; but, try as I will, I cannot make the Emperor understand that. And now, unless he left port by the middle of this month, he is finished. Before leaving for the Rhine the Emperor decided to replace him and Admiral Rosily is now on the way south to take over his command.'

Roger nodded, 'Even should he have left port before Rosily reaches Cadiz, I do not envy him. He will be terribly hampered by those almost useless Spanish ships, and you may be sure that the English will fight him tooth and nail as he makes his way up Channel.'