Years of Victory 1802 - 1812 (37 page)

For the military initiative which Pitt had won with such patience and self-denial for his allies had been lost. When Nelson lay dying he was sustained by the belief that he had won a victory which would give his country not only permanent security at sea but an advantage on land capable of overwhelming the mushroom dictator and bringing the world peace. He did not know that on the previous day England had learnt that her allies had suffered a crushing blow nor that a still worse disaster—of which the news had yet to reach London—had befallen them on the banks of the Iller. Had he done so, even he might have died in despair.

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 momenta
ry 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

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.
Wilbe
rforce, 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).