Austerlitz: Napoleon and the Eagles of Europe (10 page)

When the news of Mack’s rapid march into Bavaria reached Archduke Charles he was incensed, forcing him to express his dissatisfaction to the kaiser and pointing out that Mack was exceeding his authority. It was an unusual situation. The army operating in Bavaria, authorised to play a holding role while the army in Italy launched its offensive, was already marching on Munich. More surprisingly, Charles and Ferdinand – the men allocated to command these two armies – were both still in Vienna. Mack’s precipitate actions did nothing to improve Charles’s pessimistic views of his strategy, and fearing disaster in Bavaria, he began to entertain doubts as to the wisdom of launching his own attack in Italy. Undeterred, Mack pushed on towards the Lech, which he began to cross on 15 September.

Here for the first time he became aware of the movements of the left wing of the French army from Hanover and the general advance on the Rhine. Napoleon had taken every possible precaution to prevent word of the march of
the French army from reaching the Austrians. He managed to obscure his movements for twenty days. Napoleon remained at Boulogne until 3 September, aware that his presence attracted attention. However, a financial crisis in Paris imposed a delay in his progress to the front. While in the capital he received his first report from Murat. Despatched from Bavaria on 10 September and received three days later, the report told that the Austrians had entered Bavaria and gave estimates of the strength of Austrian troops at Wels, Braunau and north of Lake Constance. It also told that the Russian army had crossed the border into Galicia.

Back on the Lech, Mack hustled his men over the river as fast as possible. Then, leaving orders for them to cover the 50 miles to the Iller river with all haste, he rode on ahead to study the state of its defences. The river flowed north, descending from the mountains of Tirol to Ulm where it joined the Danube and created a natural defensive line facing the exits from the Black Forest, the traditional invasion route between the Danube valley and France. However, Mayer, chief of staff to the still absent army commander, began to feel uneasy. He knew Ferdinand favoured holding a position on the Lech but, despite his strongly-voiced protests, Mack pressed on, reaching the Iller on 15 September where he began to lay out fieldworks to defend the river between Memmingen and Ulm. It took two days to get the whole force over the Lech, but Mack did not sit idly waiting for their arrival. He sent an advance guard, commanded by FML Klenau, beyond the Iller – the leading squadrons and
jäger
advancing to the far western end of Lake Constance – while he busied himself with a tour of inspection. He went as far as Lindau, at the eastern end of the lake.

The hurried advance from the Inn to the Iller brought about a rapid deterioration in the condition of the Austrian army. While the first units were arriving, exhausted and hungry, others had still not crossed the Inn into Bavaria. The army was widely dispersed over some 150 miles between the two rivers. The rushed assembling of the army meant that not all had full equipment, while most battalions were short of their full allocation of muskets. Further, the additional requirement for it to forage for many of its own supplies on the march, as required by Mack’s recent changes, did little to encourage a spirit of optimism amongst the men. Straggling increased and numbers of men and horses died from exposure to the bad weather. What the army needed now was a period of rest and reorganisation on the Iller, but it was not to be.

On 19 September Archduke Ferdinand finally arrived in Bavaria to assume command of the army. The following day Archduke Charles arrived in Italy. Ferdinand immediately called a halt to the advance and ordered the advance guard back behind the Iller. He also recalled Mack to headquarters. Mack was having none of this, and wrote directly to the kaiser, who was now also in Bavaria. In his letter Mack sought imperial sanction for his moves. He described how:

‘All except perhaps 10,000 to 12,000 men who remain to guard the coasts and southern frontier of France are moving on the Rhine, and soon two great French Armies will cross that river; one probably between Hüningen and Strasbourg, the other between Mannheim and Mainz: the former against your Majesty’s army on the Iller, the later by Würzburg against the Russians coming from Bohemia.’
³

Francis confirmed his approval of Mack’s distribution, as he had already granted Mack authority to overrule Ferdinand. But a meeting was arranged for 22 September in Landsberg on the Lech river, about 35 miles to the west of Munich, to enable the three men to get together and discuss matters in greater detail.

While the Austrian army trudged wearily towards the Iller, the Bavarian army assembling on Ulm under Generalleutnant Wrede was still occupying that city. With the Austrians approaching, Wrede finally marched out northwards towards Würzburg on the afternoon of 18 September. The next day the first Austrian quartermaster arrived in the city to procure supplies for the army, followed by the first units on 20 September. The tireless Mack also entered Ulm that day and having studied the decaying defences authorised the enrolment of civilians to assist in the work necessary for their improvement. With that task underway he departed for Landsberg.

The meeting at Landsberg was frosty, both Ferdinand and Mayer speaking out against Mack’s handling of the army and its advance to the Iller. Such were Mayer’s protests that Mack, against Ferdinand’s wishes, pressed the kaiser to dismiss him. The bewildered, Mayer suddenly found himself ousted from the staff and commanding a brigade of grenadiers. Undeterred by this strong opposition Mack took the opportunity to argue his strategy in the most persuasive manner.

Mack felt sure the French army intended to advance through the Black Forest. The Iller represents the first significant natural line of defence against such a move, secured in the north by Ulm and the fortresses of Memmingen and Kempten in the south. Ulm itself held a hypnotic fascination for Mack. Not only did it offer the practical advantage of providing a bridgehead across the Danube, but he saw it as a solid bulwark, one which had effectively held off the French in the campaign of 1800. The fact that its fortifications and those of the entrenched camps on the Michelsberg and Frauenberg, beyond the city walls, had fallen into a state of disrepair, did not appear to cause him undue concern. While the French attacked on the Iller, Jella
i
offered a threat to their right flank and the army could receive local supplies from the magazine set up at Memmingen. Furthermore, a position on the Iller protected the passes into Tirol. In contrast, a position on the Lech would force the abandonment of these to the French, thus threatening the security of the army in Italy – or,
according to Mack, would require 30,000 men to defend them. If French pressure forced the army back from the Iller, each of the subsequent rivers, descending from the mountainous Tirol and flowing all the way to the Danube, provided further natural barriers behind which he could stand and delay the French advance until Russian support arrived. Should the French confound his theories and advance north of the Danube, the army could swing to meet them on interior lines, secure behind this dominant river and anchored on Ulm. The position of the Prussian territorial enclave of Ansbach, positioned like a bastion north of the Danube, prevented any threat to his rear, for Prussia assured Kaiser Francis that they would resolutely defend their neutrality.

Satisfied with Mack’s confident analysis of the situation, Francis approved all his dispositions, leaving Ferdinand seething with frustration. Orders issued from Landsberg required the full assembly of the army in five corps by 3 October. Schwarzenberg’s command was to reunite west of the Iller, maintaining contact with Jella
i
’s men operating near Lake Constance. Behind these formations, Werneck’s corps occupied the Allgäu region east of Memmingen between the Iller and the Lech, with Riesch’s corps also between those rivers but occupying the ground northwards to the Danube. The final formation, Kienmayer’s corps, was furthest to the rear and designated as a flank guard.

Centred on Neuburg and Ingolstadt on the Danube, Kienmayer was to keep an eye on the Bavarians and watch for the arrival of the Russians. With everything agreed, Francis ended the meeting by appointing Mack to replace the dismissed Mayer, and further infuriated the already angry young army commander by suggesting he should take heed of the advice of his more experienced new chief of staff. However, Francis preferred not to indicate Mack’s ultimate sanction – trusting that Ferdinand would acquiesce to his new chief of staff’s greater military experience. Convinced that everything was under control, Francis left Landsberg on 26 September and returned to Vienna, intending to return when the Russians arrived and joint operations commenced. He left behind in his wake a confused command structure, riven by rivalry and distrust.

Archduke Charles arrived in Italy to take command of the forces gathering there on 20 September. He found an army in disarray, lacking money, supplies, horses and equipment, some even without uniforms or muskets. Charles’ initial gloomy view of the prospects of success sank lower. He began to try and instil some order in the chaos, and erroneously believing himself to be outnumbered by the French, Charles opened negotiations with Masséna, agreeing an armistice pending news from Bavaria. Masséna was happy to agree. On 27 September Charles received a request to transfer more of his men to the Danube theatre of operations. The request from Francis, written as a result of the Landsberg meeting, admitted that ‘there can be no doubt any longer that Napoleon intends to strike a major blow before the Russians arrive.’ Having
already doubted the wisdom of Mack’s advance deep into Bavaria, Charles now reluctantly sent the men, but wrote to Francis that he could no longer consider taking the offensive. Charles believed he faced 100,000 French troops in Italy, whereas Masséna’s effective force was barely half that. Reduced now to about 70,000 men, Charles determined to preserve his own army, fearing the imminent destruction of that on the Danube.

In France there was but one leader, both civil and military: Napoleon Bonaparte. The problems of rivalry, jealousy and distrust that beset the Austrian high command were irrelevant to him. While some petty jealously existed amongst the members of his newly established
Marshalate
, all owed total allegiance to the emperor.