VIGOROUS CONCENTRATION. 135 Saxon troops towards the French army, to join it on the Danube." The itineraries of the various regiments of the Army of the Rhine (Davout's force) moving to Bamberg were ordered with the utmost accuracy, as were the day's marches of every part of the army. As an example, the 11th Hussars was to move March 13 to Naumburg, Camburg and Jena, the 14th to Rudolstadt, the 15th to Gräfenthal, the 16th to Neustadt, the 17th to Stafelstein, the 18th to Bamberg, the 19th to Forschheim, the 20th to Erlangen. The 30th of the line with its artillery was to march the 12th to Kalbe, the 13th to Connern, the 14th to Halle, the 15th to Merseburg, the 16th to Naumburg, the 17th to Jena, the 18th to Rudolstadt, the 19th to Gräfenthal, the 20th to Coburg, the 21st to Bamberg, to be followed by the 6th of the line, and that by the 65th of the line, each doing the same day's marches, and stopping at each of the same places one day later than its leader. These marches were drawn up with care, and each body held to accomplish them. As the troops arrived at their destinations they were cantoned and fed, under orders issued in each corps. By the vigorous concentration above ordered, the emperor could, by the end of March, count on sixty thousand men in Bamberg, thirty thousand men in Ulm and twenty thousand at Augsburg, while Lefebvre, in command of the Bavarian army, would have thirty thousand more along the Isar, and the Guard would be fast coming along. He was based on both Rhine and Main, with numberless roads leading to Würzburg, Mainz or Strasburg, while Charles' communications were the roads running up the Danube, and through Bohemia and the mountains. During the last half of February many reports ran in showing Austria's purpose to force war; and from Paris, March 23, the emperor wrote Berthier: "My Cousin, a French officer has been arrested at Braunau, and the dispatches of which he was bearer were taken away from him by main force by the Austrians, although sealed by the arms of France. Write to BERTHIER IN CHARGE. 137 Davout, Massena and Oudinot to try to have arrested some Austrian couriers. Recommend them to make these expeditions very secretly, to accelerate the march of the troops without fatiguing them. . . and to be ready to move to the Danube." Anxious not to appear the aggressor by heading his armies too early, Napoleon, in an Order from Paris of March 28,and especial heed is to be paid to this, placed Berthier, Chief of Staff, in charge of operations, and indicated to him the general plan he was to pursue, until he himself should reach the front. "Should the Austrians attack before April 10, the army is to concentrate behind the Lech, the right occupying Augsburg, and the left the right" (bank) “of the Danube towards Ingolstadt and Donauwörth. Donauwörth is to be the most central point of the army. Therefore recommend, if the case should arrive, that the biscuit of Ingolstadt and Munich be sent behind the Lech. Establish hospitals at Ulm, at Augsburg, which is to be always guarded, and at Donauwörth." This was the key-note which the emperor sounded time and again. "Should the Austrians attack before April 10 later made the 15th "the army is to concentrate behind the Lech." By the word "attack," of course, he did not mean tactical onset: before this could be met the army must be assembled and ready. What he meant was such a strategic advance by the enemy as to seek touch with the French, and deliver battle when met. In other words, he meant an advance with hostile intent into Bavaria, across the Inn and towards the Isar, or on Ratisbon from Bohemia. This underlying idea of the opening of the campaign could not be made clearer. Two days later, March 30, detailed" Instructions for the Major-General" as to the preliminary manoeuvres were dictated to Berthier before he left Paris, and no doubt these were 138 HEADQUARTERS AT RATISBON. fully explained to him by word of mouth. Though Napoleon still supposed the Austrians were assembling in Bohemia, from his experience with the methods of the Aulic Council, he scarcely expected them to open the campaign before April 15. In these Instructions he tells Berthier that "the Austrians have not declared war. To believe that they will attack without recalling their ambassadors does not seem probable, yet it is what they did in 1805." On the assumption, however, that they would be slower than they actually were, he favored Ratisbon as the most available point of assembly: the Bavarians would concentrate along the Isar; and hither Oudinot's grenadiers and the cavalry were to come, while Davout would assemble at Nürnberg and Massena at Augsburg ready to close up. "Thus," say the Instructions, "headquarters would be at Ratisbon in the midst of two hundred thousand men, astride a great river, guarding the right Danube bank from Ratisbon to Passau, and we would then be in a position secured from care about the enemy's movements, with the advantage of the Danube, which would bring up speedily to the army everything of which it stands in need." But this selection of Ratisbon was strictly dependent upon the enemy's remaining quiet, or advancing so slowly that concentration could without interruption be effected so far forward. In this project Napoleon was striving to rendezvous at a point as far in the advance as circumstances rendered possible, and especially where he would be in command of the Danube, the best line on which to invade Austria. Moreover, Ratisbon was the apex of the two lines of Charles' advance. It will be noticed that Napoleon does not open the campaign by asking what the enemy will do: he does not build his plan upon that of the adversary. Looking over the geographical situation and the general conditions, he determines upon what he himself shall do, and then first asks how the enemy A WINNING CARD IN WAR. 139 will respond to this. No one paid more heed to every event that had already occurred to limit his actions: beyond this he was free, always chose the initiative and followed it. A quite exceptional campaign was that of 1813. On more than one occasion he carried the idea too far, as in once writing to Soult: "One must never want to guess what the enemy can do. My intention is always the same." As a fact, no one was more constantly striving to divine his enemy's operations: in this dictum Napoleon meant that if, before yourself taking action, you waited for the enemy to develop, you lost one of the winning cards in war-initiative. Having, then, selected Ratisbon as the best place of assembly, provided always the enemy remained quiet, among a multitude of other things, Napoleon ordered that Augsburg with large supplies should be placed beyond danger of seizure out of hand, that the bridge-heads on the Lech should be strength |