Then he hurries back to Fontainebleau, covering the distance from Turin in eighty-five hours; and, after a brief sojourn at St. Cloud, he reaches Boulogne.  There, on August the 22nd, he hears that Austria is continuing to arm:  a few hours later comes the news that Villeneuve has turned back to Cadiz.  Fiercely and trenchantly he resolves this fateful problem.  He then sketches to Talleyrand the outlines of his new policy.  He will again press, and this time most earnestly, his offer of Hanover to Prussia as the price of her effective alliance against the new coalition.  Perhaps this new alliance will strangle the coalition at its birth; at any rate it will paralyze Austria.  Accordingly, he despatches to Berlin his favourite aide-de-camp, General Duroc, to persuade the King that his alliance will save the Continent from war.[21]

Meanwhile the Hapsburgs were completely deceived.  They imagined Napoleon to be wholly immersed in his naval enterprise, and accordingly formed a plan of campaign, which, though admirable against a weak and guileless foe, was fraught with danger if the python’s coils were ready for a spring.  As a matter of fact, he was far better prepared than Austria.  As late as July 7th, the Court of Vienna had informed the allies that its army would not be ready for four months; yet the nervous anxiety of the Hapsburgs to be beforehand with Napoleon led them to hurry on war:  and on August 9th they secretly gave their adhesion to the Russo-British alliance.

Then, too, by a strange fatuity, their move into Bavaria was to be made with a force of only 59,000 men, while their chief masses, some 92,000 strong, were launched into Italy against the strongholds on the Mincio.  To guard the flanks of these armies, Austria had 34,000 men in Tyrol; but, apart from raw recruits, there were fewer than 20,000 soldiers in the rest of that vast empire.  In fact, the success of the autumn campaign was known to depend on the help of the Russians, who were expected to reach the banks of the Inn before the 20th of October, while it was thought that the French could not possibly reach the Danube till twenty days later.[22] It was intended, however, to act most vigorously in Italy, and to wage a defensive campaign on the Danube.

Such was the plan concocted at Vienna, mainly under the influence of the Archduke Charles, who took the command of the army in Italy, while that of the Danube was assigned to the Archduke Ferdinand and Mack, the new Quarter-Master-General.  This soldier had hitherto enjoyed a great reputation in Austria, probably because he was the only general who had suffered no great defeat.  Amidst the disasters of 1797 he seemed the only man able to retrieve the past, and to be shut out from command by Thugut’s insane jealousy of his “transcendent abilities."[23] Brave he certainly was:  but his mind was always swayed by preconceived notions; he belonged to the school of “manoeuvre strategists,” of whom the Duke of Brunswick was the leader; and he now began the campaign of 1805 with the fixed purpose of holding a commanding military position.  Such a position the Emperor Francis and Mack had discovered in the weak fortress of Ulm and the line of the River Iller.  Towards these points of vantage the Austrians now began to move.