get his way the Emperor had to rush through the necessary legislation by
senatus consultum.
He was now ready for the campaign itself. He planned to hit the
Austrians hard before the Russians had time to join them and to do this
he needed to get 21o,ooo troops to the Danube as fast as possible. There
would be seven corps, each of which originally contained between two
and four infantry divisions, a brigade or division of cavalry, about 40
cannon, plus engineers and back-up troops. In addition to the seven
corps, he would dispose of a cavalry reserve of two divisions of
cuirassiers, four of mounted dragoons and one each of dismounted
dragoons and light cavalry; altogether there would be 22,000 horsemen
plus an artillery reserve of twenty-four guns, or a quarter of the total
cannon in the army. Over and above this was the Grand Reserve,
comprising the Imperial Guard and various detachments of elite
grenadiers; including second-line troops the Grande Armee probably had
a total strength of 35o,ooo in 1805.
Now was revealed the happy accident of the troop build-up at
Boulogne for the invasion of England. This in itself should have alerted
the Austrians, who continued to think, despite all the evidence, that the
main theatre of operations for the coming campaign would be in Italy.
They seemed to imagine that this was Napoleon's chosen terrain,
overlooking or forgetting that in 1796 and 18oo it was pure force of
circumstances that made Napoleon fight in Italy. In those campaigns
there were rival generals like Moreau in the Rhine-Danube theatre, but in
1805 they were no more and the Emperor had a clear field to himself.
Napoleon had anticipated that an Austrian strike would manifest itself
either as an invasion of northern Italy or an attack on Alsace from the
Danube; he had already decided to strike first and eliminate the danger
on the Danube before the Russians could come up.
The initial attack by the Austrians in Bavaria gave Napoleon the
perfect excuse to withdraw from Boulogne without losing face. Leaving
Brune in charge of the camp at Boulogne, he ordered the Grand Army to
cross the Rhine on 24-25 September; he himself left Paris on the 24th
and, travelling via Nancy, was in Strasbourg on the 26th. The seven
corps were commanded by Bernadotte, Marmont, Davout, Soult,
Lannes, Ney and Augereau, with a cavalry reserve under Murat, and the
entire force marched on the Rhine in well-planned itineraries which had
been the object of Murat's secret mission the month before. The
Austrians played into his hands by assuming that the main French effort
would still come in Italy, and by miscalculating how long it would take
the Russians to join them. In contrast to the streamlined efficiency of
marcin
(Marcin)
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