Austerlitz: Napoleon and the Eagles of Europe by Ian Castle Page A

accompanied by Maréchal Lannes at the head of Oudinot’s Reserve Grenadier Division. These men were detailed to push through the Black Forest and occupy the attention of the Austrians.
    Napoleon arrived in Strasbourg on 26 September. On arrival in the city, he was rapturously greeted by his army as they prepared to march. Cries of ‘Vive l’Empereur’ filled the air as the soldiers marched past, their hats decorated with sprigs of greenery; veteran and new recruit alike filled with enthusiasm for the task ahead. On the 27 and 28 September Napoleon despatched a number of letters in which he expressed his great wish that the Austrians would remain facing the Black Forest for another three or four days. He confided his view that: ‘If they will only allow me to gain a few marches on them, I hope to turn them and find myself with my entire army between the Lech and Isar.’
    Murat’s cavalry, pushing through the Black Forest, soon encountered Austrian patrols, but the difficult terrain favoured the opposing light troops. Napoleon wanted prisoners from whom he could gain information to help unravel Austrian plans, but in this task his cavalry failed. The Austrians fell back as French columns threatened to overwhelm them, but although clouds of mounted men showed at the exits from the forest, they appeared reluctant to press on. In fact, having made a show of passing through the forest, only one dragoon division remained in front of the position. The rest of Murat’s cavalry and Oudinot’s grenadiers slipped away, back to the Rhine, to join the main advance.
    Napoleon’s army pushed on from the Rhine as quickly as possible. By 1 October their right was at Stuttgart and the left at Neckarelz. Marmont and Bernadotte remained for the present at Würzburg and the Bavarians atBamberg. That same day, before he left Strasbourg with the Garde Impériale, Napoleon had one last meeting. Savary had returned from his spying mission to Bavaria and had grown in admiration for the special talents of his companion, the former smuggler Charles Schulmeister: talents that he felt could be exploited to the benefit of the French army. Schulmeister claimed to have friends in important positions in the Austrian army – in the field and in Vienna – and offered to infiltrate their headquarters as an agent of France. With Savary’s recommendation Napoleon agreed: Schulmeister was added to Savary’s pay roll and the following day the two men, spy master and master spy, set out for Stuttgart to finalise their plans.

    With his army on the move, Napoleon left Strasbourg to conclude the diplomatic missions his aides had begun in Baden and Württemberg. By the time he departed he had secured about 7,000 Württemberg and 3,000 Baden troops for service on his lines of communication. Quite how the three fiery Francophobe daughters of the margrave of Baden – the tsarina of Russia, the queen of Sweden and the electress of Bavaria – reacted to their father’s decision is not recorded.
    In the absence of any clear information on Austrian movements, Napoleon relinquished command of the left wing of the army – I and II Corps as well as the Bavarians – to Bernadotte, while he retained control of the rest of his forces. On 3 October the front of the army contracted to around 125 miles, its progress closest to the line of the Danube shielded by wide-ranging cavalry screens: but prisoners still eluded them. However, Napoleon still had a network of spies operating in Bavaria and a report of 2 October told of the construction of entrenchments around Ulm, along the Iller and in front of the passes exiting from Tirol. Then, a report on 4 October suggested that the Austrians were withdrawing from their positions west of the Iller and pulling back towards Ulm.
    The report was correct. Mack also had spies and scouts out in all directions and finally information from Kienmayer’s patrols, probing north-west from Donauwörth, reported the approach of large