August to 10 October 1805
From the Channel to the Danube
In September 1805 an Austrian army of about 72,000 men crosses the Inn into Bavaria without a declaration of war. Archduke Ferdinand is its nominal commander, but Karl Mack directs it. The Elector of Bavaria, secretly allied with France, withdraws his army north to Würzburg. By 18 September Mack’s army is near Ulm, watching the Black Forest to the west, while the main Austrian army, 95,000 men under Archduke Charles, is sent to northern Italy, which Vienna expects to be the main theatre of the war.
Karl Mack von Leiberich, portrait by an unknown artistWikimedia Commons, unknown artist, Public domain (Karl Mack von Leiberich.jpg)
The Grande Armée leaves the Channel coast on 27 August and by 24 September stands on the Rhine between Mannheim and Strasbourg, its left wing coming from Hanover and Utrecht. While Murat’s cavalry shows itself in the passes of the Black Forest, about 200,000 men cross the Rhine from 25 September on a front of 260 km and wheel south-east towards the Danube, behind Mack. Bernadotte’s I Corps marches through the Prussian territory of Ansbach. Mack, who expected the French to respect it, decides to stay at Ulm.
On 7 October the French cross the Danube at Donauwörth, Neuburg and Ingolstadt, and Kienmayer’s Austrian corps falls back to Munich. The next day Murat’s cavalry and Lannes’s V Corps, 12,000 men, destroy Auffenberg’s division of 5,500 at Wertingen and take 2,900 prisoners. On 9 October Malher’s division of Ney’s VI Corps seizes the Danube bridges at Günzburg as Mack tries to cross, and the Austrians withdraw into Ulm.
Napoleon believes that Mack is moving east or south and that Ulm is lightly held. He sends Davout and Bernadotte to Munich against Kutuzov’s Russians, still far to the east, Marmont to Augsburg and Soult to Memmingen, south of Ulm, to bar the road to the Tyrol. Murat closes on Ulm from the east with Lannes, Ney and the Imperial Guard.
Napoleon addresses Marmont’s II Corps on the bridge over the Lech at Augsburg, 12 October 1805, painting by Pierre-Claude Gautherot, 1808Wikimedia Commons, Pierre-Claude Gautherot, Public domain (Napoleon Addressing the 2nd Corps of his Army at the Bridge over the Lech at Augsburg, Germany, on October 12, 1805 (Claude Gautherot).jpg)
Sources
- David G. Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon (1966).
- F. N. Maude, The Ulm Campaign, 1805 (1912).
- Frederick W. Kagan, The End of the Old Order: Napoleon and Europe, 1801–1805 (2006).
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