The great army which for so many months had been gathering around Boulogne, preparing for the descent on England, waited anxiously for the arrival of the French fleet to cover its passage. But the fleet did not come; and, though hoping until the last that his plan would still be carried out, Napoleon quietly and swiftly made ready to transfer the army of England into the Grand Army, and to turn its march against his continental enemies. Never was his great war rule, “Time is everything,” more thoroughly carried out. “Austria will employ fine phrases in order to gain time,” he wrote Talleyrand, “and to prevent me accomplishing anything this year; ... and in April I shall find one hundred thousand Russians in Poland, fed by England, twenty thousand English at Malta, and fifteen thousand Russians at Corfu. I should then be in a critical position. My mind is made up.” His orders flew from Boulogne to Paris, to the German States, to Italy, to his generals, to his naval commanders. By the 28th of August the whole army had moved. A month later it had crossed the Rhine, and Napoleon was at its head. The force which he commanded was in every way an extraordinary one. Marmont’s enthusiastic description was in no way an exaggeration: “This army, the most beautiful that was ever seen, was less redoubtable from the number of its soldiers than from their nature. Almost all of them had carried on war and had won victories. There still existed among them something of the enthusiasm and exaltation of the Revolutionary campaigns; but this enthusiasm was systematized. From the supreme chief down—the chiefs of the army corps, the division commanders, the common officers and soldiers—everybody was hardened to war. The eighteen months in splendid camps had produced a training, an _ensemble_, which has never existed since to the same degree, and a boundless confidence. This army was probably the best and the most redoubtable that modern times have seen.” The force responded to the imperious genius of its commander with a beautiful precision which amazes and dazzles one who follows its march. So perfectly had all been arranged, so exactly did every corps and officer respond, that nine days after the passage of the Rhine, the army was in Bavaria, several marches in the rear of the enemy. The weather was terrible, but nothing checked them. The emperor himself set the example. Day and night he was on horseback in the midst of his troops; once for a week he did not take off his boots. When they lagged, or the enemy harassed them, he would gather each regiment into a circle, explain to it the position of the enemy, the imminence of a great battle, and his confidence in his troops. These harangues sometimes took place in driving snowstorms, the soldiers standing up to their knees in icy slush. By October 13th, such was the extraordinary march they had made, the emperor was able to issue this address to the army: