“Soldiers, a month ago we were encamped on the shores of the ocean, opposite England, when an impious league forced us to fly to the Rhine. Not a fortnight ago that river was passed; and the Alps, the Neckar, the Danube, and the Lech, the celebrated barriers of Germany, have not for a minute delayed our march.... The enemy, deceived by our manœuvres and the rapidity of our movements, is entirely turned.... But for the army before you, we should be in London to-day, have avenged six centuries of insult, and have liberated the sea. “Remember to-morrow that you are fighting against the allies of England. “NAPOLEON.” Four days after this address came the capitulation of Ulm—a “new Caudine Forks,” as Marmont called it. It was, as Napoleon said, a victory won by legs, instead of by arms. The great fatigue and the forced marches which the army had undergone had gained them sixty thousand prisoners, one hundred and twenty guns, ninety colors, more than thirty generals, at a cost of but fifteen hundred men, two-thirds of them but slightly wounded. But there was no rest for the army. Before the middle of November it had so surrounded Vienna that the emperor and his court had fled to Brünn, seventy or eighty miles north of Vienna, to meet the Russians, who, under Alexander I., were coming from Berlin. Thither Napoleon followed them, but the Austrians retreated eastward, joining the Russians at Olmütz. The combined force of the allies was now some ninety thousand men. They had a strong reserve, and it looked as if the Prussian army was about to join them. Napoleon at Brünn had only some seventy or eighty thousand men, and was in the heart of the enemy’s country. Alexander, flattered by his aides, and confident that he was able to defeat the French, resolved to leave his strong position at Olmütz and seek battle with Napoleon. [Illustration: NAPOLEON, 1805. Engraved in 1812 by Massard, after Bouillon.] The position the French occupied can be understood if one draws a rough diagram of a right-angled triangle, Brünn being at the right angle formed by two roads, one running south to Vienna, by which Napoleon had come, and the other running eastward to Olmütz. The hypotenuse of this angle, running from northeast to southwest, is formed by Napoleon’s army. When the allies decided to leave Olmütz their plan was to march southwestward, in face of Napoleon’s line, get between him and Vienna, and thus cut off what they supposed was his base of supplies (in this they were mistaken, for Napoleon had, unknown to them, changed his base from Vienna to Bohemia), separate him from his Italian army, and drive him, routed, into Bohemia.