The news of this, reaching Napoleon, wiped all the beautiful pictures out of his mind. But he had other pictures in the background. These he put promptly into the foreground, and started off with incredible swiftness toward Austria. On October 19, he brought the Austrians to battle near Ulm, and achieved one of the most decisive victories of his career. The victory was mainly due to the clearness and correctness of Napoleon's conceived idea, and the amazing speed and certainty of his movements in carrying it into execution. The Austrian General Mack was so wholly taken by surprise that he found his army was completely surrounded before he had had time to take any preventive measures. Napoleon had correctly judged the import of Villeneuve's interception by the British fleet, and realized that it would be mere folly afterward to attempt to cross the channel then. Still, the situation was not wholly bad for him, and the victory at Ulm made it beautiful. For, though England was still greater on the sea than France, France was also great, and was still a powerful weapon which he could wield against England, with all the power of genius. But, two days after the victory of Ulm, came the disaster near Cape Trafalgar, when Nelson defeated the combined French and Spanish fleets, and thereby secured for England a superiority at sea, vastly more pronounced than it had been before. This victory, by making Napoleon helpless at sea against Great Britain, ruined all Napoleon's chances of dominion, except upon the Continent. Napoleon made two brilliant campaigns after this, that brought him to the summit of his career. Had he been content to stop there, had he not tried to climb still higher, his descendants might now sit on the throne of France. But the intoxicating fumes of success seem to have clouded that brilliant mind, and to have prevented those clear and correct pictures from forming there that had formed before. The result was that he embarked on a new project for ruining England that began with an invasion of Portugal and Spain, which brought on a war with Austria. It is true that, by a brilliant campaign, Napoleon worsted Austria and made an advantageous treaty with her, and then married the daughter of the emperor: but the continuance of the policy that underlay the war with Austria, brought on later a war with Russia that sent Napoleon to Elba, an exile.