It was not to be. Wind and waves fought against him. The incapacity of his navy fought against him. Into soldiers on land he could infuse courage, confidence, sympathetic coöperation. But the navy baffled him: all his efforts were vain. His admirals could not, or would not, have faith; could not, or would not, obey orders; could not, or would not, coöperate. Utterly wasted were all his labors, all his expenditures. Austrian armies were marching against Bavaria, Napoleon’s ally; Russian hordes were moving down from the north; Prussia’s magnificent army of fifty thousand men was in the balance, wavering ominously, and threatening to unite with the coalition. Such was the situation on the Continent when the despatches reached Napoleon that all his great plans for the invasion of England had gone to wreck and ruin; that his admiral had misconceived or had disobeyed positive orders; that the French fleet would not only be unable to give him aid, but was so scattered and so placed that it must inevitably fall a prey to the English. “It was about four o’clock in the morning of August 13, that the news was brought to the Emperor,” says Ségur. “Daru was summoned, and on entering gazed on his chief in utter astonishment.” The Emperor “looked perfectly wild”; his hat jammed down over his eyes, “his whole aspect terrible.” As soon as he saw Daru, he rushed up, and poured out a torrent of pent-up wrath. He railed at his admiral, his imbecile admiral, “that damned fool of a Villeneuve!” He paced “up and down the room, with great strides for about an hour,” venting his rage, his disappointment, his reproaches. Then stopping suddenly and pointing to a desk, he exclaimed: “Sit down there, Daru, and write!” And with marvellous self-control, wresting his thoughts away from Villeneuve, the fleet, the blasted plans of invasion, he dictated to the secretary, hour after hour, as fast as pen could catch the rushing words, the whole campaign of Ulm in its largest outline, in its smallest detail, embracing, as it did, the movement of his own vast legions lying along the coast for two hundred leagues, the movement of Masséna from Italy, of Marmont from Holland, and of Bernadotte from Hanover. Four hundred thousand soldiers were moving against the French; less than half that number of French rushed to repel the attack. The vast camps on the Boulogne coast vanished, the eagles set Rhineward, other legions marched as they had never marched before--thousands speeding along the roads in coaches. The Austrians had not waited for the Russians; Bavaria had been overrun; and Mack, the Austrian general, was now dawdling about Ulm. Before he suspected what was happening, Napoleon’s combination had been made, a circle of steel drawn about his adversary; and the French armies, closing in upon front, rear, and flanks, held the Austrians as in a mighty trap. With the exception of a few squadrons which broke through the gaps in the French lines as