It is well known that the Emperor, more than all other generals, and true to the maxims of Polyænus, made it invariably his business to learn all he could about the personality and character of any commander with whom he was about to measure himself. With Alvinzy, Wurmser, Beaulieu, the Archduke Charles and Mélas, Napoleon had fought different types of battles based to a large extent on the personal qualities and disposition of the general whom he happened to be opposing. In the early months of 1805, Napoleon, always well served by his regular diplomatic agents, may be trusted to have known the names and characters of most of the commanders to whom Austria and Russia were about to entrust the command of their armies in the campaign which all Europe knew to be inevitable. As to the attributes of Field-Marshal Mack, then a man of fifty-three, he can have had but few illusions and well knew that family influence, rather than the possession of real ability, had given the Austrian his high position in the military councils of his country. In Mack was a dull simplicity of mind, unusual to a man of his class, added to the fatal quality of allowing himself easily to be influenced by others. Conditions in the Austrian army, which had within recent years suffered a series of reverses at the hands of both Bonaparte and Moreau, lent themselves easily to irregular influences, a fact which had not escaped the penetration of Napoleon. Mack, again, was anxious to atone for his defeat by the French in 1797 and was prepared to take advantage of any opportunity which should give him in the conflict a superiority over the conqueror of Italy and Austria.