"Moreau, cautious and forecasting by nature, saw in his mind's eye the Austrian army assembled opposite Schaffhausen to oppose his passage,--baffling the whole plan. All his precautions, therefore, were framed to obviate the danger of crossing in the face of the enemy. Only one corps was to cross at Schaffhausen,--another, the reserve, was to cross at Bâle to cover the passage; this entailed the movement of a third through the mountains to cover the long flank march of the reserve along the river; and a fourth was to make a false attack in order to detain the Austrian troops in the defiles as long as possible, and prevent them from re-enforcing the left. "It is probable that Napoleon's plan would have miscarried in the hands of Moreau; but looking at other achievements of Bonaparte,--his descent on the Austrian rear in Italy a few weeks later,--his decisive march to the Danube in 1805 on the other side of the present theatre,--it is not to be denied that, executed by himself, the design might have fulfilled all his expectations." It is certainly an interesting fact that, notwithstanding the objections of Bonaparte to Moreau's plan, nevertheless the commander of the Army of the Rhine succeeded in assembling the bulk of his forces in the vicinity of Schaffhausen. In his own way he executed the manoeuvres which, even to Bonaparte, seemed fraught with danger. As a matter of fact, the assembling of the French corps in this position was the most critical part of the whole campaign; and it mattered not whether the concentration was made by marching on the German side of the Rhine, or by marching on the Swiss side; in either case, skill and generalship were required to carry out successfully these manoeuvres. It will now be interesting to compare the plans of these two soldiers.