It will also be noticed that though St. Cyr, in his march across the hills and mountains from Friburg to St. Blazien, and thence to Stuhlingen, flanked and protected the reserve in its march from Bâle to Schaffhausen, yet he was obliged to send his artillery by the river road. Had he, therefore, been attacked in force during this movement, he would have been compelled to fight without his artillery. Thus the fighting power of his corps would have been diminished; and his efforts would have been directed towards the protection of his cannon, which, under ordinary circumstances, should have strengthened, instead of weakened, him. In commenting on these operations of Moreau, General Hamley says:-- "The false attacks of Ste. Suzanne and St. Cyr had the effect not only of detaining Kienmayer's sixteen thousand men in the defiles, but of causing Kray to move thither six or seven thousand additional troops. But they had no influence in detaining Starray, who was already so distant on the right that it would be impossible for him in any case to join Kray in time for the first operations. We find, then, that at first forty-nine thousand French were employed in detaining less than half their number; and when St. Cyr had joined the reserve, still Ste. Suzanne did not probably neutralise a greater number of the enemy than his own corps. The detached operations of Ste. Suzanne appear, therefore, dangerous and fruitless." Consider now the plan of Bonaparte. It is evident that the line of the Rhine from Strasburg to Lake Constance would have screened the French corps during their concentration. Since this unfordable river and the bridges crossing it were in possession of the French, there was little probability that the French corps would have been attacked in flank during their march up the Rhine to Schaffhausen. In fact, the Rhine and the mountains of the Black Forest, behind which the greater part of the Austrians lay, would have formed such a complete screen to the operations of Bonaparte that it is not improbable to suppose that the proposed French concentration, preparatory to crossing the river, might have been completed before Kray discovered what was in progress. Moreover, since this plan involved no complicated manoeuvres, it could have been carried out more quickly than the plan of Moreau. Thus time would have been saved; and _time_ was then of the greatest importance to Bonaparte, inasmuch as Masséna was in desperate straits at Genoa.