And yet on that same day General Lebrun, aide-de-camp to the Emperor, was drawing up at Paris a confidential report of the mission with which he had lately been entrusted to the Austrian military authorities. From that report we take the following particulars. On arriving at Vienna, he had three private interviews with the Archduke Albrecht, and set before him the desirability of a joint invasion of North Germany in the autumn of that year. To this the Archduke demurred, on the ground that such a campaign ought to begin in the spring if the full fruits of victory were to be gathered in before the short days came. Austria and Italy, he said, could not place adequate forces in the field in less than six weeks owing to lack of railways[15]. [15] _Souvenirs militaires_, by General B.L.J. Lebrun (Paris 1895), pp. 95-148. Developing his own views, the Archduke then suggested that it would be desirable for France to undertake the war against North Germany not later than the middle of March 1871, Austria and Italy at the same time beginning their mobilisations, though not declaring war until their armies were ready at the end of six weeks. Two French armies should in the meantime cross the Rhine in order to sever the South Germans from the Confederation of the North, one of them marching towards Nuremberg, where it would be joined by the western army of Austria and the Italian forces sent through Tyrol. The other Austrian army would then invade Saxony or Lusatia in order to strike at Berlin. He estimated the forces of the States hostile to Prussia as follows:-- +------------------------------------------------------------------+ | |Men. |Horses. |Cannon. | +-------------------------------+------------+----------+----------+ |France |309,000 |35,000 |972 | |Austria (exclusive of reserve) |360,000 |27,000 |1128 | |Italy |68,000 |5000 |180 | |Denmark |260,000 (?) |2000 |72 | +-------------------------------+------------+----------+----------+ He thus reckoned the forces of the two German Confederations:-- +-------------------------------+------------+----------+----------+ | |Men. |Horses. |Cannon. | |North |377,000 |48,000 |1284 | |South |97,000 |10,000 |288 | +-------------------------------+------------+----------+----------+ but the support of the latter might be hoped for. Lebrun again urged the desirability of a campaign in the autumn, but the Archduke repeated that it must begin in the spring. In that condition, as in his earlier statement that France must declare war first, while her allies prepared for war, we may discern a deep-rooted distrust of Napoleon III.