“By the 1st April the corps of Marshal Davout, which broke up from the Oder and Lower Elbe on the 17th March, will be established between Nuremberg, Bamberg, and Baireuth: Masséna will be around Ulm: Oudinot between Augsburg and Donauwörth. From the 1st to the 15th, three French corps, 130,000 strong, besides 10,000 allies, the Bavarians in advance on the Iser, and the Würtembergers in reserve, may be concentrated on the Danube at Ratisbon or Ingolstadt. Strong _têtes-de-pont_ should be thrown up at Augsburg, to secure the passage of the Lech at Ingolstadt, in order to be able to debouch to the left bank of the Danube; and above all at Passau, which should be able to hold out two or three months. The Emperor’s object is to concentrate his army as soon as possible at Ratisbon: the position on the Lech is to be assumed only if it is attacked before the concentration at the former town is possible. The second corps will be at Ratisbon by the 10th, and on that day Bessières will also arrive with the reserve cavalry of the Guard: Davout will be at Nuremberg: Masséna at Augsburg: Lefebvre at one or two marches from Ratisbon. Headquarters then may be safely established in that town, in the midst of 200,000 men, guarding the right bank of the Danube from Ratisbon to Passau, by means of which stream provisions and supplies of every sort will be procured in abundance. Should the Austrians debouch from Bohemia or Ratisbon, Davout and Lefebvre should fall back on Ingolstadt or Donauwörth.” On the 9th April, when hostilities began, the strength of Napoleon’s forces was as follows:--His newly-named Army of Germany, on the Danube, numbered 174,000 troops, including some 54,000 of the Rhenish Confederacy; the Army of Italy consisted of 68,000; in Saxony there were about 20,000; in Poland 19,000; in Dalmatia 10,500. Consequently the Emperor had 291,500 troops at his disposal, some 275,000 of whom were ready to confront Austria by the middle of the month. This is an enormous number when it is remembered that he was still at war with Spain, where 300,000 men were engaged, but he had had recourse to his old plan of forestalling the conscription, whereby he had obtained 80,000 recruits.