Austria was in a serious dilemma. Relying first on the treaty of Lunéville, then on the preparations at Boulogne, as likely to assure a long peace, she had fallen into Napoleon's trap, and had begun a series of important army reforms. Her new system, modeled on that of France, had not yet been perfected. There were only forty thousand men under arms, and there was no artillery. The Archduke Charles might well shrink from taking the field with such an insignificant armament. But England promised cash and Russia offered men; it was no slight inducement that Italy and perhaps Bavaria were to be won. Should Prussia fail to assert her neutrality, and declare for France, the house of Austria might even recover Silesia. On July seventh the cabinet yielded, and orders were given to mobilize the troops. General Mack, who enjoyed a swollen reputation as an organizer, was intrusted with the task of making ready. This was the condition of affairs, almost certainly known to Napoleon through his emissaries, at the time when he thought best to announce with unusual emphasis that the invasion of England was fixed for the middle of August. In April Nelson had finally been enticed to the West Indies, and Villeneuve, eluding him, had returned in May to European waters. Nelson, mistaking his enemy's destination, sailed in pursuit to Gibraltar; but one of his detached cruisers learned that the united French and Spanish squadrons were to meet at Ferrol, and by the middle of July the English admiralty was fully informed as to the whereabouts and plans of the French fleet. On the sixteenth of that month the Emperor issued orders for Villeneuve to unite the Spanish vessels with his own, and then to reinforce himself with the French squadrons of Rochefort and Brest, and appear in the Channel. On July twenty-second a British fleet under Calder met Villeneuve off Cape Finisterre in a dense fog, but the latter was not checked in his passage to Vigo. By August second he found himself at the head of a Franco-Spanish fleet numbering no fewer than twenty-nine ships of the line, which were assembled in the harbors of Ferrol and Corunna. He complained, however, that he had "bad masts, bad sails, bad rigging, bad officers, bad sailors." Conceiving himself in all probability to be only the tool of a feint, he lost the little enthusiasm he had, and became sullen. Nelson had joined Admiral Cornwallis before Brest, and, leaving his best eight ships to strengthen both the guard and the blockading fleets, made for Portsmouth. Calder, too, had reinforced the blockaders, so that by August seventeenth there would be eighteen vessels before Ferrol; eighteen remained before Brest, while a third squadron, under Sterling, was cruising with five more, prepared to join either. Villeneuve was not ready for sea until the thirteenth. Were his orders, in view of the changed situation, still valid? After an effort to beat northward against a violent storm, the French