Battle of Ulm

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Ulm ended with an Austrian general introducing himself to Napoleon as "the unfortunate General Mack." Karl Mack von Leiberich had just offered his sword, and behind him stood an army that had been caught without ever fighting one great set-piece battle. Over a few days in October 1805, a series of skirmishes near Ulm, in the Electorate of Bavaria, did the work that a pitched battle normally does. How did an Austrian army march so far from safety and into a trap? What kind of movement could close that trap with so few French casualties? And why does a campaign that cost the winner so little still draw such attention from historians?

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• 2. Mack's Gamble

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  In 1805 the United Kingdom, Austria, Sweden and Russia joined together as the Third Coalition against France. When Bavaria then allied itself with France, Mack led an Austrian army of 72,000 men into Bavaria. The move was premature, because the nearest Russian troops were still marching through Poland. Austrian planners had not expected the decisive fighting to happen in Germany. They looked to northern Italy for the main battles, and in Germany they meant only to protect the Alps from French forces.

  A popular legend blames the calendar for the mismatch. It says the Austrians used the Gregorian calendar while the Russians still used the Julian calendar, so the allies' dates never lined up. According to the story, Austria was therefore drawn into conflict with the French before the Russians could come into line. The scholar Frederick Kagan dismisses this explanation as "a bizarre myth." Far to the west, meanwhile, Napoleon's army was about to begin a march of its own.

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• 3. The Great Wheel

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  At Boulogne, 177,000 troops of the Grande Armée stood ready to invade England. Instead, they marched south on the 27th of August. By the 24th of September they were ready to cross the Rhine on a front running from Mannheim to Strasbourg. After the crossing, most of the army made a gigantic right wheel. The maneuver brought its corps to the Danube at the same moment, all facing south.

  On the 7th of October, Mack learned that Napoleon planned to cross the Danube and march around his right flank. That would cut him off from the Russians, who were advancing by way of Vienna. Mack changed front, placing his left at Ulm and his right at Rain. The change did not help. The French crossed the Danube at Neuburg, Donauwörth and Ingolstadt. Michael von Kienmayer's Austrian corps could not stop the advance, so it abandoned its positions along the river and fled to Munich. Kienmayer's flight left the French free to turn on the rest of Mack's army.

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• 4. The Net Tightens

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  On the 8th of October, Franz Xaver von Auffenberg's division was cut to pieces at Wertingen. Joachim Murat's Cavalry Corps and Jean Lannes' V Corps did the damage. The next day Mack tried to cross the Danube and move north. At Günzburg, Jean-Pierre Firmin Malher's division of Michel Ney's VI Corps, still operating on the north bank, defeated him. In that action the French seized a bridgehead on the south bank. Mack withdrew to Ulm and tried again to break out to the north. On the 11th of October at Haslach-Jungingen, a division under Pierre Dupont de l'Etang and some cavalry blocked his path.

  By that same the 11th of October, Napoleon's corps were spread in a wide net. Nicolas Soult's IV Corps reached Landsberg am Lech and turned east to cut Mack off from Tyrol. Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte's I Corps and Louis Nicolas Davout's III Corps converged on Munich. Auguste Marmont's II Corps took position at Augsburg. Murat, Ney, Lannes and the Imperial Guard began closing in on Ulm. Mack's answer to the net was to divide his own army.

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• 5. Hunting the Pieces

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  Mack ordered the corps of Franz von Werneck to march northeast, while Johann Sigismund Riesch covered its right flank at Elchingen. He sent Franz Jellacic's corps south toward Tyrol and kept the remainder of his army at Ulm. On the 14th of October, Ney crushed Riesch's small corps at the Battle of Elchingen and chased its survivors back into Ulm. Murat detected Werneck's force and raced after it with his cavalry.

  Over the next few days, Werneck's corps was overwhelmed in a series of actions at Langenau, Herbrechtingen, Nördlingen and Neresheim. On the 18th of October he surrendered the rest of his troops. Only Archduke Ferdinand Karl Joseph of Austria-Este and a few other generals escaped to Bohemia, taking about 1,200 cavalry with them. In the south, Soult secured the surrender of 4,600 Austrians at Memmingen and swung north to box in Mack. Jellacic slipped past Soult and escaped south, but his freedom did not last. In mid-November, Pierre Augereau's late-arriving VII Corps captured him in the Capitulation of Dornbirn.

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• 6. The Reckoning

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  By the 16th of October, Napoleon had surrounded Mack's entire army at Ulm. Four days later Mack surrendered in what became known as the Convention of Ulm. The French took 25,000 men, 18 generals, 65 guns and 40 standards. Some 20,000 Austrians escaped, 10,000 were killed or wounded, and the rest were made prisoner.

  French losses were strikingly light, at about 500 killed and 1,000 wounded. That is a low number for such a decisive battle. In less than 15 days the Grande Armée neutralized 60,000 Austrians and 30 generals. For Mack, the consequences were personal. He was court-martialed and sentenced to two years' imprisonment.

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• 7. Legacy

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  Napoleon announced the result in the Bulletin de la Grande Armée on the 21st of October 1805. He told his soldiers: "Soldiers, I announced to you a great battle, but, thanks to the bad combinations of the enemy, I have been able to obtain the same success, without running any risk." The Austrian surrender then enabled his conquest of Vienna one month later.

  Ulm was a victory won less by fighting than by strategic maneuver with numerically superior forces. Like the Battle of Austerlitz, it is still taught in military schools worldwide. Historians treat it as a model Napoleonic victory. They describe the campaign as the opening of the most brilliant year of Napoleon's career. His army was trained to perfection, his plans were faultless, and he aimed his forces at Mack's line of communications in a textbook turning movement. The result was so complete that the issue was never seriously contested in tactical combat.

  The campaign kept its influence on military leaders for years. A notable example is the Schlieffen Plan, which Germany employed at the start of World War I.

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