The Ulm Campaign - 1805

Colonel Maude, wrote a number of works on the Napoleonic period, and although they were published out of the chronological order of the campaigns, Leipzig(1813), Jena (1806) and Ulm (1805), they formed an unbroken stream of commentary as to the methods of the world's greatest general, Napoleon.


In this volume, Colonel Maude follows Napoleon as he sets out with his finest Grande Armée, from the camp of Boulogne where they have been well-drilled and trained, to oppose the Austrians for a further round of hostilities which had only really been suspended briefly between 1800-1805. The basic premise of the series of books was that "Napoleon did in fact possess during his later years a fixed method in strategy, which he invariably followed whenever topographical conditions permitted. This method enabled him to be absolutely certain of accumulating at the decisive point of the battlefield a crushing numerical superiority, no matter what plans his opponents might have formed;"


It was the opening of the 1805 campaign that truly showed what Napoleon had learnt since his initial campaigns in Italy on a vast scale, now the corps d'armée he commanded dwarfed the entire armies of previous wars. His articulated, co-ordinated march through and round the Black Forest, stumped the veteran commander of the Austrian forward army, the "unfortunate Mack", and despite some less than sterling work by some of his subordinates netted an entire army into the "bag".


Some of Napoleon's troops would found a new way of fighting, that he made "war using our feet".


A fascinating book, in an excellent series.