to Spain, was retiring toward Ulm by the Strasbourg route; the Saxons, Bavarians, and Wurtembergers were moving from their respective countries. The corps were thus separated by great distances, and the Austrians, who had been long concentrated, might easily break through this spider's web or brush away its threads. Napoleon was justly uneasy, and ordered Berthier to assemble the army at Ratisbon if the war had not actually begun on his arrival, but, if it had, to concentrate it in a more retired position toward Ulm.
The reason for this alternative order was obvious. If the war had begun, Ratisbon was too near the Austrian frontier for a point of assembly, as the corps might thus be thrown separately into the midst of two hundred thousand enemies; but by fixing upon Ulm as the point of rendezvous the army would be concentrated sooner, or, at any rate, the enemy would have five or six marches more to make before reaching-it,—which was a highly-important consideration as the parties were then situated.
No great talent was needed to understand this. Hostilities having commenced, however, but a few days after Berthier's arrival at Munich, this too celebrated chief of staff was so foolish as to adhere to a literal obedience of the order he had received, without conceiving its obvious intention: he not only desired the army to assemble at Ratisbon, but even obliged Davoust to return toward that city, when that marshal had had the good sense to fall back from Amberg toward Ingolstadt.
Napoleon, having, by good fortune, been informed by telegraph of the passage of the Inn twenty-four hours after its occurrence, came with the speed of lightning to Abensberg, just as Davoust was on the point of being surrounded and his army cut in two or scattered by a mass of one hundred and eighty thousand enemies. We know how wonderfully Napoleon succeeded in rallying his army, and what victories he gained on the glorious days of Abensberg, Siegberg, Landshut, Eckmühl, and Ratisbon, that repaired the faults committed by his chief of staff with his contemptible logistics.