La Bataille de Prusse 1809

200,000. However, the Capitulation at Ulm on October 20, 1805 was merely the final act in what had been a French-penned melodrama.

But this denouement was not the end of the story.

The French, led mainly by the vainly Murat, went down the Danube in a series of dashing moves, which led to the surprise capture of Vienna by Napoleon’s brother-in- law on November 13, 1805. However, the French did not attain the Austrian capital without substantial cost. The Russians, who had arrived onto the scene, fought hard

along with the remaining Austrians to inflict substantial and growing losses upon the French and Bavarians in other small battles in the Danube Valley before the fall of the Hapsburg capital. After the fall of Vienna, there are two concurrent events working at cross-purposes. First, the losses sustained by the French in lead-up to the capture of Vienna were only accentuated by further losses at Schoengrabern for the French on November 16 as they moved north from Vienna into Moravia. The truth was that the French army was shrinking, and the French were stretching their lines of communications even further as they moved further from Vienna.

Dr. Reeve observed how the French lived off the land, “…the infantry march very quick and go 12 leagues per day (36 miles); they get forward by forced marches without baggage, without any encumbrance; they live upon the inhabitants of the towns they pass through. Almost every soldier has a loaf of bread and a bit of meat on the end of his bayonet or on his knapsack. Many officers also carried their provisions with them.” The scarcity of provisions and fodder for the horses was also diminishing La Grande Armée . Dr. Reeve comments “some of the infantry were badly clothed, but marching with glee to victory. And he notes, “the weather is excessively cold with a dry, piercing, frosty wind,” confirming what the French were facing, a harsh debilitating winter already in place. The Russians were proving to be rigorous opponents to the French, much more so than what the French had faced in the Austrian army. “Numbers of wounded are brought in, the poor French soldiers, many of them with their ears cut off by the savage Russians. An officer, who had served four campaigns, told me he had never suffered so much, and the army never endured such hardships as the present: no tents, no baggage, obliged often to sleep on the ground, in cold winter weather with little or nothing to eat, and sometimes even with nothing to drink but water. “

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