ivations, battles, and forced
marches, before you; but let them oppose to us every resistance they are
able, we swear never to cry 'Halt!' till we have planted our eagles on
the territory of our enemies!"

We halted two days at Manheim to permit some regiments to come up, and
then marched forward to Nordlingen, which place the Emperor himself had
only quitted the night before. Here the report reached us that a
smart affair had taken place the previous morning between the Austrian
division and a portion of Ney's advanced guard, in which we had
rather the worst of it, and had lost some prisoners. The news excited
considerable discontent among the troops, and increased their impatience
to move forward to a very great degree. Meanwhile, the different
divisions of the French army were converging towards Ulm, from the
north, south, and west; and every hour brought them nearer to that
devoted spot, which as yet, in the security of an enormous garrison,
never dreamed of sudden attack.

The corps of Soult was now pushed forward to Augsburg, and, extended by
a line of communication to Meiningen, the only channel of communication
which remained open to the enemy. The quartier-general of the Emperor
was established at Zummerhausen; Ney was at Guntzburg: Marmont
threatened in the west; and Bernadotte, arriving by forced marches
from Prussia, hovered in the north.--so that Ulm was invested in every
direction at one blow, and that in a space of time almost inconceivable.

While these immense combinations were being effected,--requiring as
they did an enormous extent of circumference to march over before the
fortress could be thus enclosed, as it were, within our grasp,--our
astonishment increased daily that the Austrians delayed to give battle;
but, as if terror-stricken, they waited on day after day while the
measures for their ruin were accomplishing. At length a desperate sortie
was made from the garrison; and a large body of troops, escaping by the
left bank of the Danube, directed their course towards Bohemia; while
another corps, in the opposite direction, forced back Ney's advanced
guard, and took the road towards Nordlingen. Having directed a strong
detachment in pursuit of this latter corps, which was commanded by
the Archduke Frederick himself, the Emperor closed in around Ulm, and
forcing the passage of the river at Elchingen, prepared for the final
attack.

While these dispositions were being effected, the cavalry brig