an accord, and Austria was arming only from
fear, the least act of complaisance on his part would have unravelled
this ill-knit confederacy. But no such action was forthcoming. All his
letters written in North Italy after his coronation are puffed up with
incredible insolence. Along with hints to Eugene to base politics on
dissimulation and to seek only to be feared, we find letters to
Ministers at Paris scorning the idea that England and Russia can come
to terms, and asserting that the annexation of Genoa concerns England
alone; but if Austria wants to find a pretext for war, she may now
find it.

Then he hurries back to Fontainebleau, covering the distance from
Turin in eighty-five hours; and, after a brief sojourn at St. Cloud,
he reaches Boulogne. There, on August the 22nd, he hears that Austria
is continuing to arm: a few hours later comes the news that Villeneuve
has turned back to Cadiz. Fiercely and trenchantly he resolves this
fateful problem. He then sketches to Talleyrand the outlines of his
new policy. He will again press, and this time most earnestly, his
offer of Hanover to Prussia as the price of her effective alliance
against the new coalition. Perhaps this new alliance will strangle the
coalition at its birth; at any rate it will paralyze Austria.
Accordingly, he despatches to Berlin his favourite aide-de-camp,
General Duroc, to persuade the King that his alliance will save the
Continent from war.[21]

Meanwhile the Hapsburgs were completely deceived. They imagined
Napoleon to be wholly immersed in his naval enterprise, and
accordingly formed a plan of campaign, which, though admirable against
a weak and guileless foe, was fraught with danger if the python's
coils were ready for a spring. As a matter of fact, he was far better
prepared than Austria. As late as July 7th, the Court of Vienna had
informed the allies that its army would not be ready for four months;
yet the nervous anxiety of the Hapsburgs to be beforehand with
Napoleon led them to hurry on war: and on August 9th they secretly
gave their adhesion to the Russo-British alliance.

Then, too, by a strange fatuity, their move into Bavaria was to be
made with a force of only 59,000 men, while their chief masses, some
92,000 strong, were launched into Italy against the strongholds on the
Mincio. To guard the flanks of these armies, Austria had 34,000 men in
Tyrol; but, apart from raw recruits, there were fewer than 20,000
soldiers in the rest