and rejected
disagreeable facts. At once he leaped to the conclusion that the moves
of Soult, Murat, Lannes, Marmont, and Ney round his rear were merely
desperate efforts to cut back a way to Alsace. He therefore held fast
to his lines, made only feeble efforts to clear the northern road, and
despatched reinforcements to Memmingen. The next day brought other
news; that Memmingen had been invested by Soult; that Ney by a
brilliant dash across the Danube at Elchingen had routed an Austrian
division there, and was threatening Ulm from the north-east; and that
the other French columns were advancing from the south-east. Yet Mack,
still viewing these facts in the twilight of his own fancies, pictured
them as the efforts of despair, not as the drawing in of the hunter's
toils.

He was now almost alone in his reading of events. The Archduke
Ferdinand, though nominally in supreme command, had hitherto deferred
to Mack's age and experience, as the Emperor Francis enjoined. But he
now urged the need of instantly marching away to the north with all
available forces. Still Mack clung to his notion that it was the
French who were in sore straits; and he forbade the evacuation of Ulm;
whereupon the Archduke, with Schwarzenberg, Kollowrath, Gyulai, and
all whose instincts or rank prompted and enabled them to defy the
madman's authority, assembled 1,500 horsemen and rode off by the
northern road. It was high time; for Ney, firmly established at
Elchingen, was pushing on his vanguard towards the doomed city: Murat
and Lannes were charged to support him on the north bank, while across
the river Marmont, and further south Soult, cut off the retreat on
Tyrol.

At last the scales fell from Mack's eyes. Even now he protested
against the mere mention of surrender. But again he was disappointed.
Ney stormed the Michaelsberg north of Ulm, a position on which the
Austrians had counted; and on October 17th the hapless commander
agreed to terms of capitulation, whereby his troops were to march out
and lay down their arms in six days' time, if an Austro-Russian army
able to raise the siege did not come on the scene. These conditions
were afterwards altered by the captor, who, wheedling his captive with
a few bland words, persuaded him to surrender on the 20th on condition
that Ney and his corps remained before Ulm until the 25th. This was
Mack's last offence against his country and his profession; his assent
to this wily compromise at once set f