unable to arrest the enemy's progress. The
French, attended by continual victory, arrived at Vienna on the 13th of
November; and on the same day they crossed the Danube, on the left bank
of which the Russians were marching to Moravia. Napoleon concentrated
his forces at Bruma; and on the 27th of November the forces of Austria
and Russia, under the command of their respective emperors, who had
united at Olmutz, marched against him. The battle of Austerlitz was now
fought and lost. On the 1st of December Francis and Alexander saw the
destruction of thirty thousand of their soldiers, the capture of fifteen
thousand more, and the wild flight of those who escaped the slaughter;
one hundred cannon and a rich booty fell likewise into the hands of
the French. In the meantime the Austrian army in Italy, under Archduke
Charles, and another in the Tyrol, under the Archduke John, had been
compelled by the French to retreat; and having united, they marched
towards Vienna. But the Emperor of Austria had now lost all heart.
Prussia had recently made peace with France; and two days after the
battle of Austerlitz Francis repaired in person to the camp of Napoleon,
near Saroschuez, and entered into a preliminary convention relative to
an armistice and peace. Finally, a treaty was signed at Presburg,
on December the 26th, which broke the power of Austria, and gave the
continent into the hands of France. By this treaty, all the countries
usurped by Napoleon before the war were ratified to him, and Austria
likewise ceded the Venetian territory on both sides of the sea to his
"Kingdom of Italy;" to Bavaria, Tyrol, Vorarlberg, Eichstaedt, and
a part of Passau; and to Bavaria, Wurtemburg, Baden, the Suabian
territories, and the Breisgau. In return, Austria received Salzburg, and
Berchtesgaden; and the dignity of Grand Master of the Teutonic order
was to be assigned, hereditarily, to an Austrian prince. By this treaty,
likewise, the electors of Bavaria and Wurtemburg were acknowledged as
kings, and the elector of Baden as independent. The Emperor of Russia
was invited to become a party in this treaty, but he disdained it, and
led his forces into his own dominions. It was not merely the loss of
territory that made the peace of Presburg, humiliating to Austria: the
moral effects of a fall of such unexampled rapidity, and the complete
change of all relations in Germany, made it still more depressing.
South Germany, hitherto the vassal realm of Austr