Archduke Ferdinand The Ulm campaign was a series of French and Bavarian military maneuvers and battles to outflank and capture an Austrian army in 1805 during the War of the Third Coalition.

The French Grande Armée, led by Emperor Napoleon, had 210,000 troops organized into seven corps and hoped to knock out the Austrian army in the Danube before Russian reinforcements could arrive.

[5] Rapid marching let Napoleon conduct a large wheeling maneuver, which captured an Austrian army of 60,000 under Feldmarschall-Leutnant (FML) Karl Freiherr Mack von Leiberich on 20 October at Ulm.

[6][7] Napoleon himself wrote:[8] The victory at Ulm did not end the war since a large Russian army under Mikhail Kutuzov was near Vienna to defend the city against the French.

[20] Prior to the formation of the Third Coalition, Napoleon had assembled the "Army of England", an invasion force that was meant to strike at the British Isles, around six camps at Boulogne in Northern France.

On 9 September 1805, an Austrian army directed by Mack but under the nominal command of General der Kavallerie Archduke Ferdinand Karl Joseph of Austria-Este crossed the frontier into the Electorate of Bavaria without a declaration of war.

Mack expected that it would take the French two months to react, but Emperor Napoleon's Grand Army was already on the march and by 24 September it was on the Rhine River.

[32] Mack thought that Austrian security relied on sealing off the gaps through the mountainous Black Forest area in southern Germany that had witnessed much fighting during the campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars.

Mack decided to make the city of Ulm the centerpiece of his defensive strategy, which called for a containment of the French until the Russians under Kutuzov could arrive and alter the odds against Napoleon.

[34] The Austrians also detached individual corps to serve with the Swedish in Pomerania and the British in Naples, though these were designed to confuse the French and divert their resources.

Napoleon had other intentions: 210,000 French troops would be launched eastwards from the camps of Boulogne and would envelop General Mack's exposed Austrian army if it kept marching towards the Black Forest.

[2] Meanwhile, Marshal Murat would conduct cavalry screens across the Black Forest to fool the Austrians into thinking that the French were advancing on a direct west-east axis.

[35] The left wing of the Grande Armée would move from Hanover in northern Germany and Utrecht in the Netherland to fall on Württemberg; the right and center, troops from the Channel coast, would concentrate along the Middle Rhine around cities like Mannheim and Strasbourg.

[35] While Murat was making demonstrations across the Black Forest, other French forces would then invade the German heartland and swing towards the southeast by capturing Augsburg, a move that was supposed to isolate Mack and interrupt the Austrian lines of communication.

[36] Napoleon had little accurate information about Mack's intentions or maneuvers; he knew that Kienmayer's Corps was sent to Ingolstadt east of the French positions, but his agents greatly exaggerated its size.

Napoleon did not seriously consider the possibility that Mack would cross the Danube and move away from his central base, but he did realize that seizing the bridges at Günzburg would yield a large strategic advantage.

For reasons not entirely clear, on 7 October Mack ordered Auffenberg to take his division of 5,000 infantry and 400 cavalry from Günzburg to Wertingen in preparation for the main Austrian advance out of Ulm.

In the Battle of Günzburg, a column of this division ran into some Tyrolean jaegers and captured 200 of them, including their commander Konstantin Ghilian Karl d'Aspré, along with two cannons.

While the Battle of Günzburg was being fought, Ney sent GD Louis Henri Loison's 2nd Division to capture the Danube bridges at Elchingen, which were lightly defended by the Austrians.

[45] During this time, the Russian threat to the east began to preoccupy Napoleon so much that Murat was given command of the right wing of the army, consisting of Ney's and Lannes's corps.

[46] The French were separated in two massive wings at this point: the forces of Ney, Lannes, and Murat to the west were containing Mack while those of Soult, Davout, Bernadotte, and GD Auguste Marmont to the east were charged with guarding against any possible Russian and Austrian incursions.

The Austrians flooded the battle with more cavalry and infantry regiments to Ulm-Jungingen hoping to score a knockout blow against Ney's corps by enveloping Dupont's force.

The effects of the Battle of Haslach-Jungingen on Napoleon's plans are not fully clear, but the Emperor may have finally ascertained that the majority of the Austrian army was concentrated at Ulm.

Ferdinand began to openly oppose Mack's command style and decisions, charging that the latter spent his days writing contradictory orders that left the Austrian army marching back and forth.

[52] The French cleared the Austrian pickets from a bridge, then a regiment boldly attacked and captured the abbey at the top of the hill at bayonet point.

[54] Troubles continued with the Austrian command as Ferdinand overrode the objections of Mack and ordered the evacuation of all cavalry from Ulm, a total of 6,000 troopers.

The French victory highlighted the effectiveness of la manoeuvre sur les derrières, a special type of strategic envelopment first used by Napoleon in his Italian campaign in 1796.

In the Ulm campaign, Murat's cavalry served as the pinning force that fooled the Austrians into thinking the main French attack would come from the Black Forest.

As Murat lulled the Austrians towards Ulm, the main French forces crashed through Central Germany and separated Mack's army from the other theaters of the war.

Their increased size allowed them to fight without support for long periods of time, as Ney did, and their durability permitted them to spread out and subsist by requisitioning local food.