Battle of Ulm

“ Not only the conception of War but experience also leads us to look for a great decision only in a great battle. From time immemorial, only great victories have led to great successes on the offensive side in the absolute form, on the defensive side in a manner more or less satisfactory. Even Buonaparte would not have seen the day of Ulm, unique in its kind, if he had shrunk from shedding blood ”

“ The evils of war are forgotten; we have left on the soil of our conquests the spark of life. That inert mass set in movement continues to ferment because its intelligence is commencing. When travelling nowadays, we see the nations watching, knapsack on back: ready to start, they seem to be waiting for us in order to place us at the head of the column. A Frenchman is always taken for the aide-de-camp who brings the order to march.
Ulm is a clean little town, with no particular character; its dismantled ramparts have been converted into kitchen-gardens or walks, which happens to all ramparts. ”

“ In the interim since the first attack, the town had been reënforced by about one hundred volunteers, and had also been put in a partial state of defence. Fire, murder, and pillage marked the way of the savages toward it; the garrison noted their approach by the clouds of smoke which the burning dwellings of the settlers sent up to heaven.
The Indians reached and again attacked New Ulm, on Sunday morning at about eleven o'clock. The commanding officer of the whites had placed pickets, and a considerable part of his force to support them, along the outer edge of the town toward the foe ”

“ The state of an army depends in great measure on the character and experience of its leader; and we are more or less interested in the accounts given in history, or the public papers, of battles, according to the renown of the general who fought them. Such might have been the motive, which induced the inhabitants of Ulm on that morning to quit their narrow streets, to see the celebrated man of the day, employed in his military occupations. ”

“ Ulm is thus the basis of operations for the German army behind the Black Forest, and can easily shelter a force of 100,000 men; its peace garrison is 5600.
Ulm is mentioned as early as the year 854. It subsequently became a free imperial city, and the leading town in Swabia. In the 15th century it attained the summit of its prosperity, and ruled over a district of many square miles, with a population, rural and urban, of about 60,000. Towards the end of the Middle Ages it frequently appears at the head of various Swabian leagues. ”

“ Seventy pieces of cannon, with a long train of ammunition wagons, and four thousand cavalry horses, brought up the rear of this melancholy procession,—the spoils of the capitulation of Ulm. Truly, if that day were, as the imperial bulletin announced it, “one of the most glorious for France,” it was also the darkest in the history of Austria,—when thirty-two regiments of infantry and fifteen of cavalry, with artillery and siege defences of every kind, laid down their arms and surrendered themselves prisoners. ”

“ An army of eighty-five thousand men had been destroyed almost without firing a gun; its adversaries had lost only three thousand men. After this great victory Napoleon's soldiers said, "The Emperor beat the enemy with our legs, not with our bayonets."
These chronicles of war have a sad side even when they commemorate the most brilliant victories. Even while he counts the trophies the historian cannot avoid melancholy reflections. What capitulations awaited France sixty-five years after this capitulation of Ulm! But in this intoxication of victory, people have eyes only for their success. ”

“ During the following days, Ulm resembled a large camp. Instead of the peaceable peasant, the busy citizens, passing, as in ordinary times, through the streets with sober tranquil step to their several avocations, were now to be seen strange figures, with helmets and caps of iron, carrying lances, cross bows and fire-arms. In lieu of statesmen in their plain black dresses, proud knights clad in steel, and wearing helmets adorned with waving plumes, strode about the squares and market places, accompanied by numerous bands of followers. ”

“ Prince Louis with 20,000 men forming the besieging force, and Eugene and Marlborough with 30,000 the covering army. Ulm surrendered on the 16th September, with 250 pieces of cannon, and 1200 barrels of powder, which gave the Allies a solid foundation on the Danube, and effectually crushed the power of the Elector of Bavaria, who, isolated now in the midst of his enemies, had no alternative but to abandon his dominions, and seek refuge in Brussels, where he arrived in the end of September. ”

“ If it operated in the zone between the Danube and the Alps, it might adopt, according to events, the strategic line leading from Ulm on Donauwerth and Ratisbon, or that from Ulm to the Tyrol, or that which connects Ulm with Nuremberg or Mayence.
It may, then, be assumed that the definitions applied to lines of operations, as well as the maxims referring to them, are necessarily applicable to strategic lines. These may be concentric, to inflict a decisive blow, or eccentric, after victory. They are rarely simple, since an army does not confine its march to a single road ”

“ While the English troops were preparing to embark for Germany, while the Russian troops were slowly coming up from Poland, he, with rapidity unprecedented in modern war, moved a hundred thousand men from the shores of the Ocean to the Black Forest, and compelled a great Austrian army to surrender at Ulm. ”

“ From them we learned that the main body of the army was already far in advance, several entire corps having marched from Lintz with the supposed intention of occupying Vienna. Ney's division, it was said, was also bearing down from the Tyrol; Davoust and Mortier were advancing by the left bank of the Danube; whilst Lannes and Murat, with an overwhelming force of light troops, had pushed forward two days' march in advance on their way to the capital. The fate of Ulm was already predicted for the Austrian city, and each day's intelligence seemed to make it only the more inevitable. ”

“ An officer, describing this glorious attack, wrote:—"I am not an Ulsterman, but as I followed the amazing attack of the Ulster Division on July 1st, I felt that I would rather be an Ulsterman than anything else in the world." With shouts of "Remember the Boyne" and "No surrender, boys," they threw themselves at the Germans, and before they could be restrained had penetrated to the enemy's fifth line. The Royal Irish Rifles went through hell that day, and sought out the machine gunners at the bayonet's point. There has been nothing finer in the war than this charge. ”

“ On the 19th of Capitulation of the Austrian army at Ulm. Oct 19. October, Mack, finding himself surrounded and cut off from Vienna, with all hope of relief gone, capitulated at Ulm, and his whole army of 30,000 men laid down [1265] their arms before the enemy. On the 21st of the same month the English and French fleets encountered just within sight of Cape Trafalgar, outside the Straits of Gibraltar. ”

“ The taking of Ulm and the capitulation of its immense garrison completed the surprise and terror of Austria, and served to silence the factious spirit in Paris, which had been with difficulty repressed by the police. It is hard to prevent Frenchmen from ranging themselves on the side of glory, and we began to share in that which our army was gaining. But the monetary difficulty was still painfully felt; trade suffered, the theatres were empty, an increase of poverty was perceptible, and the only hope that sustained is was that a campaign so briliant must be followed by an immediate peace. ”

“ Our advance guard reached New Ulm just in time to participate in its defense against an attack of about one hundred Indians who had been murdering the settlers on the west side of the river, between the town and Fort Ridgely. The inhabitants of New Ulm were almost exclusively German, there being only a few English-speaking citizens among them, and they were not familiar with the character of the Indians, but the instinct of self-preservation had impelled them to fortify the town with barricades to keep the enemy out. ”

“ I have lost only fifteen hundred men, and two-thirds of these are but slightly wounded. Good by. Remember me to every one. Prince Charles is coming to cover Vienna. I think Masséna ought to be at Vienna at this time. As soon as I am easy about Italy I shall make Eugene fight. My love to Hortense."
The capitulation of Ulm was arranged by Napoleon with Prince Lichtenstein, Major-General of the Austrian army. ”

“ And it must be remembered that in September 1912 the Ulster Volunteer Force was still in its infancy. In the following two years its improvement in efficiency was very marked; and within three years of the time when its battalions paraded before Sir Edward Carson, with dummy rifles, and marched before him to his meetings in Lisburn, Newtownards, Enniskillen, and Belfast on the eve of the Covenant, those same men had gloriously fought against the flower of the Prussian Army, and many of them had fallen in the battle of the Somme. ”

“ The great explosion took place, and before the burning earth had time to descend, Major Redmond was “over the top” and the first man in the regiment to face the awful scene. Before long he fell, wounded in the leg and wrist, and he was found lying on the battlefield by stretcher bearers of the Ulster division. It was an Ulster ambulance which carried him, wounded to the death, from that awful field of battle; and it was men from Ulster who tended him in his dying moments. So he did, indeed, give his life, not only in an attempt to drive back the Germans, but also to bring peace to Ireland. ”

“ The population allowed the assailants to approach. The attack of the Uhlans was terrible, no less terrible the resistance of the villagers. Men, women and children opened such a frightful fire on the enemy that the first ranks tumbled one on the other. The Germans nevertheless entered the village streets, cavalry in front, infantry behind, while the exasperated populace did not cease to overwhelm the enemy with its fire. The women poured boiling oil and water on the German soldiers who rolled on the ground howling with the pain. ”

“ On the 25th day of August after the massacre of the 22nd, around New Ulm and in that vicinity, a little boy who had saved himself from the Indians by secreting himself in the grass of the swamps, came into New Ulm and said there were twelve people alive and a number of bodies to be buried sixteen miles from New Ulm. ”

“ Under such leaders it is no marvel that the messenger Ulric had no good news to tell. The army had assembled, and had marched after the Danes, whose policy for the present was to avoid a pitched battle, and to destroy their enemies in detail. So they were continually harassing the English forces, but avoiding every occasion of fair fight. Did the English march to a town under the impression the Danes were about to attack it, they found no foe, but heard the next day that some miserable district at a distance had been cruelly ravaged. Did they lie in ambush, the Danes took another road. ”

“ Allowing for the great loss the French must evidently have sustained, they must probably require some interval before they can move to the Inn, and that march must be from 100 to 150 miles. If the Austrians and Russians on the Inn were to be 100,000 men by the 20th of this month, the further reinforcements they must probably receive from the Tirol and Salzburg, from such part of the Ulm army as may find its way to them, and from the Austrian reserves, must enable them to make a stout and probably an effectual resistance in{28} that position. ”

“ So the battle became the greatest the world has ever known, so far, for its dimensions, the numbers engaged and the duration. The Ulstermen were in the left wing of the British lines, and the scene of their operations was, roughly, three miles of broken country, dips and swells, on each side of the river Ancre, between the village of Beaumont Hamel, nestling in a nook of the hill above the river, eastwards to the slopes of Thiepval, perched on a height about 500 feet, below the river, all within the German lines. The main body of the Division assembled in the shelter of a Thiepval wood. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Accordingly, Soult managed to surround and take one entire Austrian division at Memmingen, under General Spangenberg, and Dupont and Ney defeated the Archduke Ferdinand at Günzburg, who had advanced from Ulm to defend the bridges there. Ferdinand lost many guns and nearly three thousand men. This induced Mack to concentrate his forces in Ulm, where, however, he had taken no measures for supplying his troops with provisions during a siege. ”

“ Ulster will fight for the same cause as did the Northern States of America, and may well show the same self-sacrifice. It will be civil war in a country peculiarly adapted to the movements of irregular troops, well acquainted with its features; it will be accompanied by atrocities which will be remembered for centuries. And this is the tremendous risk we are deliberately running, when we only possess six divisions of regular troops to support our allies on the continent and to safeguard the interests of the whole British Empire. ”