Battle
On 14 October, Ney crushed Riesch's small corps at the Battle of Elchingen and chased its survivors back into Ulm. Murat detected Werneck's force and raced in pursuit with his cavalry. Over the next few days, Werneck's corps was overwhelmed in a series of actions at Langenau, Herbrechtingen, Nördlingen, and Neresheim. On 18 October he surrendered the remainder of his troops. Only Archduke Ferdinand Karl Joseph of Austria-Este and a few other generals escaped to Bohemia with about 1,200 cavalry. Meanwhile, Soult secured the surrender of 4,600 Austrians at Memmingen and swung north to box in Mack from the south. Jellacic slipped past Soult and escaped to the south only to be hunted down and captured in the Capitulation of Dornbirn in mid-November by Pierre Augereau's late-arriving VII Corps. By 16 October, Napoleon had surrounded Mack's entire army at Ulm, and three days later Mack surrendered with 30,000 men, 18 generals, 65 guns, and 40 standards.
Some 20,000 escaped, 10,000 were killed or wounded, and the rest made prisoner. About 6,000 French were killed or wounded. At the surrender, Mack offered his sword and presented himself to Napoleon as, "the unfortunate General Mack." Bonaparte smiled and replied, "I give back to the unfortunate General his sword and his freedom, along with my regards to give to his Emperor". Francis II was not as kind, however. Mack was court-martialed and sentenced to two years' imprisonment.
The Ulm Campaign is considered one of the finest examples of a strategic turning movement in military history.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Ulm
Famous quotes containing the word battle:
“The mothers battle for her childwith sickness, with poverty, with war, with all the forces of exploitation and callousness that cheapen human lifeneeds to become a common human battle, waged in love and in the passion for survival.”
—Adrienne Rich (20th century)
“Napoleon said of Massena, that he was not himself until the battle began to go against him; then, when the dead began to fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of combination, and he put on terror and victory as a robe.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the material it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest.”
—Karl Marx (18181883)