Chapter 904: Deterring Vienna
Inside the Bavarian command post, D'enberg’s expression darkened instantly as he watched through his telescope. The French forces, which had been feigning a retreat just moments ago, suddenly pivoted with the ferocity of hungry wolves, lunging toward his right wing.
He struggled to maintain his composure. He still held the numerical advantage. As long as he kept his formations steady and avoided a chaotic collapse, there was still a chance to defeat the French.
He barked out a rapid succession of orders, commanding the forward units to fall back immediately while the center moved up to support them. Simultaneously, he pushed his reserves toward the faltering right wing.
As for the cavalry... they had to be treated as if they no longer existed.
However, D'enberg had overlooked one crucial detail. Although Moreau often maintained the air of a dandyish aristocrat, he was far from a commander who relied solely on clever tricks.
On the contrary, Moreau was acutely aware that he had never attended a formal military academy. Consequently, he had invested several times more effort than his peers into mastering military theory. Coupled with his startling natural talent for warfare, his mastery of set-piece battles ranked among the top three in all of Europe.
In a head-on confrontation, once he gained even a sliver of an advantage, it became nearly impossible for his opponent to claw their way back.
The moment the Bavarian army began its maneuvers, Moreau deduced D'enberg’s intentions and adjusted his strategy with surgical precision.
After Ney’s main legion carved into the enemy’s right wing, they abandoned the attempt to complete a full encirclement. Instead, they deployed along the enemy's flank and rear, launching a devastating assault on the Bavarian reserves that had been rushed in to save the day.
The main body of the Bavarian center moved cautiously toward the primary battlefield, yet they encountered not a single French soldier along the way.
At the same time, Moreau’s dragoon battalion had already circled behind D'enberg’s position. They dismounted and formed a disciplined line formation...
The Bavarian right wing and the arriving reserves held out for a mere forty minutes before they were utterly shattered.
D'enberg began to panic as he realized the French seemed to be everywhere at once. The situation had spiraled completely out of his control.
He was about to instruct a messenger to order the relatively intact center to retreat toward Ingolstadt when a dense volley of gunfire erupted from behind him.
The French dragoon battalion had completed its flanking maneuver.
Though they numbered only eight hundred, D'enberg’s reserves had already been committed elsewhere, and his cavalry had been sacrificed in the very first wave of the offensive. Now, his only protection consisted of a mere hundred guardsmen.
At half-past three in the afternoon, surrounded by French dragoons, D'enberg had no choice but to surrender.
Moreau had dissected the battlefield so meticulously that the Bavarian army could find no opening to retreat. Of the twenty thousand soldiers, nearly three thousand were killed, while the rest were taken prisoner.
It was no exaggeration to say that after this battle, there were no organized military units left within the borders of Bavaria.
As the hour for dinner approached, Ney arrived at Moreau’s headquarters with a triumphant grin, tipping his hat in a respectful gesture.
"Your tactical arrangements were nothing short of perfect," Ney exclaimed. "It felt even easier than the campaigns back in North Africa."
He paused, then asked, "So, what is our next move?"
Moreau handed him a glass of wine. "To Munich."
"Munich," Ney repeated, raising his glass. "Indeed, we can occupy it at any moment."
Moreau clinked his glass against Ney’s but shook his head with a small smile. "Not 'we.' You are going to Munich."
"What? And you?"
"I am taking another trip toward Vienna."
The following day.
Just as the morning sun climbed above the treetops, Ney led three thousand soldiers across the Danube River—using the same pontoon bridge they had previously constructed—and marched toward Munich with great fanfare.
Moreau, meanwhile, led ten thousand of his core troops and struck out eastward once more.
He understood perfectly well that with such a small force, he couldn't actually capture Vienna. However, it was more than enough to send Franz II into a panic, forcing him to scramble his armies and inciting terror among the citizens of the capital.
The Austrian General Alvinczi and his legion were still en route to trap the French when they received word that the Bavarian army had been annihilated.
He immediately cursed D'enberg as a useless fool and, without a moment's hesitation, ordered a retreat to protect Vienna.
Several days later, Moreau’s army returned to the town of Perg. As expected, Vienna, located a mere hundred kilometers away, had descended into total chaos.
Austrian troops from across the region, regardless of their actual combat readiness, were summoned to the capital by Baron Thugut to bolster its defenses.
Initially, the citizens only heard rumors that "ten thousand Frenchmen are attacking Vienna." Very quickly, the rumors mutated into "fifty thousand Frenchmen have occupied all of western Austria." Within a week, the number of French troops reported in the streets had grown to a staggering one hundred thousand.
Those who could afford to leave fled to the countryside for safety. Those who remained began hoarding supplies in a frenzy, leaving every bakery in the city picked clean.
In less than a week, the price of bread in Vienna skyrocketed by 240 percent. The city was filled with scenes of devastation and despair, and it wasn't long before riots broke out as crowds began looting grain stores.
Moreau, however, simply kept his main force stationed outside the town of Perg. Every now and then, he would dispatch a company or two to march toward Vienna and fire a few rounds near populated areas just to "keep the heat up."
This psychological torment lasted for a full two weeks. By the time Vienna had gathered an army of twenty-three thousand men—half of whom were merely local militias from neighboring towns—the French were nowhere to be seen.
Baron Thugut ordered Alvinczi to send scouts toward Linz, only to discover that the French army had long since departed.
In reality, had Joseph ordered Moreau to assault Vienna at any cost, there was a high probability they could have seized the city.
But from a political and diplomatic standpoint, such a move would have been profoundly counterproductive.
Weakening Austria too severely would only allow Prussia to become the sole dominant power in Germany, thereby accelerating the process of German unification.
The only way to prevent that would be for France to commit its entire national strength to steamroll all the North German states as well.
That would essentially be retracing Napoleon’s old path, making an enemy of the entire world and trapping France in a quagmire of endless war. The British would surely wake up laughing from such a dream.
Until France possessed a navy capable of rivaling Britain and a national strength great enough to suppress all of Central and Western Europe, maintaining the balance of power between Prussia and Austria remained the optimal strategy.
Joseph’s primary goal in sending Moreau across the Rhine was to execute a display of deterrence. He wanted the German states to see that if they dared to provoke France, even Austria wouldn't be safe, and Bavaria would be laid low.
At the same time, France needed to demonstrate considerable "restraint." This signaled to the German principalities that France did not seek to destroy them. As long as they didn't initiate hostilities, France would remain a nation that respected the existing order and acted as a reliable trading partner.
On the other front, when Ney and his troops leisurely arrived at the gates of Munich, he received a secret order from the Crown Prince. He was to deploy his troops outside the city but refrain from launching an assault.
Simultaneously, Count Segur, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, arrived at the gates of the Royal Palace in Munich.
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