"Napoleon's Austrian spymaster" Topic

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"Schulmeister offered to assist the Austrian intelligence services, providing false documents of Napoleon's plans and news of discontent with Napoleon's rule within France…Before long, two letters from reliable sources in Stuttgart arrived….indicating that the British were landing a force in France and there were uprisings against Napoleon. The letters were actually forgeries sent by Schulmeister before he had arrived, but Mack then sent Schulmeister to Stuttgart to verify the authenticity of the intelligence. Mack had been planning to withdraw from Ulm, but due partially to his belief that Napoleon was retreating to France he decided to hold his position….his delay in maneuvering and overconfidence led to the trap being closed. When it became clear that no help was coming, Mack had no choice but to surrender his forces at Ulm with barely a shot being fired. Recognizing that Schulmeister had contributed to Mack's inactivity at Ulm, Napoleon told his officers, "Gentlemen, all respect to Charles, who I estimate highly, because he was worth an army corps of 40,000 men to me."

This is a dimension you don't hear a lot about…

I remember seeing a French TV series about Schulmeister when I was a teenager.

Fouché and Savary were two of the main characters

Poor old Mack. He really was doomed . . .

Considering his lack of talent and experience, Mack seems to have gotten a lot of chances and caused considerable damage to everyone he was supposed to be helping.

It's interesting though that when you read most accounts of Napoleon's genius in 1805, 1806-7, etc, you rarely hear about the centrality to these victories of his intelligence network. His successes are usually credited to his exceptional military insight and intuition, rather than to his knowledge through espionage of his enemies' strengths, dispositions and intentions. When the spies dropped the ball, battles like Aspern resulted.