Napoleon at the Height of His Power: Austerlitz, Trafalgar, and Tilsit (1805-1807)

The fragile Peace of Amiens collapsed when Britain declared war again on 18 May 1803, and by 1805 it had organized the Third Coalition with Austria, Russia, Sweden, and Naples, financed chiefly through British subsidies. Napoleon abandoned an earlier plan to invade England and redeployed the Grande Armée from its camp at Boulogne toward the Danube with remarkable speed. The Austrian general Karl Mack von Leiberich was surrounded and forced to capitulate at Ulm on 20 October 1805 with barely a fight, and Napoleon entered Vienna on 13 November 1805, the first time a great power's capital had been occupied by France.