That brave officer, after spending a short time in England, was permitted to return to France on his parole.

He died almost immediately afterwards at Rennes: whether by his own hand, in the agony of despair, as the French _Gazette_ asserted, or assassinated, as was commonly believed at the time, by some of the blood-hardened minions of Fouche's police, is a mystery not yet cleared up; and, perhaps, never destined to be so until the day comes in which nothing shall be hid.
The tidings of Trafalgar, after the first moment, served but as a new stimulus to the fire of Napoleon's energy.

He quitted Vienna, and put himself at the head of his columns, which, passing the Danube into Moravia, soon found themselves within reach of the forces of Russia and Austria, at length combined, and prepared for action, under the eyes of their respective emperors.

These princes, on the approach of the French, drew back as far as Olmutz, in order that a reserve of Russians, under Bexhowden, might join them before the decisive struggle took place.
Napoleon fixed his headquarters at _Brunn_, and, riding over the plain between Brunn and Austerlitz (a village about two miles from that town), said to his generals, "study this field--we shall, ere long, have to contest it." Buonaparte has been much criticised by strategists for the rashness of thus passing the Danube into Moravia, while the Archduke Ferdinand was organising the Bohemians on his left, the Archdukes Charles and John in Hungary, with still formidable and daily increasing forces on his right, the population of Vienna and the surrounding territories ready to rise, in case of any disaster, in his rear; and Prussia as decidedly hostile in heart as she was wavering in policy.

The French leader did not disguise from himself the risk of his adventure; but he considered it better to run all that risk, than to linger in Vienna until the armies in Hungary and Bohemia should have had time to reinforce the two emperors.
Napoleon's preparations were as follows:--his left, under Larmes, lay at Santon, a strongly fortified position: Soult commanded the right wing: the centre, under Bernadotte, had with them Murat and all the cavalry.