CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER EI GHTEEN
Joseph Fouche seems to have been the one man the Emperor genuinely
feared, and with reason. The J. Edgar Hoover of his day, the atrocious
chief of police had files on everyone, and at a moment's notice could send
a legion of Bonaparte skeletons rattling out of the cupboard. Napoleon
therefore ducked the task of tackling him head on and went for the softer
option, Talleyrand. On 28 January 1 809 he summoned his lame
chamberlain, kept him standing for three hours, and tore into him with
rare ferocity; the burden of his invective was that Talleyrand was an
ingrate and money-lover who, in return for the wealth of Croesus
lavished on him by the Emperor, had repaid him with bad advice - the
d'Enghien fiasco was mentioned - and treachery. Doubtless remembering
Mirabeau's famous quip about Talleyrand - 'the Abbe of Perigord would
sell his soul for money; and he would be right, for he would be
exchanging dung for gold' - Napoleon cast at him a famous insult: 'You
are nothing but shit in silk stockings. '
Talleyrand made no reply but a bow, then, when the three-hour tirade
finally blew itself out, went straight to the Austrian embassy and sold his
services again for one million francs to the new ambassador, Clemens
Metternich. This inflation-proofed equivalent of thirty pieces of silver
seems on the generous side, for Talleyrand was sacked as Grand
Chamberlain next day and was thus cast out of the inner circles. Besides,
all that Talleyrand could tell him Metternich knew already. There was
discontent in France in elite circles? Well, certainly, why else was
Talleyrand in the Austrian embassy?
The Austrians had already taken this factor into account when making
their decision for a war of revenge. Four principal considerations
encouraged them to think that this time they could beat Napoleon. In the
first place the French would be reluctant to engage with them, for they
were already fully stretched in Spain and their crack units were in the
Peninsula. Secondly, Czar Alexander had hinted strongly that, Erfurt or
no Erfurt, he would not back Napoleon; when the French suggested a
joint remonstrance to Austria, backed by the threat of a Russian
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declaration of war, Alexander declined to have anything to do with it.
Thirdly, the Austrians knew, even before Talleyrand confirmed it, that
France was war-weary and the necessary moral commitment for a major
war was lacking. This in turn connected with the final consideration; that
there was a new spirit of nationalism abroad in Germany and in Austria.
After Jena, Prussian intellectuals like Fichte, Arndt and Schlegel began
campaigning for a unified Germany as the way to defeat Napoleon.
Within the government reformers like Friedrich Stein had the upper
hand for two years. They emancipated the serfs, founded universities,
shook up the old bureaucracies and, most ominously, reformed the army
with a unified Ministry of War and a Commission for Military
Organization, which oversaw a new Landwehr militia (finally called up in
r 8 r 3 ) and its Trojan horse, the Krumper system of short-service training.
Stein eventually proved the truth of the proposition that the key to
Napoleon's imperial power was his alliance with Europe's old elites. The
landowning Junkers, fearing that they were the eventual target of
Napoleon's reforms, divulged the scope of his ambitions to the French.
Napoleon's reaction was swift. From Spain he imposed a new Convention
on the Prussians, including an order to exile Stein; he backed this with an
imperial edict declaring Stein to be an enemy of France and the
Confederation of the Rhine.
Although the Prussian middle classes had originally welcomed the
French Revolution, the trauma of Jena turned them into a curious
hybrid, liberal reformers at home, rabid Francophobes in foreign affairs.
Over and over again the soul-searching Prussians asked the same
questions: how was it that in late r 8o6 large, well-provisioned garrisons
surrendered to Napoleon without firing a shot? Why did German
monarchs have no pride? William II of Prussia had emerged as a cowardly
nonentity; the King of Saxony was a self-abasing French puppet whose
palace at Dresden Napoleon used as a hotel; while the Emperor Francis
was a pathetic figure who spent his time making toffee or endlessly
stamping blank sheets of parchment with specimens from his huge
collection of seals.
Something of this German risorgimento spirit was also evident in
Austria. Despite a precarious financial base and Emperor Francis's dislike
of anything that smacked of 'Jacobinism', Archduke Charles, appointed
supreme Commander-in-Chief with powers superior to those of the Aulic
Council, managed to reform the Army. Charles's methods involved
wholesale imitation of Napoleon's: the army corps system, employment of
sharpshooters and skirmishers, rigorous drilling, improved artillery and
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supply infrastructure. By early I 809 the Austrian commanders were
itching for war.
The cautious Emperor Francis was doubtful. To the war party, who
argued that England would help with troops and subsidies and there was
a good chance that Prussia and Russia would be drawn in, the Emperor
answered that Czar Alexander had made it plain he would not go beyond
neutrality. As for England, she would consult her own interests as ever.
The Emperor and his advisers had tried to drive a hard bargain with the
British over subsidies for fighting Napoleon but, in financial terms, they
had gone a bridge too far. London curtly refused the extravagant
Austrian demand for a down payment of £z . s million to cover
mobilization and a further £5 million for each year her armies fought.
Emperor Francis was finally 'bounced' into war in February I 809 when it
was put to him that any further delay might enable Napoleon's
Continental Blockade to work, in which case there would be no English
subsidies.
As a result of the Austrian declaration of war Napoleon faced his most
difficult military task since the Marengo campaign. The Austrian army
was far better than in I 8os, but his own Grand Army was far worse.
Behind him was an insurgent Spain and a British presence in Portugal;
ahead of him was an armed and restless Germany; and his home base was
moody, uncertain and treacherous Paris, with men like Fouche and
Talleyrand waiting in the wings. However, he was not entirely
unprepared. At the back of his mind he had long been expecting this
blow to fall and, in anticipation, had conscripted the necessary manpower
to deal with the threat. In I 8o8 a senatus consultum called up 8o,ooo more
conscripts from the classes of I 8o6, I 8o7, I 8o8 and I 809, and in
December I 8o8 a further 8o,ooo from the class of I 8 I o were called up
two years in advance. The unexpected losses in Spain meant that a
further u o,ooo of the class of I 8 I o were called up in the new year of
I 8o9.
The original Austrian plan was for a surprise attack on the Rhine,
hoping to spark a rebellion in the Confederation of the Rhine which
would suck Prussia into the conflict. But Archduke Charles finally
reverted to a more traditional strategy: there would be a three-pronged
attack, with the main army punching through Bavaria, Archduke John
invading Italy and Archduke Ferdinand taking out the Grand Duchy of
Warsaw in the rear. The tripartite assault was the first Austrian mistake;
the second was the assumption that Napoleon lacked the manpower to
fight on all these fronts and continue campaigning in Spain. Perhaps
Bonaparte encouraged the false optimism by an unreal, almost Neroesque,
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stance in early I 8og. On I I February Roederer recorded a conversation
with the Emperor in which he stated: 'I have only one passion, only one
mistress - France. I sleep with her, she never lets me down, she pours
out her blood and treasure; if l need soo,ooo men, she gives them to me. '
This was boastful self-delusion. His original aim was t o have 26o,ooo
troops in Germany and I so,ooo in Italy by the time war broke out; in fact
he managed a combined total of 275,000 in the two theatres. Already
about a tenth of all conscripted Frenchmen deserted and hid in the
mountains. In any case, about half the Grande Armee was non-French,
being composed of Belgians, Italians, Dutch, Germans and special mixed
units resembling the later French Foreign Legion. In Napoleon's army of
I 809 could be found Swiss, Polish, Croat, Albanian, Greek, Portuguese,
Spanish, Lithuanian, Dutch, Irish and even negro units. Pace Clausewitz,
this was no longer a citizen army or a levee en masse but a professional
army with interests distinct from those of the French nation or even the
class (the peasantry) from which it was mostly recruited . Once it was
possible for conscripted citizens to purchase substitutes, the Grand Army
filled up with the dregs of society and became more like a traditional
flotsam-and-jetsam host of the ancien regime type. Had Napoleon read his
Machiavelli carefully, he might have spotted the danger. The one clear
element of continuity with the past was the Guard, most of which was
withdrawn from Spain in the spring of I 8og.
Napoleon made three bad errors at the beginning of the I 8og
campaign. He assumed that the Austrians would send large forces to Italy
and make their main effort there, as in past wars. He appointed Berthier
commander-in-chief, with Davout, Massena and Oudinot immediately
below him, and himself remained in Paris; this curious decision is usually
interpreted as a desire to extract maximum propaganda advantage when
the Austrian blow fell, by presenting it to the French people as a wholly
unexpected sneak attack. Berthier, though, proved a disastrous choice as
field commander and could not even keep abreast of the flow of orders
from the Emperor. But Napoleon's worst mistake once again revealed his
military Achilles' heel: failure to take the weather into account. Having
campaigned on the Danube in autumn and winter, he was wholly
unprepared for the weather-driven physical aspects of the battles he
would face there in spring and summer.
On 9 April the Austrians began their invasion of Bavaria, without a
formal declaration of war and six days earlier than Napoleon expected. At
first Archduke Charles and his I 2o,ooo-strong army carried all before
them: through Berthier's incompetence the French forces were hopelessly
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split, and disaster loomed . It was fortunate for Napoleon that heavy rain
and inadequate supplies held the Austrians up, so that he was able to
speed to the front and take personal charge. Leaving Paris at 4 a.m. on 1 3
April, and accompanied b y Josephine as far as Strasbourg, he arrived at
Donauworth on the 1 7th and at once realized that the price for
concentrating his army would have to be the abandonment of Ratisbon.
He then spent five days of continuous fighting, trying to regain the
initiative.
He began his counterstroke by ordering Davout to make a fighting
withdrawal from Regensburg and Ingolstadt, drawing the Austrians after
him while Massena and Oudinot struck east round the enemy left flank
and cut communications to Vienna and the Danube. The battles of
Thann, Abensberg, Landshut, Eckmiihl and Ratisbon ( r7-2 3 April) saw
Archduke Charles repulsed and his army badly mauled. But Napoleon
was scarcely at his best at the climactic battle of Abensburg-Eckmiihl on
2o-22 April, where the Austrians brought Davout to bay. After much
vacillation he finally decided to attack Charles there with his entire army
instead of trying to encircle him. He therefore diverted Massena from his
outflanking movement and commanded him and Lannes (ordered north
from Landshut) to attack the Austrian left before Charles could
overwhelm Davout with superior numbers.
Eckmiihl was a hamlet on the river Raaber, containing a huge baroque
watermill. Napoleon ordered a frontal attack across the Raaber water­
meadows, which eventually forced the enemy to retreat. But nightfall and
general weariness in the ranks meant that the French did not pursue their
foe to Ratisbon and, on advancing there next day, Napoleon found it
grimly defended by Charles's rearguard . It was during the unsuccessful
attempt to force this position that Napoleon sustained his one and only
battle wound, being struck on the right foot by a spent cannonball.
Eventually Lannes's division was able to take Ratisbon, but not before
Archduke Charles made good his escape.
Although Charles retreated from Bavaria to Bohemia, Napoleon had
hardly covered himself with laurels. The two decisions - to attack
frontally instead of attempting encirclement, and not to press the pursuit
from Eckmiihl - were both contrary to his own military canons. The
chance of a quick knockout blow, as in r8oo, r8os or r8o6, was gone.
Some have even precisely pinpointed Eckmiihl as marking the decline of
Napoleon as a great captain. Certainly he made a number of miscalcula­
tions and unwarranted assumptions and was so far from his usual form
that one is tempted to adduce psychological reasons. It is known that
Napoleon took one of his casual 'one night stand' mistresses during this
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campaign, which was not his usual practice. His defenders, however,
claim that sending Massena on a sweep of the Saale on the zoth was his
real error, that his tactical handling of a week of battles was inspired and
that the road to Vienna lay open - a not negligible achievement for a
commander whose best units were in Spain. Most of all, Charles's 30,000
casualties and precipitate retreat removed all temptation from Saxony,
Bavaria and Wiirttemberg to throw off the yoke of the Confederation of
the Rhine in the name of German nationalism.
Uncertain exactly where Charles had gone, but guessing somewhere
between Vienna and Moravia, Napoleon advanced cautiously along the
right bank of the Danube, uncomfortably aware that the enemy had
broken down all the bridges across a river in full springtime spate.
Learning finally that Charles was in Bohemia, the Emperor opted not to
follow him there but to aim for Vienna and try to secure a negotiated
peace. Yet time was not on his side. The Austrian corps under General
Hiller fought several rearguard actions to delay the French advance on
Vienna, to give the city time to prepare its defence adequately. Napoleon
found himself held up not just by stubborn fights at W els and Ebersberg
but by the crossing of several flooded Danube tributaries. To make
matters worse, news now came in that his viceroy Eugene de Beauharnais
had been defeated in Italy.
Vienna surrendered on 13 May under threat of bombardment but the
garrison withdrew to the north bank and destroyed all four bridges across
the Danube. Napoleon entered the Austrian capital to an icy and sullen
welcome. The problem of the Danube bridges obsessed him; as he wrote:
'To cross a river like the Danube in the presence of an enemy that knows
the ground and has the sympathy of the inhabitants is one of the most
difficult military operations conceivable.' Additionally, he was outnum­
bered. On 1 6 May Archduke Charles joined forces with Hiller, giving
him a total strength of u s,ooo against Napoleon's 8z,ooo. Moreover,
French forces were scattered, for Davout with 35,000 men was forty
miles west of Vienna, putting down local uprisings, while Lefebvre's VII
Corps was at Salzburg. The problem remained: how to strike fast at
Charles, given that he was on the north bank and the Danube was
engorged with heavy spring floods.
Napoleon now made another mistake. He decided to cross the Danube
at Albern, six miles south of Vienna, where islands split the river into
three streams. He intended using Lobau island, two-thirds of the way
across, a lush, uninhabited place full of enormous poplar trees, as a
jumping-off point, but he had not taken into account the difficulties of
building bridges in these conditions. Lashed by torrential rains and
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assailed by Austrian commando raids, sometimes even having to endure
violent storms and the attacks of fireships, French engineers and pioneers
took a week to build a pontoon across the 825-yard stretch from the right
bank to Lobau, using 68 pontoons and nine rafts. The first French units
reached the island on 20 May and, after completion of the much shorter
bridge across the third channel to the left bank, Massena's and Lannes's
corps crossed north to the mainland and established a bridgehead at the
villages of Aspern and Essling.
By 2I May Napoleon had 25,000 men on the large open plain kndwn as
the Marchfeld, an arid and desolate spot on the north bank of the
Danube. Timing his attack brilliantly, Archduke Charles then attacked
with a huge army of I oo,ooo men and 250 guns; he quickly drove the
French out of the villages of Aspern and Essling and back to the bridge.
Once again, it turned out, Napoleon had miscalculated . He had not
known that Charles was within striking distance on the bridgehead on the
left bank and assumed he would be able to reinforce Lannes and Massena
easily. But now the news came in that the bridge from the left bank to
Lobau had been breached, first by rising water and then by Austrian
fireships and battering rams. By now the Austrians had perfected a
technique of floating huge hulks and logs down river which smashed into
the pontoons.
On the north bank an increasingly serious battle developed around
Aspern; in the nick of time Napoleon got enough men across the repaired
bridge to fight the Austrians to stalemate. But the French position
remained grave, for Charles could easily get reinforcements and they
could not. On the 2 I st 3 I ,ooo French troops had to confront more than
I oo,ooo Austrians with 260 big guns at their disposal. On the 22nd, after
makeshift repairs to the pontoons, Napoleon managed to ferry more men
over; now he had so,ooo infantry, I 2,000 cavalry and I 44 guns to face the
Austrian host. Ferocious streetfighting went on in Aspern and Essling on
the morning of the 22nd, and then Napoleon ordered a strong attack on
the Austrian centre.
At first Lannes seemed to carry all before him, but he was eventually
forced to retreat by his own shortage of ammunition as much as an
Austrian counterattack. In any case, Napoleon could not get Davout's
corps across the river for the coup de grace, as the bridge had broken once
again. The hand-to-hand fighting of that morning in Aspern and Essling
was repeated in the evening darkness; in one of these desperate
encounters perished General St-Hilaire, on the point of receiving his
marshal's baton. After murderous close combat General Rapp and the
Young Guard managed to retake Essling but then came news that the
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bridge to Lobau was broken once again and the Emperor had ordered a
general retreat to the island. In almost the last fighting on the mainland,
Marshal Lannes had both legs smashed by a cannonball. His limbs were
amputated but gangrene set in and he did not recover, lingering in
feverish agony for eight days before succumbing on 3 1 May. Predictably,
Bonapartist propaganda elevated his death into a 'glorious death for
France and the Emperor' apotheosis.
The French withdrew to the island of Lobau, cut the bridge linking
the mainland from its moorings and drew it back on to the island. Heavily
outnumbered, Napoleon had been defeated - a fact his propaganda
machine worked hard to conceal. But Austrian propaganda was just as
mendacious: twenty-five French generals and Napoleon himself were said
to have perished in a Cannae-style debacle. Despite heroic deeds by
Lannes, the Grande Armee had been worsted and the fault was the
Emperor's. He made two bad mistakes: giving battle without knowing
Charles's numbers, and failing to assemble his entire army on Lobau first.
The Austrians sustained 23,340 casualties, the French probably in the
region of 2o-22,ooo; Napoleon, naturally, lied and claimed his casualty
figures were 4, r oo.
At Aspern-Essling the Emperor lost his reputation for invincibility.
For thirty-six hours after the battle he remained in an indecisive brown
study, apparently stupefied by the setback. Fortunately, perhaps, the
Austrians made no attempt, either then or later, to take Lobau; it was
almost as though they could not believe their luck in having beaten the
Corsican ogre. By 24 May Napoleon was himself again and next day the
bridge from Lobau to the south bank was reopened, allowing the French
finally to evacuate their wounded, who had lain in the open for forty­
eight hours. Napoleon was aware that he faced one of the great crises of
his life, for unless he retrieved his reputation with a great victory
Germany would rise behind him.
It has to be conceded that Bonaparte recovered well from the initial
paralysis after Aspern-Essling, for the gloomy news he received while on
Lobau would have been enough to demolish a lesser man. Following the
initial French setbacks in Italy, a serious insurrection broke out in the
Tyrol, headed by the charismatic figure Andreas Hofer. There had been
serious military stirrings in Germany, prompted by the new spirit of
nationalism. In Westphalia Major Schill was attempting guerrilla warfare
while in Saxony the Duke of Brunswick's son and his 'hussars of death'
were on the rampage; this so-called 'black legion' cut a swathe through
the cities of Dresden, Leipzig, Brunswick, Hanover and Bremen. In Paris
there were rumours of popular discontent and plots, and hard news of a
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fall on the stockmarket. In Spain the military advantage the Emperor had
secured a few months earlier was thrown away by the incompetence of his
marshals, principally Soult, who remained inactive after capturing
Oporto in March r 8o9, apparently in the quixotic belief that he might be
proclaimed King of Portugal. His idleness and inactivity, and his jealousy
of Ney, enabled the British to land large-scale forces under Wellesley in
Portugal in April r 8o9.
Displaying nerves of steel, Napoleon ordered up reinforcements from
Spain. Convinced that the Austrians would not attempt a landing in
strength on Lobau but simply keep up a token bombardment from the
north bank, he evacuated all the army except Massena's corps, then
turned the island into a fortress bristling with guns, one hundred of them
trained on Charles's army. Then he painstakingly built proper bridges
across the Danube, which would be invulnerable to anything but actual
Austrian occupation. Isolated on Lobau for a month, by the end of June
he had constructed five more bridges across the Danube, three of them to
Lobau, and built stockades, piledriven into the river bed upstream, to
block the passage of fireships or floating logs and hulks; additionally, he
stationed a fleet of naval gunboats on the river.
Fortune favoured the brave. On 14 June Eugene Beauharnais and
General MacDonald with the Army of Italy defeated Archduke John at
Raab, then sent word they were on their way to the relief of Lobau. With
their 23,000 men and the corps under Davout and Marmont he had also
summoned, Napoleon had r 6o,ooo men and 500 guns by the beginning of
July. Amazingly, the Austrians remained inactive in face of this build-up,
waiting for the general German uprising which never came.
On 4 July the Emperor was ready to strike. He began by throwing
across three bridges from Lobau to Aspern-Essling, encouraging
Archduke Charles to believe that he would be attempting his manoeuvre
of six weeks earlier. His real objective with this feint was to put his army
on Charles's left flank so as to get between him and the second Austrian
army under John, which had retreated into Hungary after Raab but was
now closing in again. He therefore landed an advance guard at Gross
Enzerdorff, from which his engineers constructed seven pontoons to
Lobau. He assembled his troops at the northern crossings to Aspern­
Essling with great din and hubbub, then switched them at the last minute
to the seven bridges east to Gross Enzerdorff. On the night of 4-5 July
the French streamed across the Danube on the seven eastward pontoons,
beset by torrential rain, yet buoyed up by the Emperor's inspired tactics.
His plan was indeed a brilliant one, requiring split-second timing and
coordination. Amazingly, the diversionary feint and the actual crossing
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went off without a hitch; not a single man was lost and complete surprise
was achieved when the French emerged at their new location on the
north bank. But Charles was saved by his own lack of imagination.
Hoping to repeat his success on 2 I -22 May he pulled his troops back to
lure the French into Aspern-Essling instead of opposing the imagined
crossing, as Napoleon had expected. The consequence was that the
French outflanking movement was no longer feasible. But the Austrians
were in a rare panic when they realized the true state of affairs and pulled
their troops out of Aspern and Essling on the double.
By 9 a.m. on 5 July the three front-line corps of Davout, Oudinot and
Massena were moving forward to make way for the second line (Eugene
and Bernadotte) and the third (Marmont's corps, Bessiere's cavalry and
the Guard. The general advance was sounded at noon. Everyone knew
there would soon be a battle, for on the treeless plains of the Marchfeld
there were now nearly 30o,ooo men and 900 cannon; the Austrians had
I 36,ooo troops and 400 guns, Napoleon I 56,ooo and 500 guns. Charles
drew up his army in a semicircle of fifteen miles running from Aspern
through the villages of Aderklaa and Markgrafneusiedl with his centre
resting on Wagram. Napoleon placed the bulk of his army - Davout,
Oudinot, Eugene and Bernadotte ( u o,ooo in all) on the right, leaving
Massena with just 27 ,ooo on the left; in reserve he kept I I ,ooo Guard and
8,ooo cavalry. The dispositions were classically Napoleonic, aiming for
the 'centre position' or hinge between the two wings of the enemy army,
and arranged so that he could transfer troops from one flank to the other
faster than his opponent. But it was not a textbook formation, since
Napoleon had no choice but to fight with his back to the Danube. The
Emperor had three aims: to pierce the Austrian centre before it was
reinforced; to gain a decisive victory so that Charles could not escape and
to split the enemy before Archduke John could come to the rescue.
It was with John in mind that Napoleon ordered the attack at 5 p.m. on
the 5th, despite the lateness of the hour. The first part of the Battle of
Wagram was a near fiasco. Oudinot's corps withdrew after taking heavy
losses, while Eugene's Army of Italy panicked and fled, having earlier
mistaken the Saxons for the enemy and fired on them; they were forced
to turn and face the enemy only when they nearly impaled themselves on
the bayonets of the Guard in reserve. Both Davout and Bernadotte failed
to make progress; the Emperor was forced to call off the attack and spend
his third successive night without sleep.
Once again Bernadotte had failed at a crucial battle but this time he
went too far. Attempting one of his gasconnades to conceal his failure to
take the village of Aderklaa, he declared that Napoleon had botched
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things and that if he, Bernadotte, were in command he could have forced
Charles to surrender without firing a single shot. He followed this up by
abandoning his position outside Aderklaa at 4 a.m. on the 6th, pleading
the necessity of shortening his line by linking with Eugene on the right
and Massena on the left. This was reported to Napoleon, who finally
snapped after a decade of ingratitude and treachery from the Gascon.
Furiously countermanding Bernadotte's movements, he ordered him and
Massena to take the village regardless of casualties.
Bernadotte then committed the error of galloping right into the
Emperor's path. Napoleon raged at him. 'Is this the type of "telling
manoeuvre" with which you will force Archduke Charles to lay down his
arms? ' he thundered. Seeing Bernadotte lost for words, he continued: 'I
hereby remove you from command of the corps which you have handled
so consistently badly. Leave my presence immediately, and quit the
Grande Armee within twenty-four hours. ' But the contumacious Gascon
had not finished. Before he left for Paris he issued a bulletin, praising his
men for their part in the battle and claiming they had stood 'like bronze'.
The only thing brazen about Bernadotte's corps was its marshal's
effrontery. Napoleon was obliged to publish an official rebuke, stating
that Bernadotte's order of the day was contrary to truth, policy and
national honour.
On the morning of the 6th Napoleon tried again. His tactics were for
Massena to hold while Davout and Oudinot made a frontal attack; the
Army of Italy would be held back for the moment of breakthrough. But
Charles upset the Emperor's plans by attacking first, aiming for a double
envelopment of the French: with the anvil of his operations at Wagram,
he sent his right wing to seize Aspern and cut Napoleon off from the
Danube in that sector while his left threw the French right back against
the river. Two Austrian corps accordingly attacked Massena, hoping to
roll him up and seize the Danube bridges in the rear.
By I I a.m. things seemed to be going the Austrians' way: on their right
they were forcing the French back to Aspern while in the centre they
were forcing the Saxons to give ground . Fearing that Massena's corps
was on the point of buckling under the onslaught, and therefore that a
gap might open up enabling Charles to use the 'centre position' against
him, Napoleon ordered Massena to disengage and shift to the left. This
involved marching Massena south across the front of the enemy lines,
screened by cavalry. To take the pressure off, the Emperor ordered the
cavalry reserve to charge and Davout to press his attack with even greater
vigour. MacDonald and the cavalry performed brilliantly but took heavy
losses. To some extent these were offset by the accuracy of the massed
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French artillery on Lobau which, finding a perfect target in Charles's
would-be enveloping forces, mowed them down in droves.
Next Napoleon filled the gap vacated by Massena with massed
artillery; one hundred cannon opened up on the Austrians at close range.
For a while the battle settled down to slugging, bloody attrition, with
Oudinot's men directing artillery fire on the Austrian centre at Wagram
but not yet engaging it. By midday Massena succeeded in reaching his
new position and was poised for counterattack; the plan was that he
would switch flanks at the decisive moment to aid Davout.
Meanwhile a titanic struggle between Davout's corps and the Austrian
left was finally resolved in favour of the French, but not before Davout's
first line was broken. Shortly after midday Napoleon saw through his
spyglass that Davout's firing line was passing the church tower at
Markgrafneusiedl, the prearranged signal that Davout had turned the
Austrian left and was about to curve towards Wagram from the rear. It
was time to move up the Army of Italy under MacDonald and Eugene.
Following a heavy, sixty-gun bombardment, the Emperor launched
Oudinot, Massena and the Army of Italy under MacDonald against
Wagram and the enemy centre. MacDonald deployed 30,ooo men in a
gigantic hollow square, six ranks deep, with other infantry in column on
either flank and 6,ooo cavalry in the rear. Austrian cannonballs devastated
the square but it still came on. MacDonald's force finally dug in at a
sandpit and under this cover reinforcements were brought up. By now
Napoleon had spotted a weakness on the Austrian left centre caused by
having to reinforce their left against Davout. He ordered Davout to strike
at this hinge while Massena attacked the enemy right. But the Austrians
continued to fight like dervishes and MacDonald's attack again seemed to
be petering out when Napoleon finally broke the deadlock by committing
all his reserves except two regiments of the Old Guard.
This was a crucial decision. Finally the Austrians broke and by 2 p.m.
the French were advancing confidently on both sectors. Learning that his
own reinforcements would not arrive until nightfall, shortly after 2.30
Charles was forced to order a general retreat to Bohemia; Napoleon's
forces were too exhausted to pursue him. The Austrians had been beaten
but by no means routed and withdrew in good order, leaving no guns or
standards behind. This was no Austerlitz or Jena. Having fought six
hours non-stop, the French were at the limits of endurance and could not
be prodded to follow the enemy; in any case Napoleon still feared that
Archduke John might arrive, in which case a third day's fighting was
likely.
Wagram was Napoleon's last great victory on the battlefield but it had
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been a close-run thing and, had Archduke John appeared at the moment
the Emperor committed his last reserves, a signal defeat would have
followed. As it was, a greatly improved Austrian army had fought a
below-par French army almost to a standstill, to the point where
Napoleon lacked cavalry for pursuit operations. The Grande Armee had
fired 7 I ,ooo rounds in a murderous, bludgeoning battle that seemed to
usher in a new era of slaughterous warfare and anticipated the blood­
letting of the American Civil War. French casualties were 32,ooo,
Austrian 3 5,ooo; Napoleon, following his usual practice, toured the
battlefield to inspect the piles of dead and wounded.
After further skirmishing at Zynam on I o-I I July, the Austrians
suddenly threw in the towel and asked for an armistice, which was
arranged on the I 2th; Francis I at first refused to honour it but
reluctantly ratified it on J7 July. A dispute between Francis I and
Archduke Charles led the latter to resign and retire into private life. A
tense three months of negotiations and bargaining ensued, with the
likelihood of renewed hostilities ever-present. There were two main
reasons for this: one was Napoleon's demand for the abdication of Francis
I; the other was that Austria stalled, hoping that the military intervention
of the British could save them from harsh peace terms.
The British had made some attempt to assist their ally. When Austria
invaded Bavaria in April, Britain sent a subsidy of £25o,ooo and a further
£337,000 a little later; by the time of Wagram, subsidies to Austria
amounted to £ I , I 8s,ooo, even as London also committed substantial
sums to the struggle in Spain . In April Admiral Gambier led a Royal
Navy attack on the French Rochefort squadron. His deputy, Admiral
Thomas Cochrane used fireships to burn three French ships of the line,
made three more unfit for service and destroyed two frigates. The rest of
the French squadron lay aground, waiting to be finished off, but Gambier
refused to take his battleships into the roads, to the fury of Cochrane and
other observers, including Captain Frederick Marryat. As Napoleon
justly remarked: 'If Cochrane had been supported, he would have taken
every one of our ships.'
But the great British enterprise of I 809 was an attack on Walcheren
Island on 30 July, supposedly the opening of a second front to aid
Austria. But in attacking Walcheren in the Scheidt the British were
primarily consulting their own interests and pursuing their old obsession
about Belgium: thoughts of the possible benefit to Austria came a long
way down the list. The operation was feasible only because Napoleon had
sent most of his troops eastwards, so that it was a case of Austria helping
England, not vice versa. In any event, the landing on Walcheren quickly
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turned to debacle, though it was a protracted one, since the British did
not leave the island until 23 December, hoping the Austrians would
resume hostilities. Bad weather, inadequate planning and incompetent
leadership vitiated the expedition; the British took so long to take
Flushing that the French were able to rush reinforcements to the ultimate
target, Antwerp. Disease ('Walcheren fever') finished off the enterprise:
4,000 troops died and I 9,ooo were hospitalized.
The British incursion at Walcheren enabled the dauntless Bernadotte
to make a temporary comeback. Put in command of the troops at
Antwerp, waiting for the British thrust that never came, Bernadotte
issued an order of the day boasting that his ' I s ,ooo men' could hold the
city against all comers. When this order was brought to him, Napoleon
was enraged: he pointed out that there were 6o,ooo troops at Walcheren,
not I s,ooo and that, whatever the numbers, it was simple professional
incompetence for Bernadotte to reveal them to the enemy. He sent an
order relieving the contumacious Gascon of command: 'I intend no
longer to leave the command in the hands of the Prince of Ponte Corvo,
who now as before is in league with the Paris intriguers, and who is in
every respect a man in whom I can no longer place confidence . . . This is
the first occasion on which a general has been known to betray his
position by an excess of vanity. '
Meanwhile the Austrians dragged out the peace negotiations, hoping
for a great British success or for intervention from the Czar, now widely
known no longer to see eye to eye with Napoleon; the Russians, however,
warned that they were not yet ready for a rupture with France. In Poland,
after an initial victory by Archduke Ferdinand, the brilliance of Prince
Poniatowski soon undid all the Austrian gains. The one possible bright
spot for Austria was the Tyrol, where heavy fighting had been in progress
since April: there had been two major campaigns and twice Napoleon's
Bavarian allies had been thrown out of the region by the Tyrolese
'liberators', most recently on I 3 August.
Napoleon decided that he could not return to Paris until he had a
definite peace treaty with Austria, so in the summer of I 809 he ruled the
Empire from Schonbrunn in the Austrian countryside. Here he resumed
his affair with Marie Walewska, but it was no longer the grand passion of
two years earlier, as the tone of his letter of invitation to her partly
indicates: 'Marie: I have read your letter with the pleasure your memory
always inspires in me . . . Yes, come to Vienna. I would like to give you
further proof of the tender friendship I feel for you. ' The imperial valet
Constant's diaries show Napoleon and Marie spending every afternoon
together, but Napoleon's attentions cannot have been fully engaged for,
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when he went to Vienna in August to consult the physician Professor
Lanefranque about his indifferent health (he wrote to Josephine on 26
August that he had not felt well in years), he conducted a brief liaison
with the nineteen-year-old Viennese Eva Kraus, who was said to have
borne him a son. What is certain is that in September his regular mistress
Marie Walewska announced that she was pregnant. Once it was
demonstrated that the Emperor could indeed sire children, it was evident
to all well-informed observers that Josephine's days were numbered.
Finally, in October, the Austrians accepted that they could stall no
longer and signed the Treaty of Schonbrunn on 14 October. Napoleon
imposed harsh conditions to assuage the shock of the 1 809 crisis. Francis
I was forced to cede Carinthia, Carniola and most of Croatia, including
Fiume, !stria and Trieste. Bavaria was given Salzburg and the upper
valley of the Inn, while the Grand Duchy of Warsaw got northern
Galicia, Cracow and Lublin. Czar Alexander, who had played a double
game throughout, ended up with eastern Galicia. Additionally, Austria
had to pay a war indemnity of 85 millions, and agreed to abide by the
Continental System, limit its army to 1 so,ooo men, and recognize Joseph
as King of Spain.
The humiliation to Austrian national pride found expression in a
manifestation of the dark side of Austrian nationalism. At a military
parade at Schonbrunn, two days before the signing of the treaty, a young
Saxon student, Frederick Staps, tried to assassinate Napoleon while
ostensibly presenting a petition; it was only a chance movement by
General Rapp that diverted the would-be assassin's dagger. Napoleon was
convinced Staps was mentally deranged, possibly from a childhood under
the aegis of his father, a stern Lutheran minister, but Staps refused to
accept this chance of a reprieve and insisted that his action was rational.
'Is a crime nothing to you, then?' Napoleon asked him. 'To kill you is not
a crime, it's a duty!' Staps replied defiantly. He was executed a few days
later and met his end exclaiming: 'Long live Germany. Death to the
tyrant!'
Ever a man to turn any event, however untoward, to his advantage,
Napoleon told Marie Walewska he was concerned at the possible shock to
her unborn child and suggested she return to Poland. He himself left for
Paris two days after the treaty, on 1 6 October. But he was shaken by the
Staps incident and was convinced that if he had lost at Wagram,
Germany would have flamed into rebellion. As he wrote to Rapp, who
had intercepted the knife thrust: 'This is the result of the secret societies
which infest Germany. This is the effect of fine principles and the light of
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reason. They make young men assassins. But what can be done? . . . A
sect cannot be destroyed by cannonballs. '
Once again h e had escaped from a tight spot. Once the Austrians
capitulated, the steam went out of the Tyrolean rising. On 25 October the
Bavarians occupied Innsbruck for the third time, this time signalling the
collapse of the Tyrolean rebels. It took some time before Andreas Hofer
could be tracked down, so that he was not executed until 20 February
1 8 10. Napoleon's way with this 'martyr' was as brisk as with Staps. There
is a cold ruthlessness about the order he sent to Eugene Beauharnais, now
back in Italy as viceroy: 'My son, I had commanded you to send Hofer to
Paris, but since you have him in Mantua, give instant orders that a
military commission be set up to try him on the spot. See that this takes
place within twenty-four hours.'
On his journey back to Fontainebleau, where he arrived on 26 October,
Napoleon had time to ponder the lessons of the 1 809 campaign. He had
shown himself resilient under pressure, especially when he had to correct
Berthier's mistakes, and he had displayed tactical flair at Wagram. On the
other hand, his blunders were many. He should not have appointed
Berthier in the first place, he offended against his own military principles
during the fighting on H )--25 April and even more afterwards, perhaps
especially by pressing on to the symbolic goal of Vienna instead of
seeking out and destroying the enemy on the north bank of the Danube.
His famous opportunism descended into mere folly in May when he
attempted a quixotic and unprepared crossing of the Danube and, all in
all, the Emperor seemed to lack his old elan and brilliance; there were fits
of lethargy and depression and vaguely worded orders. There is even
some evidence that he had begun to lose confidence in his military
abilities, for he wrote after Wagram: 'Battle should only be offered when
there is no other turn of fortune to be hoped for, as from its nature the
fate of a battle is always dubious.'
Just as worrying was the declining calibre of the Army, especially the
allied contingents; the flight of the Saxons on the first day of Wagram did
not bode well. There was a worryingly high level of officer casualties, and
indiscipline in the ranks was so bad that Napoleon was forced to institute
five courts-martial. The one bright spot, the removal of Bernadotte apart,
was the distinguished showing of the marshals. MacDonald, Marmont
and Oudinot all won their batons for their exploits in the toughest
campaign so far. Oudinot, whose contribution at Wagram was decisive,
received a further annual income of 6o,ooo francs and the dukedom of
Reggio, which itself carried an annual endowment of 36,ooo francs. But if
Austria was pacified, there still remained the Spanish ulcer.
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