Napoleon

by Adam Zamoyski

  Napoleon’s attempts to outflank and cut off the retreating Archduke Charles came to nothing, and although he reached Vienna on 11 May and took up residence at Schönbrunn once more, he had little to rejoice over. His army had been bloodied and it had underperformed, largely because his seasoned troops and some of his best commanders, such as Ney and Soult, were in Spain, while Murat was in Naples. This time he had had to make a show of bombarding the city before Vienna opened its gates; the inhabitants nevertheless showed their admiration for him by cheering as he rode up to the walls. Archduke Charles had regrouped on the north bank of the Danube, and getting the French army across was not going to be easy.

  Napoleon chose the stretch where the Danube divides into two narrower streams around the large island of Lobau, and on 19 May his engineers began building pontoon bridges. The following afternoon he was on Lobau, and began moving his troops across the second branch of the river. By the morning of 21 May some 25,000 to 30,000 had made it across and taken up positions in the villages of Aspern and Essling, facing about 90,000 Austrians. At this point the Austrians destroyed his bridges by floating heavily loaded barges down the river, which was in spate. The engineers struggled to repair them, but with more heavy objects being floated downriver Napoleon’s army was stranded in three places, while Archduke Charles seized his chance and opened up on the French positions with heavy artillery. Fierce fighting developed as he tried to get between Masséna’s corps at Aspern and the river, while Napoleon himself clung on at Essling. With the bridges repaired more men got across, bringing French numbers up to around 60,000 on the morning of 22 May. Napoleon launched an attack which was returned, and the two villages changed hands several times. Although the French had held their ground, the bridges at his back had been set alight by incendiary barges, preventing reinforcements from coming up, so at nightfall Napoleon pulled all his forces back onto the island. Both sides claimed victory, the Austrians naming it Aspern and the French Essling, but there was little to celebrate on either side. Losses had been heavy – more than 20,000 Austrians and upwards of 15,000 French.38

  A harrowing personal loss for Napoleon was that of Marshal Lannes, who had both legs crushed by a cannonball. Larrey amputated in an attempt to save his life, and the physicians struggled to keep him alive. Napoleon visited him every evening, but Lannes had been badly concussed. ‘My friend, don’t you recognise me?’ Napoleon allegedly asked. ‘It’s your friend Bonaparte.’ He died on 31 May. On hearing the news Napoleon hurried over and embraced the lifeless body. He was in tears, and had to be dragged away by Duroc. Lannes had been one of his closest and, according to Fouché, the only one of Napoleon’s friends who was still able to tell him the truth. He ordered the body to be embalmed and taken back to France.39

  Napoleon was cheered by the news from the south, where Eugène had forced the Austrians out of Italy, and General Étienne Macdonald had ousted them from Dalmatia. He turned the island of Lobau into a fortress and a launchpad for his next offensive, and spent most of June bringing up reinforcements. He would go there nearly every day and often, donning a soldier’s overcoat and carrying a musket, venture out to observe enemy positions. On 14 June Eugène and Macdonald defeated Archduke John at Raab and joined forces with Napoleon, giving him a comfortable superiority over Archduke Charles. On the night of 4 July, in a violent thunderstorm Napoleon began crossing to the north bank of the Danube.

  33

  The Cost of Power

  On the morning of 5 July 1809 a powerful artillery barrage opened what was to be the largest and longest-lasting battle Napoleon had fought. Over the next two days his forces, totalling nearly 190,000 men drawn from all over Europe, supported by more than 500 guns, fought it out with an Austrian army of up to 170,000 with 450 pieces of ordnance in what was more a battle of attrition than his usual decisive manoeuvre.

  While the bombardment of their defences at Enzersdorf distracted the Austrians, the French army turned their left wing, forcing them to fall back on the village of Wagram. Archduke Charles managed to repel an attempt by Masséna’s corps to outflank him on his right – helped by the fact that following a bad fall from his horse the day before, Masséna was commanding from a reclining position in his carriage. French attacks by Bernadotte, Eugène and Davout ground to a standstill in fierce fighting at close quarters which continued late into the evening and only died down at around eleven, when Bernadotte and then the others fell back.

  Late that evening Napoleon conferred with Berthier, Davout, Oudinot and others, preparing a plan for the next day. The nature of war had changed, and so had his style; it was a far cry from the days of his first Italian campaign, when he told Costa de Beauregard that a council of war was a coward’s resource. He went to bed in his tent at one o’clock in the morning, and rose at four. At five he was in the saddle, astride a fine grey called Cyrus on which he would cover almost the whole ten-kilometre stretch of the battlefield, often within range of enemy guns, which took a heavy toll on his staff. As one of his aides lifted his hat, which was the form on receiving an order, it was blown away by a cannonball, causing Napoleon to smile and say, ‘It’s lucky you’re not taller.’1

  While Archduke Charles made a bold attempt to encircle Masséna, still in his carriage, on the French left, Napoleon ordered Davout to turn his left wing, while he himself launched a massed attack on his centre at Wagram. Ineptly led by Bernadotte, after having triumphed over stiff resistance the Saxon corps, which had led the attack, fell back, and all the advantage gained was lost. After exchanging vigorous words with Bernadotte (whom he later said he ought to have had shot for cowardice, but now just ordered back to Paris), Napoleon reorganised his forces. He combined a massive cavalry attack led by Bessières with a second assault on the Austrian centre, preceded by a heavy barrage, with the French artillery bringing over a hundred guns up to within a few hundred metres of the Austrian lines and pounding them at short range.

  When he saw the attack drive home, Napoleon lay down on the grass to sleep for an hour, undisturbed by the thunder of nearly a thousand cannon. The exertions of the past two days were telling on his health, and he had what he called ‘an overflow of bile’ that evening. He was better in the morning. ‘My enemies are undone, beaten and fleeing in complete disorder,’ he wrote to Josephine. ‘They were very numerous, but I crushed them.’2

  This was nonsense; the Austrians may have been defeated, but they withdrew in relatively good order, with most of their artillery. Assessments of the losses differ widely, but they were heavy both in men and horses, and greater on the French side. Although the French took as many as 15,000 prisoners, the Austrians lost fewer flags and cannon, and the battle had been neither tactically masterful nor decisive. Yet Napoleon’s Bulletin claimed exactly that, and described the Austrian retreat as a ‘rout’, which it was not, since the French were too exhausted to pursue the advantage. When they did, two days later, they caught up with the Austrians at Znaïm, where after an inconclusive engagement on 11 July the Austrians proposed an armistice. Dismissing the wishes of his entourage, who were keen to finish them off decisively, Napoleon agreed to it, saying too much blood had been spilt already; he had been shocked by the heavy casualties incurred by both sides in the course of the campaign.3

  That was not his only worry as he returned to Schönbrunn on 13 July. Whatever he wrote in his Bulletins, he could see for himself that none of the battles he had fought over the past three months were in any sense decisive. Others could see it too. Even though it had earned him his marshal’s baton, Marmont called Wagram ‘a victory without consequence’. ‘The days when swarms of prisoners would fall into our hands, as in Italy, at Ulm, at Austerlitz, at Jena, were past,’ he reflected. In those days, when they encountered the lightning-bold tactics of the still young Napoleon and the dash of the French soldier fledged in the ranks of the Revolution, the Austrian or Prussian commanders and soldiers did not know what had hit them and threw up their hands in a natural reflex. But much had changed sin
ce then. It was not just that Napoleon and his generals had grown older, though that was certainly a factor.4

  Although Austria was obliged to sue for peace, Germany was by no means subdued. The indecisive nature of the battle of Aspern-Essling had reverberated through Europe in much the same way as news of Bailén the previous year, further denting the myth of Napoleon’s invincibility. It had encouraged the Duke of Brunswick-Oels, whose father had been vanquished at Auerstadt, to march out in June at the head of his ‘Black Legion of Vengeance’ of 2,000 men raised with money from the Austrian government. He had joined up with a force of 5,000 Austrians and marched on Dresden and Leipzig before being seen off by Jérôme’s Westphalians. The rising in the Tyrol had also revived at the news, forcing Napoleon to send Marshal Lefèbvre to pacify the area, but this only inflamed local feeling and fuelled a guerrilla which would take time to put down.

  Perceptions of Napoleon had shifted dramatically. From having been widely viewed as a liberator and a friend of the oppressed, he was now coming to be seen as the oppressor. The failure of his attempt to play the national card by calling on the Hungarians to rise up against the Austrians was eloquent evidence of this. They had good reason not to trust him: in order not to ruffle Russian sensibilities, he let down his own party in Poland. Commanded by the nephew of the country’s last king, Prince Joseph Poniatowski, the army of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw had, after an initial defeat by Archduke Ferdinand, beaten the Austrians back and occupied most of their Polish province of Galicia. Instead of letting the Poles add it to the territory of the Grand Duchy, Napoleon ceded half of it to Russia, which had barely pretended to support him against Austria. He thereby forfeited the support of a large part of a nation prepared to be his most devoted ally.

  The young Buonaparte, who had lived to hate the oppressor of his nation and dreamed only of liberating it, had grown out of his island patriotism and espoused the cause of a France that had embraced the progressive values of the day and offered greater promise to his people. Bearing the standard of that France, he had shattered the chains of feudalism and overthrown tyranny in northern Italy and subsequently bestowed the benefits of rational administration there and in western Germany, earning the gratitude and even love of millions. But a growing cynicism had led him to sacrifice the aspirations of those millions to what he had come to see as higher priorities. The dreams of a German emancipation which he had done much to foster were methodically doused by his arrangements within it, as well as his own and his agents’ behaviour.

  A prime example is Westphalia, which could serve as a microcosm of what was wrong with Napoleon’s imperial policy. ‘What the people of Germany ardently desire is that those who are not noble and who have talent should have an equal right to your respect and to employment, that all kinds of servitude and all other bonds separating the sovereign from the lowest class of the people should be entirely abolished,’ Napoleon wrote to Jérôme as he took his throne. ‘The benefits of the Code Napoléon, the openness of procedures, the establishment of juries will be among the distinguishing marks of your monarchy. And if I am to be quite open with you, I am counting on such measures more than on the greatest victories to extend and establish your monarchy. Your people must enjoy a liberty, an equality and a well-being unknown to the people of the rest of Germany, and may this liberal government in one way or another lead to the most salutary change in the whole Confederation and the enhancement of your monarchy.’5

  The kingdom, which had a population of two million, was made up of territory taken from Prussia and eighteen minor German principalities. With its capital at Kassel, it was organised in departments along French lines and given a constitution drawn up by Cambacérès and Regnaud de Saint-Jean d’Angély based on that of France but incorporating local law. Although at the outset it was run by ministers brought in from Paris, the administration was gradually taken over by locals. But while the kingdom was supposed to be independent, Napoleon could not help treating it as a department of France. He demanded from it a tribute of forty-nine million francs per annum, and awarded estates there to French generals and officials who sucked another seven million francs a year out of it.6

  The twenty-four-year-old Jérôme was not lacking in intelligence or other qualities, but he was lazy, vain and dissolute. His career as a naval officer had been a fiasco and his military role as commander of an army corps in Silesia during the campaign against Prussia of 1806–07 was less than brilliant; in Breslau in January 1807 he and his staff had kept themselves warm with eighteen bottles of champagne and 208 of other wines each day. He was married to the plain and plump Catherine, daughter of the King of Württemberg, and although he was copiously unfaithful to her, he developed real love for his ‘Trinette’.7

  He established a court modelled on Napoleon’s, created a new nobility and instituted an order of chivalry. Palaces were rebuilt and hung with state portraits of the new royal couple, splendid uniforms were designed for royal guards, and even a new unit of currency, the Jérôme, was introduced – to be spent lavishly on court entertainments, jewellery and the trappings of royalty. He ordered a statue and over fifty busts of himself, and twelve of his wife, from Carrara. He nevertheless managed, with the help of a few competent French officials, to rule not much worse than most monarchs. As Countess Anna Potocka put it, ‘With a little more legitimacy and a little less puerile vanity, he would have passed for a distinguished ruler.’ But as well as making endless demands for more money and troops, many of which were sent to Spain, Napoleon kept interfering in his conduct of affairs, undermining his authority. He also kept rearranging the territory of his kingdom along with his changing plans; provinces were shunted between vassal states or incorporated into the French Empire, which not only disorganised the administration but also sapped any feelings of loyalty that might have developed to the new state and its ruler. Therein lay much of the weakness of Napoleon’s system: he undermined the authority of the siblings he placed on thrones by treating them as his lieutenants, yet out of a combination of fondness, family solidarity and the inability to put anyone more trustworthy in their place, was unable to control or discipline them.8

  There was an inherent contradiction at the heart of the whole Napoleonic imperium: its mission was to enlighten, liberate and modernise. Feudalism was swept away, along with all disabilities imposed by guilds and corporations, Jews were liberated, and all forms of servitude abolished, yet new hierarchies were created, and political constraints imposed on the economy. Since most of the inhabitants of the Continent recognised only monarchy as a principle of government, Napoleon abandoned republican models in favour of imperial and royal ones, with all their trappings of titles, honours, decorations and courts. In August 1811 he would institute an Ordre de la Réunion, intended to bind prominent people from all parts of the French dominion into a confraternity – which necessarily excluded all the inhabitants of Napoleonic Europe who did not belong to his newly created elite.

  What undermined the whole enterprise, particularly in Germany, was that while the benefits of emancipation, equality before the law and a functioning administration based on a solid constitution, not to mention the spread of education for all, were generally appreciated, those who had bestowed them were increasingly resented for their arrogance and their financial demands. As Jacques Beugnot, who had been sent to Düsseldorf to run the Grand Duchy of Berg after the generally popular Murat had moved to Naples, noted, he and other French officials in Germany were in the same positions as proconsuls in the Roman Empire. ‘Do not forget that in the states of the King of Westphalia you are the minister of the Emperor,’ the finance minister Gaudin reminded Beugnot as he set off on his mission in 1807. ‘His Majesty is very keen that you should not lose sight of that.’9

  The situation was not much better in those states of the Confederation of the Rhine ruled by their own sovereigns. While the people were emancipated and constitutions brought in, the process allowed the rulers to sweep away anachronistic rights and exempti
ons, and gave them far more power than they had enjoyed hitherto. Liberated from their Habsburg overlords, they now had armies, and many had been promoted in status, while their subjects gained little. And with time, the rulers too began to resent the constant demands from Napoleon for money and troops. Something which affected all the areas outside France, whether they were kingdoms governed by one of Napoleon’s siblings or allied states, was Napoleon’s stationing of French troops there. The commanders tended to behave as though they were in conquered territory, helping themselves to what they needed, behaving badly and ignoring or even browbeating local officials. As Rapp once said to Napoleon, ‘Unfortunately, Sire, we do a lot of damage as allies.’10

  They did a great deal more damage in the case of Prussia, which was not an ally, and which had been subjected after Tilsit to humiliating conditions. It was obliged to pay a levy of 600 million francs to France in penalties for having started the war, and to support a French army of occupation numbering 150,000 men and 50,000 horses. French military authorities supervised the administration of the country, sucking more money out and reducing much of the population to poverty and even starvation. Houses in towns and villages were abandoned, thousands of beggars wandered the land, and suicides were common. Originally welcomed as a liberator, by 1809 Napoleon was seen as an oppressor. Resentment of all things French grew, and the ribbon of the Legion of Honour was referred to as ‘the sign of the Beast’ in some quarters. Young men dreamed of revenge.11