by Tom Anderson
Nonetheless, Robespierre seized on the plan and approved it. Lisieux reluctantly consented, but he and Boulanger privately assumed that it was unlikely to work, and began secretly withdrawing forces from Germany to build up new armies to use against the Chouans. This is sometimes cited by historians as being the reason behind Mozart’s victory at the Siege of Vienna in March 1799, but in truth the effects of the shift of troops did not really emerge until midsummer of that year. It was simply that Leroux’s army had finally outrun its supply lines, despite Ney’s efforts, and that the Jacobin armies’ tactic of living off the land did not work very well when it came to besieging a city for months.
The British launched Seigneur in February. The political side of the plan was the brainchild of Richard Burke and the Dauphin, who had cooperated while the latter had been staying in London and raising support among French exiles there. Their political alliance and friendship meant that Louis XVII was exposed to the political system of the British Parliament, and recorded in his diary that it was: “…certainly not without its flaws…but, much like the table they keep, the constitution the British maintain is devoted to a solid, stodgy sense of stability…and in the aftermath of what we have witnessed, perhaps France needs such a monastic Diet for some time…”It is perhaps a blessing that the Dauphin had been born a prince rather than a journalist if he enjoyed puns of that type.
Seigneur was deployed from the four ports of Chatham, Portsmouth, Plymouth and Lowestoft. The first three contributed mainly British troopships carrying British or American troops and supported by British warships, while the Lowestoft fleet was a motley collection of borrowed troopships (some of them converted former slave-ships, a fact which Jacobin propagandists had much fun with), carrying the Most Catholic and Christian Royal Army of the King[205] and supported by the French Royal Navy ships that Leo Bone had ‘rescued’ from Toulon. The French force was commanded by the indecisive Admiral the Comte d’Estaing and his more competent subordinate Captain Etienne Lucas. The British Channel Squadron was under the overall command of Admiral Sir William Byng, the son of John Byng the hero of the Second Glorious Revolution. Under Byn’s authority, the Plymouth fleet was commanded by Commodore Horatio Nelson, the Portsmouth fleet by Commodore Leo Bone, and the Chatham fleet by Rear-Admiral Adam Duncan, a senior veteran. Each force consisted of about a dozen ships of the line and twenty frigates, protecting around fifteen transports of various sizes carrying infantry, cavalry and artillery.
Against these four forces – which themselves only represented part of Britain’s worldwide naval strength – Villeneuve had twenty ships of the line and eighteen frigates; most of the Republic’s frigates had already been sent off by Surcouf on raiding or messenger missions. The British were aware, via their spy network (augmented by the fact that the Dauphin could call upon secret loyalists in France) that Villeneuve was concentrating his forces in Dieppe in order to raid any Channel-crossing force. However, British opinions of Villeneuve’s capabilities were low. “The French spend more time repainting their ships than they do rolling out their guns,” sneered Commodore Nelson in his diary, a reference to the new red-and-black Revolutionary chequer pattern that the Republican Navy had adopted.[206] The British made no serious attempts to harry Villeneuve’s ships as they gathered from other French ports.
Seigneur was launched on 14th February, St Valentine’s Day—perhaps appropriate given the Sacred Heart symbol of the rebellion it sought to support. Villeneuve was kept well informed by his own intelligence network, a series of disguised fishing boats that communicated over the horizon using signal flags, and was informed of the launch bare hours later. He had more time to prepare because the British did not go straight across the Channel, instead forming up the four fleets to swing around Finisterre to the west and launch a concerted descent on Quiberon. Villeneuve launched his own forces on short notice: despite Nelson’s scepticism, he had drilled his men well and they fought as well as could be expected considering the disadvantages they faced. Villeneuve was determined to intercept one of the British fleets before they combined: like Hoche on land in Italy, he believed that success might be grasped if he could divide the enemy and hit each portion with his whole force.
The wind was with Villeneuve and one of his ships, the Égalité, sighted the Chatham fleet before Admiral Duncan had joined the others. It was just as possible that Villeneuve could have found the Royal French fleet that was travelling through the same waters, and some speculative romantics have considered the consequences of what might have happened if Villeneuve had managed to sink the Dauphin’s ship.
But no: Villeneuve attacked Duncan with the divide-and-conquer strategy he had developed. The French ships of the line formed the usual line against their British counterparts, tying them down, while the frigates ignored their British counterparts and engaged the transports directly, suffering damage as their did so. Villeneuve’s aggressive action was surprisingly successful in the short term: though the French lost eight ships of the line and ten frigates (against ten and three British, respectively), the French frigates managed to sink half the British transports before the others’ captains, deciding that their own escorts were not doing their job, gybed and returned to port. Villeneuve, his objective completed, ordered a withdrawal and regrouping. This required leaving some damaged French ships behind, but Duncan was unable to pursue. French gunnery tactics focused on attacking the masts, sails and rigging, with the result that many British ships were left only lightly damaged but disabled. Duncan’s remaining movement-capable forces, mostly frigates, were not enough to challenge even Villeneuve’s wounded fleet. Two frigates tried and were hulled at long range by French stern chasers before they could reply.
Villeneuve’s attack had been remarkably successful, though he had lost a significant part of his own force in the process. Deciding that today was his day of luck, he decided to find another British force, but soon his scouts reported that the two remaining British fleets and the Royal French had successfully amalgamated off Portland and, having waited for a day for Duncan, had given up and set sail for Finisterre.
The French Admiral pursued, setting a course for destiny…
Chapter 37: And Charlemagne Wept
“The Holy Roman Empire is neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire”
– Voltaire
*
From: “The Jacobin Wars – the Italo-German Front” by Joshua H. Calhoun (University of New York Press, 1946)—
Not since the Third War of Supremacy had Austrian forces been so outclassed. Forty years later, history repeated itself as battle after battle went the way of the enemy. Thibault Leroux was no Frederick II of Prussia,[207] but he did not need to be. Unlike the Prussians of their grandfathers’ day, the French were not fighting with outnumbered forces against two or three powerful foes at once. With the increasing dispersion of the German states’ armies to defend their own frontiers, the forces that Vienna could bring to bear were sloughing off thousands daily without ever meeting the enemy.
The chaos of the unilateral withdrawals also served to more directly hurt the Austrian war effort, as Ferdinand IV’s ministers would assume a town defended by loyal Hessian or Saxon troops, only to learn days later that they had abandoned it to the French. Sometimes an Austrian army under a good commander would make a stand and hold back one of Leroux’s armies, only to have to withdraw anyway, as the French had almost surrounded them by occupying areas that had been abandoned by Austrian allies. Such was the terrible beauty of the War of Lightning strategy: the French’s rapid advance had been the cause of the withdrawals in the first place, as the German states looked nervously at the fate of Baden and Württemburg; and now those withdrawals only aided the speed of the French drive to the east. It was a vicious circle, ever decreasing in diameter, and Austria’s survival sat at its heart.
Only Brunswicker and Hanoverian troops, backed by token British forces, continued to fight on, but they were too small in number to provide much help to the Austr
ians. Matters worsened as the Second War of the Polish Succession heated up, threatening to spill over into states bordering Saxony and Prussia, and states such as Mecklenburg – which had previously left their armies in place, considering their home territories not threatened by the French – joined the general withdrawal. The pan-German alliance, the attempt to rebuild the Holy Empire in spirit as well as name, had crumbled long before the French reached Regensburg.
The total defeat of Davidovich at Burgau in August 1798 resounded throughout all of Germany. Davidovich’s army had been Austria’s last hope of stopping the French advance before it entered Bavaria – which was now considered part of Austria’s core territory by the Hapsburgs since the land exchange in 1783. The Bavarian army was as yet not integrated with its Austrian counterpart, and many Bavarians were unenthusiastic about being part of Austria. Ferdinand IV feared that the French might find willing collaborators in the country, which would be both a disaster for Austria in general and sound the death knell for his attempts to reunite Germany. The current withdrawals were helping the French indirectly, but if Germans openly embraced Revolution and fought other Germans, then all was lost.
Leroux’s advance stalled somewhat throughout September. The War of Lightning was not about taking and holding territory; that was the task of follow-up operations, such as those that Ney was now pursuing in Swabia, having made his base of operations at Stuttgart. No, the goal for Leroux was simply to remain on the offensive, aggressively attacking along a narrow axis of advance aimed at Regensburg, and then Vienna. The Revolutionary doctrine of to hold the heart is to hold the nation was about to be tested.[208]
But Leroux realised that the Austrians would fight tooth and nail here, and if they remained on the defensive, the French could easily expend their strength and achieve nothing. Things were fragile. French victory rested on, not solid military power, but an idea, the idea among the Germans that their invincible armies could be anywhere, everywhere, and were backed up by a horde who devastated the lands in their wake. If Leroux was routed at Regensburg, that image of invincibility would collapse. Ney’s position was still delicate, and if the Badenese and Württembergers rose up in combination with a renewed Austrian offensive, the French position in Germany could yet collapse. Determined to avoid that nightmare scenario, Leroux allowed the advance to slow while he built up his forces, waiting for the ammunition wagons to catch up (some pulled by horses, others by steam fardiers) and for Ney to send reinforcements through.
This gave the Hapsburgs a few weeks to prepare. Mozart had been placed in command once again by Ferdinand IV, and he withdrew the majority of the Austrian armies to Lower Austria itself. Mozart, an insightful general, had discerned the French strategy of aiming at possession of the capital. Therefore, he reasoned, if the French could be defeated at Vienna then their whole plan would come apart and Austria might be saved. He knew that they would first aim for Regensburg, but believed that there was simply not enough time to reinforce the Holy Roman capital, and that to do so would only fruitlessly throw away men that woul be needed to defend Vienna. He authorised only a single army under Alvinczi as a delaying force, then began to bring in troops from all across the Hapsburg dominions.
Archduke Ferdinand’s army came up through the Brenner Pass, leaving a small guard to prevent Hoche’s force from following. Using the Alpine terrain against the French just as Marat’s Swiss Republic forces had against them the previous year, the Austrians were able to wear down Hoche’s already depleted forces sufficiently that even that dynamic general gave up and retreated to Venice. Officials and garrison troops sent from Paris were already converting Venetia into an integral part of Hoche’s invented Italian Republic, which also encompassed Piedmont, Modena, Parma, and Milan.
Also, echoing Maria Theresa’s efforts of fifty years before, Mozart called up levies from the Hapsburg possessions in the east: Hungarians, Croats, Transylvanians. An attempt to levy troops from Krakau failed, with the city practically in revolt due to the war in Poland next door. However, these forces served to bolster the Austrians massing in Lower Austria. Mozart ordered the building of new defensive fortifications, mostly makeshift, knowing that he had little time. Vienna had resisted two sieges from the Turks, from the east, but could it survive this outbreak of new barbarism from the west?
Meanwhile, Ferdinand IV arrived in Regensburg to address the Reichstag. The Emperor, it was universally agreed by eye-witnesses, was not a well man. He had spent the past three years pacing up and down the Schönbrunn Palace, being fed gradually worsening news from messengers from the front. Perhaps even more damaging to him than the stories of defeats and reversals were those that told him that he was betrayed, that his great dream to recreate a Holy Roman Empire worthy of the name was dead forever. He first began to visibly sicken upon hearing of Charles Theodore of Flanders’ betrayal and non-aggression treaty with France, and had rapidly worsened after the successes of the Poséidon and Rubicon offensives.
Now, on October 9th, he addressed the Reichstag in the city hall of Regensburg, where it had been meeting permanently for the last century and a half. Representatives of all the German states were there, though most of those states had practically withdrawn unto themselves and now remained in isolation, hoping that the French would pass over them like the angel of death if they made no aggressive moves. The Reichstag was a strange organisation. Ever since it had settled down in Regensburg, it had become gradually more and more divorced from real events in wider Germany, and had produced an elite ruling class of politicians and civil servants who had more in common with each other than either had with the states they were supposed to be representing. Even now, the Saxon and Brandenburger (Prussian) representatives discussed matters cordially, while their homelands fought a vicious, bloody war over the fate of Poland. It had an air of unreality, otherworldliness, as though concerns of the outside world could never come here.
But that was a lie. Even as Ferdinand IV stood up to address the Reichstag, the first distant rumbles began to sound on the horizon. Not thunder, something far worse. Leroux was on the move, his Cugnot-propelled heavy artillery in the lead, blasting a path through Alvinczi’s lines west of the city.
Despite this distraction, Ferdinand IV commanded the whole attention of the Reichstag. His eyes wild and staring, dead with hopelessness, the Emperor gave his infamous Dissolution Speech, culminating in:
“We are betrayed. The Empire is no more. I have failed as Emperor, and let that name die with me. The French are coming, and you must look to yourselves…as you already have. No more shall come from Vienna. I am the new Romulus Augustulus, and behold, my Odoacer comes out of Gallia! It is finished. Go! Take your fools’ baubles, and beg the Lord for mercy!”
By the end of his speech, the Emperor was having to shout, both over the words of outrage from the Reichstag and the thunder of the French guns from outside, as Alvinczi’s army was crushed. Ferdinand IV became red in the face with the effort, after he had remained in the Schönbrunn Palace and weakened for so long, and bare seconds after getting out the word ‘mercy’, he collapsed. The Reichstag descended into chaos, and it did not take long for the rumour to emerge – the rumour that was the truth. Emperor Ferdinand IV, Ferdinand the Last, had died from a heart attack.
The Holy Roman Empire was unique in its own way. Though the Empire had been made hereditary centuries ago, Joseph’s heir the young Archduke Francis would only become King of the Romans on his death. It was required that the Council of Electors confirm him before he become Emperor Francis II, and now the Council of Electors fled from the Regensburg city hall, followed by the Council of Princes and the Council of Cities. Legend says, though it has not been backed up by any historian, that the first one out of the door was the representative of Charles Theodore of Flanders and the Palatinate, the first Prince-Elector to betray Ferdinand, and he was followed by those of the Margrave of Brandenburg and the Duke of Saxony. But in the end they all fled the city. They had all heard of the rumours fr
om the west, of how the wild Sans-Culottes troops would lock all the nobles of a town in the city hall and then burn it down, capering and whooping as the sick stink of burning flesh wafted over the countryside.
Once the Reichstag had fled, the collapse at Regensburg was swiftly precipitated. Although Alvinczi himself escaped with a portion of his army, the French rolled over the city and burned down the city hall, even though no-one remained within. Both the Protestant mayor of Regensburg and the Roman Catholic archbishop – Regensburg was technically five states in the Reichstag, with the Protestant Imperial City and the Catholic archbishopric and three monasteries – attempted to surrender the city to the French, only to be cut down by the raging Sans-Culottes. Despite Leroux’s efforts to moderate the slaughter, the French armies were out of control and the sack of the city culminated in a fire that destroyed large portions of it. The monasteries were ‘requisitioned’, with the monks thrown out and the buildings used as arsenals.
Leroux was furious, both because the sack had destroyed much of the supplies he had hoped to obtain from the city, and because he had lost much of his chance for gaining support from the people of Bavaria. He pressed on regardless, reassembling the army, bringing it back under control. Regensburg was possessed by the forces of Revolutionary France. All that remained now was to take Vienna.
