Napoleon the Great

by Andrew Roberts

  The first real encounter of the campaign the following day set the pattern for the rest of it when Davout managed to escape destruction at Archduke Charles’s hands in the villages of Teugen and Hausen below the Danube and to join Napoleon safely. Under lowering skies, two forces, equally uncertain of each other, collided in hilly country, where the Austrians fought in a slow and rigid fashion while Davout’s veterans manoeuvred with skill. The Austrians withdrew east after their failure, allowing Napoleon to organize a pursuit. On the same day, Lefebvre won a clash at Arnhofen, and Montbrun won at Schneidhart. Although Charles had 93,000 men in the field to Napoleon’s 89,000, the initiative now very much lay with the Franco-Bavarians.

  Napoleon’s plan was to cut off Charles’s line of retreat to Vienna and trap him in Bavaria. With Davout on his left, Lefebvre and Lannes in the centre, and Oudinot on the right, Napoleon ordered Masséna to send help towards Abensberg but to direct his main force towards Landshut, to strike against the enemy lines of communication. On April 20 Colonel Coutard hid his colours and surrendered Ratisbon. Heavily outnumbered, he had held out for over twenty-four hours and caused twice as many casualties as his force had suffered. That same day, Napoleon had launched a sustained offensive along a wide front in a series of hamlets south of the Danube, 20 miles east of Ingolstadt. He had been up at 3 a.m., sending orders to Lefebvre, Masséna and Vandamme, and by 6.30 he, Lannes and Bessières were riding for Abensberg. On a hillside later called the Napoleonshöhe* outside the town, Napoleon delivered this stirring declaration to the officers of the Bavarian corps, translated for him by Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria and published as an Order of the Day:

  Bavarian soldiers! I do not come to you as a French emperor, but as Protector of your country and the Confederation of the Rhine. Today you will fight alone against the Austrians. No French serve in your front ranks; I am entirely confident in your bravery. For two hundred years, Bavarian flags, protected by France, have resisted Austria. We are going to Vienna, where we will know how to punish Austria for the harm she has so often done to your country. Austria wants to partition your country and disband your units and distribute you among their regiments. Bavarians! This war is the last you will fight against your enemies; attack them with the bayonet and annihilate them!17

  He then launched attacks along two axes, one south-eastwards from Abensberg and Peissing towards Rohr and Rottenburg, and a second one south-eastwards from Biburg to Pfeffenhausen. The well-placed and equally numerous Austrians fought well for most of the day, but once Napoleon knew that his left under Lannes was making progress he rode forward from the Napoleonshöhe to oversee it.

  After the battle, the chef d’escadron of the 2nd Chasseurs à Cheval presented Napoleon with two captured Austrian flags, the first of the campaign, with blood pouring from his face from a sabre slash. Napoleon asked his name, which was the splendid one of Dieudonné Lion. ‘I will remember you and you will be grateful,’ Napoleon told him, ‘you are well marked.’ Months later, when Berthier suggested a man to fill a vacancy in the Guard chasseurs, Napoleon demurred, saying he wanted to give the promotion to Lion.

  Napoleon believed he was pursuing the main body of the enemy towards Landshut, whereas in fact Archduke Charles was heading for Ratisbon. Two large Austrian columns under Baron Johann von Hiller converged on Landshut, creating a vast traffic jam near the two bridges. The French artillery under General Jacques de Lauriston (who, like many of Napoleon’s senior commanders, had been taken from Spain) was deployed on the ridge between Altdorf and Ergolding and poured fire into the crowded town. (Standing on the bridge at Landshut today one can see in how few places the Austrians could have organized counter-fire.) Once the Austrians were over the bridge they tried to burn it, but the flames were doused by a persistent rain. At 12.30 p.m. Napoleon turned to his aide-de-camp General Georges Mouton and said: ‘Put yourself at the head of that column, and carry the town.’18

  It must have seemed like a death sentence at the time, but Mouton led his grenadiers in a charge, covered by heavy musket fire from the island banks. His sappers smashed the town gates with axes, and men of the 13th Légère joined the attack, as did three battalions and two squadrons of Bavarians and some Württembergers, so that by 1 p.m. Landshut had fallen. Archduke Charles lost nearly 5,000 men, 11 guns and all his baggage-train, amounting to 226 wagons.19 Napoleon later gave Mouton a magnificent painting of the action at the bridge, and made an uncharacteristically weak pun about his ‘sheep’ (mouton) being a lion. ‘This keepsake from Napoleon was worth more than the highest eulogies,’ said another aide-de-camp of the picture, and by the end of the campaign Mouton had been made the Comte de Lobau.20*

  Just as in 1806, Napoleon discovered only after the battle that Davout, the ‘Iron Marshal’, had been facing the main body of the enemy, this time at Laichling, where he had managed to hold off Archduke Charles. Davout sent Napoleon four messages from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. on April 21, telling him that Charles was bringing up his reserves for a major counter-attack. From 2 a.m. on the 22nd Napoleon exploded into activity, ordering Lannes, Vandamme and Saint-Sulpice with 20,000 infantry and 5,500 cavalry to go north as soon as possible. Oudinot and the rest of the Bavarians were already under orders to join Davout, so within an hour Napoleon had 50,000 infantry, 14,000 cavalry and 114 guns closing in on Archduke Charles.

  On the 22nd, Napoleon fought Charles at the battle of Eggmühl, the culmination of the Landshut Manoeuvre, where the corps system once again brought victory. Davout’s corps had fixed the 54,000 Austrians and 120 guns, but Charles delayed his attack until General Johann Kollowrath’s corps had arrived from Ratisbon 15 miles to the north, giving Napoleon time to rush Lannes and Masséna 25 miles up from Landshut to relieve Davout. When Charles saw Bavarian and Württemberger cavalry arriving on the field, forcing one of his divisions back onto the heights behind the town, he called off the whole assault. Napoleon arrived on the battlefield with Lannes’ and Masséna’s corps soon after 2 p.m. and fell on the enemy’s left. Victory was won with Austrian losses of over 4,100 and 39 guns to Napoleon’s 3,000 men. He made Davout the Prince d’Eckmühl shortly afterwards.

  ‘With the army I generally travelled in a carriage during the day with a good, thick pelisse on, because night is the time when a commander-in-chief should work,’ Napoleon said years later. ‘If he fatigues himself uselessly during the day, he will be too tired to work in the evening … If I had slept the night before Eggmühl I could never have executed that superb manoeuvre, the finest I ever made … I multiplied myself by my activity. I woke up Lannes by kicking him repeatedly; he was so sound asleep.’21 Napoleon was more fond of Lannes than of any other marshal – after the death of Desaix, Lannes and Duroc were his closest friends – and accepted teasing from him that he wouldn’t from others. Lannes went so far as to say ‘that he was to be pitied for having such an unhappy passion for this harlot [cette catin]’, that is, Napoleon. As Chaptal recalled: ‘The Emperor laughed at these jokes because he knew that he would always find the marshal there for him when he needed him.’22

  The French victory at Eggmühl forced the Austrians to fall back to Ratisbon in some disorder hoping to escape across the Danube. Reaching Ratisbon on April 23, Napoleon ruled out a siege as taking too long, and instead insisted on storming the town by escalade – ladders placed twenty paces apart against the wall – which was achieved at the third attempt. The strong 30-foot-wide stone bridge was Charles’s only line of escape. It was – and is – one of the great bridges over the Danube, with six big stone pillars, and it would have been hard to destroy by cannon-fire. Charles was about to cross it to safety, but lost a further 5,000 men and 8 guns doing so. Near where the railway line is today Napoleon was hit in the right ankle by a spent bullet, which caused a contusion. He sat on a drum as the wound was dressed by Yvan, and a hole was cut in his boot so that it wouldn’t hurt too much when he was riding.23 So as not to demoralize the troops, the instant his wound was dressed he ‘rode down the front of the w
hole line, amid loud cheers’.24 Later in the battle he said, ‘Doesn’t it seem as though the bullets are reconnoitring us?’25 On May 6 he reassured Josephine, ‘The bullet which touched me did not wound me. It barely shaved my Achilles tendon.’26

  After the battle of Ratisbon, a grognard asked Napoleon for the cross of the Légion d’Honneur, claiming that he had given him a watermelon at Jaffa when it ‘was so terribly hot’. Napoleon refused him on such a paltry pretext, at which the veteran added indignantly, ‘Well, don’t you reckon seven wounds received at the bridge of Arcole, at Lodi and Castiglione, at the Pyramids, at Acre, Austerlitz, Friedland; eleven campaigns in Italy, Egypt, Austria, Prussia, Poland …’ at which a laughing emperor cut him short and made him a chevalier of the Légion with a 1,200-franc pension, fastening the cross on his breast there and then. ‘It was by familiarities of this kind that the Emperor made the soldiers adore him,’ noted Marbot, ‘but it was a means available only to a commander whom frequent victories had made illustrious: any other general would have injured his reputation by it.’27

  Victories were rarely more frequent than over the four consecutive days of Abensberg, Landshut, Eggmühl and Ratisbon. On the 24th the army rested, and the Emperor interviewed some of his officers. Captain Blaze recorded Napoleon’s conversation with a colonel who had clearly mastered his regimental rolls:

  ‘How many men present under arms?’

  ‘Sire, eighty-four.’

  ‘How many conscripts of this year?’

  ‘Twenty-two.’

  ‘How many soldiers who have served four years?’

  ‘Sixty-five.’

  ‘How many wounded yesterday?’

  ‘Eighteen.’

  ‘And killed?’

  ‘Ten.’

  ‘With the bayonet?’

  ‘Yes, Sire.’

  ‘Good.’28

  It was considered bravest of all to fight with the bayonet, and after an action on May 3 Napoleon was delighted that the bravest soldier in the 26th Légère actually bore the name Carabinier-Corporal Bayonnette, whom he made a chevalier of the Légion with a pension.29

  When Napoleon reached the gates of Vienna on May 10, 1809, his Polish aide-de-camp Adam Chlapowski

  saw a sight that I would not have believed had I not seen it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears. Even then I found it hard to believe. The city walls were not crowded, but there were still a good many well-to-do inhabitants on the ramparts. The Emperor rode right up to the glacis, so only a ditch ten yards wide separated him from these people. When they recognized him, from the last time he had been there, in 1805, they all took off their hats, which I suppose could be expected, and then began cheering, which seemed unnecessary and less fitting to me … When I expressed my surprise to some French officers, they assured me that they had seen and heard exactly the same thing at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin in 1806.30

  Napoleon spent half an hour riding around the defences of Vienna ‘and from time to time raised his hat in response to the cheering, just as if he were riding around Paris’. He had an escort of only twenty-five men riding with him. Turning towards Schönbrunn Palace outside the city, where he was staying as he had in 1805, he told Chlapowski: ‘A bed will already be made up for you there. You’ve spent so many nights on horseback, it’s time you had a rest courtesy of the Emperor Francis.’31

  After a very brief bombardment, Vienna surrendered to Napoleon at 2 a.m. on May 13, by which time the Archduke Charles – having destroyed all the bridges – was on the right bank of the Danube, which had a very different, far wilder watercourse than today’s calm and heavily canalized river. ‘The princes of this House have abandoned their capital,’ Napoleon declared in a proclamation that day, ‘not like soldiers of honour who cede to the circumstances and setbacks of the war, but like the perjured who are pursued by their own remorse.’32 Yet while he didn’t mind rebuking the Habsburgs, he didn’t want to alienate the Viennese, who had promised to police the city themselves. ‘All stragglers who under the pretext of fatigue have left their units to maraud,’ he ordered on the 14th, ‘shall be rounded up, tried by summary provost courts, and executed within the hour.’33 Each column had a tribunal set up to punish pillaging.

  Napoleon’s men spent three days constructing a bridge of boats downstream from Vienna which he could cross to attack the Austrian army. At 5 p.m. on May 18, General Gabriel Molitor’s infantry division started to traverse the Danube by boat. They made it only to the two-mile-wide Lobau Island, from which they began to build more substantial bridges onto the opposite bank. Napoleon has been criticized subsequently for not having built sufficiently strong bridges, but there were few specialist engineers in his army, it was a fast-flowing river, and the Austrians kept floating trees and other detritus downstream – on one occasion an entire dismantled watermill – to damage them.

  Once again, as at Austerlitz and in Poland, Napoleon was at the end of a very long supply line, deep inside enemy territory, fighting an opponent who hadn’t sued for peace when his capital had fallen. An Austrian army under Archduke Johann von Habsburg – Emperor Francis and Archduke Charles’s younger brother – was now coming back from Italy, after having been defeated by Eugène at the battle of the Piave river on May 8. The Tyrol was in revolt against Bavaria under its charismatic leader Andreas Hofer. There was discontent among Germans who resented French hegemony, and Archduke Charles’s strategy seemed to be designed to deny Napoleon a decisive battle. Yet on the late afternoon of the 19th a bridge 825 yards long, built on eighty-six boats and nine rafts, spanned the Danube, and by noon the next day the army was crossing over to Lobau Island in force. Another bridge, 100 yards long resting on fifteen captured pontoons and three trestles, stretched to the opposite bank. It looked decidedly rickety, but Napoleon decided to risk a crossing.

  The villages of Aspern and Essling lie 3 miles apart on the north-eastern side of the Danube 22 miles east of Vienna. At midnight on May 20, Masséna climbed the church tower at Aspern and, seeing relatively few campfires, informed Napoleon that the Austrians were retreating, whereas in fact they were forming up to attack. It was the same mistake that Murat had made on the morning of Eylau. Napoleon crossed at dawn on Sunday, May 21, and, showing characteristic foresight, immediately ordered that the defences of the bridgehead be improved. Unfortunately, Masséna had failed to fortify Aspern properly, probably considering it unnecessary if Archduke Charles was withdrawing. By 8 a.m. it became very clear that he wasn’t.

  In 1809, Aspern consisted of 106 two-storey houses with walled gardens running east–west along two roads with a handful of traverse streets, a church and cemetery with a chest-high wall (the church houses today’s museum), a solid vicarage and a large garden on a slight rise at its western end. An earth bank lined the road to Essling – and still does – which in turn had fifty-six houses in two groups on either side of the village square, and a large granary with 3-foot-thick stone walls. Napoleon intended to use these two villages and the road between them as bastions, while developing his attack across the Marchfeld plain beyond. The plain was so flat that it had been used by the Austrian army as a parade-ground.

  The Danube had risen 3 feet overnight and by 10 a.m. the northernmost boat-bridge had been smashed by a laden barge. The French repaired it in time for General Jean d’Espagne’s heavy cavalry to get across, walking over by dismounted squadrons. Napoleon, just east of Aspern, considered retreating when he learned about the damage to the bridge, since one of the cardinal laws of war is never to fight with a river to one’s back, but his generals (except the silent Berthier) assured him they could hold the ground. At 1 p.m. he heard that a large Austrian army was on its way across the Marchfeld, something he might have been aware of earlier had his light cavalry’s intelligence gathering not been disrupted by Austrian skirmishers. The numbers involved were daunting: some 37,000 Austrians attacked on Sunday May 21 and the next day 85,000 with 292 guns. Some 30,000 Frenchmen had crossed on Sunday and 20,000 more on
Monday, but they had only 58 guns.34 If Davout’s corps had managed to get across the Danube, those unpromising ratios would have been more even, but the state of the bridges now precluded that.

  The first clashes came between 1 and 2 p.m. at Aspern, where 5,000 French defenders had to fend off vastly more attackers. French artillery punished the attacking columns and a battalion of the 67th Line stood up behind the cemetery walls and delivered a crushing volley. But the Austrians came on relentlessly, and savage fighting developed in the village streets. Dense clouds of smoke from gunfire added to the grimness of the struggle. After 3 p.m. a ninety-gun Austrian battery further blasted the village, sweeping away the outer barricades.

  Napoleon followed the battle’s progress sitting on a drum in a little hollow near where the Aspern Tileworks is today, about halfway between the two villages. He ordered Bessières to use four divisions to secure the centre – a role similar to that of Murat at Eylau – which was achieved in four major cavalry charges. As the charges went forward, Napoleon massed his artillery to help defend Aspern by punishing Austrian cavalry that came too close. By 4.30 p.m. an Austrian attack of three columns after a major bombardment forced the defenders out of the church and cemetery. An hour later Legrand’s division was ordered in, and the 26th Légère and 18th Line recaptured Aspern, but half an hour later Archduke Charles himself accompanied a six-battalion attack, with thirteen more in support, crying: ‘For the Fatherland! Forward courageously!’ (It was said he carried a flag himself, but he later denied this.) The church and cemetery were stormed as the village caught fire and the French pulled out.