by Philip Dwyer
Talleyrand, from a profoundly aristocratic family with an abundance of ‘good taste’ – a studied elegance, simple manners, complete self-control – cultivated a polite exterior, and one that was so deeply embedded it would never crack, even in the face of extreme adversity.116 This is about a polite façade that gave nothing away, an important element of court politics. Court society was a society of masks, a society in which one learnt to dissimulate one’s thoughts and feelings.117 Talleyrand’s inscrutable face was born of the need to protect himself from the gaze of the Other. Louis XVI, for example, would never give way to impulse or testify to feelings by some sort of physical expression. Reactions that revealed true feeling rather than calculated behaviour gave rivals a trump card that could then be used to harm or discredit.
. . . and Napoleon’s Bad Behaviour
Napoleon’s insulting behaviour, on the other hand, was a blatant sign of disrespect after which it was permissible, even justifiable, for Talleyrand to sever or manipulate the relationship with him as he saw fit.118 One suspects that Talleyrand never forgave Napoleon for what was a very public humiliation. As a result of this and other slights he was to suffer over the coming years, the love and admiration he had once felt for Napoleon were gradually transformed into hatred.119
In this particular instance, Napoleon’s verbal onslaught revealed a sense of betrayal by someone who had professed such deep affection for him on so many occasions. It is entirely possible that he knew, consciously or not, that Talleyrand had undermined his efforts at Erfurt. It is even possible that a Janus-faced Fouché had informed Napoleon of this.120 But that is only part of the story. Of petty noble origin, a rough and ready soldier without tact and with little self-control, Napoleon almost never refrained from violent outbursts, even in front of foreign dignitaries. There are innumerable examples of him insulting, abusing and even assaulting courtiers, both men and women (although admittedly he never laid a hand on any woman), almost as though he took a distinct pleasure in humiliating those beneath him.121 We know that he could lose control and lash out, sometimes using a riding crop to thrash his poor interlocutor across the head and shoulders. He did this to his secretary (when he was in Syria), and cut his groom with his whip (when in Poland). The groom had been helping him mount his horse and did so a little too vigorously, sending his imperial master flying over the other side.122
Napoleon did not reserve his violence for his servants; high-ranking men came in for thrashings too. The Comte de Volney, a writer and member of the Senate, was kicked in the stomach during a ‘discussion’ about the Concordat in 1802. Napoleon then rang for someone to come and pick him up and coldly ordered him to his carriage.123 Volney sent in his resignation as senator the next day, though Bonaparte did not accept it. Napoleon once hit the minister of the interior, Chaptal, with a roll of papers, like a master hitting his dog; and he is said to have pushed the minister of justice (Régnier, not Molé) on to a sofa and laid into him with his fists. During the campaign in Germany in 1813 he struck a general across the face. Diplomats too came in for verbal drubbings – recall the scene with Whitworth, but he also verbally attacked the Austrian envoy in 1808, the Russian envoy in 1811 and a deputy from Hamburg in 1813 – as did monarchs. We saw what happened with Alexander in Erfurt in 1808. Some historians believe, echoing Napoleon’s own assertion, that these scenes were carefully prepared and were intended to strike fear into his opponents so that they would become compliant.124 It is possible that he did so in a few instances, but on other occasions it is evident that the outburst was spontaneous, and violent.
Napoleon referred to these episodes as his ‘outbursts’ (the word in French is transports, which can also mean ‘rapture’). Essentially he was an egalitarian; he treated everybody the same; no one was exempt from his rage. He lacked the dignity, the courtesy and the serenity that was meant to characterize a monarch, and his behaviour is in sharp contrast to the way in which he was customarily depicted in paintings of the day – dignified and calm. Napoleon, however, was by no means the only eighteenth-century sovereign to behave appallingly. The King of Württemberg, Frederick I, was known for hitting his ministers and staff officers with a baton.125 Alexander of Russia had a terrible temper and was capable of threatening and insulting with the best of them.
In the army, it was not uncommon for French officers, in pre-revolutionary times at least, to hit their men, either punching them, whipping them with their riding crops or hitting them with the flat of their swords (this was not limited to the French; corporal punishment in the Prussian army was notorious even by eighteenth-century standards). These were the times: physical abuse was common and a reasonably acceptable mode of behaviour. Power is often a question of force, something Napoleon used as an instrument of government, rather than refined manners. There is, however, the flipside to this coin – there are witnesses who insist that they never saw Napoleon lose his temper and that he was very attentive to others.126 It shows the extent to which no historical evidence can be taken at face value.
15
The Tide Turns
‘For the Love of the Fatherland’
‘There can no longer be any question what Napoleon wants,’ Archduke Charles wrote to the Austrian Emperor, Francis. ‘He wants everything.’1 Napoleon’s behaviour in Spain left the courts of Europe with the impression that his ambition knew no bounds. By that stage, Austria had already decided to go to war. The head of the war faction was the minister for foreign affairs, Johann-Philipp von Stadion. A professional diplomat who had served as ambassador at the courts of Berlin and St Petersburg, he had been in charge of foreign affairs since the end of 1805. Over the course of December 1808 and January 1809, he was able to convince the four important groupings at court – the military, the bureaucracy, the diplomatic corps and the imperial family – that it was in Austria’s best interests to resume war against France.2 The war faction, encouraged by the difficulties the French were encountering in Spain, also comprised two of the Emperor’s own brothers – Grand Duke Ferdinand of Würzburg and Archduke John – as well as a number of other senior military and administrative figures, and the Emperor’s (third) wife, Maria Ludovica. Genuinely disturbed by the reports floating around Vienna of French atrocities in Spain, and inspired by the resistance of the Spanish people, Maria Ludovica began urging her husband to make a stand against Napoleon. Given that Francis was terribly in love with her, scholars generally agree that her influence over him was decisive.3
Spain was an important factor, but the Austrian ambassador to Paris, the young, brilliant, if slightly delusional, and staunchly conservative aristocrat Klemens von Metternich, also had a part to play. His dispatches from Paris since the beginning of his mission in 1806 created a number of mistaken impressions: that war with France was inevitable; that Napoleon’s ultimate objective was the partition of the Habsburg monarchy; and that France was exhausted and tired of Napoleon’s ambitious projects.4 Metternich reported that opposition to Napoleon was beginning to form at the highest political levels, and that the only people prepared to support another war were a small section of the army – that is, that Napoleon had lost the support of the French nation, whose greatest desire was peace.5 As 1809 progressed, Metternich insisted that there could be no peace with a ‘revolutionary system’, and that Napoleon had declared ‘eternal war’ against the European powers.6 Spain simply reinforced the view already held by Metternich, namely, that Napoleon was truly bent on universal domination. Talleyrand, who is reported to have told Metternich that Napoleon ‘hated [Austria] to death’, gave those views a little impetus.7 Metternich had been a long-time advocate of conciliation with France, so his reports may have been that much more powerful.
When Stadion recalled Metternich to Vienna for political consultations between November 1808 and January 1809 (Napoleon was away in Spain), the ambassador spoke personally with the Austrian Emperor on a number of occasions, and later submitted three memoranda on the situation, urging that Austria take advantag
e of Napoleon’s absence in Spain to launch an attack against him.8 Stadion, too, delivered a memorandum in which he reminded Francis that Napoleon had boasted in 1806 that he would make his dynasty the oldest in Europe.9 It simply reinforced the notion that no monarchy was safe. It did not take much for Stadion to convince Francis that with the House of Bourbon now virtually eliminated from Europe, the Habsburgs were next on Napoleon’s hit list. The fact that Napoleon had made threatening noises against Austria the previous year while he was at Erfurt, openly suggesting that he was in a position to dismember the Austrian monarchy if he wanted to, only reinforced the perceived threat.10 Appeasement was no longer possible under those conditions. At most, it would delay the inevitable destruction of the Habsburg monarchy. Even the Archduke Charles had to concur, and suggested that Austria start making preparations for a war, even though he did not hold out much hope of success.11
Charles was right about Austria’s chances of success, and he ought to have known. He was considered one of the ablest generals of his time, and he had been placed in charge of reforming the Austrian army after the last resounding defeat in 1805. That was three years before, during which time a gigantic effort had been made to mobilize almost 450,000 men, and another 150,000 had been organized into a national militia known as the Landwehr,12 while the army had been restructured with the formation of independent army corps and the reorganization of the field artillery. The last two reforms, however, were problematic since, introduced only at the beginning of 1809, they had not yet become firmly established. Corps commanders, for example, had little or no practical experience, unlike their French counterparts who were all battle hardened.13
Charles had, in effect, attempted to transpose the French Revolution’s ‘nation in arms’ – the idea that the entire population was at the disposal of the country’s war machine – on to Austria, believing naively that when war broke out the people of Germany would rally behind the Austrian throne in much the same way that the Spanish people had rallied behind their monarchy. Vienna had been inspired by the Spanish example – reports about Spain regularly appeared in the Wiener Zeitung14 – but some in the Austrian political elite mistakenly believed they could somehow replicate the people’s uprising from the top. There was a concerted effort to mobilize public support for the war through newspapers, pamphlets, poems, sermons from church pulpits and official proclamations: Francis II appealed to all Austrian men to join either the army or the militia ‘for the love of the fatherland’.15 Patriotic journals attempted to whip up support among the people, especially since many of those inspired in this way were conscripted for the first time. It was necessary to convince them that the war was meaningful, to instil particular ideas about the ‘fatherland’ and ‘national honour’, and to convince them that dying for the fatherland was the highest form of manly behaviour.16 It was expecting too much. That kind of nationalist fervour was still in its incipient stages; Austria in 1809 was not France in 1792.
Eckmühl
Charles got off to a bad start.17 The original plan was to march from Bohemia to the River Main in the hope of inspiring northern Germany to rise up, but then Charles changed his mind and ordered the army to concentrate in Bavaria. In doing so, he threw everyone and everything into disarray. Both supplies and troops had to be redirected, losing ten precious days in the process, and allowing the French time to concentrate their forces. Worse, once in Bavaria the Austrians proved lethargic and failed to crush the Bavarian army.
Napoleon, accompanied by Josephine this time, left Paris early in the morning of 13 April 1809. Seven hundred kilometres and four days later, they reached Donauwörth, about one hundred kilometres north-west of Munich. It was there that Napoleon learnt that the enemy was trying to break through at Regensburg (Ratisbon) further to the east. He therefore ordered his forces to concentrate at that town. Five days of fighting followed while Napoleon, complacent, unable to take seriously an army he had defeated many times before, tried to direct operations from a distance, without being fully apprised of the situation in a number of areas of operations. He was, therefore, basing his calculations on inaccurate information and on conjecture. It was not until 20 April when he arrived before Abensberg (not far from Regensburg) that he was able personally to direct operations. The battle that followed south of Regensburg at Eckmühl (or Eggmühl) on 22 April was indecisive and did no more than maul the main Austrian army.18
There followed the storming of Regensburg during which Napoleon was wounded slightly in the heel (23 April). News of the incident quickly ran through the ranks, which is exactly why, despite the pain – ‘it hardly scratched the Achilles tendon’, he reassured Josephine – he immediately got back on his horse and rode among the ranks, bestowing decorations on soldiers he passed.19 The upshot was that Napoleon failed to deliver a knockout blow and the Archduke Charles made good his escape across the Danube. The campaign was really only just beginning. Charles, however, was made so despondent by the mauling he had received at Eckmühl that he was already prepared to throw in the towel and advised his brother to make peace.20
Pierre Gautherot, Napoléon Ier, blessé au pied devant Ratisbonne, est soigné par le chirurgien Yvan, 23 avril 1809 (Napoleon I, wounded in the foot at Ratisbon, is treated by the surgeon Yvan, 23 April 1809), 1810. An idealized vision of Napoleon’s wounding. Gautherot was a student of David.
The road to Vienna was now open again. This time, unlike in 1805, the city was to be defended. Preparations for its defence, however, began far too late, not until 5 May.21 By then, most of the city’s 200,000 inhabitants had fled the approach of the French. There was some cursory resistance when the French finally arrived at the gates of the capital on 13 May – the French bombarded some of the outlying suburbs – but the city’s garrison withdrew to the northern bank of the Danube, destroying all four bridges across the river in their retreat.22 In the days leading up to the French occupation, public opinion in Vienna had turned from support for the war to relief that it would soon be over. An inhabitant of Vienna reported that the city’s women rushed to greet the French soldiers with such alacrity that it reminded him of ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’.23
It was no doubt a slight exaggeration, even if the city held a certain number of delights. The writer Stendhal saw ‘a pretty woman at every step’, heard excellent music and went to see some Italian ballets.24 The city would normally have offered a variety of theatres that were always well attended, and there were public balls every Sunday evening. Like most cities of its day, only a few streets had pavements, and these were lined with elegant mansions. The two most famous were the Herren Gasse and the Kohlgraben. There were too a number of imposing imperial buildings, fine squares and museums. And if one could not find any amusements in the city, then a ride to one of the parks surrounding the city, such as the Prater, the Augarten or the Lusthaus, held ‘pleasing scenery’ and ‘extensive and romantic views’.
Napoleon occupied Vienna and took up residence at the Schönbrunn Palace on the outskirts of the city. Occupying a capital, as he had discovered with Prussia (and would again discover with Russia) did not mean the end of the war. Despite Charles’s pleadings, Francis decided to fight on. Charles subsequently took up position on the northern bank of the Danube so that there was a river between his forces and the French in Vienna. He had managed to bring together about 115,000 men. Napoleon, on the other hand, had only about 82,000 men and did not yet realize the strength of the Austrian army facing him.
‘So the Man is Mad’
The battle took place in a difficult context.25 Napoleon may have taken Vienna, but the war was going badly for the French on other fronts. In Italy, Eugène, after some initial successes, was defeated by Archduke John at Sacile (16 April 1809). The Tyrol rose in revolt, a revolt that had been carefully prepared by a local named Andreas Hofer.26 There were uprisings in Prussia led by Major von Schill and in Hesse led by Colonel Dernburg.27 In northern Germany, opposition to the French began to radicalize, disguised within organization
s like the League of Virtue (Tugendbund) or gymnastic associations that practised ‘shooting and reading’, but which were fronts for German nationalism.28 Censorship did its best to control the flow of news, and Napoleon could shoot journalists that overstepped the mark (as happened to Johann Philipp Palm in 1806), but he could not stem the tide of ideas. In the Iberian Peninsula, Soult had been obliged to retreat from Portugal. In Holland, a British expeditionary force landed at Walcheren.29 In Italy, relations with the pope were at breaking point. And on top of all that there was an economic crisis both in the Empire and in France proper brought about by bad harvests and the consequences of Britain’s Continental Blockade.30
The precariousness of the Empire was never more evident than during this conjuncture when, once again, it seemed as though its future existence hinged on the outcome of one battle. To come to grips with Archduke Charles, though, Napoleon had to cross the Danube. Since the bridges had been burnt, Lobau, an island in the river east of the city, was chosen as the place most suitable for building a temporary crossing. The river was wider and slower here than at other parts, and the water shallower. French sappers began to construct the pontoons needed to span the 750 metres between the banks of the Danube and the island on 19 May. The bridge was completed and the troops started to cross at around midday on 20 May, but a large hulk floated down the river by the Austrians broke the bridge so that no more troops could get across that night.31 Napoleon was still not aware at this stage that he was facing the bulk of the Austrian army. Clearly, the French scouting parties sent across to reconnoitre had not done their job.
