Citizen Emperor

by Philip Dwyer

  The French repaired the bridge overnight so that there was a steady stream of troops marching across the next morning. It was then that Charles decided to bring up his army and launch an attack across a ten-kilometre front, centring on the villages of Aspern and Essling, only a short distance from the Austrian capital. The Viennese gathered in the Prater to watch, or climbed what roofs and church towers they could to get a glimpse of the battle unfolding before them, but were unable to see much for the thick pall of smoke that lay over the field.32 Charles caught the French completely by surprise. Aspern changed hands six or seven times in the course of the day but the French managed to hang on there, and did so at Essling too with a good deal more ease. The bridge was again broken during the day with the result that after midday the flow of troops to the island was interrupted. When Napoleon realized the extent of the Austrian forces he was facing, he briefly considered calling off the whole operation, but once Charles began to attack he had to persist.33

  The outcome of the next day’s battle would depend on whether the French could keep open the bridge in order to maintain the flow of troops. The first day’s fighting saw 31,000 French facing over 100,000 Austrians. By the beginning of the second day of the battle, with troops crossing during the night, the French were still considerably outnumbered and outgunned, 62,000 men and 144 guns compared to over 100,000 men and 260 guns. Napoleon nevertheless went on the offensive, ordering Lannes to push through the centre. Lannes did as instructed, and it looked as though victory was in sight when an Austrian counter-attack led personally by Charles restored the situation. After the bridge had been broken again at eight o’clock, and again, following repairs, after midday by a floating mill that had been set on fire, Napoleon had no choice but to call off the battle. He had crossed the bridge earlier in the day and was even engaged in siting cannon when news arrived around four in the afternoon that Lannes had been wounded. Napoleon ordered a retreat back on to the island of Lobau. It was a defeat of sorts: 15,000–19,000 French killed and wounded (although the bulletin reported only 4,100 French casualties) compared to around 20,000–22,000 Austrian killed and wounded. Napoleon’s adversaries were learning how to make war.34 If in military terms this was by no means a major setback, it hurt Napoleon politically. It was the first time that, if not defeated, his army had been contained, at least in Europe (contemporaries had a tendency to forget about Syria).

  By all accounts, Napoleon was shocked by Lannes’ wounding.35 When he saw him being carried by two carabiniers he rushed over, weeping according to some, and had to be pulled away by Duroc. Napoleon saw Lannes later that day in what was reported to be a heartrending meeting after Larrey, the surgeon-in-chief, had amputated both legs. He visited Lannes once or twice a day for the next week. Lannes had been with him since the first Italian campaign and was a passionate adherent of the Emperor. It looked for a while as though he might recover, but nine days after the battle, on 31 May, after passing in and out of delirium, he died of gangrene.36 The death of Lannes appears to have affected Napoleon deeply. Did Napoleon kiss Lannes’ forehead and bathe it in his tears?37 It is unlikely, though he did mourn, but that too was a political gesture. The imperial propaganda machine exploited Napoleon’s personal sorrow, portraying him not as warrior, but rather as father figure who hated war and deplored the loss of one of his cherished children.

  Albert-Paul Bourgeois, Le Maréchal Lannes mortellement blessé près d’Essling le 22 mai 1809 (Marshal Lannes mortally wounded after the battle of Essling, 22 May 1809), 1810. The focus is not so much on Lannes dying as on Napoleon as grieving father, who occupies the centre of the painting. The emphasis increasingly in the latter part of the Empire is on the person of Napoleon, and not on his military conquests.

  The mistakes Napoleon had made were in retrospect obvious: he should have built more than one bridge across the Danube; and he should have assembled as many troops as possible on Lobau before crossing. More remarkable though is the lack of initiative on the part of Archduke Charles. He did not have a killer instinct; he should have bombarded Lobau mercilessly, especially since Napoleon seems to have been overcome with inertia – exhausted, depressed – for the next thirty-six hours. But Charles did not press home his advantage, motivated by a desire to keep the Austrian army intact, and by what he saw as an opponent that was as threatening as Napoleon – Russia. He consequently gave Napoleon all the time in the world to evacuate Lobau.

  In Buda, where the Austrian court had fled, a young princess by the name of Marie-Louise heard of the victory, and confided to a friend, ‘It is the first time that Napoleon himself has been defeated, and we must thank God for it . . . but we must not be too puffed up with pride . . . and I must confess that I am so accustomed to disappointments that I dare not hope for too much.’38 Certainly, the court of Vienna hoped – believed – that the battle would encourage Berlin and Petersburg to join the fray. That did not happen. The hawks at the court of Berlin pushed for intervention, on the side of the coalition needless to say.39 Prussia even made an offer to join, but that was dependent on two conditions: Austria accepting Prussian hegemony in northern Germany, and Russia giving its approval. Alexander, on the other hand, was more interested in conquering Finland and the Danubian principalities than in coming to Vienna’s aid.40 Admittedly, Alexander was caught in a bind – officially tied to France, he was sympathetic to the Austrian cause – but Austria had certainly been working under the mistaken assumption that he would not only come out fully on its side, but would bring Prussia with him. It is little wonder then that Napoleon complained to Savary, ‘They have all given themselves rendez-vous over my tomb, but none of them wants to be the first to arrive.’41

  For some, it was not Spain but rather the battle of Essling that marks a turning point in Napoleon’s popularity.42 We know that news of the costliness of the battle troubled Parisian opinion; it was the first time that the Emperor’s reputation as a military genius was tarnished, to the point that some were now toying with the idea that he had gone mad.43 It is the first time the term was used to describe Napoleon, and even though it was not yet used very seriously, the idea would continue to grow. It was, moreover, a sort of justification for opposition to the regime; one is not being disloyal if the man at the helm no longer has the respect of those he is leading and is now suspected of being ‘mad’. Over the next few years, people would come back to that idea. Jérôme’s wife, Catherine of Württemberg, for example, during Napoleon’s tour of Belgium and the northern coasts in 1810, when it looked as though he was again contemplating an invasion of England, wrote in her diary that ‘I would say to myself that man is crazy, it is cruel to destroy because of a difference of opinion! and why cannot they [the Bonapartes] enjoy quietly, peacefully, the infinite blessings that Providence has lavished on them!’44 The Comtesse de Boigne, admittedly a monarchist so her testimony has to be treated with caution, pointed to the sheer indifference with which the sound of the cannon announcing another victory was greeted by the Parisian population at large. They had had their fill of victories; another battle won meant more men had to be conscripted; another town conquered meant that further towns had to be occupied.45

  The Battle of the Cannon

  Austria was in a relatively good position to continue the fighting and emerge victorious. Its troops had taken Warsaw, Dresden and Bayreuth, and the Tyrol was in revolt. What was lacking, perhaps above all else, was political determination. Charles, despite his near victory, still wanted to negotiate with Napoleon, while Stadion was insistent that the struggle continue. These two opposing views split the administration and the army into two camps, one supporting war, the other supporting peace, and in some respects prevented the Austrian army from taking the offensive. What Charles did instead was wait for Napoleon to attack.

  Napoleon had to regroup and prepare for the next offensive. This time, he prepared well and did so over the next six weeks.46 Units were brought closer to Vienna so that almost 160,000 troops were positioned in and around
the city by the end of June, military stores were built up, and the artillery was given a badly needed boost with the incorporation of Austrian as well as extra French cannon so that there were around 500 guns available by the time hostilities resumed. Five good bridges were built across the Danube while Lobau was turned into a fortified area with 129 guns. Skirmishes and artillery barrages had taken place in the days leading up to the morning of 4 July, when about one hundred French artillery pieces opened up, covering the crossing of the Danube, further south than the previous month. This time, there were no incidents, and the bridges built by the sappers were more solid. Moreover, barques and boats were also used to assist thousands of troops to cross over.

  The next day, the two armies faced each other, formidable in size, for what was later dubbed the battle of Wagram, and once again it was avidly watched from the roofs, bell towers and church steeples of Vienna.47 Napoleon commanded 190,000 men and disposed of 500 artillery pieces, while this time Charles had considerably fewer – 140,000 men and about 450 artillery pieces, all spread out along a twenty-two-kilometre front.48 Charles was hoping for another 30,000 men to arrive under his brother Archduke John, who had been engaged in Italy, but he was still too far away. John’s arrival would probably not have made all that much difference to the outcome of the battle in any event; Napoleon was aware that he was moving towards the battlefield and had placed four divisions in reserve to meet him.

  The first day (5 July) went well for Napoleon; he managed to get all his men across the Danube without incident, attack the Austrian formations and secure a central position. A number of crises during the day were staved off, on both sides. At one point, the French appeared to be on the point of breaking through the centre when Archduke Charles appeared with reinforcements to shore up his faltering lines. Later, panic set in among the Italian troops under Macdonald’s command; they turned tail and fled in a way that had never been seen before among Napoleon’s troops, and were stopped only by the bayonets of the Imperial Guard.49 By that stage, late in the day, the impetus the French had initially gained began to fade with the light. No ground or real strategic advantage had been obtained by either side at the end of the first day’s fighting, although things had not gone too badly for Napoleon. He was still in a position to deliver a decisive blow the next day. That night he slept sheltered by a pile of drums, dozing in between interviews with officers who came up for orders.

  The troops did not sleep many hours that night. Fighting was resumed the next day (6 July) as soon as light broke, around four in the morning. The Austrian Emperor was able to watch the battle unfold from the Bisamberg heights; by his side was Metternich who had come from Paris at the end of May. It was far less like an eighteenth-century battle and much more like a modern-day battle in which artillery played a pivotal role. At one stage, Napoleon assembled, with great difficulty, about 100 cannon to pound the Austrian centre, before launching an attack of 15,000 men to break through. They were stopped; Napoleon was obliged to throw in his reserves. By three o’clock that afternoon, the battle had been won – Napoleon took a few moments’ nap on the ground – even though fighting continued till nightfall. The Austrians, much to their credit, retreated in good order – Charles’s reputation, at least as commander, remained intact – while the French cavalry was too exhausted to pursue them.

  Wagram was dubbed the ‘battle of the cannon’. The French estimated that they had expended around 100,000 rounds over two days, while the Austrians fired a similar number. Napoleon may have won the field, but he lost almost as many men as the Austrians – probably around 39,000 killed, wounded or taken prisoner, one-quarter of effectives on the field of battle (regardless of the grossly under-reported casualty figures in the bulletins).50 Estimates are as high as 66,000 men killed and wounded.51 The casualties included forty generals and more than 1,800 junior officers. The Austrian figures were comparable. Charles reported that around 37,000 troops had been killed, wounded or taken prisoner, about one-quarter of effectives (although it is possible the real figure was higher).52 The battle was, consequently, far from decisive and did not strike a mortal blow at the enemy. The Austrians had performed well and had extricated themselves in good order as soon as Charles realized that the battle was likely to be lost. His troops exhausted, Napoleon was obliged to give them a night’s sleep before pursuing the enemy.

  Marmont and Masséna caught up with them a few days later (10 July) at Znaim, and although the Austrians engaged and held off the French, a completely demoralized Charles asked for an armistice. Hugues-Bernard Maret, now foreign minister, and Duroc were against any suspension of hostilities; they wanted to push ahead and destroy the enemy. It was Napoleon, with some help from Berthier, who reined in his generals. He no doubt realized that his men were exhausted and that the troops of 1809 were not those of 1805. The troops were not the only ones exhausted. This campaign began to show the flaws in Napoleon’s own condition. By the end of it, after being on the road for more than three months, he was physically and quite possibly mentally drained. The armistice was signed at two in the morning of 12 July. Napoleon returned to Schönbrunn the next day.

  It was the end of Charles’s career. On 18 July, his brother Francis removed him from his post as commander-in-chief of the Austrian army. The only man who up until now had proved a match for Napoleon, and who was still considered one of the most able Austrian generals, was never to lead men into battle again.53

  The campaign and the loss of men that resulted should have given Napoleon pause for thought. It did not. Wagram was one of the largest land battles that had ever been fought up till then, involving 300,000 troops along a twenty-kilometre front, and is often considered a turning point not only in the Napoleonic wars but in modern warfare in general. It says a great deal about the rapidly changing nature of warfare under Napoleon. In Italy in 1796 the major battles pitched around 50,000 men against each other in engagements that at most lasted a day. Now, the major battles involved hundreds of thousands of men and thousands of cannon fighting for two or three days.54 Wagram also foreshadowed a change in the way battles were fought: cavalry was rendered less effective, the artillery took centre-stage, and campaigns were less about knockout blows than a war of attrition.

  Until this point in time, Napoleon’s military flair had been extraordinary, but he had made a good deal more out of his victories, politically, through propaganda, than the reality warranted. Egypt, as we know, was a half-success, although one would not know it from reading contemporary accounts of it; Marengo was a battle almost lost, through lack of foresight on Bonaparte’s part if you will, or bad luck, won only by the timely intervention of others; Austerlitz was a brilliant victory but had become so steeped in legend, playing into his own myth of manifest destiny, that it became easy for Napoleon to believe he had planned everything, foreseen everything, well beforehand; Jena was a battle won, but it was Davout who defeated the bulk of the Prussian army at Auerstädt; Eylau had been a bloodbath and was really a draw.

  This was the first time Napoleon had encountered an enemy who had his measure. Charles had learnt from his past encounters with the French. Napoleon had won the campaign but at a cost, and this was telling because it was the only time he did not attempt to exploit his victories for political purposes. There were few attempts to exploit the battle as a great victory.55 The artistic focus, as we have seen, was on the death of Lannes, and Napoleon in mourning. There were only ever popular representations of the battle, attempts by enterprising individuals to cash in on the event.56 When Napoleon returned to Paris, there were no celebrations, and the attempt by a fawning Institute to bestow on him the title ‘Augustus’ and ‘Germanicus’ fell flat. Napoleon replied that there was nothing ‘to envy in what we know of the Roman emperors’.57

  More than anything, the campaign in Austria brought Napoleon to the realization that he could no longer count on Alexander. He had personally asked the Tsar to intervene on a number of occasions, but the Russians took an eternity to reac
h the theatre of operations, and when they arrived, entering Galicia on 3 June 1809, they did everything in their power to avoid confronting the Austrians.58 In fact, Alexander had already secretly informed Austria that he would not attack them. His behaviour was indicative of how onerous he found the French alliance, but it also made a profound impression on Napoleon, to the point where, ‘wounded’, he no longer believed in his Russian ally.59 Relations between the two nevertheless had to appear normal even if behind the scenes mistrust and suspicion were the rule. Napoleon wondered what concessions he might make in order to get him back onside, grudgingly giving Russia part of Austrian Galicia as a ‘reward’ for its part in the campaign.

  Schönbrunn

  In the negotiations with Austria that followed, Napoleon did not entirely have the upper hand. The Austrians were still capable, it was thought, of putting another 250,000 men in the field (even if that proved not to be the case; the Austrian army was depleted and morale was low, to say the least). Before Wagram, Napoleon had toyed with the idea of breaking up the Austrian Empire by promoting a Hungarian national revolution: Francis would be forced to abdicate and the Empire would then be divided between the archdukes into three kingdoms – Austria, Hungary and Bohemia.60 The other option was to force Francis to abdicate in favour of his brother, the Grand Duke Ferdinand. Davout for one was pushing him towards partition; thousands of proclamations in French, German and Hungarian were distributed, calling on the Magyars to revolt and promising them an independent state.61

  But Napoleon never vigorously pursued these ideas. Instead, through the ineffectual Champagny, he presented Austria with an ultimatum: either Francis would have to abdicate if Austria were to maintain its territorial integrity; or Austria would have to lose territory if Francis were to remain.62 Napoleon wanted a victor’s treaty that would impress upon Europe the extent of the victory of Wagram, and for that to happen Austria was going to have to sacrifice as many subjects again as at Pressburg, the treaty that had concluded the campaign of 1805. Since Francis did not abdicate, Austria had to give up control over its territories in the Confederation of the Rhine, Galicia (returned to the Duchy of Warsaw) and the Adriatic ports of Trieste and Fiume (the Illyrian Provinces), making Austria landlocked and bringing it into line with Napoleon’s attempt to exclude Britain from the Continent. In the process, it lost 3.5 million souls. Moreover, it had to pay an indemnity of 200 million francs (Vienna was forced to confiscate all silver in private hands in an attempt to meet the indemnity),63 and reduce its army to 150,000 men.