One of Napoleon’s great strengths as a commander of armies was the way in which he succeeded in driving troops, already exhausted by battle, to follow up a defeated enemy. With ruthless determination, he pursued Hiller towards Vienna. On May 13th, the Emperor again rode into the Imperial city as a conqueror.
Nevertheless, the Archduke’s army had escaped destruction. Having succeeded in getting across the Danube to the left bank, it was joined by the surviving regiments of Hiller’s force and the garrison that had been driven from Vienna. Again a formidable army, it occupied the Marchfeld, some five miles south-east of the capital. It was on this historic field that Rudolph of Habsburg had defeated the famous Bohemian warrior-King Ottakar II in 1276, and so founded the Austrian Empire.
The position not only raised the morale of the troops by its historic association, but was an extremely difficult one to attack; as the river there was from two to four and a half miles wide. Between the banks lay a dozen or more islands, much the largest of which was Lobau. Napoleon decided to cross and occupied the villages of Aspern and Essling, but he was not aware that the Austrians were so close at hand. On May 21st, Bessières had barely taken up his position with only seventeen thousand infantry, when they were fallen upon by eighty thousand infantry and fifteen thousand horse. Nevertheless, Lannes succeeded in holding Essling, and it was not until dusk that the Austrians had driven Masséna from the centre of Aspern. The Emperor’s attempt to break through the enemy’s centre by a great cavalry charge failed and, by nightfall, the French positions were almost surrounded.
In the small hours, Masséna reopened the battle and drove the Austrians out of Aspern. Meanwhile, the Imperial Guard and Oudinot’s Grenadiers had crossed the river. Desperate fighting ensued all through the 22nd. Under one determined onslaught some Austrian battalions began to waver, but the Archduke seized the banner of the Zach regiment and flung himself into the fray. His example rallied his troops, and the French were driven back. In a magnificent charge the French cavalry routed the Austrian cavalry, but were robbed of the fruits of their achievement by themselves being driven back by Austrian Grenadiers.
During the morning, Napoleon received the alarming news that the largest of the bridges which he had built across the Danube had been set on fire, and that others were being swept away by trees and barges sent down the flooded river. This meant annihilation for the French should they fail to hold their own. They were now fighting for survival. Essling was lost, but regained. Aspern finally fell to the Austrians. By then both armies were utterly exhausted. By superhuman efforts the French engineers had repaired a number of bridges. That night the Emperor withdrew the remains of his army into the island of Lobau.
The slaughter had been appalling, approaching that of Eylau. Austria lost twenty-five thousand and France twenty thousand men, among them the irreplaceable Marshal Lannes. The finest assault leader in the army, he had a hundred times led his men up scaling ladders and through breaches made by cannon in the walls of fortresses. He had been wounded more than twenty times, and it was said that bullets only bent, never shattered, his bones; but, at last, he had received a wound that was mortal. Napoleon tenderly embraced the dying Marshal, but Lannes’ last words were to reproach him for his boundless ambition which was causing such a terrible loss of French lives. Like many others, for a long time past his heart had not been in the Emperor’s wars, and he had continued to serve only out of a sense of duty. A staunch Republican and convinced atheist, he had often openly criticised Napoleon for creating a new aristocracy, and for his rapprochement with the Church.
In this last matter, having paid lip-service to religion in order to gain the support of a large part of the French people, the Emperor had now become so convinced of his absolute supremacy that he could afford to humble the Pope. In Vienna only a week before, on May 17th, he had issued a decree depriving His Holiness of all temporal power, and annexed that part of the States of the Church that he had spared the previous year. Asserting himself to be the ‘successor of Charlemagne’, he relegated the Pope to merely Bishop of Rome, with a stipend of two million francs. When Pius VII protested and excommunicated him, he retaliated by having him arrested and taken as a prisoner from Rome to Florence.
The battle of Aspern-Essling had a great effect on public opinion throughout the whole of Europe. Eylau had in fact been a stalemate, but Napoleon had been able to claim it as a victory because, on the night following the battle, the Russians had withdrawn. Aspern-Essling was also a stalemate, but in that case it was the French who had withdrawn, leaving the Austrians in possession of the battlefield. The belief that Napoleon, when commanding in person, could not be defeated had at last been deflated.
Had the Archduke Charles been in a position to attack the island of Lobau next day, it could have brought Napoleon’s Empire crashing about his ears; for, not only had the majority of the French no more fight left in them, but they were without food and had run out of ammunition. But the Austrians, too, were utterly exhausted; so, under flags of truce, while the battlefield was being cleared of its mounds of corpses, a seven-week Armistice was agreed upon.
While the French army remained on Lobau, the Emperor installed himself in the Palace of Schönbrunn, just outside Vienna, and sent for his Court. During June, by feats of brilliant organisation, he brought from all quarters large reinforcements and huge quantities of stores and ammunition.
Meanwhile, from both south and north bad news for the French kept coming in.
Of the three British Generals court martialled for the Convention of Cintra, Sir Arthur Wellesley alone was acquitted. Lord Castlereagh had a great belief in his abilities and induced the Cabinet to send the future Duke of Wellington back to the Peninsula as Commander-in-Chief of a considerable army.
Napoleon had laid down the strategy to be followed by his Marshals. Gouvion St. Cyr was to clean up Catalonia, Victor was to destroy the Spanish army in Andalusia, Ney was to hold down Galicia while Soult advanced from there to take Oporto, then Lisbon. In mid-March Victor crossed the Tagus and defeated the Spanish regulars, but was so weakened that, without reinforcements, which King Joseph in Madrid could not send him, decided that he dare advance no further. Towards the end of the month Soult arrived in front of Oporto. Led by the Bishop, thirty thousand insurgents put up a most heroic resistance; but, lacking even a semblance of organisation, were massacred by the thousand. Having captured the city, but still surrounded on all sides by hordes of enemies, Soult, too, felt he dared advance no further.
Such was the situation when, on April 22nd, Wellesley landed in Lisbon. With twenty-five thousand British troops and sixteen thousand Portuguese, he decided that he was strong enough to defeat first Soult, then Victor. Marching northwards, he carried out a most daring crossing of the Douro where the cliffs were so steep that Soult had left the river unguarded. Taken by surprise, the French Marshal was chased out of Oporto, then found himself cut off by dispositions Wellesley had made. In despair, he burned his baggage, sacrificed his plunder and abandoned his artillery. The remnants of his shattered corps, reduced to a starving rabble, made their way as best they could by goat tracks over the mountains back to Galicia.
No such major disaster as the destruction of an entire French Army Corps took place in northern Europe; but there were portents of trouble to come. Sickened by the pusillanimity of his King, Frederick von Schill, who commanded a regiment of Prussian Hussars, left Berlin with them on April 28th. He endeavoured to surprise the French and take from them the great fortress of Magdeburg. In that he failed, but in other actions he met with considerable success, including the capture of Stralsund. But there he was overwhelmed by Napoleon’s Danish and Dutch troops and mortally wounded.
Schill’s gallant exploits raised the patriotic fervour of his countrymen to fever-pitch and incited the young Duke of Brunswick to follow his example. He had formed a corps of volunteers in Bohemia. With them he invaded Saxony and, on June nth, captured Dresden. After several times defeating the troop
s of Napoleon’s brother, King Jerome, in Westphalia, the Duke decided to fight his way right across Germany. After many perilous encounters, he succeeded, and with his men was taken off by British ships to England. His little troop became the nucleus of the ‘King’s German Legion’, that later fought with great gallantry under Wellington in Spain.
During the battle of Aspern-Essling, while carrying a message from the Emperor to Masséna, a bullet had knocked Roger’s hat from his head and ploughed through his scalp. It was not a serious wound, but resulted in his being sent, after a few days on Lobau, with one of the batches of casualties, into Vienna for treatment by a civilian doctor.
There, he found that Duroc was already allocating accommodation in the Schönbrunn Palace, in anticipation of the arrival of the Court. Since the Palace would also be used as Great Headquarters, it was certain that it would be crowded and very noisy. As additional accommodation, Duroc had commandeered a number of small private houses just outside the Park. Roger suffered from severe headaches as a result of his wound, so he was anxious to secure quarters where he would be as quiet as possible, and he asked Duroc if he might occupy one of the houses. His old friend readily granted his request.
It was a pleasant little, double-fronted villa, with a wing consisting of stables and coach house at ground level and servants’ quarters above. To the right of the front door, a drawing room ran the whole depth of the house, with a similar room as best bedroom on the first floor. To the left, there was a small dining room and kitchen, with two more bedrooms over. Opposite the top of the stairs, between the big bedroom and the other, smaller room at the back, was a slip room which could be entered from either. It could have been used as a dressing room, but Roger saw that it had been fitted up as a clothes closet.
At the back of the house there was a verandah, and along the first floor a broad, covered balcony looking out on a half an acre of pleasant garden. Roger decided that he would leave the big bedroom to Lisala, and himself occupy the smaller one further along the balcony. There, with his soldier servant and groom to serve him, he rested for some days, getting up only for meals and strolls round the garden, until his scalp had healed and his headaches ceased.
By that time, Napoleon was living in the Palace and Roger reported back for duty. A week later the Court arrived and, as one of the Empress’ ladies, Lisala. She was, Roger had to admit to himself, as beautiful as ever; but she stirred no trace of desire in him. Treating her with the same politeness he had shown her in Paris, he took her to the little house. She was enchanted with it, and declared that she wished she could laze away the summer days in the garden instead of having to attend on Josephine. However, hardly had she settled in than, to his intense annoyance, she produced another sheaf of bills that considerably exceeded the one thousand francs a month he had agreed to allow her.
There followed a violent quarrel. She maintained that, in her position, it was essential always to appear in the latest mode. He argued that other ladies-in-waiting did not always do so and were far less extravagant. She had found out from someone what his pay and allowances amounted to, and declared that he could well afford to indulge her tastes. He admitted that he could, but only within reason, and he would soon be beggared if she continued to run up bills at this pace. She remarked with a smile that spies who had given themselves away should not grumble at having to pay for their continued immunity. Seething with anger, he agreed to settle her bills, then stamped out of the house.
For the hundredth time he contemplated the terrible fix into which he had got himself, and felt that to go on like this indefinitely was impossible. Yet only two alternatives offered themselves. One was to kill her, the other was to throw in his hand, quietly slip away from Vienna, then make his way to England.
During his time, Roger had caused many men to die violent deaths, but to murder a woman in cold blood was a very different matter and, although he had come to hate Lisala, he knew he could not kill her. He was almost equally reluctant to free himself from her by absconding, because he felt that Europe was now hovering on the brink of the greatest crisis that had arisen for many years. It needed only one major defeat of Napoleon by the Archduke Charles to bring about the Emperor’s fall. In adversity, every hand would be against him. In Paris, Talleyrand and Fouché, backed by many of the Marshals, would seize power. Both of them knew the truth about Roger, so he would then have nothing to fear. He could divorce Lisala and send her packing.
While continuing with her, he had only one consolation. So far no rumour had reached him that she had taken a lover. Her nature being as it was, he had little doubt that, after he left Paris, she had had one or more, and that she would shortly select one here in Vienna. But at least she was exercising discretion in her amours. Perhaps because she had taken seriously his threat that, should she fail to do so, he would kill her. In any case, she had not as yet brought public ridicule upon him.
During the last half of June Schönbrunn became nightly the scene of balls, operas, plays and brilliant receptions. The Emperor appeared at them all, attended by his subject Kings and Princes, and giving the impression that he considered the war with Austria as good as over. But, during the days and far into the nights, he was in his Cabinet, working with frantic energy to build up the army that still occupied the island of Lobau.
By early July, Napoleon had succeeded in massing over one hundred and seventy thousand troops on the island, and now had a superiority in numbers; for the Archuke had not been so able or so fortunate in bringing up reserves.
After the Archduke Ferdinand’s first success in taking Warsaw, the tide had turned against him. Early in May, Prince Poniatowski took the offensive and prevented him from crossing the Vistula. Meanwhile, the Czar, feeling that he must at least make a show of honouring his promise to Napoleon should Austria attack France, despatched a corps towards Lemberg. Now threatened from both sides, Ferdinand had to evacuate Warsaw and, by mid-June, had withdrawn to Opatoff. There followed a number of minor engagements, in which the fortunes of both sides varied; but the Austrian army of thirty thousand continued to be tied up in distant Poland, so could not be brought to the assistance of the Archduke Charles.
Fortune had also deserted the Archduke John. After defeating de Beauharnais and freeing the Tyrol, a large detachment he had sent into Dalmatia had been thoroughly defeated by the able Marshal Marmont. By then, de Beauharnais had called up considerable reinforcements and, after a series of conflicts, driven John out of Carinthia; from where he withdrew into Hungary. De Beauharnais had followed him up and, on June 14th, forced him, after a pitched battle outside the fortress of Rueb, to retire again. While retreating in the direction of Pressburg, the Archduke received an urgent summons from his brother Charles, to join him outside Vienna before the sevén-week armistice with the French expired. John’s original force of fifty-three thousand men had by then been reduced to twenty thousand effectives, and he was a considerable distance from the capital; but he altered his line of march, hoping to arrive in time to participate in the great battle that was about to take place in the neighbourhood of Lobau.
In consequence, the Archduke Charles could dispose of only one hundred and thirty-five thousand men, as opposed to Napoleon’s one hundred and seventy thousand. On the other hand, the French had to cross the arm of the Danube separating the island from the mainland, then advance through Aspern-Essling and four miles of open country before they could attack the Austrians’ major concentration, which occupied a ridge of hills where there stood the village of Wagram.
For some time past, with great labour, the Austrians had been throwing up very strong defences opposite the north shore of Lobau, as it was there, the river being at its narrowest, the French were expected to make their attempt to cross. But Napoleon had prepared a most effective deception plan.
On the night of July 4th, the French opened a terrific cannonade directed at the Austrian trenches north of Lobau. Meanwhile, sufficient boats to form six bridges that had been kept under camoufl
age, were swiftly hooked together and swung into position from the east end of the island, across the much broader channel to the mainland.
When the battle opened, a violent storm was raging. Forked lightning streaked down, and the crashes of thunder could not be” distinguished from the roar of the bombardment. In torrents of rain the divisions of Oudinot and Masséna streamed over the bridges. The Austrian earthworks were outflanked and rapidly evacuated, their defenders swiftly retiring to the ridge of hills. Dawn saw the whole French army deployed for battle on the mainland.
At midday, the French marched steadily forward and, in the afternoon, launched an attack in close columns on the heights held by the Austrians. But, by seven o’clock, they had been beaten back from Wagram with heavy losses. The battle was then broken off, to be renewed on the morning of the 6th.
The Archduke took the offensive, launching his right with such force that he drove Masséna back on to Aspern. The Austrian centre then advanced, and several hours of most bloody conflict ensued, as the White-Coats gradually gained ground from the French. Realising the danger in which his army now stood of being driven into the river, the Emperor massed one hundred cannon, afterwards known as the ‘Grand Battery’, and, under its devastating fire, the Austrians’ advance was checked. He then launched a solid column consisting of thirty thousand infantry and six thousand horse, under General Macdonald, against the enemy’s centre. It gave, but did not break, and the Archduke might yet have emerged victorious, because his left wing was almost intact.
It was the brilliant Davoust who really saved the day. His corps had been allotted the task of preventing the Archduke John’s army from arriving on the scene. On learning that battle had been joined, Davoust left only a light screen of troops to mislead the Archduke into believing that his way to Vienna was still barred, then hastened with the bulk of his corps to Napoleon’s assistance. He arrived late in the afternoon, but in time to drive the Austrians from the village of Neusiedel, and so threw their left into confusion. At length the whole of the Archduke Charles’ army was forced back from the heights of Wagram, although it retired in good order, and covered by a murderous artillery fire.
Evil in a Mask Page 50