The Battle

by Patrick Rambaud

  'All the same, to have him shot for such a madcap attempt!'

  'His Majesty wished to spare him.' 'Oh, come now!'

  'No, no, he did. I have it from General Rapp, who w as there. The boy was intractable, he insulted the Emperor. How could he be expected to be pardoned after that? 5

  'All Vienna is whispering that he will become a hero.'

  'Alas, that cannot be ruled out.'

  'The Emperor will be accused of brutality.'

  'His life was at stake, and ours too.'

  'What was his name, this hero of yours who thought himself another Joan of Arc?' 'Stabs or Staps.'

  Henri started when he heard the name. At supper he was the most solemn of the three. Valentina amused Louis-Francois and they decided to see each other again.

  The island of Lobau was unrecognizable. In a matter oi days the thickets and reeds of Massena's entrenched camp had been transformed into a hidden city with streets lined with street-lamps, solid fortifications, and canals cleai enough for boats bringing flour and ammunition to draw water. In one corner was a mill. In another, ovens where bread was baking. Herds of oxen had been penned in a

  fenced-off clearing. The army had seized quantities of wine from the neighbouring abbeys and the cellars of the Viennese bourgeoisie to keep the troops and the workers happy, since twelve thousand Seaman of the Guard and as many engineers and carpenters had started building three large bridges on stilts, which were protected from floating objects by a stockade of piles upstream. The Austrians were clearly visible on the Essling bank, but they couldn't themselves see the heavy guns trained on them. Every morning, after inspecting the works, Colonel Sainte-Croix rode hard to Schonbrunn to report to the Emperor on their progress. The sentries and chamberlains had learnt to recognize him and they respected him; he became a familiar figure and used to enter the Lacquer Salon without knocking.

  On 30 May, at seven o'clock in the morning, Sainte-Croix found the Emperor drinking his usual glass of water.

  'Do you want some : ' said the Emperor, pointing to the carafe. 'Schonbrunn's spring is cold and very delicious.'

  'I can well believe Your Majesty, but I prefer a glass of good wine.'

  'D'accordol Constant! Monsieur Constant, send the Colonel two hundred bottles of Bordeaux and the same of champagne.'

  Then the Emperor and his new favourite climbed into his Berime, which took them to Ebersdorf, opposite the bridges. Napoleon would usually stop in the village for a few minutes to visit Marshal Lannes, whose health had continued to fail and whose death throes had become agonizingly drawn out. On that morning, Marbot had left the dying man's bedside. He was waiting in front of the stables, leaning on a cane because of the pain his thigh caused him. The Emperor saw him as he stepped out of his Berline.

  'The marshal?'

  'He died this morning, sire, at five o'clock. In my arms. His head fell back on my shoulder.'

  The Emperor went up to the first floor and stayed by the body for an hour, in that stinking room. Then he congratulated Marbot on his loyalty and asked him to have the marshal embalmed before sending him home to France. Deep in thought, he followed Sainte-Croix who was showing him the latest works. He remained silent. He didn't open his mouth again until they entered Massena's tent. The Duke of Rivoli had one leg bandaged and received him from his armchair.

  'What 2 You as well? What on earth happened to your has ended, as far as I'm aware!'

  'I fell in a hole which was hidden by a thicket and I've had a slight limp ever since. The bones are fragile at my age, sire.'

  'Take your crutches and follow me.'

  'My doctor has to change the dressing every hour, sire. Let's not go too far.'

  Massena hobbled along behind the Emperor and Sainte-Croix, as the latter explained the capabilities of the landing craft he was having built.

  'Each craft, sire, can hold three hundred men. At the bows, as you can s^e, there is a shutter behind which the men can shelter and, as soon as they beach, the shutter folds down and becomes a gangway by means oi which they can leap onto the bank.'

  After visiting a number of workshops and making a tour of the fortifications, the Emperor wished to walk along the sandy bank of the island, where his soldiers had gol into the habit of bathing under tin amused gaze oi the

  Austrians. To eliminate any risk, Napoleon and the Marshal put on sergeants' greatcoats.

  'We attack in a month,' said the Emperor. 'We will have a hundred and fifty thousand men, twenty thousand horse, five hundred cannon. Berthier has assured me of this. What's that, over there, at the far end of the plain?'

  'The hutments of the Archduke's camp.'

  'They're as far away as that, are they?'

  With a twig, the Emperor drew a map in the sand.

  'In the first days of July, we cross in strength. Mac-Donald and the Army of Italy, Marmont and the Army of Dalmatia, Lefebvre's Bavarians, Bernadotte's Saxons. Your divisions, Massena, will make for between the villages . . .'

  He raised his head to survey the plain.

  'I tell you this, Massena, and you too, Sainte-Croix. Over there, where the Archduke has pitched his camp, that will be his tomb! What's the name of the plateau behind him?'

  'Wagram, sire.'

  HISTORICAL NOTES

  IN 1809

  At the end of the 1820s, Walter Scott was greatly admired by French writers and there was a vogue for the historical novel in France. Vigny had a success with Cinq-Mars, which went through fourteen editions in his lifetime, Hugo was contemplating Notre-Dame de Paris, and Balzac published an involved novel about the Chouans. His work attracted only three hundred readers and the critics pilloried it, finding it confused, pretentious, obscure and lacking in style. But Balzac persevered. In 1831, after La Peau de Chagrin, he returned to his historical novel, which he revised and completed, and at the same time announced another work, Scenes de la Vie Militaire, which was to include La Bataille. He claimed to be working on this book at Aix but the Marchioness de Castries, with whom he was in love, took up too much of his time. He didn't, however, abandon his plan. In December 1834, he spoke of it again with assurance. He promised a portrait of Paris at the start of the fifteenth century, a story from the reign of Louis XIII and, once again, his La Bataille, this time specifying its period by adding, Vue de VEmpire, 1809.

  Which battle? Wagram? No. Essling. The year before he had revealed his intention in a letter to Mme Hanska.

  In it I undertake to initiate you into all the horrors, all the beauties, of a battlefield. My battle is Essling - Essling with

  all its consequences. What I have to do is make a man sitting quite coolly in his armchair behold the country, the inequalities of the ground, the masses of troops, the strategic events, the Danube, the bridges; he must admire the details and the whole of this conflict, hear the artillery, interest himself in every movement on this military chessboard, see everything, and feel, in each joint of that great body, Napoleon, whom I shall not show, or of whom I shall give only a passing glimpse as he crosses the Danube in a boat at the end of the day! Not a single woman: only cannon, horses, two armies, uniforms. On the first page the cannon roars; on the last it falls silent. You read through the smoke, and, when you have shut the book, you must have intuitively seen everything and be able to recall as if you had been an eyewitness.

  In 1835 Balzac was in Vienna. He had gone to present the manuscript of Seraphita to Eveline Hanska. He took this opportunity to hire a carriage and visit Essling, the Marchfeld plain, the plateau of Wagram and the island of Lobau. Prince Schwarz-enfeld accompanied him onto field. He took notes. Then he returned home to write Le Lys dans la vallee. Jostled by a thousand characters and a thousand subjects, Balzac was never to give us his version of La Bataille.

  Why did Balzac choose this little-known battle? Possibly because, at Essling, the nature of war changed. Louis Madelin, the historian of the Empire, emphasizes this: This battle ushered in the era of the great hecatombs which, from then on. we re to mark
the campaigns of the Emperor.' More than forty thousand killed in approximately thirty hours. Twenty-seven thousand Austrians and sixteen thousand French - the equivalent of a death every three seconds - quite apart from almost eleven thousand disabled in the Grande Armee. And then Essling was

  also the first reversal Napoleon suffered when he was in personal command, which both damaged his prestige and gave heart to his enemies. After Essling, nationalist movements began to develop throughout Europe.

  To understand and what was at stake, I consulted the historians first. I soon realized that the specialists lack objectivity. When it comes to Napoleon, few of them remain dispassionate: Jean Savant hates him, Elie Faure reveres him, Madelin celebrates him, Bainville is fond of him, Taine fights against him and so on. So then I turned to eye-witnesses. Balzac had access to these, since, for the most part, they were still alive and could tell their stones. Fortunately they left memoirs and other written accounts. They too have strong opinions, favourable or otherwise, about Napoleon, but they give us a mass of details which I wouldn't have dared invent and, in combination with the more anecdotal historians, they provided me with the ideal subject matter. Lucas-Dubreton, for instance, tells the story ot the standard bearer ot the Guard who was decapitated by a cannon ball: gold coins, his savings which he'd hidden in his stock, rained down on the ground. I owe the broth made from dead horses and seasoned with gunpowder to the memoirs of Constant, the Emperor's valet. The clothes are authentic, as are the songs, the decor, the topography, the weather, the portraits of the principal protagonists, their strengths and weaknesses. I tried not to judge the soldiers. Dorsenne, for example. If Thie-bault's Memoires are to be believed, he was a complete imbecile, but Thiebault wasn't at Essling and the examples he gives do not apply to this battle. What's more he exaggerates, one can tell.

  A historical novel is the staging of actual events. To achieve this, I had to introduce fictional characters alongside the Marshals and the Emperor. They contribute to the rhythm and help to

  reconstruct . I invented as little as possible, but it was often necessary to work up a detail or a sentence into an entire scene.

  A historian, Alexander Dumas said, defends a point of view and chooses the heroes who will help him to do so. Only the novelist, he added, is impartial: he does not judge, he shows.

  Here, arranged by subject, is the list of books which helped me bring of Essling to life as faithfully as possible. For those which I consulted at the Service historique des armees, fort de Vincennes, I have given the reference number preceded by a V for Vincennes.

  [Publisher's Note. We have for convenience numbered those works that have been translated into English, and listed them on page 308.J

  /. On the campaign of 1809 and its course.

  Martin, Henri, Histoire de France populaire, tome V, Paris: Furne, Jouvet et Cie (undated). Fast-moving, precise, vivid and inspired, Henri Martin gives an incomparable overview.

  Cadet-Gassicourt, Voyage en Autriche, en Moravie et en Baviere fait a la suite de I'armee frangaise pendant la campagne de 1809, Paris: L'Huillier, 1818. This rare and precious book was composed shortly after the Empire by the pharmacist in ordinary to Napoleon. An occasionally acid account, Cadet-Gassicourt (or Cadet de Gassicourt) is the forerunner of occupational medicine.

  Tranie et Carmigniani, Napoleon et I'Autriche, la campagne de 1809: Copernic, 1979. This large illustrated history has been

  indispensable. The text is clear and teems with details. It contains a multitude of photographs, pictures, sketches, portraits and plates of uniforms which helped me to imagine . Moreover the daily plans of operations saved me from making a considerable number of mistakes about the movement of troops.

  Pelet, Memoires sur la guerre de 1809, tome 3, V. 72905. Military account by an eye-witness.

  Marbot, Memoires, tome 1, Mercure de France, 1983. One of the best memoirists, with an abundance of details and anecdotes. I owe him most of the information about Marshal Lannes at Essling, his wound and his death. I also owe him the figure of Sainte-Croix, to whom he devotes almost an entire chapter.

  hJ

  Lejeune, Memoires, de Valmy a Wagram, V. 40518. Here again I have invented very little. He was a real person who lived in the circumstances I have described. He was a great painter and a liaison officer on the General Staff, which allowed him to cover the length and breadth of field. The stags swept downstream by the current, the Austrian sentry who shoots at him in Chapter 6 — all this is true. What is invented is his friendship with Stendhal (who was in Vienna, serving under Count Daru) and his thwarted love for Anne Krauss (who did not exist). Louis-Francois Lejeune wrote as well as he painted and his Memoires are a pleasure.

  Massena, Memoires, tome VI, V. 6835. The Marshal speaks of himself in the third person, like Julius Caesar, and always paints himself in the most flattering light. He is irreplaceable when describing the topography of a battlefield. Thanks to him I walked along the sunken lanes and through the copses of willows and elms, I learnt the thickness of the walls of Essling's granary, the layout of the houses, etc. The story of

  his equerry killed by a roundshot as he was helping adjust his stirrup is true (and appears in Marbot as well).

  Renemont, Campagne de 1809* V. 55192. Technical.

  Camon. La Guerre napolionienne , V. 66363/1. Technical.

  Napier, Campagne de 1809, V. 730999. vol. 3. Technical.

  Brunon, 'Essling'. Revue Historique des armies. V. Titre III, ch II. 1959/I. In this I learnt that, due to a shortage of oats, the horses were ted barley and that on the second day thev charged at a trot.

  Baron Peyrusse. Lettres inidites. Perrin. 1894.

  2. On the army.

  Masson. Cavaliers de Xapolion. V. 24S11. A classic. All the

  regiments, all the uniforms, all the officers. Lucas-Dubreton. Soldats de Xapolion. V. 61835. Another classic,

  full of details and revealing anecdotes. Coignet. Les Cahiers du capitaine Coignet. Hachette. 1883 and

  Souvenirs d'un vieux grognard, V. 21980. On the Imperial

  Guard. A celebrated work. [3] Pils. Journal de marche d'un grenadier. V. 20291. Parquin, Souvenirs et campagnes. V. 41352. [4] Chevalier, Souvenirs des guerres napoleomennes. V. 17804. Brice, Les Femmes et les armies de la Rivolution et de I'Empire. V.

  4354-

  Masson, Jadis. tome 2. V. 9989.

  Caziot, Historique du corps des pontonmers. X. 37488. Chardigny. Les Marichaux de Xapolion. Flammarion, 1846. Very

  thorough. Zieseniss, Berthier, Belfond, 1985.

  Histoire et dictionnaire du Consulat et de I'Empire. Fierro. Palluel-Guillard and Tulard. "Bouquins'. Robert Laftont, 1995.

  In Hachette's 'Vie Quotidienne' collection, one can consult the three volumes concerning the Empire, composed at different periods by Messrs Robiquet [5], Baldet and Tulard.

  On the period and Vienna.

  D'Almeras, La Vie Parisienne sous le Consulat et I'Empire, Albin

  Michel, 7th Edition (undated). Bertaut, La Vie a Paris sous le ier Empire, Calmann-Levv, 1949 Kralik, Histoire de Vienne, Payot, 1932.

  Mme de Stael, De I'Allemagne, tome 1, Garnier-Flammarion, 1968. [6]

  Grueber, Sous les aigles autrichiennes, V. 3523.

  Brion, La Vie quotidienne a Vienne au temps de Mozart et de

  Schubert, Hachette, 1986. Any book by Marcel Brion is always

  a great event and deserves to be read as closely as possible.

  He led me out onto the now vanished ramparts of the old

  town and into the taverns on the banks of the Danube.

  Thanks to him I learnt that Haydn was in Vienna, where he

  died soon after Essling. Vienne, Guides Gallimard. Describes the flora and fauna of the

  island of Lobau.

  4. On military medicine. e

  Percy, Journal de campagne, V. 31488.

  Larrey, Memoires de chirurgie militaire, vol. 3, V. 71126 and

  Clinique chirurgicale, 4 vols, V. 71125. Roos, Souvenirs
d'un medecin de la grande armee, Perrin,

  1913.

  Toute I'Histoire de Napoleon, vol. 8, Napoleon et les medecins: periodical printed at Caen, January 1952. In which I came

  across the preparation Doctor Corvisart used to treat the Emperor's eczema.

  5. On Napoleon.

  Constant, Memoires intimes de Napoleon ier, Mercure de France, 1967. The indispensable work. Constant, the Emperor's valet, allowed me to visit Schonbrunn. The numerous and comprehensive notes at the end of this edition are enthralling: they are the work of M. Maurice Dernelle of the Academie d'histoire, for whose erudition I am grateful.

  Stendhal, Vie de Napoleon, Payot, 1969. Written with panache and no fondness for its subject. [7]

  Bainville, Napoleon, Fayard, 1931. [8]

  Godechot, Napoleon, Albin Michel, 1969. Well-constructed series of studies, arranged by subject and including period accounts. Contains the story of Friedrich Staps and his complete cross-examination, recorded by General Rapp (c.f. his Memoires, V. 73242). I have brought the date of the assassination attempt forward in the novel; it actually took place in October 1809. I kept Staps because he is a good representative of the mystical opposition to the Empire which subsequently was to grow stronger. The Emperor would have kept the kitchen knife with which Staps wanted to kill him.-The details of the cross-examination appear in the May/June 1922 issue of Etudes napoleomennes.

  Ludwig, Napoleon, Payot 1929. [9]

  Savant, Tel fut Napoleon, Fasquelle, 1953. This text was reprinted in an illustrated book entitled Napoleon, Henri Veyrier, 1974, and accompanied by a multitude of illustrations, pictures and portraits. For Jean Savant, Napoleon is an entirely negative

  figure and he gathers together every sort of evidence to this effect. Almost too much.

  G. Lenotre. Napoleon, croquis de Vepopee, and En suivant I'Empereur, 'La petite histoire, Grasset, 1932 and 1935. The first of these was republished in the 'Cahiers Rouges'. Incomparable. Mon bon maitre. In homage I have borrowed his description of the Emperor's tricorn which he discovered in a bill of the hatmaker Poupard.