Napoleon Conquers Austria: The 1809 Campaign for Vienna
by J. Arnold
Published by: Arms & Armour, 219 pages, 13 maps, 19 illustrations
18.99 pounds
The second part of this author's account of the 1809 Danube campaign comes 5 years after his slightly larger 1990 Crisis on the Danube, which looked at the Bavarian phase of the campaign. In just 200 text pages, this looks at Ebelsberg, Aspern and Wagram plus the Italy/Hungary theatre, some politics and general comments on tactics. We even get a page on the birth of the King of Rome followed by 7 pages on Walcheren and the Peninsula! In these metric days, it is somewhat more than trying to put 1.13 litres into a 0.565 litre Euro-container.
As in Crisis, the pictures are paper-printed and rather dark, albeit all full page size. Quite why we need illustrations of Saragossa and Russian heavy cavalry isn't clear and the 'ground' photo of the Russbach and Wagram ridge is so dark as to be useless in illustrating anything.
Awful half-page maps, looking like they were drawn on the back of the proverbial fag packet, disfigure the book and contain a number of mistakes. At the back there are only OBs for Aspern and Wagrarn, which appear to be tidied-up but still error-ridden versions of Bowden + Tarbox - claims to have used 'Krieg 1809' are absurd, especially as that work doesn't extend to Wagram! While there are only a few proofing errors, there has been no attempt to marry up the text with these OBs, notably in references to Austrian landwehr and light troops which don't appear in the corresponding OB.
The title Napoleon Conquers Austria reveals much about the nature of the text. This is a French version of this multi-taceted campaign. Recent correspondence in FE debated the distortions in Napoleonic books caused by linguistic limitations compared with the American Civil War - here is the proof par excellence!
Arnold is best-known for his American Civil War books and here is his Napoleonic book telling the story from one side. Even with the availability of Gill's work, the Confederation troops feature little beyond an attempt to rehabilitate the Saxons; the epic fight with Kollowrat's Korps at Urfahr-Linz on 17th May, which saved Napoleon's long line of communication, doesn't even warrant a mention.
Having learned not to make extravagant claims to have read Germanic sources this time, Arnold deploys just 10 pages of Austrian memoirs, half of which date from a patriotic collection of 1811. The author makes frequent reference to the "Official Austrian report" in French in Vincennes, but its been in English since 1810 and was reprinted in 1985 by Ken Trotman as a small paperback: Muller - 'Relations of the Operations... in the year 1809' - see FE22 (March 1995).
Missing entirely are the much larger key works - many are listed among the 'secondary sources' notably the General Staff History 'Krieg 1809', and the biographies of Charles by Angeli and Criste. Worse is the complete omission of the most detailed Austrian account of Wagram by Hoen, a member of the General Staff team. Had Arnold asked his colleague to translate just the small army booklets on Ebelsberg, Aspern and Wagram, some balance could be restored, but instead, the Emperor's enemy remain almost invisible throughout - the text gets really silly when it is alleged that the Archduke invented the double battle line formation and a conversation reputedly between Charles and Emperor Francis emanates from a 1913 French source! We finish up with the strange idea that the French smashed through the Austrian position at Wagram around 6.30p.m. - four hours after the Austrian retreat began.
The author is keen on contemporary memoirs, which will always liven up any narrative, but without the proper structure of events to hang them on, they are of little value. In the only place where he manages to link up, the memoirs from the action around the Grand Battery and MacDonald's attack paint the confused scene well and shed some light on what has always been a rather opaque part of Wagram.
More typical, however, is the account of Ebelsberg written largely from memoirs from a couple of French regiments. Those unfamiliar with the scenario will lose all track of events. On the Austrian side, he lobs in Petre's critical comments about Hiller's command ability without considering, first, that they come from Angeli's biography of Charles, and secondly that as the author says, Napoleon's moves elsewhere had already out flanked the position. Generally, there are little flashes of French detail in amongst a thin and in too many places inaccurate narrative.
The whole book is one-sided and has as many holes as a Swiss cheese. At 18.99 pounds, it's cheap, but in trying to be all things to all French fans, it's of no real use to anyone, (especially as it is inadequately indexed). General wargamers and fans of OBs should buy the Osprey, which has OBs/narrative drawn from more reliable sources and many better pictures.
Unless you are a collector of recollections, anyone with a small collection of books on 1809 will find nothing really illuminating in here. Despite some bad errors and a lot of myth, Crisis attempted a detailed look at a complex series of battles in Bavaria - this one just skates over everything and I can't work out who this is aimed at. With a lively wnting style, Arnold has certainly done a lot to promote this campaign, but this second book is a poor effort.
Typical of some American writing, Arnold can't resist a jab at the British - Petre's work he says is "A classic British work of highly opinionated history". Well, at least Petre attempted to look at Austrian involvement and utilised some Germanic material - people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. A quick look at the back cover shows a lot of blurb about Hamilton Williams books. What is Arms and Armour doing?
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