Eagles on the Danube Part 1

This paper was presented at the 1992 Autumn Conference of the Napoleonic Association, held at the National Army Museum.

On 23rd April the defeated Austrians were withdrawing through Regensburg. The city was still surrounded by its medieval wails and the French attack was to be the last occasion in history when such walls were scaled. While the attack was being prepared Napoleon was wounded very painfully in the foot by a ball of grapeshot. News of this incident spread through the army and men were leaving the ranks all over the place to crowd around their hero.

So Napoleon called for his horse, hurried the surgeon (Dr. Ivan) in binding the wound, and carried out an impromptu review, receiving petitions and making awards. The attack was entrusted to Marshal Lannes; two attempts by volunteers to scale the walls had failed and when he called for fresh volunteers there was a stony silence.

"I Was a Grenadier..."

Lannes took a ladder himself, saying "I was a grenadier once and will show you that I still am one" and set off towards the wall. His young ADCs, led by Captain Marbot stopped him. Marbot said, "Marshal, if you were so much as scratched in getting over the wall before we had been killed we should be disgraced, as well you know", took the ladder from the Marshal and the whole crowd of ADCs joined in. Marbot and Labedoyeres, who later became a general and one of Napoleon's ADCs at Waterloo, were the first over the wall. Marbot had to lend a hand to Labedoyeres, whose ladder was slipping. Somehow they managed to get into the city with a small party and marched immediately to the Straubing Gate, where they found an Austrian Battalion.

Marbot bluffed the battalion commander into thinking the French had a much larger force in the city and persuaded him to surrender. The gate was opened and the main body of the French streamed in. The houses were burning on all sides, blazing embers falling into the street. Somebody pointed out that a line of parked carts were loaded with powder, so everyone downed tools, Austrian and French alike, to move them out through the gate and avert a catastrophic explosion.

The Austrians withdrew over the famous bridge, which is the largest medieval stone bridge in the world. They also built a pontoon bridge, which fell into the hands of the French at the end of the day. Napoleon's Army Headquarters moved into the Residenz, nowadays a furniture shop, in the shadow of the famous cathedral. And it was here that Napoleon made one of those decisions which has fascinated and amused military historians ever since, because, instead of following up the main body of Austrians withdrawing through the Forest of Bohemia he decided to pursue the already defeated Austrian left wing, under Field Marshal Hiller, and race for Vienna.

Accordingly, Davout was left behind with the III Corps to watch Charles and ensure he really was withdrawing to Bohemia, while the remainder of the army turned Eastward along the river. The city of Passau, at the confluence of the Inn and the Danube, had been captured by the Austrians on 9th April but the small French garrison in the main fortress, overlooking the city, and held out against an Austrian siege.

Passau was retaken on 24th April and the pursuit of Hiller continued, with Massena's corps on the left, close to the river, and Lannes' Corps on the right. On 3rd May they reached the river Traun and the town of Ebelsberg. Napoleon had given orders to Massena that, if he found the town defended he was to wait until it had been outflanked by the right wing before going on.

But such was the enthusiasm of Massena's young recruits, that when they found the Austrian rearguard withdrawing across the bridge they could not be stopped from rushing across after them, hard on their heels. The bridge was 550 metres long, and the modern one still is. Massena was obliged to reinforce the attack, which resulted in the destruction of the town and its castle and horrendous casualties.

The whole place had to be rebuilt, so the modern castle bears little resemblance to the old one, but it does contain a fascinating small private museum. It was on the steep roadway leading up to the main gate that an outstanding act of personal heroism took place. A young lieutenant called Guyot, who was well known as a good sporting shot, stood coolly in the middle of the roadway, picking off the Austrian sharpshooters in the castle one by one, as his men passed him one loaded musket after another.

On 7th May they reached Melk, and many people are familiar with the huge Benedictine Abbey there. It is one of the great sights of Europe. The guides always point out the wonderful trompe Foeuil decoration of the Marble Room, and mention that the West wing of the Abbey was more like a palace than a monastery, since it was reserved for the use of visiting VIP'S. Napoleon was dining here on the night of 7th May, with the Abbott and Marshal Lannes.

He was anxious to know whether or not Hiller had succeeded in crossing the river to join up again with Charles, and asked Lannes to find a volunteer officer to lead a fighting patrol to bring back some Austrian prisoners from the far side. Young Captain Marbot, the hero of Regensburg, volunteered for the job, with a few picked grenadiers who spoke German and a crew of press-ganged local boatmen. It was a dark and dirty night, the river was in flood and the crossing was exceedingly dangerous. Nevertheless, they succeeded in crossing, nabbed three prisoners and brought them back to this very room for personal interrogation by the Emperor.

The result showed that Hiller had indeed crossed to the North bank, not far from Durnstein, the most romantic village on the Danube. Not only is it an outstandingly pretty place, but it was here that Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned from 1192-94 after the Third Crusade. It was also the scene of a heroic action in November 1805, shortly before the battle of Austerlitz, thus ensuring the immortalisation of the village on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

Vienna

On 10th May Lannes reached the outskirts of Vienna. Unimpressed by the defence of the city he put his heavy howitzers to work, shelling the city for some hours. One round fell close to the house where the composer Haydn lay dying. Beethoven took refuge in his cellar. Napoleon later ordered a guard of honour to be posted on Haydn's house.

Anyway, the garrison soon withdrew across the Danube, burning the bridge behind them and carelessly leaving the entire contents of the enormous arsenal intact, thus enabling Napoleon to reequip his army from the captured stores. Napoleon himself arrived at the Schonbrunn Palace on 13th May, exactly a month after he had left Paris. And here, during the lowing few days, the infantry of the Imperial Guard at last arrived from Spain to be reunited with their Emperor. The Eagles were installed on the gates of the palace during Napoleon's stay. Years later, the Austrian Emperor FranzJosef was asked if they should be taken down, since they represented a French defeat of his country. But he replied "Well, they have been there a long time and the people seem to like them - and I don't care one way or the other". So there they have stayed ever since.

The Lion of Aspern is well known to every Austrian schoolboy and schoolgirl as marking the place where the Archduke Charles defeated the Emperor Napoleon. In fact, the Battle of Aspern and Essling ended in stalemate rather than a victory for either side, but it was broadcast throughout Europe as Napoleon's first major defeat - and is still regarded as such in Austria, where the Archduke Charles is a national hero.

Since all the Danube bridges had now been destroyed, Napoleon's pressing problem was to find a suitable bridging site to get his army across and bring Archduke Charles to a decisive battle. He was in one of his impatient moods, ignoring local advice that the river could be extremely unpredictable, especially at that time of year. There was a South Easterly wind against the strong current, causing considerable waves and making things difficult for the engineers, and the river had been known to rise by several feet in a few hours. Despite the capture of the two bridge trains at Landshut and Regensburg there was barely sufficient material for the necessary pontoon bridges and the ones finally built were far from satisfactory. Two of them crossed from a point near the village of Gros-Enzersdorf to the large island called the Lobau, and a third completed the operation on the North side of the island to a bridgehead which was promptly protected by large earthworks.

Crossing

Crossing began on the night of 20th May and by the morning of 21st, Whit Sunday, two infantry divisions of Massena's Corps were in possession of the village of Aspern and a third in Essling. Command of that sector was entrusted to Marshal Lannes. The area between the two villages was covered by a force of light cavalry under Marshal Bessieres, including the division of General Lasalles. The crossing had been observed by powerful telescopes on the Bisamberg Hill, which has a fine view of Vienna and the river.

During the night Charles had issued his orders for attack, which eventually materialised during the Sunday afternoon. The bridges broke several times, inhibiting the arrival of reinforcements, but by nightfall the villages were still in French hands. During the night Napoleon managed to get more troops across, but by first light on Monday there were only some 50,000 French opposed by perhaps twice that number of Austrians. At around 10.00 AM the main bridge was broken again, this time beyond immediate repair.

From upstream, the Austrians were launching every heavy floating object they could find, including an enormous flour mill and several rafts, some of which had fires built on them to inhibit efforts to tow them away. But according to local legend, the most effective method of breaking the bridges was devised by an experienced river man called Michael Fink, who kept an inn at Brannan. He had holes bored in some heavy boats which were connected together in pairs by a heavy chain. As they floated down the stream the boats sank to surface level and the chains snagged the anchor ropes of the pontoons, thus carrying them away.

Napoleon realised that he had to withdraw to the Lobau island. For Massena, on the left, this was no great problem, but over at Essling fighting was intense, especially around the huge granary. Napoleon sent Mouton, the hero of Landshut bridge, with two battalions of the Young Guard, to help in extricating the hard pressed garrison. Then he sent another of his ADC's, General Rapp, with three more battalions. The two young men had a short conference and strictly speaking against their orders, arranged a spectacularly successful counter attack which cleared the village and enabled the orderly withdrawal.

Afterwards Napoleon told Rapp "If you never did so well in disobeying my orders you did so today". Lannes was riding slowly back towards the bridgehead with his staff when a cannon ball killed his chief of staff, General Pouzet, who was a very old personal friend. So shocked was Lannes by the loss of his friend that he dismounted and sat down on the edge of a ditch with his head in his hands.

Moments later an almost spent cannon ball struck him on the knees. Together with all the rest of the wounded he was taken to Lobau and then on by boat to the makeshift hospital in Kaiser-Ebersdorf. The famous chief surgeon of the Grande Armee, Dominique Larrey, amputated his right leg at the knee - the operation took two minutes. Conditions were awful, both in the hospital and on the Lobau, where there were hundreds of wounded. Larrey gave orders for horses, some of them belonging to senior officers, to be slaughtered to provide meat and broth.

When the officers complained to Napoleon of this high handed treatment of their property his response was immediately to make Larrey a Baron of the Empire. Lannes seemed to be recovering after a few days, but then gangrene set in and he died on 31st May, the first of the Marshals to die in battle. His body was returned to France for burial in the Pantheon.

They say that Napoleon slept for thirty- six hours after the battle of Aspern/Essling. But when he awoke, his energy was as great as ever, issuing orders in all directions for preparation of a second attempt at the decisive confrontation. Reinforcements were already under way as a result of the orders issued after Eckmuhl. Eugene was coming with the Army of Italy, hot on the heels of the withdrawing Archduke John, who had received orders from Charles, after the disaster at Eckmuhl, to rejoin the main army; Marshal Bernadotte brought the Army of Saxony and Marmont that from Dalmatia.

Bridging Feat

In the meantime the engineers, under General Bertrand, were constructing an astonishing bridge. It consisted of sixty piers, each of five piles approximately twelve inches in diameter, tied together with cross members and some of them set in twenty-five feet of water; the roadway was just over twelve feet wide and four feet six inches above the mean water level. This amazing engineering feat was conceived, designed and constructed in less than six weeks.

Over 4,000 wagons were used to haul the supplies, which included vast quantities of rope; they even took the bell ropes from the churches to provide enough. The Army concentrated on the Lobau during the night of 3rd/4th July. Charles and his staff expected the second attack to come through the old bridgehead but Napoleon had other plans. Assault bridges were prepared, out of sight of Austrian patrols behind the several islands in the river. Napoleon himself was present when one of these, 178 yards long, was launched during the night of 4th July, under cover of a violent thunderstorm.

He asked the bridge commander, a young engineer captain called Heckmann, how long it would take "Fifteen minutes, Sire" was the reply. "I give you five" said Napoleon - and four minutes later, before the far end of the bridge had been anchored, the infantry started across.

During the morning of 5th July the Grande Armee marched out on to the plain of the Marclifeld, which might be called the Salisbury Plain of Austria, since the Austrian Army had used it for exercises for hundreds of years. At the head of the regiments the bands were playing as they formed up facing the Austrians, who were deployed along the general line of the Russbach brook from Markgrafneusiedl, through Parbersdorf to Wagram and on to Sussenbrunn.

By five o'clock in the afternoon Napoleon was in a position to attack. He rode along the front line, mounted on a white charger called Euphrates, a gift from the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. But the first attacks that evening were repulsed, the obstacle of the brook proving rather harder to pass than Napoleon imagined.

Wagram Continued

Battle was joined again at six in the morning. Space does not allow for a detailed description of events, but the outcome was decided on the French right wing, where Marshal Davout's IIIrd Corps turned the Austrian left near the old church of St. Martin at Markgraftieusiedl.

At mid-day Napoleon saw the line of smoke of Davout's advancing muskets pass by the tower. For this moment General Macdonald had prepared a huge infantry attack on the Austrian centre, supported by 112 guns organised by General Lauriston, Commander of the Guard Artillery. A monumental painting by the Bavarian painter Kobell records the scene. It hangs in the Residenz in Munich because the 2nd Bavarian Division was involved, having arrived during the previous night after four days of forced marching from Salzburg. It is not too difficult to imagine the scene today when standing at the site of Napoleon's field headquarters. The Archduke Charles realised the battle was lost and ordered withdrawal. Napoleon's Army was too exhausted to follow up with anything more than minor harassment with the cavalry. During one of these charges the famous cavalry commander, General Lasalle, was shot between the eyes by a musket ball.

Znaim

The campaign was not quite over. A relatively minor battle began at Znaim, now in the Czech Republic, on 10th July, but was cut short by arrival of the news of an armistice. Napoleon returned to the Palace of Schonbrunn, where he spent the next three months negotiating the treaty of that name.

And each evening, an unmarked carriage left the palace, travelling the ten kilometres or so to the small town of Modling, now a suburb of Vienna. It returned an hour or so later with a lady, the lovely Countess Maria Walewska, Napoleon's so-called "Polish Wife".

Eagles on the Danube Part 1