Book: History of Modern Europe 1792 1878

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[Campaign of Archduke Charles in Bavaria.]

The operations of the Austrian commanders upon the Inn formed a melancholy
contrast to the activity of the mountaineers. In spite of the delay of
three weeks in opening the campaign, Davoust had still not effected his
junction with the French troops in Southern Bavaria, and a rapid movement
of the Austrians might even now have overwhelmed his isolated divisions at
Ratisbon. Napoleon himself had remained in Paris till the last moment,
instructing Berthier, the chief of the staff, to concentrate the vanguard
at Ratisbon, if by the 15th of April the enemy had not crossed the Inn, but
to draw back to the line of the Lech if the enemy crossed the Inn before
that day. [158] The Archduke entered Bavaria on the 9th; but, instead of
retiring to the Lech, Berthier allowed the army to be scattered over an
area sixty miles broad, from Ratisbon to points above Augsburg. Davoust lay
at Ratisbon, a certain prey if the Archduke pushed forwards with vigour and
thrust his army between the northern and the southern positions of the
French. But nothing could change the sluggishness of the Austrian march.
The Archduke was six days in moving from the Inn to the Isar; and before
the order was given for an advance upon Ratisbon, Napoleon himself had
arrived at Donauwoerth, and taken the command out of the hands of his feeble
lieutenant.

[Napoleon restores superiority of French, April 18, 19.]

It needed all the Emperor's energy to snatch victory from the enemy's
grasp. Davoust was bidden to fall back from Ratisbon to Neustadt; the most
pressing orders were sent to Massena, who commanded the right at Augsburg,
to push forward to the north-east in the direction of his colleague, before
the Austrians could throw the mass of their forces upon Davoust's weak
corps. Both generals understood the urgency of the command. Davoust set out
from Ratisbon on the morning of the 19th. He was attacked by the Archduke,
but so feebly and irresolutely that, with all their superiority in numbers,
the Austrians failed to overpower the enemy at any one point. Massena,
immediately after receiving his orders, hurried from Augsburg
north-eastwards, while Napoleon himself advanced into the mid-space between
the two generals, and brought the right and left wings of the French army
into communication with one another. In two days after the Emperor's
arrival all the advantages of the Austrians were gone: the French, so
lately exposed to destruction, formed a concentrated mass in the presence
of a scattered enemy. The issue of the campaign was decided by the
movements of these two days. Napoleon was again at the head of 150,000 men;
the Archduke, already baulked in his first attack upon Davoust, was seized
with unworthy terror when he found that Napoleon himself was before him,
and resigned himself to anticipations of ruin.

[Austrian defeats at Landshut and Eggmuehl, April 22.]

[French enter Vienna, May 13.]

A series of manoeuvres and engagements in the finest style of Napoleonic
warfare filled the next three days with French victories and Austrian
disasters. On April the 20th the long line of the Archduke's army was cut
in halves by an attack at Abensberg. The left was driven across the Isar at
Landshut; the right, commanded by the Archduke himself, was overpowered at
Eggmuehl on the 22nd, and forced northwards. The unbroken mass of the French
army now thrust itself between the two defeated wings of the enemy. The
only road remaining open to the Archduke was that through Ratisbon to the
north of the Danube. In five days, although no engagement of the first
order had taken place between the French and Austrian armies, Charles had
lost 60,000 men; the mass of his army was retreating into Bohemia, and the
road to Vienna lay scarcely less open than after Mack's capitulation at Ulm
four years before. A desperate battle fought against the advancing French
at Edelsberg by the weak divisions that had remained on the south of the
Danube, proved that the disasters of the campaign were due to the faults of
the general, not to the men whom he commanded. But whatever hopes of
ultimate success might still be based on the gallant temper of the army, it
was impossible to prevent the fall of the capital. The French, leaving the
Archduke on the north of the Danube, pressed forwards along the direct
route from the Inn to Vienna. The capital was bombarded and occupied. On
the 13th of May Napoleon again took up his quarters in the palace of the
Austrian monarchs where he had signed the Peace of 1806. The divisions
which had fallen back before him along the southern road crossed the Danube
at Vienna, and joined the Archduke on the bank of the river opposite the
capital.

[Attempts of Doernberg and Schill in Northern Germany, April, 1809.]

The disasters of the Bavarian campaign involved the sacrifice of all that
had resulted from Austrian victories elsewhere, and of all that might have
been won by a general insurrection in Northern Germany. In Poland and in
Italy the war had opened favourably for Austria. Warsaw had been seized;
Eugene Beauharnais, the Viceroy of Italy, had been defeated by the Archduke
John at Sacile, in Venetia; but it was impossible to pursue these
advantages when the capital itself was on the point of falling into the
hands of the enemy. The invading armies halted, and ere long the Archduke
John commenced his retreat into the mountains. In Northern Germany no
popular uprising could be expected when once Austria had been defeated. The
only movements that took place were undertaken by soldiers, and undertaken
before the disasters in Bavaria became known. The leaders in this military
conspiracy were Doernberg, an officer in the service of King Jerome of
Westphalia, and Schill, the Prussian cavalry leader who had so brilliantly
distinguished himself in the defence of Colberg. Doernberg had taken service
under Jerome with the design of raising Jerome's own army against him. It
had been agreed by the conspirators that at the same moment Doernberg should
raise the Hessian standard in Westphalia, and Schill, marching from Berlin
with any part of the Prussian army that would follow him, should proclaim
war against the French in defiance of the Prussian Government. Doernberg had
made sure of the support of his own regiment; but at the last moment the
plot was discovered, and he was transferred to the command of a body of men
upon whom he could not rely. He placed himself at the head of a band of
peasants, and raised the standard of insurrection. King Jerome's troops met
the solicitations of their countrymen with a volley of bullets. Doernberg
fled for his life; and the revolt ended on the day after it had begun
(April 23). Schill, unconscious of Doernberg's ruin, and deceived by reports
of Austrian victories upon the Danube, led out his regiment from Berlin as
if for a day's manoeuvring, and then summoned his men to follow him in
raising a national insurrection against Napoleon. The soldiers answered
Schill's eloquent words with shouts of applause; the march was continued
westwards, and Schill crossed the Elbe, intending to fall upon the
communications of Napoleon's army, already, as he believed, staggering
under the blows delivered by the Archduke in the valley of the Danube.

[Schill at Stralsund, May 23.]

On reaching Halle, Schill learnt of the overthrow of the Archduke and of
Doernberg's ruin in Westphalia. All hope of success in the enterprise on
which he had quitted Berlin was dashed to the ground. The possibility of
raising a popular insurrection vanished. Schill, however, had gone too far
to recede; and even now it was not too late to join the armies of
Napoleon's enemies. Schill might move into Bohemia, or to some point on the
northern coast where he would be within reach of English vessels. But in
any case quick and steady decision was necessary; and this Schill could not
attain. Though brave even to recklessness, and gifted with qualities which
made him the idol of the public, Schill lacked the disinterestedness and
self-mastery which calm the judgment in time of trial. The sudden ruin of
his hopes left him without a plan. He wasted day after day in purposeless
marches, while the enemy collected a force to overwhelm him. His influence
over his men became impaired; the denunciations of the Prussian Government
prevented other soldiers from joining him. At length Schill determined to
recross the Elbe, and to throw himself into the coast town of Stralsund, in
Swedish Pomerania. He marched through Mecklenburg, and suddenly appeared
before Stralsund at moment when the French cannoneers in garrison were
firing a salvo in honour of Napoleon's entry into Vienna. A hand-to-hand
fight gave Schill possession of the town, with all its stores. For a moment
it seemed as if Stralsund might become a second Saragossa; but the French
were at hand before it was possible to create works of defence. Schill had
but eighteen hundred men, half of whom were cavalry; he understood nothing
of military science, and would listen to no counsels. A week after his
entry into Stralsund the town was stormed by a force four times more
numerous than its defenders. Capitulation was no word for the man who had
dared to make a private war upon Napoleon; Schill could only set the
example of an heroic death. [159] The officers who were not so fortunate as
to fall with their leader were shot in cold blood, after trial by a French
court-martial. Six hundred common soldiers who surrendered were sent to the
galleys of Toulon to sicken among French thieves and murderers. The cruelty
of the conqueror, the heroism of the conquered, gave to Schill's
ill-planned venture the importance of a great act of patriotic martyrdom.
Another example had been given of self-sacrifice in the just cause.
Schill's faults were forgotten; his memory deepened the passion with which
all the braver spirits of Germany now looked for the day of reckoning with
their oppressor. [160]

[Napoleon crosses the Danube, May 20.]

[Battle of Aspern, May 21, 22.]

Napoleon had finished the first act of the war of 1809 by the occupation of
Vienna; but no peace was possible until the Austrian army, which lay upon
the opposite bank of the river, had been attacked and beaten. Four miles
below Vienna the Danube is divided into two streams by the island of Lobau:
the southern stream is the main channel of the river, the northern is only
a hundred and fifty yards broad. It was here that Napoleon determined to
make the passage. The broad arm of the Danube, sheltered by the island from
the enemy's fire, was easily bridged by boats; the passage from the island
to the northern bank, though liable to be disputed by the Austrians, was
facilitated by the narrowing of the stream. On the 18th of May, Napoleon,
supposing himself to have made good the connection between the island and
the southern bank, began to bridge the northern arm of the river. His
movements were observed by the enemy, but no opposition was offered. On the
20th a body of 40,000 French crossed to the northern bank, and occupied the
villages of Aspern and Essling. This was the movement for which the
Archduke Charles, who had now 80,000 men under arms, had been waiting.
Early on the 21st a mass of heavily-laden barges was let loose by the
Austrians above the island. The waters of the Danube were swollen by the
melting of the snows, and at midday the bridges of the French over the
broad arm of the river were swept away. A little later, dense Austrian
columns were seen advancing upon the villages of Aspern and Essling, where
the French, cut off from their supports, had to meet an overpowering enemy
in front, with an impassable river in their rear. The attack began at four
in the afternoon; when night fell the French had been driven out of Aspern,
though they still held the Austrians at bay in their other position at
Essling. During the night the long bridges were repaired; forty thousand
additional troops moved across the island to the northern bank of the
Danube; and the engagement was renewed, now between equal numbers, on the
following morning. Five times the village of Aspern was lost and won. In
the midst of the struggle the long bridges were again carried away. Unable
to break the enemy, unable to bring up any new forces from Vienna, Napoleon
ordered a retreat. The army was slowly withdrawn into the island of Lobau.
There for the next two days it lay without food and without ammunition,
severed from Vienna, and exposed to certain destruction if the Archduke
could have thrown his army across the narrow arm of the river and renewed
the engagement. But the Austrians were in no condition to follow up their
victory. Their losses were enormous; their stores were exhausted. The
moments in which a single stroke might have overthrown the whole fabric of
Napoleon's power were spent in forced inaction. By the third day after the
battle of Aspern the communications between the island and the mainland
were restored, and Napoleon's energy had brought the army out of immediate
danger.

[Effect on Europe.]

[Brunswick invades Saxony.]

Nevertheless, although the worst was averted, and the French now lay secure
in their island fortress, the defeat of Aspern changed the position of
Napoleon in the eyes of all Europe. The belief in his invincibility was
destroyed; he had suffered a defeat in person, at the head of his finest
troops, from an enemy little superior in strength to himself. The disasters
of the Austrians in the opening of the campaign were forgotten; everywhere
the hopes of resistance woke into new life. Prussian statesmen urged their
King to promise his support if Austria should gain one more victory. Other
enemies were ready to fall upon Napoleon without waiting for this
condition. England collected an immense armament destined for an attack
upon some point of the northern coast. Germany, lately mute and nerveless,
gave threatening signs. The Duke of Brunswick, driven from his inheritance
after his father's death at Jena, invaded the dominions of Napoleon's
vassal, the King of Saxony, and expelled him from his capital. Popular
insurrections broke out in Wuertemberg and in Westphalia, and proved the
rising force of national feeling even in districts where the cause of
Germany lately seemed so hopelessly lost.

[Napoleon's preparations for the second passage of the Danube, June.]

[French cross the Danube, July 4.]

But Napoleon concerned himself little with these remoter enemies. Every
energy of his mind was bent to the one great issue on which victory
depended, the passage of the Danube. His chances of success were still
good, if the French troops watching the enemy between Vienna and the
Adriatic could be brought up in time for the final struggle. The Archduke
Charles was in no hurry for a battle, believing that every hour increased
the probability of an attack upon Napoleon by England or Prussia, or
insurgent Germany. Never was the difference between Napoleon and his ablest
adversaries more strikingly displayed than in the work which was
accomplished by him during this same interval. He had determined that in
the next battle his army should march across the Danube as safely and as
rapidly as it could march along the streets of Vienna. Two solid bridges
were built on piles across the broad arm of the river; no less than six
bridges of rafts were made ready to be thrown across the narrow arm when
the moment arrived for the attack. By the end of June all the outlying
divisions of the French army had gathered to the great rallying-point; a
hundred and eighty thousand men were in the island, or ready to enter it;
every movement, every position to be occupied by each member of this vast
mass in its passage and advance, was fixed down to the minutest details.
Napoleon had decided to cross from the eastern, not from the northern side
of the island, and thus to pass outside the fortifications which the
Archduke had erected on the former battlefield. Towards midnight on the 4th
of July, in the midst of a violent storm, the six bridges were successively
swung across the river. The artillery opened fire. One army corps after
another, each drawn up opposite to its own bridge, marched to the northern
shore, and by sunrise nearly the whole of Napoleon's force deployed on the
left bank of the Danube. The river had been converted into a great highway;
the fortifications which had been erected by the Archduke were turned by
the eastward direction of the passage. All that remained for the Austrian
commander was to fight a pitched battle on ground that was now at least
thoroughly familiar to him. Charles had taken up a good position on the
hills that look over the village of Wagram. Here, with 130,000 men, he
awaited the attack of the French. The first attack was made in the
afternoon after the crossing of the river. It failed; and the French army
lay stretched during the night between the river and the hills, while the
Archduke prepared to descend upon their left on the morrow, and to force
himself between the enemy and the bridges behind them.

[Battle of Wagram, July 5, 6.]

[Armistice of Zuaim, July 12.]

Early on the morning of the 6th the two largest armies that had ever been
brought face to face in Europe began their onslaught. Spectators from the
steeples of Vienna saw the fire of the French little by little receding on
their left, and dense masses of the Austrians pressing on towards the
bridges, on whose safety the existence of the French army depended. But ere
long the forward movement stopped. Napoleon had thrown an overpowering
force against the Austrian centre, and the Archduke found himself compelled
to recall his victorious divisions and defend his own threatened line.
Gradually the superior numbers of the French forced the enemy back. The
Archduke John, who had been ordered up from Presburg, failed to appear on
the field; and at two o'clock Charles ordered a retreat. The order of the
Austrians was unbroken; they had captured more prisoners than they had
lost; their retreat was covered by so powerful an artillery that the French
could make no pursuit. The victory was no doubt Napoleon's, but it was a
victory that had nothing in common with Jena and Austerlitz. Nothing was
lost by the Austrians at Wagram but their positions and the reputation of
their general. The army was still in fighting-order, with the fortresses of
Bohemia behind it. Whether Austria would continue the war depended on the
action of the other European Powers. If Great Britain successfully landed
an armament in Northern Germany or dealt any overwhelming blow in Spain, if
Prussia declared war on Napoleon, Austria might fight on. If the other
Powers failed, Austria, must make peace. The armistice of Zuaim, concluded
on the 12th of July, was recognised on all sides as a mere device to gain
time. There was a pause in the great struggle in the central Continent. Its
renewal or its termination depended upon the issue of events at a distance.

[Wellesley invades Spain, June, 1809.]

[Talavera, July 27.]

[Wellesley retreats to Portugal.]

For the moment the eyes of all Europe were fixed upon the British army in
Spain. Sir Arthur Wellesley, who took command at Lisbon in the spring, had
driven Soult out of Oporto, and was advancing by the valley of the Tagus
upon the Spanish capital. Some appearance of additional strength was given
to him by the support of a Spanish army under the command of General
Cuesta. Wellesley's march had, however, been delayed by the neglect and bad
faith of the Spanish Government, and time had been given to Soult to
collect a large force in the neighbourhood of Salamanca, ready either to
fall upon Wellesley from the north, or to unite with another French army
which lay at Talavera, if its commander, Victor, had the wisdom to postpone
an engagement. The English general knew nothing of Soult's presence on his
flank: he continued his march towards Madrid along the valley of the Tagus,
and finally drew up for battle at Talavera, when Victor, after retreating
before Cuesta to some distance, hunted back his Spanish pursuer to the
point from which he had started. [161] The first attack was made by Victor
upon the English positions at evening on the 27th of July. Next morning the
assault was renewed, and the battle became general. Wellesley gained a
complete victory, but the English themselves suffered heavily, and the army
remained in its position. Within the next few days Soult was discovered to
be descending from the mountains between Salamanca and the Tagus. A force
superior to Wellesley's own threatened to close upon him from the rear, and
to hem him in between two fires. The sacrifices of Talavera proved to have
been made in vain. Wellesley had no choice but to abandon his advance upon
the Spanish capital, and to fall back upon Portugal by the roads south of
the Tagus. In spite of the defeat of Victor, the French were the winners of
the campaign. Madrid was still secure; the fabric of French rule in the
Spanish Peninsula was still unshaken. The tidings of Wellesley's retreat
reached Napoleon and the Austrian negotiators, damping the hopes of
Austria, and easing Napoleon's fears. Austria's continuance of the war now
depended upon the success or failure of the long-expected descent of an
English army upon the northern coast of Europe.

Three months before the Austrian Government declared war upon Napoleon, it
had acquainted Great Britain with its own plans, and urged the Cabinet to
dispatch an English force to Northern Germany. Such a force, landing at the
time of the battle of Aspern, would certainly have aroused both Prussia and
the country between the Elbe and the Maine. But the difference between a
movement executed in time and one executed weeks and months too late was
still unknown at the English War Office. The Ministry did not even begin
their preparations till the middle of June, and then they determined, in
pursuance of a plan made some years earlier, to attack the French fleet and
docks at Antwerp, and to ignore that patriotic movement in Northern Germany
from which they had so much to hope.

[British Expedition against Antwerp, July, 1809.]

[Total failure.]

On the 28th of July, two months after the battle of Aspern and three weeks
after the battle of Wagram, a fleet of thirty-seven ships of the line, with
innumerable transports and gunboats, set sail from Dover for the Schelde.
Forty thousand troops were on board; the commander of the expedition was
the Earl of Chatham, a court-favourite in whom Nature avenged herself upon
Great Britain for what she had given to this country in his father and his
younger brother. The troops were landed on the island of Walcheren. Instead
of pushing forward to Antwerp with all possible haste, and surprising it
before any preparations could be made for its defence, Lord Chatham placed
half his army on the banks of various canals, and with the other half
proceeded to invest Flushing. On the 16th of August this unfortunate town
surrendered, after a bombardment that had reduced it to a mass of ruins.
During the next ten days the English commander advanced about as many
miles, and then discovered that for all prospect of taking Antwerp he might
as well have remained in England. Whilst Chatham was groping about in
Walcheren, the fortifications of Antwerp were restored, the fleet carried
up the river, and a mass of troops collected sufficient to defend the town
against a regular siege. Defeat stared the English in the face. At the end
of August the general recommended the Government to recall the expedition,
only leaving a force of 15,000 soldiers to occupy the marshes of Walcheren.
Chatham's recommendations were accepted; and on a spot so notoriously
pestiferous that Napoleon had refused to permit a single French soldier to
serve there on garrison duty, [162] an English army-corps, which might at
least have earned the same honour as Schill and Brunswick in Northern
Germany, was left to perish of fever and ague. When two thousand soldiers
were in their graves, the rest were recalled to England.

[Austria makes peace.]

Great Britain had failed to weaken or to alarm Napoleon; the King of
Prussia made no movement on behalf of the losing cause; and the Austrian
Government unwillingly found itself compelled to accept conditions of
peace. It was not so much a deficiency in its forces as the universal
distrust of its generals that made it impossible for Austria to continue
the war. The soldiers had fought as bravely as the French, but in vain. "If
we had a million soldiers," it was said, "we must make peace; for we have
no one to command them." Count Stadion, who was for carrying on the war to
the bitter end, despaired of throwing his own energetic courage into the
men who surrounded the Emperor, and withdrew from public affairs. For week
after week the Emperor fluctuated between the acceptance of Napoleon's hard
conditions and the renewal of a struggle which was likely to involve his
own dethronement as well as the total conquest of the Austrian State. At
length Napoleon's demands were presented in the form of an ultimatum. In
his distress the Emperor's thoughts turned towards the Minister who, eight
years before, had been so strong, so resolute, when all around him wavered.
Thugut, now seventy-six years old, was living in retirement. The Emperor
sent one of his generals to ask his opinion on peace or war. "I thought to
find him," reported the general, "broken in mind and body; but the fire of
his spirit is in its full force." Thugut's reply did honour to his
foresight: "Make peace at any price. The existence of the Austrian monarchy
is at stake: the dissolution of the French Empire is not far off." On the
14th of October the Emperor Francis accepted his conqueror's terms, and
signed conditions of peace. [163]

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