The War of Wars (94 page)

Charles’s new plan of battle was for skirmishers to advance with the regular infantry in line behind them, to quicken the pace at 150 yards, to deliver a volley at sixty paces, and then to charge with fixed bayonets. The Austrians were unusual in starting their charges at
such distances, which meant that the soldiers would have more ground to cover, would be exposed to enemy fire longer, might get out of breath and would become vulnerable to a counter-charge. The British, in particular, would wait until the enemy was much closer. The Austrian motive may have been fear that their conscripted ranks of eastern Europeans would break if they got too close to enemy fire.

Charles also introduced nine corps in imitation of the French flexible and decentralized model. But the commanders-in-chief still tended to centralize overall control – as indeed did the more skilful Napoleon, increasingly so to his detriment in later years – and the Austrian corps commanders, accustomed by training to obey their orders, were lacking in initiative, so the corps were not used with the same flair and flexibility as the French.

Charles refused initially to abandon the Austrian practice of attacking in line. Wellesley was already showing in the Peninsula that traditional line formations against French attack could be effective in defence, and the Austrians remained to be convinced by the imaginative French models of attacking in columns, or mixed line and columns, or massed attack. But Austrian line attacks against Napoleon had failed in the past and were to do so again. However Charles did experiment at Essling with keeping his rearguard in columns, where they very effectively repelled French cavalry attacks. The same thing happened at Wagram, so Charles became committed to the use of columns behind the front lines.

The Austrians also began, at last, to realize the value of artillery packed together in strength. Napoleon, as a former artillery officer, seemed to have an obsession with the concept. ‘It is with artillery alone that battles are won,’ he declared with hyperbole, a view only partially born out by his own victories.

Charles pedantically argued that ‘war is governed by immutable laws . . . based on irrefutable mathematical truths’. He retained the aristocratic British-style system of promoting generals by birth and status rather than on merit. This further inhibited the independence of the corps as dull-witted staff officers refused to take the initiative. However under attack the corps system proved its worth, permitting large
Austrian forces to extricate themselves without the complexity of a movement of the whole army or authorization by the centre.

Charles also tentatively introduced a militia, the
Landwehr
, an idea he had previously opposed, drawn from all males between the ages of eighteen and forty-five in Austria and Bohemia. In theory this provided him with an additional 180,000 men to resist the French hordes. However the militia were kept to the rear, and were no match at all for the enforced conscript drives of the Napoleonic army. Napoleon had raised huge conscript armies from his subject peoples – Belgium, the west Bank of the Rhine, Savoy, Nice and Piedmont, Italy, Germany, Holland, Carolina, Westphalia and Poland. Westphalia provided 70,000 soldiers out of a total population of 2 million. Bavaria provided 110,000. The Kingdom of Italy provided 120,000 and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw some 90,000. Altogether a total of more than 700,000 subject peoples were to serve under the French at any one time or other. In addition to these subject troops, Napoleon raised some 270,000 French men by levies over fourteen years. Including the force he withdrew from Spain, and those gathered by conscription drives, Napoleon was able to put some 275,000 men in the field against Austria in 1809, a staggering total by previous standards.

While the Austrians had begun to improve their tactics in their traditionally cautious and stuffy fashion, the impact of French tactics had now begun to deteriorate from its peak. First, no longer faced by simple line formations but ones backed up by the columns now introduced by Archduke Charles, the old French tactic of manoeuvring quickly and massing at a weak spot was no longer so effective: the Austrians were able to bring up reinforcements in depth to hold off such attacks. Secondly, as the quality of the French and allied troops declined with the huge recruitment drives for raw conscripts, it became necessary to take measures to improve their morale. This was first done by dispersing artillery pieces around the units to help build up French offensives, giving the men the feeling that they were being supported. In fact concentrated artillery fire, as Napoleon well knew, was militarily much more effective.

In addition ‘cuirassier’ regiments, equipped with heavy breast plates and body armour were introduced. Highly popular with the men, as providing at least the illusion of greater protection, this armour slowed up the horses. Lancer regiments were also introduced which had the benefit of making cavalrymen feel they could strike the enemy before the enemy had a chance to strike them with their swords, but in practice the lances were unwieldy and sabres were more effective, particularly after rival cavalry formations had converged for close fighting.

Most significant of all, the French army began to lose the flexibility of operating in a mass of quasi-independent units with the objective of eventually concentrating to defeat the enemy at one particular point. Instead, again in order to improve the confidence of the soldiers, the French became wedded to attacking in might from the first to overwhelm the weak points. A soldier in a large body of troops would have much greater confidence. But these were much less manoeuvrable than the old smaller formations, and if those at the front were stopped or repulsed by the enemy, panic was liable to set in throughout the whole huge column (as was to happen at Waterloo). Massed battalions, even multiple-regiment columns were deployed.

Thus the battlefield was now to return to the bloody formality of earlier years. When great linear armies clashed, huge numbers of casualties had been inflicted along the line. When Napoleon developed his methods of movement and manoeuvre on the battlefield, punching through and staging flank attacks, these often yielded localized bloodbaths, with morale collapsing all along the line, followed by great victories and smaller casualties. With the Austrians now deploying in depth, with columns behind the lines, and the French less flexible in their tactics and attacking en masse, battles tended to revert to sanguinary slugging matches.

On 8 February Austria took the plunge and declared war. The decision to go to war was dictated by a variety of factors. In particular, a large part of the French army was bogged down in Spain and the Russian Tsar had indicated that he would not come to the help of his ally, Napoleon, although he refused to intervene on the Austrian side
either. The Austrians also believed that the Prussians were ready to join them, and that the smaller German states were ripe for insurrection against France. The British too were desperately keen for an Austrian second front, although they balked at the cost of £2.5 million outright and a further £1 million in subsidies every year demanded by Vienna.

Archduke Charles hesitated, and made no move until 9 April. He first planned to strike in a central thrust through Germany, then he decided to revert to a traditional Austrian strategic mistake – a three-pronged offensive with Archduke Frederick attacking the Grand Duchy of Warsaw in the north, Charles himself leading the main thrust through the centre and Archduke John looping down through Italy. Charles first planned to take the main route into Bohemia, then switched at the last moment to a route further south so as to protect the capital, Vienna, from a French counter-thrust; the change in route tired his men.

If Charles had struck as early as March he would have taken the French by surprise. Davout’s main Third Corps was then still travelling towards the French centre at Ratisbon in Bavaria, and Masséna’s Fourth Corps had not yet caught up with him. Napoleon was still back in Paris. But he had secured a breathing space of three vital weeks to get organized.

Charles issued a ringing declaration of war: ‘Comrades in arms . . . the eyes of all who maintain their sense of national honour focus on you . . . Europe seeks freedom beneath your banners. Your victories will loose her bonds . . . Your German brethren wait for salvation at your hands.’

The following day he crossed the river Inn with his main army, while John marched to Piave in Italy and Ferdinand went north. Some 12,000 troops were despatched to help the Tyrolese revolt. However the main Austrian army made slow progress and only reached Landshut after six days. From there Charles tried to cut off Davout’s smaller corps at Ratisbon – which he certainly could have done if he had been quick enough. But Napoleon, who had acted with his usual astonishing speed, taking over command from his worthy but slow-moving chief of staff Berthier, realized the danger and ordered Davout to join up with Lefebvre east of Ingolstadt to the west of Ratisbon.

He berated his approaching corps commanders, Masséna, Lannes and Oudinot, to hurry. He ordered Lannes and Masséna to attack in the south; they pushed back the Austrian left wing. Realizing that the bulk of Charles’s army was pressing up against Oudinot in the north, Napoleon ordered Masséna and Lannes’s 40,000 men to attack his southern flank. A succession of small engagements left Charles’s army reeling at Thann, Abensberg, Landshut and Eckmehl. When the French pushed forward to Ratisbon, they found their path blocked by Charles’s rearguard.

In that action Napoleon was for the first time lightly wounded by a cannonball in the foot. This was highly symbolic for Europeans as well as himself: it suggested that the Emperor was, after all, a mere mortal. To Josephine he wrote: ‘Dear friend: I have received your letter. The bullet that struck me did not wound me; it just grazed the tendon of Achilles. My health is excellent and there is no cause for worry. My affairs are going well.’ Charles was able to escape with his armies intact across the Danube, burning all the bridges for several miles. Napoleon had shown uncharacteristic slowness in dealing a quick knockout blow, although he managed to seize the main road to Vienna.

In northern Italy the competent French commander, Napoleon’s stepson and Viceroy of Italy, Eugène de Beauharnais, had suffered an unexpected defeat, although commanding a superior force. Napoleon scolded him:

war is a serious business in which one risks one’s own reputation and that of one’s country; a reasonable man should examine himself and decide whether or no he is fitted for it. I know that in Italy you affect a great contempt of Masséna. Yet he has military talents to which we may well doff our hats; we must forget his foibles; every man has some. I made a mistake in giving you the command of the army; I should have placed you under Masséna in command of the cavalry. Kings of France, even reigning Emperors, have often enough commanded a regiment, or a division under the orders of an old Marshal.

However, news of the setback to Charles in the north compelled John to withdraw from the Adige to the Piave and then up to Austria, while Archduke Ferdinand had also had to fall back from Warsaw. Charles meanwhile had withdrawn north-east to Bohemia, while Napoleon pressed on towards Vienna on the south side of the Danube.

Napoleon entered Vienna for the second time on 10 May, returning to his bedroom in the Schönbrunn Palace: the Austrian garrison had evacuated the city once again. But this time there was real resistance to the French: the citadel held out for four days and the French had to fire warning cannon into it, threatening to raze it in a total bombardment. One cannonball fell next to the home of the elderly composer Joseph Haydn, the shock of which helped to hasten his death three weeks later.

All four bridges across the Danube had been destroyed by the retreating Austrians. They had amassed some 115,000 troops on the opposite bank. Napoleon’s forces were down to 82,000 men. However he was determined to crush the Austrians this time. As they had no intention of exposing themselves by recrossing the Danube to liberate Vienna, he ordered the flooded river to be crossed through the erection of pontoons a few miles downstream to Lobau Island. From there he wrote: ‘The nearest villages are Aspern, Essling, and Enzersdorf. To cross a river like the Danube in the presence of an enemy knowing the ground thoroughly, and having the sympathies of the inhabitants, is one of the most difficult military operations conceivable.’ Nine rafts and sixty-eight pontoons were floated, the final link being some seventy-five feet long. Masséna and his corps crossed rapidly and took the villages of Aspern and Essling. Soon some 25,000 men had crossed.

But the floodwaters rose, while the Austrians floated heavy timbers downstream which broke the pontoon in two places, preventing further reinforcement. Masséna’s men were cut off. On 21 May
Charles arrived in force with 100,000 men and 250 guns and in fierce fighting succeeded in driving the French out of the two villages. The French across the river were now in desperate straits thanks to Napoleon’s rashness: with both retreat and reinforcements potentially cut off and their backs to the river against a vastly superior army, it seemed that Lannes and Masséna risked annihilation or capture.

As they worked feverishly to repair the pontoon bridges on the night of the 21st, reinforcements were at last able to arrive and the French strength rose to some 50,000 infantry, 12,000 cavalry and 144 guns; Charles had missed his chance to attack in devastating force. The French regained control of part of Essling and then of Aspern in desperate hand-to-hand streetfighting.

Napoleon now ordered one of his classic concentrated attacks on the Austrian centre, and Lannes threw them on to the defensive until the Archduke Charles arrived in person to rally his troops. The Bridge had been wrecked again, and Napoleon realistically ordered a retreat to the two villages to draw up defensive positions. The Austrians attacked and retook Essling before the Imperial Guard managed to take it. With the fighting having seesawed and the villages changed hands so often, and the bridge once again damaged, Napoleon had had enough. He ordered an evacuation from the two villages to the island of Lobau in the Danube’s midstream. Charles called off his men and ordered a bombardment of Napoleon’s forces marooned on the island in the middle of the river. As they rested, a cannonball took Lannes’s legs off. It was the agonizing end of one of Napoleon’s most skilled and principled marshals.