Chapter 26

Austria declares War--Napoleon heads his army in Germany--Battles of Landshut and Eckmuhl--Ratisbonne taken--Napoleon in Vienna--Hostilities in Italy, Hungary, Poland, the North of Germany, and the Tyrol--Battle of Raab--Battle of Wagram--Armistice with Austria.... Progress of the War in the Peninsula, Battle of Talaveyra--Battle of Ocana--English Expedition to Walcheren.... Seizure of Rome and arrest of the Pope.... Treaty of Schoenbrunn.

Napoleon had foreseen that Austria, hardly dissembling her aversion to the "continental system," and openly refusing to acknowledge Joseph as King of Spain, would avail herself of the insurrection of that country, necessarily followed by the march of a great French army across the Pyrenees, as affording a favourable opportunity for once more taking arms, in the hope of recovering what she had lost in the campaign of Austerlitz. His minister, Talleyrand, had, during his absence, made every effort to conciliate the Emperor Francis; but the warlike preparations throughout the Austrian dominions proceeded with increasing vigour--and Napoleon received such intelligence ere he witnessed the retreat of Moore, that he immediately countermanded the march of such of his troops as had not yet reached the Pyrenees,--wrote (from Valladolid) to the princes of the Rhenish league, ordering them to hold their contingents in readiness--and travelled to Paris with extraordinary haste. He reached his capital on the 22nd of January; renewed the negotiations with Vienna; and, in the meantime, recruited and concentrated his armies on the German side--thus adjourning, and as it turned out for ever, the completion of the Spanish conquest.

On the 6th of April, Austria declared war; and on the 9th, the Archduke Charles, Generalissimo of armies which are said to have been recruited, at this period, to the amount of nearly 500,000 men, crossed the Inn at the head of six corps, each consisting of 30,000; while the Archduke John marched with two other divisions towards Italy, by the way of Carinthia; and the Archduke Ferdinand assumed the command of a ninth corps in Galicia, to make head against Russia, in case that power should be forced or tempted by Napoleon to take part in the struggle. Napoleon, having so great an army in Spain, could not hope to oppose numbers such as these to the Austrians; but he trusted to the rapid combinations which had so often enabled him to baffle the same enemy; and the instant he ascertained that Bavaria was invaded by the Archduke Charles, he proceeded, without guards, without equipage, accompanied solely by the faithful Josephine, to Frankfort, and thence to Strasbourg. He assumed the command on the 13th, and immediately formed the plan of his campaign.

He found the two wings of his army, the one under Massena, the other under Davoust, at such a distance from the centre that, if the Austrians had seized the opportunity, the consequences might have been fatal. On the 17th of April, he commanded Davoust and Massena to march simultaneously towards a position in front, and then pushed forward the centre, in person, to the same point. The Archduke Lewis, who commanded two Austrian divisions in advance, was thus hemmed in unexpectedly by three armies, moving at once from three different points; defeated and driven back, at Abensberg, on the 20th; and utterly routed, at Landshut, on the 21st. Here the Archduke lost 9000 men, thirty guns, and all his stores.

Next day Buonaparte executed a variety of movements, considered as among the most admirable displays of his science, by means of which he brought his whole force, by different routes, at one and the same moment upon the position of the Archduke Charles. That prince was strongly posted at Eckmuhl, with full 100,000 men. Napoleon charged him at two in the afternoon; the battle was stern and lasted till nightfall, but it ended in a complete overthrow. The Austrians, besides their loss in the field, left in Napoleon's hands 20,000 prisoners, fifteen colours, and the greater part of their artillery; and retreated in utter disorder upon Ratisbonne. The Archduke made an attempt to rally his troops and defend that city, on the 23rd; but the French stormed the walls and drove the Austrians through the streets: and their general immediately retreated into Bohemia: thus; in effect, abandoning Vienna to the mercy of his conqueror.

Napoleon was wounded in the foot during the storming of Ratisbonne, and for a moment the troops crowded round him in great alarm; but he scarcely waited to have his wound dressed, threw himself again on horseback, and restored confidence by riding along the lines.

Thus, in five days, in spite of inferiority of numbers, and of the unfavourable manner in which his lieutenants had distributed an inferior force, by the sole energy of his genius did the Emperor triumph over the main force of his opponent.

He reviewed his army on the 24th, distributing rewards of all sorts with a lavish hand, and, among others, bestowing the title of Duke of Eckmuhl on Davoust; and forthwith commenced his march upon Vienna. The corps defeated at Landshut had retreated in that direction, and being considerably recruited, made some show of obstructing his progress; but they were defeated again and totally broken at Ehrensberg, on the 3rd of May, by Massena, and on the 9th Napoleon appeared before the walls of the capital. The Emperor had already quitted it, with all his family, except his daughter, the Archduchess Maria Louisa, who was confined to her chamber by illness. The Archduke Maximilian, with the regular garrison of 10,000 men, evacuated it on Napoleon's approach; and though the inhabitants had prepared for a vigorous resistance, the bombardment soon convinced them that it was hopeless. It perhaps deserves to be mentioned, that on learning the situation of the sick princess, Buonaparte instantly commanded that no fire should be directed towards that part of the town. On the 10th a capitulation was signed, the French troops took possession of the city, and Napoleon once more established his headquarters in the imperial palace of Schoenbrunn.

In the meantime, the Archduke Ferdinand had commenced the war in Poland, and obtaining the advantage in several affairs, taken possession of Warsaw; but the news of Eckmuhl recalled this division to the support of the main army, under the Archduke Charles; and the Russian troops not only retook Warsaw, but occupied the whole of the Austro-Polish provinces. Alexander, however, showed no disposition to push the war with vigour, or to advance into Germany for the support of Napoleon. In Italy, in like manner, the Archduke John had at first been successful. But after defeating Eugene Beauharnois, Napoleon's viceroy, and taking possession of Padua and Vicenza, this prince also was summoned to retrace his steps, in consequence of the catastrophe at Eckmuhl. Eugene pursued him into Hungary, and defeated him in a great battle at Raab. Colonel Schill, the Prussian partisan already mentioned, had availed himself of the concentration of Napoleon's troops for the Austrian campaign, to take up arms, though without any authority from his sovereign, in the hope that the national resentment would burst out in an universal insurrection; and the Duke of Brunswick, son to him who was mortally wounded at Jena, had also appeared in Lusatia, and invited all true Germans to imitate the heroic conduct of the Spaniards. These occurrences threatened a general burst of war wherever the _Tugend-bund_ and other patriotic associations had for some time been strongly influencing the popular mind. The battle of Eckmuhl, however, diffused new awe all over the north of Germany. The troops of Saxony checked the Duke of Brunswick's progress, and Schill's heroic band were at last shut up in Stralsund, where their leader perished in a sortie; thus, and only thus, escaping the vengeance of Napoleon.

Among the mountains of the Tyrol, the native zeal of a few hardy peasants achieved more than all the mighty population of Germany. This ancient province of the house of Austria had been, in sinful violation of all the rights of mankind, transferred to the hated yoke of Bavaria, by the treaty of Presburg. The mountaineers no sooner heard that their rightful sovereign was once more in arms against Napoleon, than they rose (early in April), under the guidance of Hofer, a gallant peasant, seized the strong passes of their country, and, in the course of four days, made every French and Bavarian soldier quartered among them a prisoner,--with the exception of the garrison of the fortress of Kufstein. Napoleon caused Lefebre to march into the country with his division; but Hofer posted his followers on the edge of precipices, from which they fired on the French columns with the skill of practised marksmen, and rolled down torrents of stones with such effect, that Lefebre was compelled to retreat. Austria, however, having enough of work at home, could not afford to sustain the efforts of these heroic peasants by any detachment of regular troops. On the retirement of Lefebre, they issued from their hills and wasted the neighbouring territory of Bavaria; but the general issue of the campaign left them at the mercy of Napoleon, who suppressed the insurrection, finally, by overwhelming numbers, and avenged it by massacring Hofer and all who had taken a prominent part in the cause of freedom.

These popular movements, however, could not be regarded with indifference by him who had witnessed and appreciated the character of the Spanish insurrection. Napoleon well knew, that unless he concluded the main contest soon, the spirit of Schill and Hofer would kindle a general flame from the Rhine to the Elbe; and he therefore desired fervently that the Austrian generalissimo might be tempted to quit the fastnesses of Bohemia, and try once more the fortune of a battle.

The Archduke, having re-established the order and recruited the numbers of his army, had anticipated these wishes of his enemy, and was already posted on the opposite bank of the Danube, which river, being greatly swollen, and all the bridges destroyed, seemed to divide the two camps, as by an impassable barrier.

Napoleon determined to pass it; and after an unsuccessful attempt at Nussdorff, met with better fortune at Ebersdorff, where the river is broad and intersected by a number of low and woody islands, the largest of which bears the name of Lobau. On these islands Napoleon established the greater part of his army, on the 19th of May, and on the following day made good his passage, by means of a bridge of boats, to the left bank of the Danube; where he took possession of the villages of Asperne and Essling, with so little show of opposition, that it became evident the Archduke wished the inevitable battle to take place with the river between his enemy and Vienna.

On the 21st, at daybreak, the Archduke appeared on a rising ground, separated from the French position by an extensive plain; his whole force divided into five heavy columns, and protected by not less than 200 pieces of artillery. The battle began at four p.m., with a furious assault on the village of Asperne; which was taken and retaken several times, and remained at nightfall in the occupation, partly of the French, and partly of the assailants, who had established themselves in the church and churchyard. Essling sustained three attacks also; but there the French remained in complete possession. Night interrupted the action; the Austrians exulting in their partial success; Napoleon surprised that he should not have been wholly victorious. On either side the carnage had been terrible, and the pathways of the villages were literally choked with the dead.

Next morning the battle recommenced with equal fury; the French recovered the church of Asperne; but the Austrian right wing renewed their assaults on that point with more and more vigour, and in such numbers, that Napoleon guessed the centre and left had been weakened for the purpose of strengthening the right. Upon this he instantly moved such masses, _en echelon_, on the Austrian centre, that the Archduke's line was shaken; and for a moment it seemed as if victory was secure.

At this critical moment, by means of Austrian fireships suddenly sent down the swollen and rapid river, the bridge connecting the island of Lobau with the right bank was wholly swept away. Buonaparte perceived that if he wished to preserve his communications with the right of the Danube, where his reserve still lay, he must instantly fall back on Lobau; and no sooner did his troops commence their backward movement, than the Austrians recovered their order and zeal, charged in turn and finally made themselves masters of Asperne. Essling, where Massena commanded, held firm, and under the protection of that village and numerous batteries erected near it, Napoleon succeeded in withdrawing his whole force during the night. On the morning of the 23rd the French were cooped up in Lobau and the adjacant islands--Asperne, Essling, the whole left bank of the river, remaining in the possession of the Austrians. On either side a great victory was claimed; and with equal injustice. But the situation of the French Emperor was imminently hazardous: he was separated from Davoust and his reserve; and had the enemy either attacked him in the islands, or passed the river higher up, and so overwhelmed Davoust and relieved Vienna, the results might have been fatal. But the Archduke's loss in these two days had been great; and, in place of risking any offensive movement, he contented himself with strengthening the position of Asperne and Essling, and awaiting quietly the moment when his enemy should choose to attempt once more the passage to the left bank, and the re-occupation of these hardly contested villages.

Napoleon availed himself of this pause with his usual skill. That he had been checked was true, and that the news would be heard with enthusiasm through Germany he well knew. It was necessary to revive the tarnished magic of his name by another decisive battle: and he made every exertion to prepare for it. Some weeks, however, elapsed ere he ventured to resume the offensive. On the 4th of July he had at last re-established thoroughly his communication with the right bank, and arranged the means of passing to the left at a point where the Archduke had made hardly any preparation for receiving him. The Austrians, having rashly calculated that Asperne and Essling must needs be the objects of the next contest as of the preceding, were taken almost unawares by his appearance in another quarter. They changed their line on the instant; and occupied a position, the centre and key of which was the little town of Wagram.

Here, on the 6th of July, the final and decisive battle was fought. The Archduke had extended his line over too wide a space; and this old error enabled Napoleon to ruin him by his old device of pouring the full shock of his strength on the centre. The action was long and bloody: at its close there remained 20,000 prisoners, besides all the artillery and baggage, in the hands of Napoleon. The Archduke fled in great confusion as far as Znaim, in Moravia. The Imperial Council perceived that further resistance was vain: an armistice was agreed to at Znaim; and Napoleon, returning to Schoenbrunn, continued occupied with the negotiation until October.

In this fierce campaign none more distinguished himself than Lannes, Duke of Montebello. At Ratisbonne he headed in person the storming party, exclaiming, "Soldiers, your general has not forgotten that he was once a grenadier." At the battle of Asperne his exertions were extraordinary. He was struck, towards the close of the day, by a cannon-shot, which carried off both his legs. The surgeons, on examining the wound, declared it mortal. He answered them with angry imprecations, and called with frantic vehemence for the Emperor. Napoleon came up, and witnessed the agonies of the dying marshal, who blasphemed heaven and earth that he should be denied to see the end of the campaign. Thus fell Lannes, whom, for his romantic valour, the French soldiery delighted to call the Roland of the camp.

The war, meanwhile, had been pursued with mixed fortune in the Peninsula. Zaragossa, after sustaining another siege with fortitude not unworthy of the first, was at length compelled to surrender in the month of February. Sir Arthur Wellesley, being restored to the command of the British army in Portugal, landed at Lisbon on the 22nd of April, and immediately marched upon Oporto, which Soult had occupied early in the year. Soult was defeated under the walls of the town, and forthwith began his retreat towards Galicia, which he effected under circumstances as miserable as had attended Sir John Moore's march on Coruna in the preceding campaign. Sir Arthur was prevented from urging the pursuit of Soult by the intelligence that Marshal Victor was laying Andalusia waste, being opposed only by Cuesta, a bigoted old general, and an army which had lost heart by repeated disasters. The English leader perceived that if he marched into Galicia, Victor must possess the means of instantly re-occupying Portugal; and resolved, in place of following Soult, to advance towards this more formidable enemy. He effected a junction with Cuesta at Oropesa, on the 20th of July, and marched along the Tagus towards the position of Victor. He, however, having a force at least double that of Wellesley, assumed the offensive, and attacked the allies, on the 28th, at Talaveyra de la Reyna. The battle ended in the total defeat and repulsion of Victor; but Wellesley found it impossible to advance further into Spain, because Ney, Soult and Mortier were assembling their divisions, with the view of coming between him and Portugal. The English retired, therefore, to Badajos, and thence to the Portuguese frontier.

On the eastern side of the Peninsula, Blake, advancing with the view of recovering Zaragossa, was met on the 19th of June by Marshal Suchet, Duke of Albufera, and totally routed. The central Spanish army, under Ariezaga, attempted, with equal ill-fortune, to relieve Madrid. King Joseph, accompanied by Soult, Victor, and Mortier, met them at Ocana on the 19th November, and broke them utterly. In December Girona surrendered to Augereau; and the intrusive King appeared to be in possession of far the greater part of Spain. But his command extended no further than the actual presence of his brother's legions. Wherever they were posted, all was submission; beyond their lines the country remained as hostile as ever. The soldiery of the defeated armies dispersed themselves in small bands, watching every opportunity to surprise detachments and cut off supplies; and, in spite of all their victories, the situation of the invaders became every hour more embarrassing. In Portugal, meanwhile, the English general (created Lord Wellington after the battle of Talaveyra) was gradually organising a native force not unworthy of acting under his banners; and on that side it was obvious that, unless Napoleon made some extraordinary exertions, the French cause was wholly undone.

Portugal was safe; and the character of the British army had been raised by another splendid victory in Spain; but these were trivial advantages compared with what Lord Wellington might have achieved, had his government placed him, as they could easily have done, at the head of an army of 80,000 or 100,000 men, while Napoleon was occupied with the campaign of Essling and Wagram. Instead of strengthening Wellington's hands in an efficient manner, the English cabinet sent 40,000 troops, under the command of the Earl of Chatham, an indolent or incompetent general, to seize the isle of Walcheren, and destroy the shipping and works at the mouth of the Scheld; nor was this ill-judged expedition despatched from Britain until the first of August, three weeks after the decisive battle of Wagram had been fought and won. Lord Chatham took Flushing, and fixed his headquarters at Middleburg; but Bernadotte (Prince of Ponte Corvo) put Antwerp into such a state of defence that the plan of besieging that city was, ere long, abandoned. A pestilence, meantime, raged among the marches of Walcheren; the English soldiers were dying by thousands. The news of the armistice of Znaim arrived; and Lord Chatham abandoned his conquests. A mere skeleton of his army returned to their own country, from the most disastrous expedition which England had undertaken since that of Carthagena, seventy years before.

The announcement of the armistice with Austria put an end, in effect, to all hostile demonstrations on the continent, the Peninsula alone excepted. The brave Schill (as has already been said) was happy enough to fall in the field: his followers, being at last compelled to surrender at Stralsund, were treated as rebels, and died with the constancy of patriots. The Duke of Brunswick, who had by this time obtained considerable successes in Franconia, found himself abandoned, in like manner, to the undivided strength of Napoleon. At the head of a few regiments, whose black uniform announced their devotion to the one purpose of avenging their former sovereign, the Duke succeeded in cutting his way to the Baltic, where some English vessels received him. Germany, in apparent tranquillity, awaited the result of the negotiations of Vienna.

Napoleon, a few days after he returned from Moravia to Schoenbrunn, escaped narrowly the dagger of a young man, who rushed upon him in the midst of all his staff, at a grand review of the Imperial Guard. Berthier and Rapp threw themselves upon him, and disarmed him at the moment when his knife was about to enter the Emperor's body. Napoleon demanded what motive had actuated the assassin. "What injury," said he, "have I done to you?" "To me, personally, none," answered the youth, "but you are the oppressor of my country, the tyrant of the world; and to have put you to death would have been the highest glory of a man of honour." This enthusiastic youth, by name Stabbs, son of a clergyman of Erfurt, was, justly--no doubt--condemned to death, and he suffered with the calmness of a martyr.

Buonaparte led at Schoenbrunn nearly the same course of life to which he was accustomed at the Tuileries; seldom appearing in public; occupied incessantly with his ministers and generals. The length to which the negotiations with Austria were protracted excited much wonder; but he had other business on hand besides his treaty with the Emperor Francis, and that treaty had taken a very unexpected shape.

It was during his residence at Schoenbrunn that a quarrel, of no short standing, with the Pope reached its crisis. The very language of the Consular Concordat sufficiently indicated the reluctance and pain with which the head of the Romish church acquiesced in the arrangements devised by Buonaparte, for the ecclesiastical settlement of France; and the subsequent course of events, but especially in Italy and in Spain, could hardly fail to aggravate those unpleasant feelings. In Spain and in Portugal, the resistance to French treachery and violence was mainly conducted by the priesthood; and the Pope could not contemplate their exertions without sympathy and favour. In Italy, meantime, the French Emperor had made himself master of Naples, and of all the territories lying to the north of the papal states; in a word, the whole of the peninsula was his, excepting only that, narrow central stripe which still acknowledged the temporal sovereignty of the Roman Pontiff. This state of things was necessarily followed by incessant efforts on the part of Napoleon to procure from the Pope a hearty acquiescence in the system of the Berlin and Milan decrees; and thus far he at length prevailed. But when he went on to demand that his holiness should take an active part in the war against England, he was met by a steady refusal. Irritated by this opposition, and, perhaps, still more by his suspicion that the patriots of the Spanish Peninsula received secret support from the Vatican, Buonaparte did not hesitate to issue a decree in the following words: "Whereas the temporal sovereign of Rome has refused to make war against England, and the interests of the two kingdoms of Italy and Naples ought not to be intercepted by a hostile power; and whereas the donation of Charlemagne, _our illustrious predecessor_, of the countries which form the Holy See, was for the good of _Christianity_, and not for that of the _enemies of our holy religion_, we, therefore, decree that the duchies of Urbino, Ancona, Macerata, and Camarino, be for ever united to the kingdom of Italy."

The seaports of the papal territory were forthwith occupied by French troops, but Pius remained for some time in undisturbed possession of Rome itself. On his return from Spain, however, Napoleon determined to complete his work in Italy, ere he should begin the inevitable campaign with Austria. General Miollis, therefore, took military possession of Rome in February, 1809; the Pope, however, still remaining in the Vatican, and attended there as usual by his own guards.

On the 17th of May, Napoleon issued, from Vienna, his final decree declaring the temporal sovereignty of the Pope to be wholly at an end, incorporating Rome with the French empire, and declaring it to be _his_ second city; settling a pension on the holy father in his spiritual capacity--and appointing a committee of administration for the civil government of Rome. The Pope, on receiving the Parisian senatus-consultum, ratifying this imperial rescript, instantly fulminated a bull of excommunication against Napoleon. Shortly after some unauthentic news from Germany inspired new hopes into the adherents of the Pontiff; and, disturbances breaking out, Miollis, on pretence that a life sacred in the eyes of all Christians might be endangered, arrested Pius in his palace at midnight, and forthwith despatched him under a strong escort to Savona.

The intelligence of this decisive step reached Napoleon soon after the battle of Wagram, and he was inclined to disapprove of the conduct of Miollis as too precipitate. It was now, however, impossible to recede; the Pope was ordered to be conveyed across the Alps to Grenoble. But his reception there was more reverential than Napoleon had anticipated, and he was soon reconducted to Savona.

This business would, in any other period, have been sufficient to set all Catholic Europe in a flame; and even now Buonaparte well knew that his conduct could not fail to nourish and support the feelings arrayed against him openly in Spain and in Southern Germany, and suppressed, not extinguished, in the breasts of a great party of the French clergy at home. He made, therefore, many efforts to procure from the Pope some formal relinquishment of his temporal claims--but Pius VII. remained unshaken; and the negotiation at length terminated in the removal of His Holiness to Fontainebleau, where he continued a prisoner, though treated personally with respect, and even magnificence, during more than three years:--until, in the general darkening of his own fortunes, the imperial jailer was compelled to adopt another line of conduct.

The treaty with Austria was at last signed at Schoenbrunn on the 14th of October. The Emperor Francis purchased peace by the cession of Salzburg, and a part of Upper Austria, to the Confederation of the Rhine; of part of Bohemia to the King of Saxony, and of Cracow and western Galicia to the same Prince, as Grand Duke of Warsaw; of part of eastern Galicia to the Czar; and to France herself, of Trieste, Carniola, Fruili, Villach, and some part of Croatia and Dalmatia. By this act, Austria gave up in all territory to the amount of 45,000 square miles, with a population of nearly four millions; and Napoleon, besides gratifying his vassals and allies, had completed the connection of the kingdom of Italy with his Illyrian possessions, obtained the whole coasts of the Adriatic, and deprived Austria of her last seaport. Yet, when compared with the signal triumphs of the campaign of Wagram, the terms on which the conqueror signed the peace were universally looked upon as remarkable for moderation; and he claimed merit with the Emperor of Russia on the score of having spared Austria in deference to his personal intercession.

Buonaparte quitted Vienna on the 16th of October; was congratulated by the public bodies of Paris, on the 14th of November, as "the greatest of heroes, who never achieved victories but for the happiness of the world"; and soon after, by one of the most extraordinary steps of his personal history, furnished abundant explanation of the motives which had guided his diplomacy at Schoenbrunn.