Citizen Emperor (67 page)

The road to Vienna was now open again. This time, unlike in 1805, the city was to be defended. Preparations for its defence, however, began far too late, not until 5 May.
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By then, most of the city’s 200,000 inhabitants had fled the approach of the French. There was some cursory resistance when the French finally arrived at the gates of the capital on 13 May – the French bombarded some of the outlying suburbs – but the city’s garrison withdrew to the northern bank of the Danube, destroying all four bridges across the river in their retreat.
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In the days leading up to the French occupation, public opinion in Vienna had turned from support for the war to relief that it would soon be over. An inhabitant of Vienna reported that the city’s women rushed to greet the French soldiers with such alacrity that it reminded him of ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’.
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It was no doubt a slight exaggeration, even if the city held a certain number of delights. The writer Stendhal saw ‘a pretty woman at every step’, heard excellent music and went to see some Italian ballets.
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The city would normally have offered a variety of theatres that were always well attended, and there were public balls every Sunday evening. Like most cities of its day, only a few streets had pavements, and these were lined with elegant mansions. The two most famous were the Herren Gasse and the Kohlgraben. There were too a number of imposing imperial buildings, fine squares and museums. And if one could not find any amusements in the city, then a ride to one of the parks surrounding the city, such as the Prater, the Augarten or the Lusthaus, held ‘pleasing scenery’ and ‘extensive and romantic views’.

Napoleon occupied Vienna and took up residence at the Schönbrunn Palace on the outskirts of the city. Occupying a capital, as he had discovered with Prussia (and would again discover with Russia) did not mean the end of the war. Despite Charles’s pleadings, Francis decided to fight on. Charles subsequently took up position on the northern bank of the Danube so that there was a river between his forces and the French in Vienna. He had managed to bring together about 115,000 men. Napoleon, on the other hand, had only about 82,000 men and did not yet realize the strength of the Austrian army facing him.

‘So the Man is Mad’

The battle took place in a difficult context.
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Napoleon may have taken Vienna, but the war was going badly for the French on other fronts. In Italy, Eugène, after some initial successes, was defeated by Archduke John at Sacile (16 April 1809). The Tyrol rose in revolt, a revolt that had been carefully prepared by a local named Andreas Hofer.
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There were uprisings in Prussia led by Major von Schill and in Hesse led by Colonel Dernburg.
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In northern Germany, opposition to the French began to radicalize, disguised within organizations like the League of Virtue (Tugendbund) or gymnastic associations that practised ‘shooting and reading’, but which were fronts for German nationalism.
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Censorship did its best to control the flow of news, and Napoleon could shoot journalists that overstepped the mark (as happened to Johann Philipp Palm in 1806), but he could not stem the tide of ideas. In the Iberian Peninsula, Soult had been obliged to retreat from Portugal. In Holland, a British expeditionary force landed at Walcheren.
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In Italy, relations with the pope were at breaking point. And on top of all that there was an economic crisis both in the Empire and in France proper brought about by bad harvests and the consequences of Britain’s Continental Blockade.
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The precariousness of the Empire was never more evident than during this conjuncture when, once again, it seemed as though its future existence hinged on the outcome of one battle. To come to grips with Archduke Charles, though, Napoleon had to cross the Danube. Since the bridges had been burnt, Lobau, an island in the river east of the city, was chosen as the place most suitable for building a temporary crossing. The river was wider and slower here than at other parts, and the water shallower. French sappers began to construct the pontoons needed to span the 750 metres between the banks of the Danube and the island on 19 May. The bridge was completed and the troops started to cross at around midday on 20 May, but a large hulk floated down the river by the Austrians broke the bridge so that no more troops could get across that night.
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Napoleon was still not aware at this stage that he was facing the bulk of the Austrian army. Clearly, the French scouting parties sent across to reconnoitre had not done their job.

The French repaired the bridge overnight so that there was a steady stream of troops marching across the next morning. It was then that Charles decided to bring up his army and launch an attack across a ten-kilometre front, centring on the villages of Aspern and Essling, only a short distance from the Austrian capital. The Viennese gathered in the Prater to watch, or climbed what roofs and church towers they could to get a glimpse of the battle unfolding before them, but were unable to see much for the thick pall of smoke that lay over the field.
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Charles caught the French completely by surprise. Aspern changed hands six or seven times in the course of the day but the French managed to hang on there, and did so at Essling too with a good deal more ease. The bridge was again broken during the day with the result that after midday the flow of troops to the island was interrupted. When Napoleon realized the extent of the Austrian forces he was facing, he briefly considered calling off the whole operation, but once Charles began to attack he had to persist.
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The outcome of the next day’s battle would depend on whether the French could keep open the bridge in order to maintain the flow of troops. The first day’s fighting saw 31,000 French facing over 100,000 Austrians. By the beginning of the second day of the battle, with troops crossing during the night, the French were still considerably outnumbered and outgunned, 62,000 men and 144 guns compared to over 100,000 men and 260 guns. Napoleon nevertheless went on the offensive, ordering Lannes to push through the centre. Lannes did as instructed, and it looked as though victory was in sight when an Austrian counter-attack led personally by Charles restored the situation. After the bridge had been broken again at eight o’clock, and again, following repairs, after midday by a floating mill that had been set on fire, Napoleon had no choice but to call off the battle. He had crossed the bridge earlier in the day and was even engaged in siting cannon when news arrived around four in the afternoon that Lannes had been wounded. Napoleon ordered a retreat back on to the island of Lobau. It was a defeat of sorts: 15,000–19,000 French killed and wounded (although the bulletin reported only 4,100 French casualties) compared to around 20,000–22,000 Austrian killed and wounded. Napoleon’s adversaries were learning how to make war.
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If in military terms this was by no means a major setback, it hurt Napoleon politically. It was the first time that, if not defeated, his army had been contained, at least in Europe (contemporaries had a tendency to forget about Syria).

By all accounts, Napoleon was shocked by Lannes’ wounding.
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When he saw him being carried by two carabiniers he rushed over, weeping according to some, and had to be pulled away by Duroc. Napoleon saw Lannes later that day in what was reported to be a heartrending meeting after Larrey, the surgeon-in-chief, had amputated both legs. He visited Lannes once or twice a day for the next week. Lannes had been with him since the first Italian campaign and was a passionate adherent of the Emperor. It looked for a while as though he might recover, but nine days after the battle, on 31 May, after passing in and out of delirium, he died of gangrene.
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The death of Lannes appears to have affected Napoleon deeply. Did Napoleon kiss Lannes’ forehead and bathe it in his tears?
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It is unlikely, though he did mourn, but that too was a political gesture. The imperial propaganda machine exploited Napoleon’s personal sorrow, portraying him not as warrior, but rather as father figure who hated war and deplored the loss of one of his cherished children.

Albert-Paul Bourgeois,
Le Maréchal Lannes mortellement blessé près d’Essling le 22 mai 1809
(Marshal Lannes mortally wounded after the battle of Essling, 22 May 1809), 1810. The focus is not so much on Lannes dying as on Napoleon as grieving father, who occupies the centre of the painting. The emphasis increasingly in the latter part of the Empire is on the person of Napoleon, and not on his military conquests.

The mistakes Napoleon had made were in retrospect obvious: he should have built more than one bridge across the Danube; and he should have assembled as many troops as possible on Lobau before crossing. More remarkable though is the lack of initiative on the part of Archduke Charles. He did not have a killer instinct; he should have bombarded Lobau mercilessly, especially since Napoleon seems to have been overcome with inertia – exhausted, depressed – for the next thirty-six hours. But Charles did not press home his advantage, motivated by a desire to keep the Austrian army intact, and by what he saw as an opponent that was as threatening as Napoleon – Russia. He consequently gave Napoleon all the time in the world to evacuate Lobau.

In Buda, where the Austrian court had fled, a young princess by the name of Marie-Louise heard of the victory, and confided to a friend, ‘It is the first time that Napoleon himself has been defeated, and we must thank God for it . . . but we must not be too puffed up with pride . . . and I must confess that I am so accustomed to disappointments that I dare not hope for too much.’
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Certainly, the court of Vienna hoped – believed – that the battle would encourage Berlin and Petersburg to join the fray. That did not happen. The hawks at the court of Berlin pushed for intervention, on the side of the coalition needless to say.
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Prussia even made an offer to join, but that was dependent on two conditions: Austria accepting Prussian hegemony in northern Germany, and Russia giving its approval. Alexander, on the other hand, was more interested in conquering Finland and the Danubian principalities than in coming to Vienna’s aid.
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Admittedly, Alexander was caught in a bind – officially tied to France, he was sympathetic to the Austrian cause – but Austria had certainly been working under the mistaken assumption that he would not only come out fully on its side, but would bring Prussia with him. It is little wonder then that Napoleon complained to Savary, ‘They have all given themselves rendez-vous over my tomb, but none of them wants to be the first to arrive.’
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For some, it was not Spain but rather the battle of Essling that marks a turning point in Napoleon’s popularity.
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We know that news of the costliness of the battle troubled Parisian opinion; it was the first time that the Emperor’s reputation as a military genius was tarnished, to the point that some were now toying with the idea that he had gone mad.
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It is the first time the term was used to describe Napoleon, and even though it was not yet used very seriously, the idea would continue to grow. It was, moreover, a sort of justification for opposition to the regime; one is not being disloyal if the man at the helm no longer has the respect of those he is leading and is now suspected of being ‘mad’. Over the next few years, people would come back to that idea. Jérôme’s wife, Catherine of Württemberg, for example, during Napoleon’s tour of Belgium and the northern coasts in 1810, when it looked as though he was again contemplating an invasion of England, wrote in her diary that ‘I would say to myself that man is crazy, it is cruel to destroy because of a difference of opinion! and why cannot they [the Bonapartes] enjoy quietly, peacefully, the infinite blessings that Providence has lavished on them!’
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The Comtesse de Boigne, admittedly a monarchist so her testimony has to be treated with caution, pointed to the sheer indifference with which the sound of the cannon announcing another victory was greeted by the Parisian population at large. They had had their fill of victories; another battle won meant more men had to be conscripted; another town conquered meant that further towns had to be occupied.
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