A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878 Part 17

[Austria preparing for war, 1808-9.]

Napoleon, quitting Spain in the third week of January, 1809, travelled to Paris with the utmost haste. He believed Austria to be on the point of declaring war; and on the very day of his arrival at the capital he called out the contingents of the Rhenish Federation. In the course of the next few weeks, however, he formed the opinion that Austria would either decline hostilities altogether, or at least find it impossible to declare war before the middle of May. For once the efforts of Austria outstripped the calculations of her enemy. Count Stadion, the earnest and enlightened statesman who had held power in Austria since the Peace of Presburg, had steadily prepared for a renewal of the struggle with France. He was convinced that Napoleon would soon enter upon new enterprises of conquest, and still farther extend his empire at the expense of Austria, unless attacked before Spain had fallen under his dominion. Metternich, now Austrian Amba.s.sador at Paris, reported that Napoleon was intending to divide Turkey as soon as he had conquered Spain; and, although he advised delay, he agreed with the Cabinet at Vienna that Austria must sooner or later strike in self-defence. [154] Stadion, more sanguine, was only prevented from declaring war in 1808 by the counsels of the Archduke Charles and of other generals who were engaged in bringing the immense ma.s.s of new levies into military formation. Charles himself attached little value to the patriotic enthusiasm which, since the outbreak of the Spanish insurrection, had sprung up in the German provinces of Austria. He saw the approach of war with more apprehension than pleasure; but, however faint his own hopes, he laboured earnestly in creating for Austria a force far superior to anything that she had possessed before, and infused into the ma.s.s of the army that confident and patriotic spirit which he saw in others rather than felt in himself. By the beginning of March, 1809, Austria had 260,000 men ready to take the field.

[The war of 1809 to be a war for Germany.]

The war now breaking out was to be a war for the German nation, as the struggle of the Spaniards had been a struggle for Spain. The animated appeals of the Emperor's generals formed a singular contrast to the silence with which the Austrian Cabinet had hitherto entered into its wars. The Hapsburg sovereign now stood before the world less as the inheritor of an ancient empire and the representative of the Balance of Power than as the disinterested champion of the German race. On the part of the Emperor himself the language of devotion for Germany was scarcely more than ironical. Francis belonged to an age and to a system in which the idea of nationality had no existence; and, like other sovereigns, he regarded his possessions as a sort of superior property which ought to be defended by obedient domestic dogs against marauding foreign wolves. The same personal view of public affairs had hitherto satisfied the Austrians. It had been enough for them to be addressed as the dutiful children of a wise and affectionate father. The Emperor spoke the familiar Viennese dialect; he was as homely in his notions and his prejudices as any beerseller in his dominions; his subjects might see him at almost any hour of the day or night; and out of the somewhat tough material of his character popular imagination had no difficulty in framing an idol of parental geniality and wisdom. Fifteen years of failure and mismanagement had, however, impaired the beauty of the domestic fiction; and although old-fas.h.i.+oned Austrians, like Haydn, the composer of the Austrian Hymn, were ready to go down to the grave invoking a blessing on their gracious master, the Emperor himself and his confidants were shrewd enough to see that the newly-excited sense of German patriotism would put them in possession of a force which they could hardly evoke by the old methods.

[Austrian Parties.]

One element of reality lay in the professions which were not for the most part meant very seriously. There was probably now no statesman in Austria who any longer felt a jealousy of the power of Prussia. With Count Stadion and his few real supporters the restoration of Germany was a genuine and deeply-cherished desire; with the majority of Austrian politicians the interests of Austria herself seemed at least for the present to require the liberation of North Germany. Thus the impa.s.sioned appeals of the Archduke Charles to all men of German race to rise against their foreign oppressor, and against their native princes who betrayed the interests of the Fatherland, gained the sanction of a Court hitherto very little inclined to form an alliance with popular agitation. If the chaotic disorder of the Austrian Government had been better understood in Europe, less importance would have been attached to this sudden change in its tone. No one in the higher ranks at Vienna was bound by the action of his colleagues. The Emperor, though industrious, had not the capacity to enforce any coherent system of government. His brothers caballed one against another, and against the persons who figured as responsible ministers. State-papers were brought by soldiers to the Emperor for his signature without the knowledge of his advisers. The very manifestos which seemed to herald a new era for Germany owed most of their vigour to the literary men who were entrusted with their composition. [155]

[Patriotic movement in Prussia.]

[Governing cla.s.ses in South Germany on the side of Napoleon.]

The answer likely to be rendered by Germany to the appeal of Austria was uncertain. In the Rhenish Federation there were undoubted signs of discontent with French rule among the common people; but the official cla.s.ses were universally on the side of Napoleon, who had given them their posts and their salaries; while the troops, and especially the officers, who remembered the time when they had been mocked by the Austrians as "harlequins" and "nose-bags," were won by the kindness of the great conqueror, who organised them under the hands of his own generals, and gave them the companions.h.i.+p of his own victorious legions. Little could be expected from districts where to the ma.s.s of the population the old regime of German independence had meant nothing more than attendance at the manor-court of a knight, or the occasional spectacle of a ducal wedding, or a deferred interest in the droning jobbery of some hereditary town-councillor. In Northern Germany there was far more prospect of a national insurrection. There the spirit of Stein and of those who had worked with him was making itself felt, in spite of the fall of the Minister. Scharnhorst's reforms had made the Prussian army a school of patriotism, and the work of statesmen and soldiers was promoted by men who spoke to the feelings and the intelligence of the nation. Literature lost its indifference to nationality and to home. The philosopher Fichte, the poet Arndt, the theologian Schleiermacher pressed the claims of Germany and of the manlier virtues upon a middle cla.s.s singularly open to literary influences, singularly wanting in the experience and the impulses of active public life. [156] In the Kingdom of Westphalia preparations for an insurrection against the French were made by officers who had served in the Prussian and the Hessian armies. In Prussia itself, by the side of many n.o.bler agencies, the newly-founded Masonic society of the Tugendbund, or League of Virtue, made the cause of the Fatherland popular among thousands to whom it was an agreeable novelty to belong to any society at all. No spontaneous, irresistible uprising, like that which Europe had seen in the Spanish Peninsula, was to be expected among the unimpulsive population of the North German plains; but the military circles of Prussia were generally in favour of war, and an insurrection of the population west of the Elbe was not improbable in the event of Napoleon's army being defeated by Austria in the field. King Frederick William, too timid to resolve upon war himself, too timid even to look with satisfaction upon the bold att.i.tude of Austria, had every reason for striking, if once the balance should incline against Napoleon: even against his own inclination it was possible that the ardour of his soldiers might force him into war.

[Plans of campaign.]

So strong were the hopes of a general rising in Northern Germany, that the Austrian Government to some extent based its plans for the campaign on this event. In the ordinary course of hostilities between France and Austria the line of operations in Germany is the valley of the Danube; but in preparing for the war of 1809 the Austrian Government ma.s.sed its forces in the north-west of Bohemia, with the object of throwing them directly upon Central Germany. The French troops which were now evacuating Prussia were still on their way westwards at the time when Austria was ready to open the campaign. Davoust, with about 60,000 men, was in Northern Bavaria, separated by a great distance from the nearest French divisions in Baden and on the Rhine. By a sudden incursion of the main army of Austria across the Bohemian mountains, followed by an uprising in Northern Germany, Davoust and his scattered detachments could hardly escape destruction. Such was the original plan of the campaign, and it was probably a wise one in the present exceptional superiority of the Austrian preparations over those of France. For the first time since the creation of the Consulate it appeared as if the opening advantages of the war must inevitably be upon the side of the enemies of France. Napoleon had underrated both the energy and the resources of his adversary. By the middle of March, when the Austrians were ready to descend upon Davoust from Bohemia, Napoleon's first troops had hardly crossed the Rhine. Fortunately for the French commander, the Austrian Government, at the moment of delivering its well-planned blow, was seized with fear at its own boldness. Recollections of Hohenlinden and Ulm filled anxious minds with the thought that the valley of the Danube was insufficiently defended; and on the 20th of March, when the army was on the point of breaking into Northern Bavaria, orders were given to divert the line of march to the south, and to enter the Rhenish Confederacy by the roads of the Danube and the Inn. Thus the fruit of so much energy, and of the enemy's rare neglectfulness, was sacrificed at the last moment. It was not until the 9th of April that the Austrian movement southward was completed, and that the army lay upon the line of the Inn, ready to attack Napoleon in the territory of his princ.i.p.al German ally.

[Austrian manifesto to the Germans.]

The proclamations now published by the Emperor and the Archduke bore striking testimony to the influence of the Spanish insurrection in exciting the sense of national right, and awakening the Governments of Europe to the force which this placed in their hands. For the first time in history a manifesto was addressed "to the German nation." The contrast drawn in the Archduke's address to his army between the Spanish patriots dying in the defence of their country, and the German va.s.sal-contingents dragged by Napoleon into Spain to deprive a gallant nation of its freedom, was one of the most just and the most telling that tyranny has ever given to the leaders of a righteous cause. [157] The Emperor's address "to the German nation" breathed the same spirit. It was not difficult for the politicians of the Rhenish Federation to ridicule the sudden enthusiasm for liberty and nationality shown by a Government which up to the present time had dreaded nothing so much as the excitement of popular movements; but, however unconcernedly the Emperor and the old school of Austrian statesmen might adopt patriotic phrases which they had no intention to remember when the struggle was over, such language was a reality in the effect which it produced upon the thousands who, both in Austria and other parts of Germany, now for the first time heard the summons to unite in defence of a common Fatherland.

[Austrians invade Bavaria, April 9, 1809.]

[Rising of the Tyrol, April, 1809.]

[Its causes religious.]

The leading divisions of the Archduke's army crossed the Inn on the 9th of April. Besides the forces intended for the invasion of Bavaria, which numbered 170,000 men, the Austrian Government had formed two smaller armies, with which the Princes Ferdinand and John were to take up the offensive in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw and in Northern Italy. On every side Austria was first in the field; but even before its regular forces could encounter the enemy, a popular outbreak of the kind that the Government had invoked wrested from the French the whole of an important province. While the army crossed the Inn, the Tyrolese people rose, and overpowered the French and Bavarian detachments stationed in their country. The Tyrol had been taken from Austria at the Peace of Presburg, and attached to Napoleon's va.s.sal kingdom of Bavaria. In geographical position and in relations.h.i.+p of blood the Tyrolese were as closely connected with the Bavarians as with the Austrians; and the annexation would probably have caused no lasting discontent if the Bavarian Government had condescended to take some account of the character of its new subjects. Under the rule of Austria the Tyrolese had enjoyed many privileges. They were exempt from military service, except in their own militia; they paid few taxes; they possessed forms of self-government which were at least popular enough to be regretted after they had been lost. The people adored their bishops and clergy. Nowhere could the Church exhibit a more winning example of unbroken accord between a simple people and a Catholic Crown. Protestantism and the unholy activities of reason had never brought trouble into the land. The people believed exactly what the priests told them, and delighted in the innumerable holidays provided by the Church. They had so little cupidity that no bribe could induce a Tyrolese peasant to inform the French of any movement; they had so little intelligence that, when their own courage and stout-heartedness had won their first battle, they persuaded one another that they had been led by a Saint on a white horse. Grievances of a substantial character were not wanting under the new Bavarian rule; but it was less the increased taxation and the enforcement of military service that exasperated the people than the attacks made by the Government upon the property and rights of the Church. Montgelas, the reforming Bavarian minister, treated the Tyrolese bishops with as little ceremony as the Swabian knights. The State laid claim to all advowsons; and upon the refusal of the bishops to give up their patronage, the bishops themselves were banished and their revenues sequestrated. A pa.s.sion for uniformity and common sense prompted the Government to revive the Emperor Joseph's edicts against pilgrimages and Church holidays. It became a police-offence to shut up a shop on a saint's day, or to wear a gay dress at a festival. Bavarian soldiers closed the churches at the end of a prescribed number of ma.s.ses.

At a sale of Church property, ordered by the Government, some of the sacred vessels were permitted to fall into the hands of the Jews.

These were the wrongs that fired the simple Tyrolese. They could have borne the visits of the tax-gatherer and the lists of conscription; they could not bear that their priests should be overruled, or that their observances should be limited to those sufficient for ordinary Catholics. Yet, with all its aspect of unreason, the question in the Tyrol was also part of that larger question whether Napoleon's pleasure should be the rule of European life, or nations should have some voice in the disposal of their own affairs. The Tyrolese were not more superst.i.tious, and they were certainty much less cruel, than the Spaniards. They fought for ecclesiastical absurdities; but their cause was also the cause of national right, and the admiration which their courage excited in Europe was well deserved.

[Tyrolese expel Bavarians and French, April 1809.]

Early in the year 1809 the Archduke John had met the leaders of the Tyrolese peasantry, and planned the first movements of a national insurrection. As soon as the Austrian army crossed the Inn, the peasants thronged to their appointed meeting-places. Scattered detachments of the Bavarians were surrounded, and on the 12th of April the main body of the Tyrolese, numbering about 15,000 men, advanced upon Innsbruck. The town was invested; the Bavarian garrison, consisting of 3,000 regular troops, found itself forced to surrender after a severe engagement. On the next morning a French column, on the march from Italy to the Danube, approached Innsbruck, totally unaware of the events of the preceding day. The Tyrolese closed behind it as it advanced. It was not until the column was close to the town that its commander, General Brisson, discovered that Innsbruck had fallen into an enemy's hands. Retreat was impossible; ammunition was wanting for a battle; and Brisson had no choice but to surrender to the peasants, who had already proved more than a match for the Bavarian regular troops. The Tyrolese had done their work without the help of a single Austrian regiment. In five days the weak fabric of Bavarian rule had been thrown to the ground. The French only maintained themselves in the lower valley of the Adige: and before the end of April their last positions at Trent and Roveredo were evacuated, and no foreign soldier remained on Tyrolese soil.

[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 Donauworth, 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 s.n.a.t.c.h victory from the enemy's grasp. Davoust was bidden to fall back from Ratisbon to Neustadt; the most pressing orders were sent to Ma.s.sena, 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 ma.s.s 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. Ma.s.sena, immediately after receiving his orders, hurried from Augsburg north-eastwards, while Napoleon himself advanced into the mid-s.p.a.ce 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 ma.s.s 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 antic.i.p.ations of ruin.

[Austrian defeats at Landshut and Eggmuhl, 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 Eggmuhl on the 22nd, and forced northwards. The unbroken ma.s.s 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 ma.s.s 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 Dornberg 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 Dornberg, 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. Dornberg 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 Dornberg 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. Dornberg 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. Dornberg fled for his life; and the revolt ended on the day after it had begun (April 23). Schill, unconscious of Dornberg'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 Dornberg'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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sage. The broad arm of the Danube, sheltered by the island from the enemy's fire, was easily bridged by boats; the pa.s.sage 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 ma.s.s 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 impa.s.sable 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 va.s.sal, the King of Saxony, and expelled him from his capital. Popular insurrections broke out in Wurtemberg 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage 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 ma.s.s in its pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 pa.s.sage. 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 ma.s.ses 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.]