IN THE FIRST CAMPAIGN:--
UNDER FIRE WITH MARSHAL NEY
The Eagles made their _début_ on the battlefield amid a blaze of glory.
Within a twelvemonth of the Field of Mars they had swooped irresistibly
across half the Continent, leading forward victoriously through the
cannon-smoke in combat after combat, to achieve the crowning triumphs
of Ulm and Austerlitz. Within the twelvemonth they witnessed the
overwhelming defeat of more than 200,000 foes, the capture of 500
cannon, while 120 standards had been paraded before them as spoils of
victory.
In the first fortnight of September 1805, Austria and Russia, as the
protagonists in Pitt’s great European Coalition against Napoleon,
declared war on France, and an army of 80,000 Austrians traversed
Bavaria in hot haste, to take post at Ulm by the Danube, on the
frontiers of Würtemberg. There they proposed to hold Napoleon in check,
until their Russian allies, whose advance by forced marches through
Poland had already begun, could join hands with them. After that they
would press forward in resistless force to cross the Rhine and invade
France.
[Sidenote: NAPOLEON’S OPENING MOVE]
But Napoleon was beforehand with them from the outset. Within
twenty-four hours of the ultimatum reaching his hands he had made the
opening move in the campaign: the lion, whose skin had been sold, had
crouched for the fatal spring.
General Mack, the Austrian Commander-in-chief, entered Bavaria on
September 8. On September 1 Napoleon’s “Army of the Ocean” had struck
its tents in Boulogne camp and started on its way, with plans laid that
ensured Mack’s overthrow. A hundred and eighty thousand soldiers were
hastening along every high-road through Hanover, Holland, and Flanders,
and in eastern France, towards the great plain of central Bavaria, to
deal the Austrians the heaviest and most resounding blow ever yet dealt
to a modern army.
Napoleon, screening his movement by means of Murat’s cavalry, sent
ahead on a wide front to occupy the attention of the Austrian outposts,
made a bold sweep right round Mack’s right flank. Before the Austrian
general had any suspicion that there was a single Frenchman on that
side of him, the entire French army had passed the Danube in his rear,
and had blocked the great highway from Vienna. Napoleon at the first
move had cut the Austrian line of communication with their base. He
had barred the only route by which the Russians could approach to
Mack’s assistance.
That done, swiftly and successfully, while Mack, startled and utterly
staggered at the sudden appearance of the enemy in his rear, was
hurriedly facing about in confusion, to try to hold his ground,
Napoleon struck at him hard. He hurled attack after attack in force
on the Austrian flanking divisions, on both wings of Mack’s army, and
broke them up. Taking thousands of prisoners and many guns, he drove
the wreck, a disorganised mass of scared and helpless battalions,
in rout to the walls of Ulm itself. Penned in there, ringed round
by 100,000 French bayonets, with the French artillery pouring shot
and shell into the doomed fortress from commanding heights within
short range, General Mack, left now with barely 30,000 men, after a
despairing interview with Napoleon, was terrorised into immediate
surrender at discretion.
Amid such scenes did the Eagles of the Field of Mars undergo their
baptism of fire. Ever in the forefront under fire, brilliantly, time
and again, did those who bore them do their duty.
It was round the Eagles of Marshal Ney’s corps, “the Fighting Sixth,”
that the fiercest contests of the campaign centred; and on every
occasion they gained honour.
In the sharp brush at the bridge across the Danube at Reisenburg, near
the small town of Günsburg, on October 8, one of the opening encounters
of the campaign, the Eagle of the 59th of the Line showed the way to
victory. The Austrians, whom Ney surprised on the south side or right
bank, retreating as the French approached, had partially broken down
the bridge before Ney’s men could reach the place.
[Sidenote: AT THE BRIDGE OF GÜNSBURG]
The Danube flows wide and deep at Reisenburg, and there was no other
means of getting over.
Ney had explicit orders from Napoleon to cross over and occupy
Günsburg, and to hold the river passage. As the 59th, who led the
attack, got to the bridge, a long and narrow wooden structure, the
Austrian sappers were hard at work destroying it; covered by a
rearguard brigade of infantry and artillery. The planking had been
ripped away, but most of the bridge framework and supporting beams
still stood. The 59th came up and opened fire, compelling the sappers
to withdraw. Then a hasty effort was made by the pioneers of the
regiment under fire to repair part of the bridge. They made a way
across with planks wide enough for a few men to scramble over together.
“In places only one man could get across at a time.”
At once the 59th rushed forward cheering, but the concentrated Austrian
fire from the other side was too hot to face. They were beaten back
three times, the dead and wounded falling into the rushing stream
below. But were they not the 59th? No other of the regiments following
them in rear should have the honour of being the first to make the
passage! The Eagle-bearer of the 59th, weaving the Eagle aloft,
headed a fourth attack; with Colonel Gerard Lacuée, the colonel of
the regiment, a distinguished officer and an Honorary A.D.C. to the
Emperor, beside him. The two led out in front, regardless of the storm
of bullets round them. Colonel Lacuée fell mortally wounded. An officer
ran forward and carried the Colonel back to die on the river-bank, but
the Eagle-bearer went on. “Soldiers,” the brave fellow stopped for an
instant to turn round and shout back to his comrades, “your Eagle goes
forward! I shall carry it across alone!” The men of the 59th, thrown
into a frenzy at the sight of their Eagle’s peril, rallied instantly to
follow. The four leading companies held on bravely and got across. Then
they charged the Austrians at the point of the bayonet and drove them
back into the village. That, though, was not all. Fresh Austrians had
turned back to help their rearguard troops. Firing from the river-bank
on either side of the village, for a time they stopped the other
French regiments from crossing the bridge after the 59th. Austrian
dragoons and infantry at the same time charged the gallant regiment,
entirely isolated now on that side of the river. But they could not
break the 59th. Forming square, the two battalions, with their Eagles
held on high as rallying-centres, kept a host of foes at bay. Three
fierce Austrian charges did they beat off--and then help arrived.
A second regiment, the 50th, had by then managed to get across the
bridge. The two regiments maintained themselves there all the afternoon
until nightfall and then bivouacked on the ground they had won until
morning, “passing an anxious time, under arms, unable to light a fire.
Fortunately, in the dark the Austrians did not realise our small
numbers. They were more anxious to cover their own retreat.” Before
daylight the Austrians fell back and the passage of the Danube was won.
There was another morning’s work on October 11.
[Sidenote: THE EAGLES AT HASLACH]
At Haslach, on the north bank of the Danube, not far from Ulm, a
brigade of Dupont’s Division of Ney’s corps, advancing on that side
on its own account, was suddenly set on by five times its number of
Austrians. The brigade was made up of three regiments: the 9me Légère
(or 9th Light Infantry), the 32nd, and the 69th. They stumbled, as it
were, suddenly on the Austrians, whereupon General Dupont, who was
riding with the brigade, on the opposite side of the river from the
rest of his troops, “judging that if he fell back it would betray
his weakness,” made a dash at the enemy. His daring deceived the
Austrians, who believed that he was the advanced guard of a large force
close behind. They held back at first and awaited attack. Throwing
the 32nd into Haslach to hold the village, Dupont boldly charged with
the two other regiments, and at the first onset made 1,500 prisoners,
numbers equal to a quarter of his total force. The Austrians, however,
rallied and returned to the fight. They brought up reinforcements and
entrenched themselves in the village of Jüningen, near by, where again
Dupont attacked them. Five times did the 9th Light Infantry take and
retake Jüningen at the point of the bayonet, their two battalion Eagles
heading the attack each time. No fewer than six officers, bearing the
Eagles in turn, fell in the fight. “Ces corps ne devaient étonner de
rien,” commented Napoleon in praising Dupont and his men.
At Elchingen, a village in the immediate neighbourhood of Ulm, the
scene of the brilliant victory by which Marshal Ney won his title of
Due d’Elchingen, the Eagles of two regiments won distinction, through
the individual heroism of the officers who, holding them on high,--“En
haut l’Aigle!” was the charging cry--led the onset that stormed the
place.[7]
[Sidenote: THE EAGLES STORM ELCHINGEN]
Ney headed the 6th Light Infantry personally, “in full uniform and
ablaze with decorations, offering a splendid target to the enemy.” Ney
led the 6th with the Eagle of the First Battalion carried close at
his side. Fifteen thousand Austrians with forty guns held Elchingen,
and the post is described as being “one of the strongest positions
that could be imagined.” The village itself, a large place, consisted
of “successive piles of stone houses, intersected at right angles
by streets, rising in the form of an amphitheatre from the banks of
the Danube to a large convent which crowns the summit of the ascent.
All the exposed points on heights were lined with artillery; all the
windows filled with musketeers.” The village was on the north bank, and
the river had to be crossed to get to it.
First the gallant 6th Light Infantry stormed the bridge. It had been
partly destroyed by the Austrians on the day before, and its tottering
arches were now swept by cannon-balls, plunging down from batteries on
the heights in rear, and a tornado of bullets from sharpshooters in the
houses near the river-side. Fighting their way forward step by step,
the 6me Légère went on. Their Eagle headed the advance. Its bearer was
wounded, but he proudly brandished on high the standard; its silken
flag torn to tatters by bullets, and with one wing of the Eagle broken
by a shot. With the 6th fought the 69th of the Line. The two regiments
forced their way along the steep crooked main street up hill, fired
down on furiously meanwhile from the windows. Parties of men at times
entered the houses at the sides and fought the enemy inside bayonet to
bayonet, from floor to floor. The 6th and the 69th pressed forward,
broke down the enemy’s resistance, and carried Elchingen. The Austrians
finally, after a gallant attempt to hold out in the convent on the
hilltop, abandoned it as fresh French troops came up from across the
river.
On the battlefield, when the fight was over, Napoleon, with the
Imperial staff round him, publicly congratulated Marshal Ney (he named
him later “Duc D’Elchingen”) in the presence of the 6th Light Infantry
and the 69th, specially paraded at the spot for the occasion.
[Sidenote: THE EAGLES AT ULM]
The Eagles of Ney, again, were foremost at the winning of the final
fight at Ulm. They led the furious onrush that stormed the steep
heights of Michelsberg and Les Tuileries, the key of the last Austrian
position. Thence Napoleon looked down directly into the fortress; and
within an hour of Ney’s brilliant final feat the French shells, from
batteries, quickly galloped up to the heights, were bursting in Ulm,
carrying terror and death into every quarter of the city.
On that came the surrender of General Mack. The curtain next rises on
the intensely dramatic Fifth Act of the tragedy, the march out of the
Austrians to lay down their arms.
In that display the Eagles had their allotted place. Before them,
brought forward and prominently paraded, each Eagle in advance of its
own corps in line, with the whole Grand Army ranged in battle order as
spectators of the scene, the standards of the vanquished foe defiled
out of the gates of Ulm, and were laid down on the ground in formal
token of surrender.
Napoleon proved himself at Ulm a born stage-manager.
Hardly ever before, never in modern war, had such a spectacle been
witnessed as that presented on that chill and cheerless October Sunday
forenoon, October 20, 1805, in the heart of central Germany, beside the
banks of the rushing Danube, roaring past, a yellow foaming torrent
after weeks of autumn rain, amid pine-clad summits extending far and
wide on either hand.
Along the lower slopes of the high ground to the north and east of
Ulm, drawn up in lines and columns over a wide semi-circle, stood the
victorious army; massed round, as it were, in a vast amphitheatre. They
formed up by army corps, and took post grim and silent, drawn up in
battle array, with muskets loaded and bayonets fixed. The Cavalry with
sabres drawn were on one side; the Infantry on the other, facing them
and leaving a space between, along which the Austrians were to pass.
Fifty loaded cannon, in line along one ridge, pointed down on the city.
In front, towards the river, there rose a small knoll, an outlying spur
of rock. On that Napoleon took his station beside a blazing watchfire
which marked the spot from far. Accompanying him were most of the
marshals and the assembled Etat-Major of the Grand Army, a numerous and
brilliant gathering. Immediately in rear stood massed the 10,000 men of
the Imperial Guard.
Two army corps, a little way from the rest, had a special post of
honour. They were drawn up at the end of the wide semi-circle of the
main army nearest the Augsburg gate of Ulm; immediately where the
defilading column of captives would present themselves before passing
Napoleon to lay down their arms and standards. The two corps were: that
on the right, Ney’s, the Sixth Army Corps, the heroes of the day _par
excellence_; on the left, the Second Corps, Marmont’s, who had been
doing notable work elsewhere in the neighbourhood of Ulm. Ney, with his
personal staff beside him, was on horseback in front of the centre of
his corps; Marmont had his post in like manner in front of his men. As
his personal reward for the leading part Ney and the Sixth Corps had
had in bringing about the triumph, that marshal had the special honour
of being designated to superintend the surrender.
A few minutes before ten o’clock the French drums began to beat, and
the regimental bands to play. Immediately after that the long-drawn-out
procession of sullen and woebegone-looking Austrian captives began
silently to trail its way out of the Stuttgart gate of the fortress.
“Suddenly we saw an endless column file out of the town and march up in
front of the Emperor, on the plain at the foot of a mountain.”
[Sidenote: MACK SURRENDERS HIS SWORD]
General Mack himself headed it, wan-faced and pale as the white
uniform coat he wore, his eyes filled with tears, his head bowed,
a pitiful and abject figure to behold. After him followed eighteen
Austrian generals--a surprising number--most of them as wretched
and downcast-looking as their chief. “Behold, Sire, the unfortunate
Mack!” was the ill fated leader’s address to Napoleon, as he formally
presented his sword. Napoleon, in a mood--as well he might be--in
that hour of unparalleled triumph, to show courtesy to the fallen
foe, desired Mack to keep his sword and remain at his side. He said
the same to the eighteen other generals as, one by one, they came up
in turn to tender him their swords. He returned each his sword and
bade them all place themselves near their chief. When all the swords
had been presented and returned, Napoleon made the Austrian generals
collectively a short harangue. “Gentlemen,” he began, “war has its
chances! Often victorious, you must expect sometimes to be vanquished!”
He did not really know, Napoleon went on, why they were fighting.
Their master had begun against him an unjust war. “I want nothing on
the Continent,” said Napoleon in conclusion, “only ships, colonies,
and commerce!” It was on the day before Trafalgar that these memorable
words were spoken. The Austrian generals stared at Napoleon blankly,
but not one uttered a word. “They were all very dull; it was the
Emperor alone who kept up the conversation.” Then they took their stand
beside their conqueror and looked on at the bitterly humiliating scene
of the defilade of their fellow soldiers.
[Sidenote: THE PARADE OF THE VANQUISHED]
In an almost incessant throng the columns of the Austrian army
streamed by: white-clad cuirassiers; hussars in red and blue and grey;
battery after battery of cocked-hatted, brown-garbed artillerymen,
riding with or on their rumbling dull-yellow wheeled guns; battalion
after battalion of white-coated linesmen; dark-green coated jägers;
Hungarian grenadiers, and so on. Twenty-seven thousand officers and
men and sixty field-guns in all defiled past the Eagles, proudly
arrayed there above them, in front of the serried lines of glittering
French bayonets along the hillsides. For five hours on end the host
of captives plodded on before the rocky brow from which Napoleon
surveyed the spectacle; tramping by, their muskets without bayonets
and unloaded, their cartridge-boxes emptied. In several regiments the
men maintained a fair semblance of discipline and military order; but
the ranks of all were sadly bedraggled-looking, the white uniforms
torn and soiled and besmirched with powder-smoke, with many of the men
hatless, or limping from wounds, or with bound-up heads, and their arms
in bloodstained slings. As had been ordered by Napoleon, they carried
with them their standards; no fewer than forty silken battle-flags--for
the most part cased, but here and there was to be seen one not furled,
displaying, as though in futile defiance, its flaunting yellow folds
with the double-headed Black Eagle.
As the Austrian linesmen came abreast of where Napoleon stood, the
pace of the men slackened. Every eye was turned to look at “him”; at
the small grey-coated figure on foot beside the watchfire, standing
near the crestfallen group of their own generals, a few paces from the
bright and brilliant-hued cavalcade of French marshals and the staff.
All stared at Napoleon, gazing as if under a spell. Then, in the midst
of it all, this happened. Suddenly, as they passed Napoleon, a shout
rose from among the ranks of the defeated army: “Es lebe der Kaiser!”
(“Long live the Emperor!”) The cry burst forth with startling effect.
It was repeated, and then several men took it up. But what did it
mean? “Es lebe der Kaiser!” was the national German greeting in salute
to their own Austrian sovereign as Head of the Empire, to the Kaiser
at Vienna, the Emperor of Germany. Did the soldiers who first raised
the cry intend it for that, or to hail Napoleon, as his own men did,
with a “Vive l’Empereur!”? The words bore the same meaning. Or did the
men fling the words at Napoleon in a sort of bravado, as a show of
defiance? Some of the Austrians assuredly did mean them so; to relieve
the breaking strain, the terrible tension of the ordeal. At least some
of the French officers near Napoleon took that view of it. “As they
passed by,” describes one, “the prisoners, seized with wonder, with
admiration, slowed down in their march to gaze at their conqueror,
and some cried out ‘Long live the Emperor!’ but no doubt under very
different emotions; some with evident mortification.”
[Sidenote: GIVING UP THE GUNS AND HORSES]
From the presence of Napoleon the captive army passed to the scene of
the act of final humiliation: to the place where, midway between the
lines of bayonets of the troops of Ney and Marmont, they were to lay
down their colours and ground their arms.
The colours were first surrendered, a French General, Andréossi,
formerly Napoleon’s Ambassador in London, receiving them, with half a
dozen staff officers and orderlies, who deposited the flags one by one
in two commissariat wagons drawn up close by.
It was a moment of the deepest and keenest anguish for proud and
gallant soldiers. All round them on the hillsides most of the French,
overcome by excitement over the unprecedented and amazing spectacle,
were by that time almost beside themselves, rending the air with
exulting shouts and cheers. Under the cruel stress of the ordeal,
as the supreme moment came on, the self-possession of some of the
Austrians, tried beyond endurance, gave way.
The men of the Cavalry and Artillery bore themselves throughout with
well-disciplined steadiness. As they came to the appointed place where
groups of French cavalry troopers and gunners, told off to take over
their horses and guns, were standing near the roadside awaiting them,
they dismounted at the word of command from their own commanders
and stood back. With hardly a murmur from the ranks the Austrian
troopers unbuckled their swords and carbines and pistols, and dropped
them in heaps at the places pointed out to them. With quiet dignity
the officers relinquished their gold-embroidered banners into the
enemy’s hands. In grim silence they saw the victors--who there at
any rate behaved with courtesy and soldierly consideration for the
feeling of the vanquished--step forward to take possession of their
horses and their cannon. Many of the Austrians had tears running down
their cheeks; some stood trembling with suppressed passion;--but all
preserved order and behaved with complete decorum as became disciplined
soldiers.
With others unfortunately, with some of the infantry corps, it was
otherwise. At the very last, before arriving at the place where they
were to give up their weapons, a number of the men in some of the
marching regiments broke down under the fearful strain of the moment
and lost their heads. In many regiments, no doubt, the soldiers obeyed
mechanically, acting like men half stunned after a violent shock; they
did as they were told, and passively grounded their arms to order.
But in others the final scene was attended by acts of wild frenzy,
pitiful to behold. In, as it were, a paroxysm of exasperation at the
disgrace that had befallen them, the rank and file of these broke out
recklessly, and got at once beyond all efforts of their officers to
control. With one accord they began smashing the locks and butts of
their muskets on the ground with savage curses, flinging away their
arms all round, and stripping off their accoutrements and stamping on
them, trampling them down in the mud. These, though, as has been said,
were only some of the men; and in certain regiments. The majority of
the Austrians bore themselves with fortitude and calmness.
At the end of the afternoon the Imperial Guard, headed by their Eagle
and band, marched into Ulm and through the city, as we are told, “amid
the shouts of the whole populace.”
So terminated the tragedy of Ulm, in the presence of the Eagles on
their first triumphant battlefield.
[Sidenote: THE ULM TROPHIES FOR PARIS]
The spoils of the Eagles at all points, as announced by Napoleon in
the Ulm Bulletin of the Grand Army, were 60,000 prisoners, 200 pieces
of cannon, and, in all, 90 flags. The 40 standards surrendered at Ulm
itself Napoleon sent to Paris forthwith--after a grand parade of the
trophies at Augsburg, in which ninety sergeants of the Imperial Guard
bore in procession the Austrian flags. The Ulm trophies were made an
Imperial gift for the Senate. “It is a homage,” wrote Napoleon, “which
I and my Army pay to the Sages of the Empire.” They were the flags, it
may be added, which were displayed at the head of Napoleon’s coffin on
the occasion of his State funeral in 1840: they form four-fifths of the
trophies now grouped round Napoleon’s tomb. Alone of the trophies of
the Ulm campaign, and also of the Austerlitz campaign which followed
it, they escaped destruction in the holocaust of Napoleon’s trophies
that took place at the Invalides in March 1814, on the night of the
surrender of Paris to the Allies. How that came to pass will be told
later.
There was a very interesting sequel to the Ulm campaign for one of
Ney’s regiments. A brief but brilliant campaign in the Tyrol on their
own account followed for Ney’s men immediately after Ulm.
Entering the Tyrol with two of his divisions, Ney attacked and
by brilliant tactics overthrew the Tyrolese forces and Austrian
regulars who barred his way in a position among the mountains deemed
impregnable. The battalion Eagles of the 69th gave the signal for
the frontal attack which stormed the enemy’s position. Guided by
chamois-hunters the soldiers with the Eagles scaled the face of a
precipitous line of crags which overhung in rear the Austrian centre,
by inserting their bayonets into fissures in the rocks and clinging
to shrubs and creepers, their havresacs tied round their heads as
protection from the stones that the Tyrolese above showered down on
them. At the top, driving in the defenders, they held up the gleaming
Eagles in the sunlight on the brink of the precipice to the marshal
below, firing down on the Austrians at the same time to demoralise
their resistance and clear the way for Ney’s main effort: “Les Aigles
du 69me plantées sur la cime des rochers servirent de signal à
l’attacque de front que le Maréchal Ney avait preparé.”
Innsbrück, the capital of the Tyrol, and the head-quarters of the
Austrian army corps garrisoning the country, was the immediate prize of
the victory. It was there that this incident took place.
[Sidenote: TWO LOST FLAGS ARE FOUND]
One of Ney’s regiments, the 76th, had fought in the Tyrol six years
before; in Masséna’s campaign of 1799, in one of the battles of
which--at Senft in the Grisons, on August 22--two of its battalions
lost their colours. An officer of the regiment, while visiting the
arsenal at Innsbrück after Ney’s capture of the city, came across the
two flags there, in tatters from bullet-holes, hung up as trophies. He
made known his discovery, and the place was quickly filled with the
soldiers of the regiment, eager to see the old flags. “They crowded
round them and kissed the fragments of their old colours, with tears in
their eyes.”
Ney had the flags removed at once. He restored them to the custody
of the regiment with his own hand at a grand parade in the presence
of the rest of his army, which the marshal attended with his staff,
all in full uniform. The old colours were received with an elaborate
display of military ceremonial. They were borne along the lines while
the regimental band played a stately march, and the Eagles of both
battalions were formally dipped in salute to them.
On receiving Ney’s report, Napoleon thought fit to give the recovery
of the flags a Bulletin to itself. Relating how they had been lost in
battle, and the “affliction profonde” of the regiment in consequence,
he set forth how they had been found and handed back by Marshal Ney to
the regiment “with an affecting solemnity that drew tears from the eyes
of both the old soldiers and the young conscripts, proud of having had
their share in regaining them!” “Le soldat Français,” concluded the
Bulletin, “a pour ses drapeaux un sentiment qui tient de la tendresse;
ils sont l’objet de son culte, comme un présent reçu des mains d’une
mère.” A medal was specially struck to commemorate the event; and
Napoleon, in addition, specially commissioned an artist, Meynier,
to paint a picture for him of Marshal Ney presenting the recovered
colours to the regiment. The painting is now in one of the galleries of
Versailles.
THE MIDNIGHT BATTLE BY THE DANUBE
[Sidenote: TRAPPED BY NAPOLEON’S FAULT]
A startling and dramatic episode of the first campaign of the Eagles
comes next. It took place during the second stage of the war; in
the midst of Napoleon’s impetuous advance on Vienna down the Danube
valley after Ulm. Intent on dealing a shattering blow at the advanced
army corps of the Russians, which had reached Lower Austria and was
making an effort to cover the capital, Napoleon made a false move,
and left one of the headmost French divisions in an exposed position,
temporarily isolated. It got trapped by the Russians at Dürrenstein, or
Dirnstein, on the north side of the Danube, to the west of and about
seventy miles up the river from Vienna; and was all but annihilated.
There was nearly twenty hours of continuous fighting, including a night
battle of the fiercest and most desperate character in which three
Eagles were temporarily lost; fortunately to be recovered later among
the dead on the battlefield.[8]
It was on an extemporised corps, specially placed under the command of
Marshal Mortier, that the blow fell.
[Illustration: NAPOLEON’S CONCENTRATION IN REAR OF ULM]
While Napoleon and the Grand Army in force advanced along the south, or
right, bank of the Danube, Mortier had been detached across the river
to hold in check any attempt to interfere with the main operations
from the Bohemian side. A body of Austrian cavalry, under the Archduke
Ferdinand, had managed to cut their way through from Ulm at one point
just before the closing of the net round General Mack. With the aid of
the local militia levies these might prove troublesome on the line of
communications. To deal with them, three divisions, drawn from as many
corps, were amalgamated as Mortier’s special corps, which numbered in
all between twenty and twenty-five thousand men: Gazan’s division, lent
by Marshal Lannes; Dupont’s, lent by Ney; Dumonceau’s, lent by Marmont.
To keep Mortier in touch with the main body of the army, and that he
might be reinforced in emergency, a flotilla of Danube craft was at
the same time improvised, and placed in charge of the Seamen of the
Guard, a battalion of whom had accompanied Napoleon for the campaign.
The flotilla was to keep pace with Mortier and link him with Napoleon.
Mortier crossed at Linz and moved forward; his three divisions each a
day’s march apart, for convenience of provisioning. He marched so fast,
however, that he outstripped the connecting boats.
[Sidenote: THE DANUBE FLOTILLA STOPPED]
At the moment the fighting opened, the flotilla was miles in rear.
It had been stopped and its progress blocked near Moelkt, unable in
the swollen state of the Danube to pass the dangerous Strudel, or
whirlpool, there, raging just then, after the heavy autumn rains,
with the force of a swirling maelstrom. The flooded river had made it
extremely difficult work all the way, even for the picked Seamen of
the Guard, to navigate with safety the assortment of boats and timber
rafts, clumsy structures of logs and spars lashed together, 160 feet
long each, and planked over, with cabins on the planks, which composed
the flotilla. On them, together with a quantity of spare stores and
ammunition for the army, convalescents and footsore men of various
regiments were being carried, who, it was intended, would thus be on
the spot to reinforce Mortier first of all in case of danger.
Immediately after passing Dürrenstein, the leading division, General
Gazan’s, numbering some 6,000 men, unexpectedly stumbled across part
of the Russian rearguard. All unknown to Mortier, the Russian army
corps which had been entrenched in front of Vienna had abandoned its
position and had hastily withdrawn north of the river, crossing a short
distance from Dürrenstein.
Mortier, after clearing a narrow and difficult pass on the eastern
side of Dürrenstein, with steep and rocky hills on one hand and the
Danube on the other, first learned of the presence of the enemy by
catching sight of the smoke of the burning bridge of Krems, which the
Russians had set fire to after passing over. Then he suddenly found
his further advance barred by troops with guns, who rapidly formed up
across his path. The Russians took up a formidable-looking position,
but the marshal decided to attack without waiting for Dupont to come
up with the Second Division, or for the flotilla; both miles in rear.
The sight of the burning bridge and the apparent haste of the enemy
to get across the river, it would seem, misled Mortier into thinking
that the Russians had been in action with Napoleon, and were in flight,
trying to escape. He went at them without pausing to reconnoitre. He
assumed that they were only making a show of defence. The troops before
him he would sweep aside easily. Then he would press on and complete
the rout of the rest of the Russians, whom he took to be retreating in
confusion, screened by the force he saw, across his front. Confident
of easy success, Mortier entered into the fight then and there.
[Sidenote: A SURPRISE FOR THE MARSHAL]
The sudden rencontre, as has been said, was a surprise for the
marshal. Half an hour previously a battle had been almost the last
thing in Mortier’s thoughts. His guns were on board a number of river
boats which were being drifted downstream abreast of the troops, the
artillery horses being led with the marching columns along the bank.
The boats had been requisitioned a few miles back, so as to enable
the troops to get on faster over the rough stretch of road through
the Pass of Dürrenstein. The guns were hastily disembarked and raced
forward into the firing line in order to stop a forward movement that
the Russians, who promptly took advantage of the opportunity offered by
Mortier being apparently without artillery, began by making.
The Russians came on and quickly increased in numbers, to Marshal
Mortier’s further surprise. Were those beaten troops in full flight?
They began to swarm down to meet the French; heading for the guns as
these were being brought forward. The fight rapidly became general, and
charge after charge was made by the Russians to carry Mortier’s guns.
They captured them, but were then beaten back and the guns recaptured.
Twice were the guns taken and retaken. The two French regiments nearest
the guns, the 100th and 103rd, defended them with brilliant courage,
their four battalion Eagles conspicuous in the forefront and repeatedly
the centre of desperate fighting, as the Russians essayed again and
again at the point of the bayonet to make prize of the gleaming emblems.
But more and more Russians kept joining in, and after four hours of
very severe fighting the marshal began to get anxious. He had gained
ground towards Krems, and had made some 1,500 prisoners; but every
foot of the way had been stubbornly contested, and his losses had been
serious.
Mortier after that left the troops, and with an aide de camp galloped
back through the pass in order to hasten up Dupont. But the Second
Division was still at a distance. Dupont’s men were still a long way
beyond Dürrenstein and could not arrive for some time yet. Mortier
could only tell them not to lose a moment, and then retrace his own
steps. On his way back, to his amazement, he came upon a second Russian
column in great strength in the act of debouching from a side pass and
entering Dürrenstein. It had come round by a track among the hills on
the north to take Gazan’s division in rear, and interpose between it
and Dupont’s reinforcing troops. At considerable personal risk the
marshal managed to evade discovery by the Russians. By following a
devious by-path he at length got back to where Gazan’s division was;
as before, in hot action and slowly forcing the Russians back.
[Sidenote: TOO LATE TO CLEAR THE PASS]
Mortier stopped the advance at once. He faced his troops about, and,
while keeping off his original enemy, retreated; closing his columns
and rushing all back as fast as possible to repass the defile of
Dürrenstein and confront the new enemy on the further side, in a
position he might hold until Dupont could reinforce him. But it was
already too late. The French reached the entrance of the pass on the
near side to find it already occupied by the Russians, who were pouring
through in dense masses. There were nearly 20,000 of them on that side
of him and 15,000 on the other, his former foes now fast closing in
from behind hard on his heels. Mortier’s reduced ranks numbered barely
4,000 all told.
Owing to the high, steep rocks on one hand, and the river on the other,
it was impossible to push past the Russians on either flank. All that
could be done was to attack in front and try to cut a way through.
That; or to surrender! With reckless impetuosity the French attacked,
firing furiously and flinging themselves on the Russian bayonets;
while their rearguard, facing round, kept their first foes back. For
two long hours they fought like that; their ranks swept by the enemy’s
cannon on each side. At length they forced the entrance to the pass:
but they could get no farther. They had by then lost all their guns
but two: but they still had all their Eagles. With bullet-holes through
some of them, and their silken flags shot away or torn to tatters,
the Eagles did their part. Now they were rallying-centres; now they
were leading charges. There was hardly a battalion in which the first
standard-bearer had not gone down.
All were fighting almost without hope, holding out in sheer despair
as long as they had cartridges left, when, as that dreadful November
afternoon was drawing to its close, suddenly, from beyond the far end
of the pass was heard the booming of a distant cannonade. The soldiers
heard it and hope revived. It could only be Dupont! Help, then, was
coming! The despairing rank and file took heart again--but the hour of
rescue was not yet.
They had four long hours more to go through; every hour making their
terrible situation worse. At nightfall “our cavalry gave way, our
firing slackened, our bayonets, from incessant use, became bent and
blunted. The confusion became terrible. Things, indeed, could hardly
have got worse.” So an officer describes. The enemy, in places, had
got right in among them, but “our soldiers, being the handier and more
agile, had an advantage over the great clumsy Russians.” Here and there
“the men were so close, that they seized each other by the throat.”
In the midst of the fiercest of the fighting the tall figure of the
marshal was conspicuous. He was seen amid the flashes from the muskets
“at the head of a party of grenadiers, sword in hand, laying about him
like any trooper.”
[Sidenote: “YOUR DUTY IS TO SAVE THE EAGLES!”]
The Battalion-Eagles of the 100th, with their Porte-Aigles and a
handful of soldiers, got cut off together, amid a surging _mêlée_
of Russians. The major of the regiment, Henriot by name, the senior
surviving officer--the colonel of the 100th, as also the colonel of the
103rd, had fallen earlier in the fight--saw what was happening and the
extreme peril of the Eagles. Calling for volunteers, he got together
some of his men, cut his way through to the Eagles, and rescued them.
Major Henriot, after that, having saved the Eagles for the moment,
determined as a last resource to attempt a forlorn-hope charge; to
get beyond the enemy and reach Dupont with them. It might be possible
to save them under the cover of darkness. One of the Porte-Aigles of
the 6th Light Infantry with his Eagle, near by at the moment, joined
the devoted band of men that the intrepid major now managed to rally
round the Eagles of the 100th. With half a dozen stirring words Henriot
called on them to follow him. “Comrades, we must break through! They
are more than we, but you are Frenchmen: you don’t count numbers!
Remember, your duty is to save the Eagles of France!” (“Souvenez vous
qu’il s’agit de sauver les Aigles Françaises!”)
There was a hoarse shout in reply: “We are all Grenadiers! Pas de
charge!”
They dashed at the Russians, Henriot leading, and, after fighting their
way through the pass and nearly to Dürrenstein, fell to a man. Yet the
three Eagles did not fall into Russian hands, thanks to the darkness.
They were found next morning by French search-parties under a heap of
dead, where the last survivors, fighting back to back, had fallen while
making their final stand.
So desperate, indeed, did things look for the French at one time, a
little before midnight, that some of his staff appealed to Mortier to
make his escape and get across to the other side of the Danube in a
boat, “so that a Marshal of France shall not fall into the hands of the
enemy!”
But the gallant veteran flatly refused to listen to the proposal.
“No,” was his answer, “certainly not! I will not desert my brave
comrades! I will save them or die with them! Keep the boats for the
wounded,” he went on. “We have still two guns and some case-shot--rally
and make a last effort!”
Almost immediately afterwards an opportunity did offer for the marshal
to save them.
[Illustration: MARSHAL MORTIER.]
[Sidenote: A DASH IN THE DARK TO HELP]
Two of Dupont’s regiments at that moment reached the battle. By
persistent exertions, outstripping the rest of the Second Division,
and continuing in the dark, guided by the flashes of the guns, they
had made their way by a goat-path along the steep rocky slopes at the
side of the defile and taken the Russians barring Mortier’s retreat in
rear. Instantly the new arrivals flung themselves hotly into the fight.
They were the 9th Light Infantry and the 32nd of the Line, that old
favourite of Napoleon’s in the days of the Army of Italy, whose flag on
the Eagle-staff bore, as has been said, the golden inscription which
Napoleon had placed there--“J’étais tranquille, le brave 32me était là.”
The golden legend was of good omen for Mortier.
Their interposition put the Russian main force between two fires,
weakening the attack on Mortier and compelling a portion of them to
face about. Its effect was speedily felt, and at once; although a
desperate effort by the two regiments to break through and join hands
with Mortier, in which the Eagles of the 9th and 32nd were “taken and
retaken,” was beaten back under pressure of numbers.
The arrival of the two regiments so opportunely put heart into all:
Dupont’s whole division, declared the marshal, could not be far off.
He himself would make an effort to meet him on the farther side of the
pass.
“Then,” as is described by Napoleon’s aide de camp, Count de Sègur,
“rallying and closing up the remaining troops, he brought up the
only two guns left him. One was to point towards Krems and against
Kutusoff’s troops; the other Mortier placed at the head of the column,
in the direction of Dürrenstein. As all the drums had been broken he
had the charge sounded on iron cooking-cans.
“At that moment the Austrian general, Schmidt, who had led the Russian
corps from Dürrenstein, headed a final charge which was to strike a
crushing blow and complete the destruction of our column. But Fabvier
(the colonel in charge of Mortier’s artillery) heard them advance.
Concealed by the darkness, he let Schmidt approach quite near. Then
he suddenly fired the gun on that side, at the shortest range, in
among the headmost of the attacking troops. The discharge threw the
enemy into confusion and killed their leader. Into this bloody opening
Mortier and Gazan precipitated themselves, overthrowing everything
before them. Dürrenstein itself was retaken in the impetuous dash.”
It was indeed a _tour de force_; a sudden reversal of the fortunes
of the fight. The feat in its complete accomplishment surprised even
Mortier’s expectations. “The Marshal, in fact, could hardly believe
his own success.” So an officer puts it. But he had done more than
burst through the toils. As daylight next morning showed, the Russians,
driven headlong, had abandoned six of their guns, and left in the
hands of the French no fewer than twelve standards. Two of them
were taken by the two Dupont regiments which had so gallantly flung
themselves on the Russian rear.
That was as concerned honour and glory. As a set off, barely 2,000
remained of Mortier’s corps of 6,000 men. Two-thirds of the total when
the roll was called next day were found to have fallen on the field.
[Sidenote: THEIR FATE STILL IN DOUBT]
Mortier’s men regained Dürrenstein, all in flames; set on fire by the
Russians as they evacuated the village. But where was Dupont and his
Division? They had heard Dupont’s distant guns just before dark; but
except the two regiments who had been rushed forward independently,
ahead of the main body, starting immediately after Mortier’s visit in
the early afternoon, no help from Dupont had reached them. Gazan’s
wearied survivors of the midnight battle dared not even yet lay aside
their arms. The fight was not all over. The enemy were still near by;
just beyond the outskirts of the village. Both the Russian divisions
that they had been fighting with in front and rear had in the end
united. Outnumbering Mortier’s men as they did by ten to one, the
Russians would certainly turn back and be on them before long with
re-formed ranks, eager to take vengeance for their defeat and the rough
handling they had undergone.
But the end was near.
Suddenly, from the farther side of Dürrenstein, from the direction
in which the enemy had fallen back, there came a violent outburst of
firing. Immediately on that followed sounds of shouting. Then there was
the trampling rush of a great host of men all making for the village.
“With despair in our hearts we were preparing for another battle, when,
in answer to our challenge of ‘Qui vive?’ came back, with electrifying
effect, the answer ‘France!’ It was Dupont. At last he had arrived to
the rescue of his Marshal.
“We recognised each other in the light of the blazing houses, and with
transports of joy and gratitude and cries of ‘Long live our rescuers!’
our men threw themselves on the necks of their deliverers.”
In that dramatic fashion the battle of Dürrenstein reached its close.
The Russians fell back under cover of the night, retreating up the
lateral valley-pass, by which way at the outset they had worked their
way round, guided by the Austrian general, Schmidt, to surprise and cut
off Gazan’s division.
Napoleon, in his great relief at learning that Mortier had come through
without disaster, for once blamed nobody. He knew that he himself was
most of all to blame, for exposing to sudden attack a comparatively
weak detachment of his army in the face of an enemy still full of
fight, on the farther side of a deep and rapid river. “It seemed,”
in Marbot’s words, “as if no explanation of this operation beyond the
Danube satisfactory to military men being possible, there was a desire
to hush up its consequences.”
[Sidenote: BY WAY OF COVERING THE BLUNDER]
By way of covering up his own glaring blunder Napoleon heaped praises
on the troops engaged. He expressed unbounded admiration at the stand
they had made. In the 22nd “Bulletin of the Grand Army,” issued from
Schönbrunn, near Vienna, two days later, the Emperor declared that
“le combat de Dürrenstein sera à jamais mémorable dans les annales
militaires.” Gazan, he said, had shown “beaucoup de valeur et de
conduite.” The 4me and 9me Légère and the 32nd and 100th of the Line,
wrote Napoleon, “se sont couverts de gloire.”