Mack's army, the Emperor increased the pace of his advance, down
the right bank of the Danube towards Vienna. He captured Passau
and then Linz, where he learned that 50,000 Russians, commanded
by General Koutousoff, reinforced by 40,000 Austrians, whom
General Kienmayer had collected, had crossed the Danube at Vienna
and had taken up a position between M”lk and St. Poelten. He was
told at the same time that the Austrian army commanded by Prince
Charles had been defeated by Massena in the Venetian district and
was retreating via the Friuli in the direction of Vienna; and
lastly that the Archduke Jean was occupying the Tyrol with
several divisions. Those two princes were therefore threatening
the right of the French army, while it had the Russians in front
of it. To protect himself against a flank attack, the Emperor,
who already had Marshal Augereau's corps in the region of
Bregenz, sent Marshal Ney to attack Innsbruk and the Tyrol, and
moved Marmont's corps to Loeben, in order to block Prince
Charles' route from Italy. Having taken these wise precautions to
protect his right flank, Napoleon, before advancing to meet the
Russians, whose advance-guard had already clashed with ours at
Amstetten, near to Steyer, wished to protect his left flank from
any attack from those Austrians who had taken refuge in Bohemia,
under the command of Archduke Ferdinand. To effect this he gave
Marshal Mortier the infantry divisions of Generals Dupont and
Gazan, and ordered him to cross the Danube by the bridges at
Passau and Linz, and then proceed down the left bank of the
river, while the bulk of the army went down the right. However,
in order not to leave Marshal Mortier too isolated, Napoleon
conceived the idea of gathering together on the Danube a great
number of boats, which had been captured on the tributaries of
the river, and forming a flotilla which, manned by men from the
guard, could move down the river, keeping level with Mortier and
making a link between the troops on both banks.
You may think it a little presumptuous of me to criticise one of
the operations of a great captain, but I cannot refrain from
commenting that the sending of Mortier to the left bank was a
move which had not been sufficiently considered, and was an error
which could have had very serious consequences. The Danube,
Europe's largest river, is, after Passau, so wide in winter that
from one bank one cannot discern a man standing on the other; it
is also very deep and very fast-flowing, and it therefore
provided a guarantee of perfect safety for the left flank of the
French army as it marched down the right bank. Furthermore, any
attack could be made only by the Archduke Ferdinand, coming from
Bohemia; but he, very pleased to have escaped from the French
before Ulm, had only a few troops, and they were mostly cavalry.
Even if he had wished to do so, he had not the means to mount an
attack which involved crossing an obstacle such as the Danube,
into which he might be driven back. Whereas, by detaching two of
his divisions and allowing them to be isolated across this
immense river, Napoleon exposed them to the risk of being
captured or exterminated. A disaster which might have been
foreseen and which very nearly came about.
Field-marshal Koutousoff, had been awaiting the French with
confidence, in a strong position at St. Poelten, because he
believed that they were being pursued by the army of Mack; but
when he heard of the surrender of this army at Ulm, he no longer
felt himself strong enough to face Napoleon alone, and being
unwilling to risk his troops to save the city of Vienna, he
decided to put the barrier of the Danube between himself and the
victor, so he crossed the river by the bridge at Krems, which he
burned behind him.
He had scarcely arrived on the left bank with all his army, when
he ran into the scouts of the Gazan division, which was
proceeding from Dirnstein to Krems, with Marshal Mortier at its
head. Koutousoff, having discovered the presence of a French
corps isolated on the left bank, resolved to crush it, and to
achieve this aim he attacked it head to head on the narrow road
which ran along the river bank, while seizing control of the
escarpments which overlook the Danube. He sent light troops to
occupy Dirnstein to cut off the retreat of the Gazan division.
The position of the division was made even more critical by the
fact that the flotilla of boats had dropped back and there were
only two little boats available, which made it impossible to
bring reinforcements from the other bank.
Attacked in front and in the rear and on one of their flanks by
enemies six times their number; shut in between the rocky
escarpment occupied by the Russians and the depths of the Danube,
the French soldiers, crowded on the narrow roadway, did not
despair. The gallant Marshal Mortier set them an example, for,
when it was suggested that he should take one of the boats and go
over to the right bank, where he would be with the Grande Armee,
and avoid giving the Russians the glory of capturing a marshal,
he replied that he would die with his men, or escape over the
dead bodies of the Russians!
A savage bayonet fight ensued: five thousand French were up
against thirty thousand Russians: night came to add to the
horrors of the combat: Gazan's division, massed in column,
managed to regain Dirnstein at a moment when Dupont's division,
which had remained behind opposite M”lk, alerted by the sound of
gunfire, was running to their aid. Eventually the battlefield
remained in French hands.
In this hand to hand fighting, where the bayonet was almost the
only weapon used, our men, more adroit and agile than the giant
Russians, had a great advantage; so the enemy losses amounted to
some four thousand five hundred men, while ours were three
thousand only. But had our divisions not been made up of
seasoned soldiers, Mortier's corps would probably have been
destroyed. The Emperor was well aware of this, and hastened to
recall it to the right bank. What seems to me to be proof that
he realised the mistake he had made in sending this corps across
the river, is the fact that, although he generously rewarded the
brave regiments which had fought at Dirnstein, the official
bulletins scarcely mention this sanguinary affair, and it is as
if one wished to conceal the results of this operation because
one could find no military justification for it.
What further confirms me in the opinion which I have taken the
liberty of expressing, is that in the campaign of 1809, the
Emperor, when he found himself in a similar situation, did not
send any troops across the river, but, keeping all his force
together, he went with it to Vienna.
But let us return to the mission with which Major Massy and I
were charged.
When we arrived in Vienna, Napoleon and the bulk of the army had
already left the city, which they had seized without a shot being
fired. The crossing of the Danube which it was necessary to
effect in order to pursue the Russians and the Austrians who were
retreating into Moravia, had not been disputed, thanks to a
perhaps culpable deception which was carried out by Marshals
Lannes and Murat. This incident, which had such a profound effect
on this well-known campaign, deserves recounting.
The city of Vienna is situated on the right bank of the Danube: a
small branch of that immense river passes through the city, but
the main stream is half a league away; there the Danube contains
a large number of islands which are connected by a long series of
wooden bridges, terminated by one which, spanning the main arm of
the river, reaches the left bank at a place named Spitz. The road
to Moravia runs along this series of bridges. When the Austrians
are opposing the crossing of a river, they have a very bad habit
of leaving the bridges intact up to the very last moment, to give
them a means of mounting a counter-attack against the enemy, who
almost always does not allow them time to do so and takes from
them the bridges which they have neglected to burn. This is what
the French did during the campaign in Italy in 1796 at the
memorable affairs of Lodi and Arcoli. But these examples had not
served to correct the Austrians, for on leaving Vienna, which is
not suited to defence, they retired to the other side of the
Danube without destroying a single one of the bridges spanning
this vast watercourse, and limited themselves to placing
inflammable material on the platform of the main bridge, in order
to set it alight when the French appeared. They had also
established on the left bank, at the end of the bridge at Spitz,
a powerful battery of artillery, as well as a division of six
thousand men under the command of Prince D'Auersperg, a brave but
not very intelligent officer. Now I must tell you that some days
before the entry of the French into Vienna, the Emperor had
received the Austrian general, Comte de Guilay, who came as an
envoy to make peace overtures, which came to nothing. But hardly
had the Emperor settled in the palace of Schoenbrunn, when
General Guilay again appeared and spent more than an hour
tˆte-a-tˆte with Napoleon. From this a rumour arose that an
armistice had been arranged, a rumour which spread amongst the
French regiments which were entering Vienna and the Austrians who
were leaving to cross the Danube.
Murat and Lannes, whom the Emperor had ordered to secure the
crossing of the Danube, placed Oudinot's Grenadiers behind a
bushy plantation and went forward, accompanied only by some
German-speaking officers. The enemy outposts withdrew, firing as
they went. The French officers called out that there was an
armistice, and continuing their progress, they crossed all the
small bridges, without being held up. When they arrived at the
main bridge, they renewed their assertion to the commander at
Spitz, who did not dare to fire on two marshals, almost alone,
who claimed that hostilities were suspended. However, before
allowing them to go any further, he wanted to go and ask General
Auersperg for orders, and while he did so, he left the post in
charge of a sergeant. Lannes and Murat persuaded the sergeant
that under the terms of the cease-fire, the bridge should be
handed over to them, and that he should go with his men to join
his officer on the left bank. The poor sergeant hesitated, he was
edged back gently while the conversation continued, and by a slow
but steady advance they reached, eventually, the end of the main
bridge.
At this point an Austrian officer endeavored to set light to the
incendiary material, but the torch was snatched from his hand,
and he was told that he would be in serious trouble if he did any
such thing. Next, the column of Oudinot's Grenadiers appeared and
began to cross the bridge.... The Austrian gunners prepared to
open fire, but the French marshals ran to the commander of the
artillery and assured him that an armistice was in force, then,
seating themselves on the guns, they requested the gunners to go
and inform General Auersperg of their presence. General Auersperg
eventually arrived and was about to order the gunners to open
fire, although by now they and the Austrian troops were
surrounded by the French Grenadiers, when the two marshals
managed to convince him that there was a cease-fire, a principal
condition of which was that the French should occupy the bridge.
The unhappy general, fearing to compromise himself by the useless
shedding of blood, lost his head to the point of leading away all
the troops which he had been given to defend the bridges.
Without this error on the part of General Auersperg, the passage
of the Danube could only have been carried out with great
difficulty, and might even have been impossible; in which case
Napoleon would have been unable to pursue the Russians and
Austrians into Moravia, and would have failed in his campaign.
That was the opinion at the time, and it was confirmed three
years later when, the Austrians having burned the bridges, to
secure a passage we were forced to fight the two battles of
Essling and Wagram, which cost us more than thirty thousand men,
whereas in 1805 Marshals Lannes and Murat took possession of the
bridges without there being a single man wounded.
Was the stratagem they employed admissible? I have my doubts. I
know that in war one eases one's conscience, and that any means
may be employed to ensure victory and reduce loss of life, but in
spite of these weighty considerations, I do not think that one
can approve of the method used to seize the bridge at Spitz, and
for my part I would not care to do the same in similar
circumstances.
To conclude this episode, the credulity of General Auersperg was
very severely punished. A court-martial condemned him to be
cashiered, dragged through the streets of Vienna on a hurdle and
finally put to death at the hands of the public executioner...! A
similar sentence was passed on Field-marshal Mack, to punish him
for his conduct at Ulm. But in both cases the death sentence was
commuted to life imprisonment. They served ten years and were
then released, but deprived of their position, expelled from the
ranks of the nobility and rejected by their families, they died,
both of them, shortly after they had been set at liberty.
The stratagem employed by Marshals Lannes and Murat having
secured the crossing of the Danube, the Emperor Napoleon directed
his army in pursuit of the Russians and the Austrians. Thus began
the second phase of the campaign.
Chap. 25.
The Russian marshal Koutousoff was heading via Hollabrunn for
Brno in Moravia, in order to join the second army which was led
by the Emperor Alexander in person; but on approaching
Hollabrunn, he was alarmed to discover that the troops of Lannes
and Murat were already occupying the town and cutting off his
means of retreat. To get out of this fix, the aged marshal,
making use, in his turn, of trickery, sent General Prince
Bagration as an envoy to Marshal Murat, whom he assured that an
aide-de-camp of the Emperor was on his way to Napoleon in order
to conclude an armistice, and that, without doubt, peace would
shortly follow.
Prince Bagration was a very amiable man, he knew exactly how to
flatter Murat, so that he in turn was deceived into accepting an
armistice, in spite of the observations of Lannes, who wished to
fight but had to obey Murat, who was his superior officer.
The truce lasted for thirty-six hours; and while Murat was
inhaling the incense which the crafty Russian lavished on him,
Koutousoff's army made a detour and concealing its movement
behind a screen of low hills, escaped from danger, and went on to
take up, beyond Hollabrunn, a strong position which opened the
road to Moravia and assured his retreat and his junction with the
second Russian army which was encamped between Znaim and Brno.
Napoleon was still in the palace of Schoenbrunn, and was
furiously angry when he heard that Murat had allowed himself to
be bamboozled by Prince Bagration, and had accepted an armistice
without his orders, and he commanded him to attack Koutousoff
immediately.
Now the situation of the Russians had changed greatly to their
advantage, so they repelled the French most vigorously. The town
of Hollabrunn, taken and re-taken several times, set on fire by
the mortars, filled with the dead and dying, remained finally in
French possession. The Russians retired in the direction of Brno;
our troops followed them and took possession of this town without
a fight, although it was fortified and dominated by the
well-known citadel of Spielberg.
The Russian armies and the remains of the Austrian troops were
united in Moravia; the Emperor Napoleon, in order to deliver the
final blow, arrived in Brno, the capital of the province.
My comrade Massy and I followed after him, but we moved slowly
and with much difficulty, firstly because the post-horses were on
their last legs, and then because of the great quantity of
troops, guns, ammunition wagons, baggage, etc. with which the
roads were obstructed. We were obliged to stop for twenty-four
hours at Hollabrunn, while we waited for a passage to be cleared
through the streets, destroyed by fire and littered with planks
and beams and the debris of furniture, still alight. This
unfortunate town had been so completely burned that we were
unable to find a single house to provide shelter!
During our enforced stay, we were confronted and distressed by
the most horrible and shocking spectacle. The wounded, mainly
Russians, had taken refuge during the fighting in the houses
which were soon set ablaze. All who could walk fled at the
approach of this new danger, but the crippled and gravely injured
were burned alive in the ruins! Many had attempted to escape the
fire by crawling along the ground, but the flames had followed
them into the streets,where one could see a multitude of these
wretched victims half consumed by fire, some of them still
breathing! The bodies of the men and horses killed in the battle
had also been roasted, so that for several leagues around the
town there was a sickening stench of burning flesh! ... There are
countrysides and towns which because of their situation are
destined to serve as battlefields, and Hollabrun is one of them,
because it offers an excellent military position; thus it was
that the damage done by the fire of 1805 had scarcely been
repaired, when I saw the place again, four years later, once more
on fire and littered with the half-roasted bodies of the dead and
dying; as you will see from my description of the campaign of
1809.
Major Massy and I left this pestilential spot as soon as we
could, and went on to Znaim, where, four years later I was to be
wounded; and at last we reached the Emperor at Brunn (Brno), on
November 22nd, ten days before the Battle of Austerlitz.
The day after our arrival, we completed our mission and handed
over the flags with the ceremony laid down by the Emperor for
solemn occasions of this kind; for he missed no opportunity of
displaying to the troops anything which could raise their morale
and enthusiasm.
The procedure was as follows:--Half an hour before the daily
parade,--which took place at eleven o'clock outside whatever
residence was serving as the Emperor's palace,--General Duroc,
the Grand Marshal, sent to our billet a company of Grenadiers of
the Guard, with bandsmen and drummers. The town of Brunn was full
of French troops, and the soldiers, as we passed, celebrated with
much cheering the victory of their comrades of 7th Corps. All the
guard-posts accorded us military honours, and on our entry to the
courtyard of the Emperor's quarters, the units formed up for the
parade beat a salute, presented arms, and cried repeatedly "Vive
L'Empereur!"
The aide-de-camp on duty came to receive us and to present us to
Napoleon, to whom we were introduced, accompanied always by the
N.C.O.s carrying the Austrian flags. The Emperor examined these
various trophies, and after dismissing the N.C.O.s. he questioned
us closely about the various actions which had been fought by
Marshal Augereau and on all we had seen or learned on our long
journey through a countryside which had been the theatre of war.
Then he told us to await his instructions, and to join the
imperial suite. The Grand Marshal Duroc took charge of the
flags, for which he gave us a receipt in the regular manner,
informed us that horses would be placed at our disposal and
invited us, for the duration of our stay, to the table over which
he presided.
The French army was now massed around and before Brunn. The
Russian advance-guard occupied Austerlitz, while the bulk of
their army was positioned round the town of Olmutz, where were
also the Emperor Alexander of Russia and the Emperor of Austria.
A battle seemed inevitable, but both sides being well aware that
the outcome would have an immense bearing on the destiny of
Europe, each hesitated to make a decisive move. Napoleon, usually
so swift to act, waited for eleven days at Brunn before launching
a major attack. It is, however, true that every day of waiting
increased his forces by the arrival of great numbers of soldiers
who had lagged behind because of illness or fatigue, and who
having now recovered, hastened to rejoin their units. I recall
that, in these circumstances, I told a white lie which could have
ruined my military career.
Napoleon usually treated his officers with kindness, but there
was one point on which he was perhaps too strict, for he held
colonels responsible for keeping their units up to full strength,
something it is very difficult to do during a campaign. It was in
this matter that the Emperor was most often deceived, for the
corps commanders were so afraid of displeasing him that they
risked being committed to facing an enemy force disproportionate
to their own numbers, rather than admit that sickness, fatigue
and the need to forage for food had caused many soldiers to drop
out. So Napoleon, in spite of his authority, never knew the exact
number of combatants available to him on the day of battle.
Now it so happened that the Emperor, in the course of one of the
endless trips he made to visit the various corps of the army, saw
the mounted Chasseurs of his guard, who were moving to a
different position. He was particularly fond of this regiment, of
which his "guides" from Italy and Egypt formed the nucleus. The
Emperor, whose experienced eye could estimate very exactly the
strength of a column, noticing that their numbers were much
reduced, took out of his pocket a little notebook, and, calling
for General Morland, the commander of the mounted Chasseurs, he
said to him in a stern voice, "Your regiment is down in my notes
as having 1200 men, and although you have not been in action, you
have no more than 800; what has happened to the others?" General
Morland was a fine, brave fighting soldier, but he did not have a
ready tongue, and being quite nonplussed, he said in his
Franco-Alsatian dialect that he was short of only a small number
of men. The Emperor maintained that he was about four hundred
short, and to get to the truth of the matter he wanted to have an
immediate count; but knowing that General Morland was very much
liked by the officers of the imperial staff, he feared a
cover-up, and thought he would be more likely to discover the
truth by choosing an officer who did not belong to his entourage
nor to the Chasseurs; so, seeing me, he ordered me to count the
Chasseurs and to deliver to him personally a record of their
numbers; having said which, he made off at the gallop. I began my
task, which was made more easy because the troopers were riding
past four abreast at walking pace.
Poor General Morland, who knew how close Napoleon's estimate was
to the reality, was in a state of great agitation, for he foresaw
that my report would call down on his head a severe reprimand. He
hardly knew me, and did not dare to suggest that I might
compromise myself to get him out of trouble. He was then sitting
silently on his horse beside me, when, fortunately for him, his
adjutant came to join him. This officer, named Fournier, had
started his military career as an assistant surgeon, then, having
become a surgeon-major, he felt that he had more of a vocation
for the sabre than for the lancet, and had asked for and obtained
permission to join the ranks of the combatant officers, and
Morland, with whom he had served previously, arranged for him to
join the Guard.
I had known Captain Fournier very well when he was still
surgeon-major, and I was very much obliged to him, for not only
had he dressed my father's wound when it was inflicted, but he
had gone, like him, to Genoa, where, as long as my father lived,
he had come several times a day to care for him: if the doctors
charged with the duty of fighting the typhus epidemic had been as
assiduous and zealous as Fournier, my father, perhaps, would not
have died. I had often thought this, so I gave the warmest of
welcomes to Fournier, whom I did not at first recognise in the
pelisse of a captain of Chasseurs.
General Morland, seeing the pleasure we had in meeting one
another, thought he might profit from our mutual friendship to
persuade me not to reveal to the Emperor by how many men he was
short. He took his adjutant aside and conferred with him for a
time; then Fournier came, and in the name of our former
friendship, he begged me to extricate General Morland from a most
unpleasant situation by concealing from the Emperor the extent to
which the regiment was under strength. I refused firmly and
continued to count. The Emperor's estimate was very close, for
there were only a few over eight hundred Chasseurs present, four
hundred were missing.
I was about to leave to make my report, when General Morland and
Captain Fournier renewed their pleas pointing out that the
greater part of the men who had dropped behind for various
reasons would rejoin them very shortly, and that it was not
likely that Napoleon would engage in battle before the arrival of
the divisions of Friant and Gudin, who were still at the gates of
Vienna, thirty-six leagues from us and would take several days to
reach us. In the interval more laggards would rejoin the unit.
They added that the Emperor would be too busy to check my report.
I could not pretend to myself that I was not being asked to
deceive the Emperor, which was very wrong, but I felt also that I
was under a great obligation to Captain Fournier for the truly
tender care he had given to my dying father, I allowed myself
therefore to be swayed and promised to conceal a large part of
the truth.