206 STRATEGY OF DAVOUST TOWARDS THE ARCHDUKE. [A.D. wrapped in his cloak and resting himself on a hard bench, was anxiously awaiting his return; and, as soon as he received his report, mounted his horse and rode to Abensberg, where he found the Prince Royal of Bavaria in the midst of his troops. He now learned that Davoust's advanced divisions, Gudin and Morand, had passed the defile of Abbach, and that the country, singularly intersected with woods and broken elevations, afforded great facilities for defence and for the concealment of the amount of force which might occupy it. He, therefore, rallied on this ground about 40,00 Bavarians and Würtembergers, including a division of French cuirassiers, with whom he determined to bring the enemy to action on the banks of the Abens, for the Archduke had collected his force in and about Rohr. Napoleon welcomed at this moment the arrival on the field again of his old friend and favourite Lannes, and ordered that a new corps should be immediately formed to be placed under that Marshal's orders. 18. BATTLE OF ABENSBERG.-CAPTURE OF LANDSHUT. Napoleon was now at ease for the safety of Davoust's corps, but, reflecting on the position he was in, he resolved to bring him back towards Abensberg, and to send up Massena from Pfaffenhausen to Landshut, thus by this double march concentrating 140,000 or 150,000 men in front of the Archduke, with which strength he felt convinced he could crush him. He therefore ordered Davoust to keep the Archduke fully occupied on the side of Offenstetten, while Lannes should move by the road to Rohr and Adelshausen, threatening the left and forcing his way between the separated Austrian corps of Hiller and Hohenzollern; and he concluded his despatch to Massena in these words, "Activité, activité, vitesse, je me recommande à vous." He then put himself, without guard or personal staff, at the head of the Bavarian and Würtemberg contingents, and marched against the Austrians under Thierry, who were at Kirchdorf; at the same moment, Davoust and Lannes also set themselves in motion to fulfil the Emperor's orders. It so happened that the Archduke was marching from his camp near Rohr on the high road to Ratisbon, thinking to entrap Marshal Davoust and his corps-d'armée there; while his left column under Hohenzollern was marching on Hausen and Tengen, and his right on Saalhaupt, a brigade under the Archduke Louis also was advancing by the great road through Echinühl. It was 9 in the morning, however, before the columns perceived each other, when the division Gudin suddenly came aux prises with some Austrian tirailleurs near Schneidart. Each army thought they had taken the village, whereas the troops of both had only passed through it in their respective opposing directions; Thierry however on his side gave way upon the Emperor's advance, and fell back to Rohr, where he was taken prisoner with three battalions. Louis fell back before the Bavarians commanded by Wrede, and did not stop till he reached Lulmansdorff. Wrede's attack was so successful that his opponent was obliged to send to [1809. A SCENE OF INDESCRIBABLE CONFUSION. 207 Prince Reus, who, with General Brinchi, was gallantly defending himself at Kirchdorf, to fall back and join him; and, accordingly, at the end of the day Pfaffenhausen was occupied by the troops of Hiller and the Archduke Louis, while Hohenzollern held his ground at Leindorf; but Lannes was pursuing his course on the high road to Landshut, having only some fugitives under Vincent between him and that city. Marshal Davoust had strictly obeyed the Emperor's orders, and occupied the Archduke's attention all the day, and had indeed, passed imperceptibly between him and the river, so that at night-fall the ground right and left of Tengen in front of Abensberg was in possession of the French troops. The Archduke most unaccountably remained all day at Saalhaupt, awaiting the junction of his left wing under Louis, and did not know till the evening that he was cut off entirely from that portion of his army; but, hearing that the French had been seen moving towards the Iser, he took up his position between the two rivers called Grosse and Kleine Laber, at Eckmühl, having his back on Ratisbon and facing the road leading thence on Landshut. Napoleon, awaiting the consequences of Lannes's forward movement towards Landshut, established his head-quarters for the night at Rottenburg, delighted with the events of the day, in which he had been so well served by the troops of Bavaria and Würtemberg. General Hiller, who, by right of seniority, held the Archduke Louis's command, now seeing himself cut off from the Generalissimo, and knowing the importance of saving the great depôt of the army at Landshut, resolved to retire in the course of the night of the 20th-21st, by the great road leading from Neustadt on that town. Napoleon, ever on the alert, and scarcely lying down to rest, was on horseback at daylight, and came up early with Lannes's corps of 25,000 men on the road to Landshut, in hot pursuit of Hiller and Louis, while Wrede, with the Bavarians and Würtembergers, were pushing their way to the same point from Pfaffenhausen; and he hoped and trusted that Massena was also moving his corps of 30,000 by some road or other to unite with him at the same place as he had directed. As the Emperor advanced, a scene of indescribable confusion opened before him. The two Austrian divisions of Hiller met near Altdorf, and, to add to the entanglement, the great pontoon train, sufficient for the passage of one of the broadest rivers, became clogged with their cavalry, artillery, and infantry: Bessières, therefore, seeing the disorder, dashed forward with the cuirassiers of Saint Sulpice and the chasseurs of Jacquinot into the midst of them, where he was, however, encountered by the Austrian cavalry, who resisted him with great bravery. In the meantime the Austrian infantry hastened through the town to cross the Iser, while the grenadiers of Aspre held the suburb of Seligenthal, to keep back the French from crossing by the bridge. The extensive marshy ground about the suburb, on both roads, was covered with guns, tumbrils, and baggage; and, to increase the tumult, Napoleon established two batteries on the heights commanding this bottom, which plunged their fire into the midst of the mass, and 208 THE ARCHDUKE LOSES HIS OPPORTUNITY. LA.D. made confusion worse confounded. Hiller placed the 5th and 6th corps into position outside of the town, to cover the retreat of his troops, and then set fire to the bridge, when General Mouton, one of the Emperor's aides-de-camp, placed himself at the head of the 17th, and animating them by voice and gesture, carried them in the teeth of a storm of projectiles, along the flaming structure. Just at this moment the head of the column of Massena appeared on the river side, which the Austrians had gained: marching up from Morsburg, the cavalry led by Marulaz, and the infantry by Clarapède. Hiller immediately sent forward General Nordmann, with both cavalry and infantry, to check them, while the Archduke Louis held stoutly the castle of Trausnitz, which commanded the town; but it was all in vain-with no chance of being reinforced, the Austrians were obliged to give way before the immense accumulation which the arrival of Massena had brought against them, and they retreated on Geissenhausen, followed closely by Clarapède. Their loss was 6,000 men, and 36 guns; but the gain to the French in guns, pontoons, and immense magazines, was even more than a victory, at the comparatively trifling loss of 1,800 men. Nor was it the least triumph of these operations that while Napoleon effected the junction of his divided army, he separated the armies of the Archdukes Charles and Louis for the rest of the campaign. 19. BATTLE OF ECKMÜHL OR EGGMÜHL - ENTRY INTO RATISBON. All this time, however, Napoleon was not without his anxieties about Davoust. His forethought had induced him to send back the divisions of Morand and Gudin, as soon as he had sent off Lefebvre with the Bavarians in pursuit of the Archduke Louis; but Kollowrath still defended himself between Schierling and the wood of Hohewald. In the night of the 21st-22nd, however, this general received the Archduke Charles's order to march on Abach, while Prince John of Lichtenstein was moved on Peising. The Austrian army, in front of Napoleon, now formed a line, resting its right on the Danube, and its left on the Gross Laber, where Charles hoped to rally the divisions of Hiller and Louis. Rosenberg and Hohenzollern, forming the left, held high ground near Eglofsheim, where the high road crosses from Landshut to Ratisbon. This town was occupied by a single French regiment, but as it now formed the only road of retreat for the Austrian army, Charles ordered Kollowrath and Lichtenstein to advance across the stone bridge. Colonel Coutard commanded the regiment at the bridge of Ratisbon and defended himself valiantly, until he had exhausted all his ammunition, and was forced to surrender. The Archduke might, now that Ratisbon was in his power, have brought Bellegarde's army over the Danube to join him, and have assumed the offensive against Davoust; but he did nothing, and remained on the defensive all the time that Napoleon was thundering at Landshut. Davoust, not quite understanding the Austrian repose in his 1809.] NAPOLEON'S SKILFUL DISPOSITIONS. 209 front, thought the best way to prevent his adversary from working mischief against himself was by attacking him, and he therefore made the utmost demonstrations of his forces that a country full of thickets and briars gave him the means of doing, and at nightfall of the 21st he was still in front of Eckmühl. He then sent General Piré to the Emperor to receive further instructions. This staff officer found the Emperor, after the fatigues of the day, hard at work in writing despatches, of which it is remarked there are an unusual number extant, dated from Landshut on this day. He immediately gave orders that General Saint Sulpice, with the cuirassiers, and the division of Würtembergers, under General Vandamme, who were bivouacked nearest the road, should march at 2 in the morning to reinforce Davoust, and Piré was sent back to the Marshal with the assurance that he would himself in a short time follow. The result of the reflections which crossed the Emperor's mind at this moment convinced him that the whole of the Archduke's strength was in position between Eckmühl and Ratisbon, and he therefore sent successive orders to Lannes and Massena to be prepared to march back before daybreak, while he subsequently despatched an aide-de-camp to carry the more detailed information as regarded the forces which might be expected to arrive on the field between 1 and 2 o'clock, and he directed signals to be made, so that, as soon as salvos of artillery were heard, he might immediately attack. He instructed, at the same time, Bessières to follow Hiller beyond the Iser, but, lest he should turn and recover his strength, he placed the divisions Boudet and Tharreau en echelon between Neustadt and Landshut, to be available to meet a contingency on either hand, for his guards, who were on march from Spain, might be expected to arrive at Landshut from day to day. He then lay down for a short repose, and at daybreak on the 22nd departed at a gallop, with Massena, Savary, and all their staff, on the road to Eckmühl. After the engagement between the Archduke and Davoust, on the 21st, the Austrian division of Rosenberg occupied the two villages called Ober and Unter Leuchling, on the heights immediately in front of Eckmühl; Hohenzollern's corps was on the great road which crossed them leading to Ratisbon; Wukassovitch, with about 6,000 men, was in the valley of the Great Laber, more to their left; and the castle of Eckmühl was occupied: but the Archduke's plan was to make an attack with the weight of his forces from the side of Abach, upon the French left. The divisions St. Hilaire, Friant, and Demont, in and about Schierling, with the Bavarian cavalry of Deroy, a little to the right, immediately advanced and deployed; but nothing beyond a violent cannonade ensued. The Archduke, in utter ignorance of Napoleon's advance on Landshut, and of General Hiller's flight, imagined that he could act upon the rear of the left of the French army; but as for this manœuvre he required the assistance of Kollowrath's division, out of Ratisbon, the necessity of forming these columns of attack delayed the orders for the onset till about midday. However, he had scarcely got the 210 ECKMÜHL CASTLE CARRIED BY THE BAYONET. [A.D. troops in motion when he received from General Wukassovitch the information that heavy columns were advancing towards him, on the road from Landshut. Upon the nearer approach of the columns which had been thus seen, Rosenberg and Wukassovitch massed their forces, posting their artillery so as to sweep all the approaches; and accordingly, as soon as the head of Lannes' corps showed itself out of Buckhausen, it was received with such a storm of grape as induced it to swerve to the left, towards Schierling; and Gudin's division, which followed, moved off from the same cause, to its right towards Deckenback and Zaitkoven. Some troops nevertheless advanced, notwithstanding the heavy fire, and carried the little village of Lintach, while the whole force, being reformed, crossed the Laber to attack Eckmühl and Roeking The divisions of St. Hilaire and Friant then rushed up the heights, at the villages of Ober and Unter Leuchling, when they were received with a deadly fire of musketry from the regiments of Bellegarde and Reuss-Greitz, notwithstanding which they got possession of both villages, though they were most skilfully barricaded and well defended. In like manner, the regiments of Chastelor, Coburg, and Archduke Louis, which occupied the adjoining woods, were driven out from them at the point of the bayonet. An Austrian battery of 16 guns, which swept the plain of the Laber, still delayed the French attack on the bridge at Eckmühl, and counteracted for a long time the headlong assaults of the Würtembergers against it; but a French battery was opened on the side of Schierling which silenced the Austrian fire, although attempts at seizing the battery by the Bavarian cavalry were successfully resisted. The Archduke Charles now sent to Rosenberg to discontinue the unequal combat, and to retire; and, as soon as he saw that he had new opponents on his right, he also withdrew his divisions from Abach, and sent them to the assistance of the 2nd corps, by way of Peising, while the 1st and 3rd corps marched up to Thalmassing. Davoust's divisions came upon the flank of this march to Thalmassing, but Hohenzollern launched his cavalry against the enemy, and effectually checked his advance. Napoleon now ordered a decisive attack; but the fight was so stubbornly maintained at Eckmühl that he desired General Saint Sulpice to carry forward a large force of Bavarian, Würtemberg, and French cavalry to seize the Austrian battery. Combined with this movement, the Würtemberg infantry, under Vandamme, and the division St. Hilaire carried the castle of Eckmühl with the bayonet, and Lannes crossing the Laber at Standelsmühle, drove back the rear-guard through the defile of Holberg. General Rosenberg on this ordered a retreat on Eglofsheim. In front and to the left of this village the Archduke had massed 12 squadrons of cuirassiers and 26 squadrons of light horse, who poured down, under the command of Prince Lichtenstein, upon the French advance, with unexampled fury. This put an end to the conflict, for, under cover of this charge, Charles made a change of front parallel to the highway, a disposition admirably calculated to preserve his army in their retreat -a great |