1809.] NAPOLEON SLIGHTLY WOUNDED. 211 object, to which his attention was now alone directed. The battle had indeed lasted three hours, and it was nightfall. The Archduke therefore encamped on the hills immediately in front of Ratisbon; and Napoleon gave orders to his army to halt and bivouac on the Austrian position. The French took a great number of prisoners, 16 guns, and 15 standards: the actual killed and wounded on each side was nearly the same, about 6,000. The corps of Massena could not get up to the field of battle to take part in it, but the Marshal himself came up to the Emperor at Eglofsheim, though his divisions were still far to the rear. When Bellegarde's army, on the other side of the Danube, was taken into account, the Archduke was still at the head of 80,000 men. It is strange that he should have left them so long out of the account, but he at length saw the wisdom of concentrating them. He therefore threw a bridge over the Danube, on the night of the 22nd-23rd, by which the corps of Hohenzollern and Rosenberg passed over as soon as it was completed, the mass of the cavalry crossing by the stone bridge of Ratisbon. Kollowrath coming in from Abach, and not having been engaged in the battle of the 20th-21st, was left in the city to cover the Austrian retreat. The French cavalry came down upon the rear-guard at break of day, on the 22nd, to try whether there would be any resistance, which they soon found to their cost; for the Austrian cavalry drove them back before them with such vigour that Lannes thought it necessary to order up his guns to check them. The Archduke brought down Bellegarde's army to the confluence of the Regen to insure the respect of the enemy for the retreating army; and the StadtamHoff was strongly occupied by them, and the hills behind it crowned with artillery. The divisions Friant, St. Hilaire, Morand, and Gudin came down to the town wall; but General Telsen barred all the gates, and so well posted his six regiments on the old defences of the city, that he kept the French in awe until Massena brought up his corps and encamped them at Fraesling, on the heights commanding Ratisbon. Napoleon ordered batteries to be formed to play upon the bridge and on the streets of the town, and while he was thus occupied and in conversation with Duroc, raising his glass to spy around him, he was struck by spent ball upon the great toe. On the Emperor remarking, "Je suis touché," a host of surgeons threw themselves before his horse, and drew off the boot, but the skin was found unbroken. The notion, however, that the Emperor was wounded excited the enthusiasm of the soldiers, who received the conqueror with a delirium of delight as he passed their ranks. It was past midday, and all were impatient to get into Ratisbon, when Lannes brought his guns to bear upon a portion of the enceinte, and by the destruction of a few houses made a sort of breach; but there were still obstacles unremoved, and when the grenadiers attempted to enter, they were driven back by the balls and bayonets of their foes. On this Marshal Lannes, covered with orders and decorations, got down from his horse, and seizing a ladder, exclaimed, "Vous allez voir que votre maréchal, tout maréchal qu'il est, n'a pas cessé d'être grenadier." In an instant he leaped through the gap into the town, 212 SURPRISING ENDURANCE OF NAPOLEON. [A.D. and was followed by his aides-de-camp, Labédoyère and Marbok, into the city, and through the streets, till they reached the Staubig gate, which they opened to their friends. The Austrians retreated to the stone bridge, which the Duc de Montebello would fain have forced, but, at sight of the Austrian army on the other side of the river, he thought it more prudent to hold back. The Archduke withdrew the pontoon bridges which he had thrown over the Danube and the Regen, and prepared to carry off his army to Bohemia. It was by this way, on the same evening, that the Emperor Francis came up as far as Schärding to share in the triumphs of his army, and to endeavour to win the German contingents to his side; but alas! it was only to receive the sad news that his army was separated into two parts, and that the road was again open to the conqueror to advance upon Vienna. Napoleon passed the 24th at Ratisbon, and issued this order of the day to his soldiers, to whom he also distributed praise and decorations to a considerable extent:-" En peu de jours nous avons triomphé dans les trois batailles de Thann, d'Abensberg et d'Eckmühl, dans les combats de Leising, de Landshut et de Ratisbonne. Cent pièces de canon, quarante drapeaux, 50,000 prisonniers, trois équipages de pont, 3,000 voitures attelées portant les bagages, et toutes les caisses des régiments; voilà les résultats de la rapidité de vos marches et de votre courage." Alison makes the following just remarks on this campaign: "It was by indefatigable activity and the nicest calculation of time that these astonishing results had been obtained; and never has Napoleon displayed in a more striking manner the untiring energy of his character. Unwearied by a journey night and day for six consecutive revolutions of time, he no sooner arrived at the army than he occupied himself to obtain a full knowledge of the situation of affairs. His calculation of time was so exact, and the habits of precise obedience on the part of his generals so complete, that the perusal of his letters to his lieutenants, still extant, are a complete history. His troops marched and combated with little repose, but the Emperor never spared himself the fatigue that he imposed upon his soldiers. On the contrary, none of them underwent anything like the mental and bodily labour to which their Emperor subjected himself. From the early morning of the 19th, when he repaired to Abensberg on receipt of the intelligence from Davoust, till the night of the 23rd, when he slept in a bed at Ratisbon for the first time since he quitted Paris, he was on horseback at least eighteen hours out of the twenty-four, and was ever dic ating letters through the night, taking needful rest only by snatches on chairs, or forms, or on the ground. By the rapidity of his journey from Paris, he had outstripped all his saddle horses, and knocked up the stud of his friend the King of Bavaria." His movements during this period are declared by himself to have been the greatest manœuvres he ever executed. "Those for which I give myself the greatest credit were performed at Eckmühl, and were infinitely superior to those at Marengo, or any other of my 1809.] INERTNESS OF THE ARCHDUKE CHARLES. 213 actions." 39* On the other hand, the Archduke Charles evinced none of the daring energy, activity, and vigilance, which had distinguished his early campaigns. He appears to have already fallen back to the normal condition of an Austrian tactician, in formal inertness and procrastination in all military movements. Immediately after he had taken the bold resolve to cross the Inn, he became paralysed. He crept feebly forward, as if afraid to strike the first blow, when by an energetic spring he might have leapt upon his opponents, scattered through the plains from Augsburg to Ratisbon. With the force at his command he might have crushed both Massena and Davoust, so that the Emperor could not have had an army fit for an advance for weeks; and when this great antagonist arrived, the Archduke permitted him to do his work upon Hiller and Louis apparently without enquiring what had become of them; for on the 21st he was idle, or, if doing anything, he was preparing an operose bit of strategy in a remote nook of country in which there was scarcely a battalion or a squadron to oppose him. Yet the movement that Napoleon made was of no deeper art than to make a dash at the enemy's magazines by a raid to the rear-an extremely hazardous attempt in war, which the most ordinary vigilance could have prevented, and the slightest activity of his enemy have severely punished. 20. NAPOLEON MARCHES ON VIENNA-BLOODY FIGHT AT EBENSBERG. The Archduke, when he crossed the Danube to unite himself to the corps of Bellegarde, appeared perfectly indifferent to the fact that he left the road to Vienna unbarred to Napoleon, except by such troops as might be collected by Hiller, which, including the reserves of Stienmayer and Jellalich, could not at most number above 50,000 men; for he fell back to Cham in order to cover the defiles into Bohemia by way of Fürth and Roetz, which lead to Pilsen. Napoleon had now, therefore, to choose between pursuing the Archduke through the mountains of the Böhmerwald, abounding with most advantageous positions, or of driving Hiller across the Inn upon Lintz, and marching straight to Vienna. The Archduke moved his army to Cham, followed by Davoust as far as Vittenau, and, unaccountably enough under the circumstances, he rested at Cham till the 28th, when it was of the first importance for him to hasten forward, that he might seize the important post of Lintz, through which the high road passes to the capital. Certainly it was a very round-about march by Pilsen and Budweis, while Napoleon had before him the shorter road by Passau; but, nevertheless, an army of 80,000 men upon the French left flank was enough to have influenced even the stout heart of the experienced conqueror against the occupation of Vienna under such circumstances. Marshal Bessières had been left at Landshut during the operations *Las Casas. LIL 214 PACIFIC OVERTURES TO NAPOLEON. [A.D. before Ratisbon, but now that the resolution of marching on the capital had been adopted, this corps was to be moved forward. On the 24th the advance of this Marshal's column, consisting of the light cavalry of Marulaz and the Bavarians under General Wrede, were attacked at Neumarkt, amidst the low grounds of the river Roth, by Hiller's army, in three columns. With his accustomed forethought of everything, Napoleon had judged that Bessières, who had already advanced as far as Villa Biburg, would not be strong enough to contend with Hiller, and had, therefore, ordered the division Molitor to follow him. Both Marulaz and Wrede were indeed driven back in the ardour of the conflict which now ensued, but Molitor coming up to their aid, re-established affairs, and Bessières was enabled to maintain the bridge over the Roth at Neumarkt. In the nights of the 24th and 25th, however, General Hiller became informed of the extent of the evil which had befallen the Archduke Charles before Echmühl, so, renouncing all further hostilities, he marched off across the Inn and the Traun, where he hoped to receive some instructions from his Commanderin-Chief. In the meantime, Massena with the divisions Boudet, Legrand, Carra-St.-Cyr, and Oudinot, marched on the 23rd to Staubing, having orders to secure the passages across the Danube at Passau and Lintz, and Bessières moved to the right in order to turn all the confluents of the great river; while Davoust was left at Ratisbon to follow on one side or other of the Danube hereafter, as might be found desirable, and was to be followed by Bernadotte. So changed in every respect was the Archduke Charles from what he had been ever before, that his despondency at this unfortunate opening of the campaign induced him to propose to his brother the Emperor to make pacific overtures to Napoleon. Francis, however, saw the weakness of such a temporising policy, but did not absolutely decline his brother's proposal, who accordingly, of his own accord, wrote at this period to the conqueror to congratulate him upon his arrival at the command of his army, which he paid him the compliment of saying was visible in the immediate results; but, with a view to lessen the evils of war, he proposed an exchange of prisoners. Napoleon was sufficiently versed in the world to guess the motive which could have suggested the Archduke's letter at this early period of the campaign, but kept His Imperial Highness in unpleasant uncertainty by making him no reply. The French Emperor quitted Ratisbon on the 26th, and crossing the Inn at Mühldorf, placed his head-quarters on the 28th at Burghausen, on the Salza, where he remained two days to re-establish the bridge there, which had been burned. He now sent Lefebvre with the Bavarians into the Tyrol to turn the tide of affairs against the mountaineers. The Marshal forthwith attacked them at Lauffer on the 28th, and scattered the division of Jellalich, who fled, sacrificing their magazines at Salzburg. Marshal Massena met with no obstacle at Passau, and the whole army passed the Inn between that and Braunau, and advanced upon the Traun. This position was one 1809.] SANGUINARY AFFAIR AT EBENSBERG. 215 of the most important upon the road to Vienna, and Napoleon determined to force all opposition to his army by carrying it by Lintz, Mauthausen, and Ebensberg. He was aware that the great strength of this ground is at Ebensberg, where the river is crossed by a long wooden bridge. The army arrived opposite this position on the 3rd of May. Massena was ordered to seize Lintz, which is in advance of the river, and to push on vigorously to Mauthausen, where there is also a bridge across the Danube, as well as one over the Traun. Marshal Bessières on his right was to be ready to support him, and Lannes, marching on Wels, was to be at hand to turn towards Ebensberg, if any very considerable resistance should be met with there. As Massena advanced, he drove before him the rear-guard of the corps of Hiller, and he could see across the Danube the march of the Archduke's army coming down to Lintz. He accordingly pushed forward with his utmost activity, and at daybreak of the 3rd fell upon that town, which the division of Klenau and Stuttenheim had just entered. Indeed, these divisions had only just time to save themselves and destroy the bridge. Clearly, then, had not the Archduke dallied at Cham, he might yet have barred the approach of Napoleon to the capital. Massena, as soon as he saw himself in possession of Lintz, and that it was only 10 in the day, marched forward to Ebensberg, General Marulaz leading the column with the light cavalry. The two corps of the Archduke Louis and General Hiller had marched in the same direction, and occupied an advantageous position behind the Traun, across which they held the bridge at Ebensberg- a highly important position, because, as the bridge of Lintz over the Danube had been destroyed by the Austrians, it completely protected that of Mauthausen, which was two leagues behind, and was the true strategic point, as it secured the means to the Archduke Charles of reassembling his army for the protection of Vienna. Massena was not aware that Napoleon had fixed his head-quarters that night at Lambach, upon the Traun, with the express object of turning this position but he well knew its importance, and was not deterred by its formidable nature from immediately assailing it. narrow bridge, crossing over many islets, extended 200 toises in length; and on the plateau commanding it stood the little town with its castle. A force of nearly 40,000 men, with 80 guns, placed on such a position, were enough to check even the stout heart of Massena. The French advance, however, came upon the Austrian rear-guard as it was moving through the village of Klein München; and the Marshal, impatient to obtain possession of this important passage, immediately ordered forward the division Coehorn of the corps of Oudinot, who, regardless of the danger, dashed through the village with reckless bravery, broke down the barriers, and made their way good, contending with the enemy the whole length of the bridge. The French entered the town of Ebensberg in the face of three Austrian battalions, who were imprudently left for its defence without any support, and, encouraged by their success, attempted, but ineffectually, to carry its castle. The |