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THE FRENCH ARMY IN PURSUIT.

[a.D.

therefore directed Montbrun's cavalry to take up the pursuit by the latter road, and as Marmont's corps had had the least share in the battle of the 6th, and was the least fatigued, they were sent forward with the Bavarians, under Wrede, to pursue whatever might appear to be the principal line of the Archduke's retreat. Massena was ordered to rally his corps and march by Kornendorf and Stockerou towards Bohemia, and Bruyère (who had succeeded to Lasalle's command) was directed to scour all that line of country with the light cavalry of General Saint Sulpice. On the 8th Davoust was ordered to follow Marmont, on the road to Nikolsburg, while Bernadotte with the Saxons was sent in pursuit of the Archduke John, and Macdonald was ordered, after giving his troops ample repose, to follow Massena, and the Viceroy to remain and take charge of the capital, and to put in order the vast place d'armes of the Isle of Lob-awe, which was in glorious confusion after so arduous a conflict. Napoleon himself remained at Wolkensdorf till the 9th to receive reports from the different columns regarding the movements of the enemy. It turned out that the Archduke had taken the road to Prague, marching with the corps of Bellegarde, Kollowrath, and Klenau, and confiding the rear guard to Prince Reuss, who, owing to an oversight, had been left idle the whole day of the battle, as above related. The corps of Rosenberg and Hohenzollern marched by the other road to Nikolsburg. On the one road marched 60,000 men, and on the other about 25,000. The Emperor Francis, the Empress, and the Court, with a train of 200 carriages, took the shortest and direct road between the two columns to Znaim. The French army sent in pursuit numbered about 45,000 men.

While Napoleon remained at Wolkersdorf somewhat indisposed after all his fatigues, Bernadotte presented himself at his headquarters, and demanded an audience. General Savary, who had been desired by the Emperor to prevent his being disturbed, refused him admittance. The Prince of Ponte Corvo had long chafed at the insignificant command which had been assigned him in this campaign, and had been in constant correspondence with Berthier, complaining that he could do nothing with his Saxon soldiers unless supported by some French divisions; but, as soon as the battle had terminated, he had issued an order of the day from his bivouac at Leopoldau, addressed to the Saxons, in which he ascribed to them a principal part in the successes of the 5th and 6th of July. Napoleon was furious at this flagrant insubordination. That one of his marshals should presume to take on himself to distribute praises while he was himself present in command of the army, and should assert without his concurrence statements which, moreover, could be denied, that other corps d'armée should be by implication pronounced inferior to the corps of Bernadotte, and that a pretence should thus be put forward that the battle of Wagram was won by soldiers other than native troops of France, made him most exceedingly angry; but he felt he must not repair the mischief by wounding the self-love of the Saxons, who had done their duty, and, therefore, while he refused to see the Marshal, he drew up a

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statement of facts which he directed should be addressed, under confidence, to those marshals only who were with the army, and to the King of Westphalia, to whom Berthier was ordered to express strongly the Emperor's grave displeasure at this act of the Prince Marshal. At the same time, however, that he vented this displeasure against one of his oldest comrades, the great conqueror distributed with a lavish hand honours and decorations to his companions in arms of all ranks. On the 5th of October Berthier was constituted Prince of Wagram; Davoust, Prince of Eckmühl; and Massena, Prince of Essling. Lower grades of nobility were at the same time given to his Generals, and the ribbon of the Legion of Honour gratified thousands.

Marmont was the first to come up with the enemy in his retreat. On the 9th he overtook half way to Laas, on the Taya, the rearguard of Rosenberg, whom he unhesitatingly attacked, and while yet in action the Emperor himself came up to the head of his column. A cannonade ensued, under which a flag of truce presented itself at the outpost by the hands of M. de Fresnel, a French gentleman in the service of Austria, proposing a cessation of arms. This was followed on the 10th by the arrival of Prince John of Lichtenstein, to offer the terms of an armistice with a view to negotiations for peace. Napoleon forthwith summoned Berthier, Maret, and Duroc to a cabinet council to consider the proposition. He could not conceal his satisfaction from them that it had been received, for he was tired of the war, and after such a victory he knew that he was in the best possible condition to treat with Austria; but he had great misgivings of the Emperor of Russia and of the general feeling of the German people, and thereupon he speedily stopped all discussion amongst his councillors by saying, " Il y assez de sang versé-j'accepte l'armistice." He soon came back to the Prince, and replied, that he would leave to the Prince of Neufchatel and Baron de Wimpfen to stipulate the conditions, and fix the demarcation of the two armies, but would order his troops to discontinue hostilities forthwith. The armistice was signed on the 11th of July, and is called the armistice of Znaim. He immediately sent off orders to the same effect to Massena, who was at the moment in hot action with the enemy between Schellersdorf and Znaim, and so bitterly was the contest raging between the combatants that Colonel Marbot and General d'Aspré were both slightly wounded as they rode down on each side exclaiming, "Paix ! paix ! ne tirez plus." Napoleon now again took up his head-quarters at Schönbrunn, where he awaited the end of the negotiations for the peace, but the Archduke Charles resented the abrupt termination of the war, and resigned his command and never again resumed it. The Emperor Francis hesitated about accepting the terms dictated by Napoleon, but at length they were agreed to at Komorn on the 18th, the Archduke John being called into council on behalf of the army instead of his more distinguished brother.

248

MILITARY CHARACTER OF ARCHDUKE CHARLES. [A.D.

30. RETIREMENT AND MILITARY CHARACTER OF THE ARCHDUKE CHARLES OF AUSTRIA.

Charles Louis of Lorraine, Archduke of Austria, was second brother of the Emperor Francis, and born in 1771. He first entered the career of arms under Prince Coburg, in 1793, when he was not more than 21 years of age; and at Neerwinden and Laubrecies he evinced the daring of a brave soldier, united with the abilities and coup-d'œil of a natural-born captain. His high qualities, as well as his exalted birth, aided him in the attainment of many high commands; and already, in 1796, when only 25 years of age, he was appointed successor of Marshal Clairfayt, in the command of the army of the Rhine, and, to give him greater authority, he was at that` time named Reichs-Feld-Marshal. Although such early promotion might have been thought the result of mere favour, and, indeed, the Aulic Council seemed to have thought so also, for it deemed it more safe and prudent to surround him with a council of their most trusted veterans, yet the Prince amply justified the preference which had been so happily accorded him, and at once trod the stage with an applause scarcely inferior to that of his rival actor and great contemporary, Napoleon Bonaparte, who made his début in the same year, as a young general, in supreme command of an army. The one, however, had the old used-up leaders of the empire to contend against, whereas the Archduke came at once to be pitted against the young successful generals of the school of the French Revolution. His first opponent was the rival and almost the equal of Napoleon, General Moreau, who was, nevertheless, obliged to fly before the Austrian eaglet, and had considerable difficulty in escaping his vigorous swoop. The two great "stars" or débutants were brought face to face before in the following year, when Wurmser, Alvinzi, and Provera, having successively succumbed to the young hero of Italy, the Archduke Charles was sought out and sent by the Aulic Council in hot haste to save the Imperial capital, which he barely effected, by agreeing to the preliminaries of Leoben.

When the war again broke out in 1799, the Archduke was intrusted with the command of an army, to oppose a leader of the next highest reputation in the French armies, General Jourdan, whom he defeated at Ostrach and Stockach, while he likewise overcame Massena at Zurich. From causes which have never been satisfactorily explained, the Archduke, though at the very summit of his genius and fame, was wholly laid aside in the campaign of 1800, until Vienna was a second time threatened with hostile occupation, after the disastrous battles of Marengo and Hohenlinden, when, by his address and good judgment, he again succeeded in checking the advance of the conqueror by accepting the armistice of Treviso. In the campaign of Austerlitz he was given the separate command of the army of Italy, and, indeed, the conduct of the war, which began so disastrously with the surrender of Mack's army at Ulm, was to have rested mainly on the Archduke's shoulders, and

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would have done so with probably a different result but for this very early discomfiture of the Imperial plan. As it was, the Archduke held his French antagonist long in check, and unquestionably defeated him at the battle of Caldiero; but a change had already come over the spirit of this young and illustrious commander. He had become either weakened in energy, or, perhaps, controlled by some high authority which he could not resist; for a common fault in Austrian strategy that of sending out detachments too large for quick movement and too small for resolute offence or defence- was visible in his Italian campaign to a degree which he had never manifested before, so that, when following up the victory of Caldiero, a corps of 10,000 or 12,000 men, who had no intelligible duties assigned to them, became needless victims to the more concentrated advance of the enemy, and were sacrificed most recklessly at a moment when every single man was of value to the empire.

But it was in the campaign of 1809 that it became quite clear that the Archduke Charles was no longer a commander of the modern age, but had lapsed into the procrastinating and listless habits of a bygone generation of Austrian commanders. By great prudence he at all times avoided the most dangerous pitfalls, into which his competitors fell; and was neither surrounded, like Mack, nor divided nor circumvented, like other adversaries of Napoleon. He even gained the day against him at Essling and Aspern; but, after that, when he had obliged Napoleon to withdraw into the isle of Lobawe, he appears to have relapsed into listlessness, and to have left the French army undisturbed there for six weeks, making all needful preparations for a second spring, without moving a finger, and finally permitted it to cross the Danube, and win the battle of Wagram, though indeed he made a noble and bold resistance, and succeeded in withdrawing his army from the field and saving it from annihilation.

There is no doubt that infirmity of some kind had at this period very considerably impaired his energies, for, after Wagram, he never again mounted his horse in the field, and an anecdote is related of the Duke of Wellington which may explain it, when asked who was, in his estimation, the greatest general of the epoch, His Grace replied, "The Archduke Charles, until attacked by fits of epilepsy, which afterwards altogether changed his character and his fortunes." The fact that the Archduke was subject to fits during his military career does not appear to have been generally known, but the severe bodily ailments with which he was afflicted, did doubtless influence, to a great extent, the vigour of his mind, in the arduous conflicts in which he was engaged with his redoubtable adversary; for he was frequently obliged, in consequence of these attacks, to quit the field at a most critical moment, and give over the command to others, who, under such circumstances, were not either able or willing to improvise bold manœuvres.

Although the Archduke Charles is universally admitted to have been one of the greatest generals of his day, yet this praise is usually

250

NAPOLEON'S OPINION OF ARCHDUKE CHARLES. [A.D.

qualified, even by his German admirers. No one ever questioned his masterly skill as a tactician, and in the art of planning a campaign he has been admitted to stand unrivalled; but he has been thought to have been too slow in action, wanting in enterprise, and, although of great personal bravery and remarkable for self-sacrifice and disregard of responsibility, yet deficient in bold views, and too ready to adopt a passive, under the false impression that it was the safer course. He frequently erred in that first principle of warfare, the end to be attained, which should always be the annihilation of an opponent. He was satisfied merely to drive the enemy out of a strategic position, but not as a means to an end, for he rarely followed up the advantages of a first success, and was content to rest on what he had obtained as success, and not as a mere steppingstone to future operations. His victories at Wetzlar, Arberg, Ostrach, Stockach, Emmendingen, Schlingen, and Caldiero are speaking illustrations of this defect in his character, and especially the entire campaign of 1809, already noticed. We may, perhaps, except from the above criticism his victory at Wurzburg, from which very brilliant resuits were certainly obtained by a vigorous and energetic pursuit. The Archduke was probably as much the opposite of the great Emperor in tactics as any man of his time. What Bonaparte gained by incessant action, the Archduke often effected by his slow, but more sure plan of operations. Where the Corsican was rash and placed all on the hazard of the die, the German succeeded by leaving nothing to chance, and preventing disaster by the husbanding of his means, and securing good reserves in support or in a safe retreat. His delivery of Germany in 1796 was achieved by strategic abilities quite equal to those which gave Bonaparte the possession of Italy. His able retreat through the Alps in 1797 saved Vienna, and, in 1799, he almost achieved the subversion of the French Republic; yet he now idled away his time at Schaffhausen and Zurich, as he had done at Ratisbon, Budweiss, and before Wagram. The Archduke in the whole of his career was subject to a bondage from which his rival was exempt. Napoleon had no council to thwart his measures, and was, in this respect, in happy contrast to the great Marlborough and his Dutch deputies. It is strange that people exist who will only place such half confidence in the man to whom they intrust considerable armies, and appoint men of inferior ability, far removed from the scene of action, to interfere with an absolute control, and mar the best planned enterprises. In one most important particular the Archduke was far superior to Napoleon. Charles never experienced any great disaster; and, if not always victorious, it cannot be said he was ever quite defeated.

The Archduke's judgment was honest, sound, and clear; and Napoleon said of him, "that he was a man whose conduct was irreproachable." Moreover, he was in everything the dignified gentleman; "his soul belonged to the heroic age, and his heart to that of gold." He united the courtesy of the chivalrous Goth to the manly, patriotic bearing of the ancient Roman; and he was