campaign, which was not his usual practice. His defenders, however,
claim that sending Massena on a sweep of the Saale on the zoth was his
real error, that his tactical handling of a week of battles was inspired and
that the road to Vienna lay open - a not negligible achievement fo r a
commander whose best units were in Spain. Most of all, Charles's 30,000
casualties and precipitate retreat removed all temptation from Saxony,
Bavaria and Wiirttemberg to throw off the yoke of the Confederation of
the Rhine in the name of German nationalism.
Uncertain exactly where Charles had gone, but guessing somewhere
between Vienna and Moravia, Napoleon advanced cautiously along the
right bank of the Danube, uncomfortably aware that the enemy had
broken down all the bridges across a river in full springtime spate.
Learning finally that Charles was in Bohemia, the Emperor opted not to
fo llow him there but to aim fo r Vienna and try to secure a negotiated
peace. Yet time was not on his side. The Austrian corps under General
Hiller fought several rearguard actions to delay the French advance on
Vienna, to give the city time to prepare its defence adequately. Napoleon
fo und himself held up not just by stubborn fights at W els and Ebersberg
but by the crossing of several flooded Danube tributaries. To make
matters worse, news now came in that his viceroy Eugene de Beauharnais
had been defeated in Italy.
Vienna surrendered on 13 May under threat of bombardment but the
garrison withdrew to the north bank and destroyed all four bridges across
the Danube. Napoleon entered the Austrian capital to an icy and sullen
welcome. The problem of the Danube bridges obsessed him; as he wrote:
'To cross a river like the Danube in the presence of an enemy that knows
the ground and has the sympathy of the inhabitants is one of the most
difficult military operations conceivable.' Additionally, he was outnum
bered. On 16 May Archduke Charles joined fo rces with Hiller, giving
him a total strength of us,ooo against Napoleon's 8z,ooo. Moreover,
French fo rces were scattered, fo r Davout with 35,000 men was fo rty
miles west of Vienna, putting down local uprisings, while Lefebvr e's VII
Corps was at Salzburg. The problem remained: how to strike fa st at
Charles, given that he was on the north bank and the Danube was
engorged with heavy spring floods.
Napoleon now made another mistake. He decided to cross the Danube
at Albern, six miles south of Vienna, where islands split the river into
three streams. He intended using Lobau island, two-thirds of the way
across, a lush, uninhabited place full of enormous poplar trees, as a
jumping-off point, but he had not taken into account the difficulties of
building bridges in these conditions. Lashed by torrential rains and
marcin
(Marcin)
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