fall on the stockmarket. In Spain the military advantage the Emperor had
secured a few months earlier was thrown away by the incompetence of his
marshals, principally Soult, who remained inactive after capturing
Oporto in March r8o9, apparently in the quixotic belief that he might be
proclaimed King of Portugal. His idleness and inactivity, and his jealousy
of Ney, enabled the British to land large-scale forces under Wellesley in
Portugal in April r8o9.
Displaying nerves of steel, Napoleon ordered up reinforcements from
Spain. Convinced that the Austrians would not attempt a landing in
strength on Lobau but simply keep up a token bombardment from the
north bank, he evacuated all the army except Massena's corps, then
turned the island into a fo rtress bristling with guns, one hundred of them
trained on Charles's army. Then he painstakingly built proper bridges
across the Danube, which would be invulnerable to anything but actual
Austrian occupation. Isolated on Lobau for a month, by the end of June
he had constructed five more bridges across the Danube, three of them to
Lobau, and built stockades, piledriven into the river bed upstream, to
block the passage of fireships or floating logs and hulks; additionally, he
stationed a fleet of naval gunboats on the river.
Fortune favoured the brave. On 14 June Eugene Beauharnais and
General MacDonald with the Army of Italy defeated Archduke John at
Raab, then sent word they were on their way to the relief of Lobau. With
their 23,0 00 men and the corps under Davout and Marmont he had also
summoned, Napoleon had r6o,ooo men and 500 guns by the beginning of
July. Amazingly, the Austrians remained inactive in face of this build-up,
waiting for the general German uprising which never came.
On 4 July the Emperor was ready to strike. He began by throwing
across three bridges from Lobau to Aspern-Essling, encouraging
Archduke Charles to believe that he would be attempting his manoeuvre
of six weeks earlier. His real objective with this feint was to put his army
on Charles's left flank so as to get between him and the second Austrian
army under John, which had retreated into Hungary after Raab but was
now closing in again. He therefore landed an advance guard at Gross
Enzerdorff, from which his engineers constructed seven pontoons to
Lobau. He assembled his troops at the northern crossings to Aspern
Essling with great din and hubbub, then switched them at the last minute
to the seven bridges east to Gross Enzerdorff. On the night of 4-5 July
the French streamed across the Danube on the seven eastward pontoons,
beset by torrential rain, yet buoyed up by the Emperor's inspired tactics.
His plan was indeed a brilliant one, requiring split-second timing and
coordination. Amazingly, the diversionary feint and the actual crossing
marcin
(Marcin)
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