Battle of Aspern–Essling

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Aspern-Essling was the first time Napoleon had been personally defeated in a major battle in ten years. It was fought on the 21st-the 22nd of May 1809. At four in the afternoon on the first day, his senior commanders met on the north bank of the Danube to review the latest intelligence. No scouts had reported the Austrian army nearby. Marshal Lannes predicted the French would face no more than 8,000 enemy troops that day. Archduke Charles had 99,000 men concealed behind a low ridge. He had waited deliberately for the French to commit a large enough force before striking. How Napoleon miscalculated so badly, and what two days on the Marchfeld plain cost him, is what this documentary examines. The only man in that room who suspected trouble was Masséna, and he was not believed.

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• 2. The Patient Archduke

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  Austrian troops crossed into Bavaria on the 10th of April 1809, without any declaration of war. The French were caught off-guard but recovered quickly. Napoleon defeated the Austrians at Abensberg, Eckmühl, and Ratisbon in rapid succession. Archduke Charles, fearing his army might be destroyed, retreated toward Bohemia. By the 13th of May, Napoleon had entered Vienna.

  His 115,000 men on the Marchfeld gave Charles an advantage no Austrian general had enjoyed in years. Napoleon could muster only 82,000 troops, and many of those were deployed elsewhere. Davout's corps of 35,000 was near St. Polten on the River Traisen, roughly forty miles west of Vienna. Lefebvre's 7th Corps, numbering 22,000 men, was watching Archduke John's forces near Salzburg and along the upper reaches of the River Enns. The 8th and 9th Corps, numbering 38,000 men, were tied up on the River Traun.

  Emperor Francis I pressed his brother to attack immediately, given this numerical advantage. Charles refused. He argued that remaining on the left bank of the Danube preserved his freedom of movement. Napoleon, for his part, was concerned about potential Prussian intervention and the approach of Archduke John's army. He believed the main Austrian force was retreating into Moravia and held the Austrians in low regard. The Marchfeld, the broad plain north of the Danube, was the ground Charles had chosen to make his stand.

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• 3. Lobau and the Bridge

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  A first French attempt to cross the Danube, at a place called the Schwarze Lackenau, was repulsed with around 700 casualties. Napoleon then chose Lobau, a large island that divided the river into narrower channels, as the next crossing point. On the night of the 19th-the 20th of May, French engineers bridged all the channels between the right bank and the island. By the evening of the 20th, the final channel between Lobau and the north bank had been bridged. Masséna's corps crossed at once and drove off the Austrian outposts.

  Throughout the 21st, the current of the Danube grew violent and the bridges became increasingly unsafe. Napoleon pushed troops across without pause. The bridges remained open through most of the following night. Lannes's command, with additional cavalry and artillery, reached the bridgehead by 4:00 a.m. This brought the total French force to around 50,000 infantry, 12,000 cavalry, and 144 guns.

  Shortly after eight in the morning on the 22nd, word reached Napoleon that the bridge had collapsed again. Davout's corps could not cross. With no reinforcements coming and the offensive across the Austrian centre already failing, Napoleon ordered a withdrawal to the villages. Army surgeon Dominique-Jean Larrey, tending casualties on Lobau island, fed his patients a broth of horse meat seasoned with gunpowder.

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• 4. Six Times at Aspern

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  At approximately one in the afternoon on the 21st of May, the Austrian 1st Corps drove into Aspern. Molitor's outposts were pushed back through the village streets. The attack had been concealed by a dust storm until the last moment. The French were caught off-guard, but Molitor recovered quickly. He brought all four of his regiments into Aspern and repelled the initial assault. Despite repeated attacks throughout the afternoon, the French defence held.

  By five in the afternoon, Austrian forces had formed a half-circle around the village. Archduke Charles ordered a general assault. Molitor was attacked simultaneously from three directions. In the hours that followed, Aspern changed hands no fewer than six times. Legrand and Carra St. Cyr eventually reinforced Molitor, and the vital bridge to the rear was kept open. Meanwhile, Bessières led 7,000 sabers in a prolonged engagement against Austrian cavalry in the center. At Essling, on the French right, Boudet's forces repulsed three successive Austrian attacks.

  The second day brought a new assault on Aspern at approximately five in the morning, under cover of darkness and a thick mist. Masséna's counterattack at about seven that morning recaptured the whole village. To the south, at Essling, Dedovich and Rosenberg's columns pressed Boudet's men again but made no decisive gains.

  Rosenberg's IV Corps, supported by a body of grenadiers, drove Boudet from most of Essling as the French withdrawal began. A few hundred grenadiers continued to hold out in the granary. Napoleon dispatched General Mouton with Young Guard battalions to retake the village. Mouton entered Essling but risked being isolated. General Rapp arrived with two additional battalions of Middle Guard Fusilier Grenadiers. On Rapp's advice, the French battalions charged and drove the Austrians from Essling at bayonet point. Rosenberg lost his nerve and fell back toward Gross-Enzersdorf. Napoleon, at the insistence of his personal guards, withdrew to the island of Lobau.

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• 5. The Death of Lannes

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  Shortly after seven in the morning on the 22nd of May, Lannes led his corps forward in echelon. Saint-Hilaire's division advanced on the right while Oudinot's grenadier corps followed in the centre. They marched into a sustained Austrian artillery bombardment. The Austrians at the front wavered, but Archduke Charles sent his reserve grenadier divisions forward and halted the French advance. Napoleon then launched a series of cavalry charges under Bessières, but these too were driven back.

  Around two in the afternoon, Charles repositioned roughly 150 cannons against the French centre. A cannonball struck Lannes in the leg. The wound proved fatal.

  Marcellin Marbot, one of Lannes's aide-de-camps, wrote in his memoirs about witnessing the last moments of his commander. He described the bloodshed and mourning that descended on the Grande Armée after the Danube crossing. Lannes was one of the few marshals Napoleon considered capable of independent command, and one of Napoleon's closest friends. The absence of a general who could operate without close direction would weigh on Napoleon's campaigns in the years that followed.

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• 6. The Reckoning

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  The French lost between 20,000-23,000 killed and wounded at Aspern-Essling, with a further 3,000 taken prisoner. Austrian casualties were comparable: around 19,000 killed and wounded, though only 700 were captured. In his subsequent bulletin, Napoleon acknowledged only 4,100 casualties. He described the battle as "a new memorial to the glory and inflexible firmness of the French army." It was the closest language he could offer to an admission of defeat.

  Emperor Francis I, on learning the news, was relieved. He wrote to his brother Archduke Charles. The victory had demonstrated that the Austrian army had recovered significantly since the catastrophic defeats of 1800 and 1805. The damage to Napoleon's public reputation was real.

  Six weeks later, Napoleon defeated the Austrians decisively at the Battle of Wagram, and the Fifth Coalition collapsed. The damage done to his reputation at Aspern-Essling did not, in the end, change the outcome of the campaign. Patrick Rambaud, a French author, later wrote a fictionalized account of the battle entitled "The Battle," drawing on first-hand sources. The concept and notes for the book had originally come from the novelist Honoré de Balzac.

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