Battle of Ratisbon

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Ratisbon on the 23rd of April 1809 produced one of the most unusual moments in Napoleon's career: the Emperor of the French was struck by a canister round in the left foot. He was walking toward a breach in the city wall to observe the damage when the shot found him. He was able to mount his horse and ride among his troops, visibly calming the men who had feared the worst. What had begun at dawn as a pincer movement against a city the Austrians had captured just two days earlier would end, by nine in the evening, with the last three hundred defenders surrendering near a bridge over the Danube. How the French got inside those medieval walls, and what it cost both sides to settle the question, is a story of failed assaults, a marshal's fury, and a single act of shame that finally moved an army.

• 2. The Eve of Battle

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  On the 22nd of April, Napoleon won a victory at Eckmühl and then did something he had never done before: he summoned a council of war. That council decided to halt the army roughly eighteen kilometers south of Ratisbon, giving the Austrians a precious window of time.

  The Austrians used that night well. The main Austrian army, comprising I through IV Korps and I Reserve Korps, moved its heavy equipment across the city's stone bridge over the Danube. A second crossing, a pontoon bridge, was thrown together about two kilometers downstream to the east. Five battalions from II Korps stayed inside the city to defend it. Outside, six thousand cavalry and additional infantry battalions held the hilly ground surrounding Ratisbon, a position that would prove critical for buying time the next morning.

• 3. The Cavalry Screen

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  At dawn on the 23rd, the French advance split into two columns. General Louis-Pierre Montbrun pushed in from the southwest while Napoleon himself moved up from the south, the classic form of the pincer.

  Around nine in the morning, ten thousand French cavalry under General Etienne Nansouty's two cuirassier divisions made contact with their Austrian counterparts. The Austrian charges were poorly coordinated, but the riders held on for nearly three hours, long enough for the main army to complete its escape. When the Austrian cavalry finally slipped away, the French discovered the pontoon bridge downstream. Its last defenders managed to cut the ropes securing it before the French could seize and use it. The crossing that had saved the Austrian army was now gone.

• 4. Assault on the Walls

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  By noon, French infantry had reached Ratisbon and formed up outside the city's medieval defenses. Marshal Jean Lannes was given command of the assault and opened with an artillery bombardment while light infantry probed the suburbs. Two attacks on the main gates failed, both with heavy losses.

  At three in the afternoon, General Henri Gatien Bertrand, head of the engineers, smashed a breach in the wall near the Straubing gate using heavy artillery. Three small parties carrying siege ladders then tried to scale the damaged section. All three failed. Lannes' men, having gone at the walls four times without success, could not bring themselves to try again. Exasperated, Lannes grabbed a scaling ladder himself. He shouted at his troops: "I will let you see that I was a grenadier before I was a marshal and still am one." His aides physically restrained him from going forward. But the shaming worked. The fourth assault party carried the walls, and within minutes French soldiers were streaming into Ratisbon.

• 5. The City Falls

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  Street fighting continued for several hours as the French worked to secure the southern part of the city, which they then began looting. The stone bridge over the Danube, the city's most critical feature, held out far longer than the walls.

  The 1st Battalion of Infanterie Regiment 15 defended the bridge from the northern gatehouse until around nine in the evening, when they finally abandoned their positions. Only then could French troops reach the northern suburb of Stadt-am-Hof. The last three hundred defenders surrendered shortly after. French casualties across the battle, including Napoleon's ankle wound, ran between fifteen hundred and two thousand. The Austrians lost at least six thousand men killed, injured, or captured.

• 6. What Came Next

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  Napoleon sent Marshal Louis Davout to guard the north bank of the Danube, securing the French position around Ratisbon. With that done, the road south to Vienna lay open.

  The engagement at Ratisbon was the last action of the Bavaria phase of the 1809 campaign. The Austrian army had escaped into Bohemia, but it had paid a steep price for the time the pontoon bridge and the cavalry screen had bought. The army's survival set the stage for the Battle of Aspern-Essling, where Napoleon would face a very different kind of reckoning. Robert Browning later wrote a poem called "Incident of the French Camp" drawing on a probably fictional episode from the battle, a sign that the day's drama had left marks well beyond the military ledgers.