Napoleon's Conquest: Austria's Defeat And Napoleon's Triumph

Napoleon Bonaparte's military career was illustrious, but it was not without defeat. One of his earliest losses came in 1799, when he was forced to retreat from Acre. A decade later, in 1809, Napoleon suffered his second defeat at the hands of the Austrian army during the Battle of Aspern-Essling. This was the first time Napoleon had been bested since Acre, and it was a significant blow to his morale. The Austrians struck again later that year, this time at the Battle of Wagram, which resulted in a costly victory for Napoleon and ultimately led to the breakup of the Fifth Coalition.

The Battle of Austerlitz

In the lead-up to the battle, Napoleon had assembled an invasion force called the Armée d'Angleterre (Army of England) in Northern France, intending to strike at England. However, his troops never invaded, and he soon turned his sights to the Rhine to deal with new Austrian and Russian threats. On 25 September 1805, 200,000 French troops began crossing the Rhine in a wheeling movement that put them at the Austrian rear. On 20 October, 23,000 Austrian troops surrendered at Ulm, bringing the number of Austrian prisoners to 60,000. Although this victory was overshadowed by the defeat of a Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar, French success on land continued as Vienna fell in November.

Napoleon pursued the Allies north but then feigned weakness to lure them into thinking they were facing a weak army. He gave the impression that his army was in a pitiful state and abandoned the Pratzen Heights near Austerlitz, enticing the Allies to launch an assault on his right flank. Napoleon's plan was to encourage the Allies to commit many troops to envelop his right flank, leaving their centre and left flank exposed and vulnerable. He deliberately left his right flank under-defended, protected only by a complicated system of streams and lakes and with a secondary line of retreat through Brunn.

The Allied council met on 1 December to discuss battle proposals. The Tsar and his entourage pushed for a battle, but Emperor Francis of Austria was more cautious. The Allies adopted a plan proposed by Austrian Chief-of-Staff Franz von Weyrother, which called for a main drive against the French right flank and diversionary attacks against the French left. The French, however, were hoping the Allies would attack, and Napoleon was pleased with their plan.

The battle began at about 8 am on 2 December, with the first Allied lines attacking the village of Telnitz. This sector saw heavy fighting as several ferocious Allied charges forced the French out of the town. The first men of Davout's corps arrived and briefly retook Telnitz before being attacked by hussars and forced to retreat again. Additional Allied attacks were checked by French artillery.

The Allied plan was to attack with four columns, with the Russian Imperial Guard held in reserve. However, their deployments were poorly timed and executed. Meanwhile, the French plan was to attack and recapture the Pratzen Heights, a gently sloping hill that was the centrepiece of the battlefield. From there, they would launch a decisive assault on the centre of the Allied army.

Napoleon asked Soult how long it would take his men to reach the Pratzen Heights, to which Soult replied, "Less than twenty minutes, sire." Napoleon then ordered the attack, adding, "One sharp blow and the war is over." A dense fog helped to conceal the advance of St. Hilaire's French division as they ascended the slope. As the mist parted, Russian soldiers and commanders on the heights were stunned to see the French troops approaching.

The French centre, composed of Soult's corps with Bernadotte's in the second line, launched the massive thrust through the Allied centre. The French did not win the plateau without a fight, and intense struggles ensued. The battle turned in France's favour, but it was far from over. Napoleon ordered reinforcements to support his troops and moved his command centre forward.

The northernmost part of the battlefield also witnessed heavy fighting as Liechtenstein's heavy cavalry assaulted Kellermann's lighter cavalry forces. Initially, the French held their ground, but they were eventually forced to take cover behind Caffarelli's infantry division. Caffarelli's men halted the Russian assaults, and Murat sent two cuirassier divisions to finish off the Russian cavalry.

Napoleon's focus then shifted to the southern end of the battlefield, where the French and Allies were fighting over Sokolnitz and Telnitz. In a double-pronged assault, St. Hilaire's division and part of Davout's corps smashed through the enemy, causing the Allied commanders to flee. General panic seized the Allied army, and they abandoned the field. A famous episode during the retreat was the drowning of defeated Russian forces in frozen Satschan ponds as they were bombarded by French artillery.

The Allied army suffered around 36,000 casualties out of 89,000 troops, while the French lost around 9,000 out of 66,000. The Allies also lost about 180 guns and 50 standards. The French victory at Austerlitz was a masterpiece that secured Napoleon's imperial regime and gave him the initiative in Europe. It ended the War of the Third Coalition and forced Austria to make peace with France.

The Battle of Wagram

In 1809, Napoleon transferred soldiers from the Confederation of the Rhine to fight in the Peninsular War, and the Austrian Empire saw an opportunity to recover some of its lost influence. They invaded the Kingdom of Bavaria, a French ally, but Napoleon beat the Austrian forces and occupied Vienna at the beginning of May 1809. Despite the defeat, Archduke Charles of Austria-Teschen salvaged an army and retreated north of the Danube, allowing the Austrians to continue the war. Napoleon resumed the offensive at the end of May, but suffered an unexpected defeat at the Battle of Aspern-Essling.

Napoleon spent six weeks preparing his next offensive, amassing a 172,000-man French, German, and Italian army near Vienna. The Battle of Wagram began when Napoleon crossed the Danube with the bulk of these forces during the night of July 4 and attacked the 136,000-man Austrian army. The Austrians were thinly spread in a wide semicircle but held a naturally strong position. Napoleon attempted an early breakthrough with a series of evening attacks, but the defenders regained the upper hand and the attacks failed.

The next day, Archduke Charles launched a series of attacks along the entire battle line, seeking to take the opposing army in a double envelopment. The offensive failed against the French right but nearly broke Napoleon's left. Napoleon countered with a cavalry charge, temporarily halting the Austrian advance, and then redeployed his forces to stabilise his left. He also set up a grand battery, which pounded the Austrian right and centre. The tide of the battle turned, and Napoleon launched an offensive along the entire line. Maréchal Louis-Nicolas Davout drove an offensive that turned the Austrian left, and Charles's position became untenable. Towards mid-afternoon on July 6, Charles admitted defeat and led a retreat.

The two-day battle of Wagram was particularly bloody, mainly due to the use of 800 artillery pieces and the expenditure of 200,000 rounds of artillery ammunition on a flat battlefield packed with some 300,000 men. Although Napoleon was the winner, he failed to secure an overwhelming victory, and the Austrian casualties were only slightly greater than those of the French and their allies. The defeat, however, was serious enough to shatter the morale of the Austrians, who could no longer find the will to continue the struggle. The resulting Treaty of Schönbrunn meant the loss of one-sixth of the Austrian Empire's subjects, along with some territories, rendering it landlocked until the German Campaign of 1813.

The Battle of Marengo

The battle took place on a plain to the east of Alessandria, crossed by the river Bormida, over which the Austrians had installed a bridgehead. The French had 22,000 troops and 15 guns, while the Austrians had 30,000 troops and 100 guns. The Austrians planned to fight their way out eastward but attempted to deceive Bonaparte into thinking they would head north. Bonaparte knew that the Austrian commander, Melas, had no way out from Alessandria, but he did not know his position.

The battle began at 9 am with the Austrian attack. Initially, their two assaults across the Fontanone stream near Marengo village were repelled, and General Jean Lannes reinforced the French right. Bonaparte realised the true position and issued orders at 11 am to recall the detachment under Général de Division Louis Desaix while moving his reserve forward. On the Austrian left, Ott's column had taken Castel Ceriolo, and its advance guard moved south to attack Lannes' flank. Melas renewed the main assault, and the Austrians broke the central French position. By 2:30 pm, the French were withdrawing, and Austrian dragoons seized the Marengo farm. Bonaparte had arrived with the reserve, but the French troops began to fall back.

Desaix's arrival at around 5:30 pm stabilised the French position, as the 9th Light Infantry Regiment delayed the Austrian advance down the main road, and the rest of the army reformed north of Cascina Grossa. As the pursuing Austrian troops arrived, a mix of musketry and artillery fire concealed the surprise attack of Général de Brigade François Étienne de Kellermann’s cavalry, which threw the Austrian pursuit into disordered flight back into Alessandria, with about 14,000 killed, wounded, or captured. The French casualties were considerably fewer but included Desaix. The French line chased after the Austrians to seal a political victory that secured Bonaparte's grip on power.

The Battle of Eckmühl (Battle of Eggmühl)

The Battle of Eckmühl (also known as the Battle of Eggmühl) was fought on 22 April 1809 and was the turning point of the 1809 Campaign, also known as the War of the Fifth Coalition. Napoleon I was unprepared for the start of hostilities on 10 April 1809 by the Austrians under Archduke Charles of Austria and was forced to give up the strategic initiative to an opponent for the first time since assuming the French Imperial Crown.

The battle was fought over a fifty-mile front, from Regensburg (Ratisbon to the French) to Pfaffenhofen, marked by stretches of rugged, wooded terrain. Neither side had developed adequate intelligence about their opponent's strength, dispositions, or intentions. Assuming that the bulk of the Austrian army was deployed to cover their bridgehead at Landshut and the main highway to Vienna, on 20 April 1809, Napoleon launched most of his army in a southwestward attack. The resulting Battle of Abensberg was a clear French victory, following which Napoleon ordered all but Davout's III Corps and Lefebvre's (Bavarian) VII Corps to pursue and destroy what he thought were the remains of the Austrian Army.

The French attack had, however, only split the Austrian Army, separating its Left Wing (composed of the V Armee Korps, VI A.K., and II Reserve A.K.) from the balance of the army. Two corps, III A.K. and IV A.K., were withdrawn by Archduke Charles to the North, forming a nine-mile line from Abbach on the Danube to Eckmühl on the Grosse Laber. More importantly, unbeknownst to Napoleon, the Austrians gained a victory of their own on 20 April 1809, by surrounding and capturing the French garrison at Regensburg and its strategic bridge over the Danube. The capture of the bridge allowed Charles to re-establish contact with his Right Wing, General der Kavallerie Bellegarde's I A.K. and FZM Kollowrat's II A.K., hitherto separated from the rest of the Austrian Army by the Danube.

With the seizure of the bridge at Regensburg, Archduke Charles no longer needed to defend the Landshut bridgehead and instead moved to concentrate his remaining forces so as to envelop and destroy Davout's corps. FML Prince Friedrich of Hohenzollern-Hechingen's III A.K. and FML Prince Franz Seraph of Rosenberg-Orsini's IV A.K. were ordered to hold the Austrian left, pinning Davout's corps in place, while FZM Johann Kollowrat's fresh II A.K. and the elite grenadiers and cuirassiers of G.d.K. Prince Johann of Liechtenstein's I Reserve A.K. advanced south from Regensburg and deployed against Davout's exposed left flank.

Napoleon, for his part, was intent on enveloping and destroying the Austrian forces retiring southwest to Landshut and its bridge across the Isar. The II and IV Corps (approx. 57,000 men under the overall command of Marshal Masséna) were directed to cross the Isar upstream from Landshut and block the Austrians from crossing to the south bank. Meanwhile, under the overall command of Marshal Lannes, Lannes' Provisional Corps, the VII (Württemberg) Corps, a division from VII Corps, and two cuirassier divisions (approx. 51,000 men) were to closely pursue and destroy the defeated Austrians. The mop-up of what Napoleon thought was a "curtain of three regiments" was left to Davout, even though more than half of the III Corps' original units had been detached to create Lannes' task force. Despite Davout's reports to the contrary, Napoleon ordered him to attack the Austrians on his front in the morning, with the proviso that Lefebvre's equally depleted corps would support him if he needed help (a total of approximately 36,000 men for both corps).

The vanguard of the assault were the German troops under General Vandamme; these soldiers stormed the bridge at Eckmühl and even captured the town's chateau after ferocious Austrian resistance. At this point, Davout launched his men against the Austrian centre at the village of Unterlaichling and the woods to the north. The famous 10th Legere Regiment became involved in vicious fighting around the woods but was eventually strengthened by Bavarians under Deroy and managed to capture the positions. North of Unterlaichling, Davout's troops under Louis Friant and St. Hilaire steadily pushed back the defenders of Oberlaichling and the surrounding woods, overran a redoubt held by Hungarian grenadiers, and prompted Charles to order a general retreat.

The struggle now devolved into a series of major cavalry clashes as the Austrians attempted to extricate their army without losing too many prisoners. The Vincent Chevau-légers and the Stipsic Hussars, perhaps the best cavalry in the Habsburg army, occupied the Bettelberg ridgeline between Eckmühl and the woods above Unterlaiching. These elite units demolished some German light cavalry before being stopped by Bavarian infantry. Napoleon was insistent on the immediate capture of this position and ordered forward two heavy cavalry divisions under St. Sulpice and Nansouty. These horsemen were pummeled by Austrian artillery but came on nonetheless and managed to saber the gunners after having seen off the enemy cavalry.

The first phase of the retreat ended, but it was not over yet. The Austrians had found a chokepoint in the road and were instructed to stem the French tide. Three French cuirassier divisions supported by additional German light cavalry attacked, and a swirling melee developed. The Austrians fought but were heavily outnumbered and had to retreat. During this part of the conflict, more French cavalry struck their flank, and the remaining Austrian horse fled north to Ratisbon with great celerity.

The French had won the battle, but it was not a decisive engagement. Napoleon had hoped that he would be able to catch the Austrian army between Davout and the Danube, but he didn't know that Ratisbon had fallen, thus giving the Austrians a means of escape over the river. Nevertheless, the French inflicted 10,700 casualties at the cost of just 3,000, and Napoleon's speedy arrival witnessed an entire axial realignment of his army (from a north-south axis to an east-west one) that permitted the defeat of the Austrians. Subsequent campaigning led to the French recapture of Ratisbon, Austrian eviction from Southern Germany, and the fall of Vienna.

The Battle of Aspern-Essling

In the battle, Napoleon attempted to cross the Danube near Vienna. However, the French and their allies were attacked and forced back across the river by the Austrians under Archduke Charles. Although the Archduke drove out the French, he fell short of destroying their army. The Austrian artillery dominated the battlefield, firing 53,000 rounds compared to 24,300 French. The French lost over 20,000 men, including one of Napoleon's ablest field commanders and closest friends, Marshal Jean Lannes.

The battle began when the Austrians launched a surprise attack on Aspern, which the French had neglected to fortify. The French were taken by surprise when the first elements of the Austrian I Corps appeared outside Aspern, their approach having been hidden by a low ridge and sudden dust storm. The Austrians, under Johann von Hiller, drove the French outposts into Aspern, where French General Gabriel-Jean Molitor managed to rally them and hold off the Austrian assault long enough to gather all four of his regiments. Despite repeated Austrian attacks throughout the afternoon, the French defence held firm. However, by 5:00 pm the Austrian forces had formed a half-circle around Aspern, and Archduke Charles ordered a general assault. The French defence continued to hold, but by the time the fighting fizzled out, Aspern was a smoking ruin.

While the Austrian attack on Aspern almost succeeded, their simultaneous assault on Essling went much poorer. The Austrian IV Corps under Prince Rosenberg assaulted Essling three times after 6:00 pm but was repulsed each time by the determined French defenders from Marshal Lannes' II Corps; by nightfall, not a single house in Essling had fallen to the Austrians.

Napoleon took advantage of nightfall to filter more troops across the bridge, including the hardened division of General Jean-Vincent de Saint-Hilaire. By the dawn of 22 May, Napoleon had roughly 50,000 infantry, 12,000 cavalry, and 144 guns against nearly 100,000 Austrian soldiers and 260 guns. Fighting began at 5:00 am when the Austrian I and VI Corps took advantage of the thick morning mists to launch an assault on the ruins of Aspern. Though this attack succeeded in capturing the town, the Austrians were forced out again by a French counterattack around 7:00 am. A simultaneous Austrian assault on Essling was also beaten back.

With both Austrian wings engaged, Napoleon saw a golden opportunity to attack the vulnerable Austrian centre. He entrusted this task to the II Corps of Marshal Lannes, which began its charge at 7:30 am amidst the sound of beating drums. The charge was met with waves of Austrian shot and shell, but the II Corps kept on coming, causing the Austrian line to waver. The Austrians may have been broken, had it not been for the personal intervention of Archduke Charles, who rushed into the fight at the head of the Zach Grenadier Regiment, bearing the regiment's flag in his own hands. The sight of their commander's valour inspired the Austrian troops, who held their ground and stopped Lannes' charge in its tracks. After bitter fighting, Lannes was forced to give ground. The French position worsened further when several Austrian projectiles punched fresh holes in the bridge, preventing Davout's corps from crossing and joining the battle.

Shortly after 8:00 am, when Archduke Charles learned that the bridge was damaged, he ordered every Austrian corps to attack. By 10:00 am, savage fighting was raging around both villages. It was at this point that French General Saint-Hilaire was mortally wounded, only days after Napoleon had promised him a marshalate. At Essling, the Austrian IV Corps succeeded in driving the French out of their positions while the French centre began to buckle under the pressure. Napoleon sent his Young Guard to retake Essling, but it failed to do so. The bridge, which had just been repaired, was smashed again by a flaming floating mill, leading Napoleon to realise that the battle had to be called off. As the emperor began organizing a withdrawal, his staff realized that he was within range of the enemy guns and begged him to retire across the river. Reluctantly, Napoleon agreed to do so, handing control of the army over to Lannes before withdrawing to Lobau Island shortly after 3:00 pm.

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