CHAPTER XXIV
The Austrian Campaign (1809)
On a certain memorable occasion, Walpole is said to have made the remark, “They are ringing the bells now; they will be wringing their hands soon!” with reference to a universal outcry for war on the part of Great Britain. Had it been uttered by an Austrian statesman at the beginning of 1809, it would have been equally apposite. Thinking men recognised that the army was not yet prepared to meet Napoleon, despite the fact that since the Austerlitz campaign of 1805 the improvement of her military forces had engrossed the attention of Archduke Charles, the Commander-in-chief. He was convinced that his troops were not ready to take the field, and he led the peace party solely on this account. The war party, however, headed by Count Stadion, the able and energetic Minister of Foreign Affairs, and aided by the Empress, who had considerable influence over her august husband, proved more powerful. Its supporters felt confident that as the war in Spain necessarily occupied so much of Napoleon’s attention, and had drawn off such a large proportion of his troops, the time to strike was come. Austrian diplomatists had vainly endeavoured to woo both Russia and Prussia without success; the Czar had no wish at that moment to break with his ally; Frederick William trembled for his throne.
In January 1809, war was imminent. Napoleon, deceived as to the real state of affairs in Spain, set out on his return journey to France on the 16th. He at once began to organise his forces, Berthier being placed in command until the Emperor’s arrival at the seat of war. Napoleon’s explicit instructions were as follows:—
“By the 1st April the corps of Marshal Davout, which broke up from the Oder and Lower Elbe on the 17th March, will be established between Nuremberg, Bamberg, and Baireuth: Masséna will be around Ulm: Oudinot between Augsburg and Donauwörth. From the 1st to the 15th, three French corps, 130,000 strong, besides 10,000 allies, the Bavarians in advance on the Iser, and the Würtembergers in reserve, may be concentrated on the Danube at Ratisbon or Ingolstadt. Strong têtes-de-pont should be thrown up at Augsburg, to secure the passage of the Lech at Ingolstadt, in order to be able to debouch to the left bank of the Danube; and above all at Passau, which should be able to hold out two or three months. The Emperor’s object is to concentrate his army as soon as possible at Ratisbon: the position on the Lech is to be assumed only if it is attacked before the concentration at the former town is possible. The second corps will be at Ratisbon by the 10th, and on that day Bessières will also arrive with the reserve cavalry of the Guard: Davout will be at Nuremberg: Masséna at Augsburg: Lefebvre at one or two marches from Ratisbon. Headquarters then may be safely established in that town, in the midst of 200,000 men, guarding the right bank of the Danube from Ratisbon to Passau, by means of which stream provisions and supplies of every sort will be procured in abundance. Should the Austrians debouch from Bohemia or Ratisbon, Davout and Lefebvre should fall back on Ingolstadt or Donauwörth.”
On the 9th April, when hostilities began, the strength of Napoleon’s forces was as follows:—His newly-named Army of Germany, on the Danube, numbered 174,000 troops, including some 54,000 of the Rhenish Confederacy; the Army of Italy consisted of 68,000; in Saxony there were about 20,000; in Poland 19,000; in Dalmatia 10,500. Consequently the Emperor had 291,500 troops at his disposal, some 275,000 of whom were ready to confront Austria by the middle of the month. This is an enormous number when it is remembered that he was still at war with Spain, where 300,000 men were engaged, but he had had recourse to his old plan of forestalling the conscription, whereby he had obtained 80,000 recruits.
The Austrian forces were divided into three armies: that of Germany, under Archduke Charles, consisting of 189,684 troops; of Italy, under Archduke John, totalling 64,768, including those for action in Tyrol under Chasteler; and of Galicia, under Archduke Ferdinand, with 35,400; in all 289,852. The Reserves, made up of the landwehr and levées en masse reached 244,247, but as Mr F. Loraine Petre points out in his masterly study of this campaign, only some 15,000 of the landwehr were used with the active army at the beginning of hostilities. “There was little of the spirit of war in the landwehr,” he adds, “and discipline was very bad. One battalion attacked and wounded its chief with the bayonet. Two others refused to march. Eleven Bohemian battalions could only be got to march when regular troops were added to them. Even then they only averaged about 500 men each, and those badly equipped and armed.” But while this organisation was of little practical service at the moment, it was creating a healthy public opinion which could not fail to be beneficial in the years to come.
Already Napoleon’s military glory was beginning to decline. In some of his principles he “became false to himself,” he omitted to make his orders to his subordinates sufficiently clear, and on one occasion, in the early stage of the campaign, threw away “chances of a decisive battle which would then probably have made an end of the war.” He also exhibited the utmost contempt for a country which “had profited by the lessons he had taught her,” with the result that “her armies, and her commander-in-chief, were very different from the troops and leaders of 1796 and 1805,” when he had crossed swords with Austria.
Yet another failing is pointed out by Mr Petre. “Napoleon’s wonderful successes in every previous campaign,” he notes, “and the height to which his power had risen, by the practical subjugation of all Europe to his dominion, tended to fan the flame of his pride, to make him deem himself invincible and infallible, to cause him to assume that what he desired was certain to happen. The wish now began to be father to the thought. Of this we shall find numerous instances in this campaign, the most notable, perhaps, being when, notwithstanding Davout’s positive assertions that the greater part of the Austrian army was in front of himself, the Emperor persisted in believing that Charles was in full retreat on Vienna by the right bank of the Danube. His constant over-estimates of his own forces, not in bulletins but in letters to his generals and ministers, are other examples of this failing.”
The campaign opened in Bavaria, where 176,000 Austrians assembled early in April 1809. Berthier, doubtless acting for the best as he conceived it, instead of concentrating at Ratisbon, Ingolstadt or Donauwörth according to orders, had seen fit to scatter his forces, “in the dangerous view,” as Alison puts it, “of stopping the advance of the Austrians at all points.” As a result of Berthier’s blunder Davout at Ratisbon and Masséna at Augsburg were thirty-five leagues from each other, and Archduke Charles with 100,000 troops were interposed between them. About Ingolstadt were the Bavarians under Wrede, Lefebvre, and the reserve under Oudinot, the only forces available to oppose the Austrians, whose march, fortunately for the French, was extremely slow.
The Emperor arrived at Donauwörth on the 17th April, and at once saw the danger. “What you have done appears so strange,” he wrote to Berthier, “that if I was not aware of your friendship I should think you were betraying me; Davout is at this moment more completely at the disposal of the Archduke than of myself.”