Lannes was conveyed to the island of Lobau. He had fainted. But he recovered his senses in the presence of Napoleon, the god of his idolatry: he clung around his neck, and said—
“In an hour you will have lost him who dies with the glory and conviction of having been your best friend!”
But Lannes lingered in agony for ten days. He did not want to die. He had not drank deep enough of glory. He said the man who could not cure a Marshal and a Duke of Montebello ought to be hanged!
“It is at the moment of quitting life,” said Napoleon, later, “that one clings to it with all one’s strength. Lannes, the bravest of all men, Lannes, deprived of both legs, wished not to die. Every moment, the unfortunate man asked for the Emperor; he clung to me for the rest of his life; he wished but for me, thought of me only. A species of instinct! Assuredly he loved his wife and children better than me; and yet he spoke not of them; it was because he expected nought from them; it was he who protected them, whilst, on the contrary, I was his protector. I was for him something vague, superior; I was his providence; he prayed to me! It was impossible,” added Napoleon, “impossible to be more brave than Lannes and Murat. Murat remained brave only. The mind of Lannes would have increased with his courage; he would have become a giant. If he had lived in these times, I do not think it would have been possible to have seen him fail either in honor or duty. He was of that class of men who change the face of affairs by their own weight and influence.”
The illustrious marshal expired at Viluna on the 31st of May. He was lamented as the Roland of the army, and one of the greatest generals France had produced. General St. Hilaire, also, an excellent officer, was mortally wounded in this bloody struggle. He was highly esteemed by the Emperor, and if he had lived would doubtless have risen to the rank of marshal.
Napoleon was now cooped up in the island of Lobau. He had fought two indecisive battles. But that they were indecisive, when he contended with an army double his own in number, was a triumph, of which any other commander would not have ceased to boast. However, the Emperor prepared himself to strike a blow as decisive as was Friedland after Eylau.
In the meantime, Napoleon ordered the funeral obsequies of the illustrious Lannes to be celebrated in a style which astonished all Europe, and showed how a man should be honored who had risen from the ranks by force of talent, to be a marshal and a Duke of Montebello. It was a funeral procession of an army of thirty thousand men, detailed for this service, who escorted the remains of the illustrious warrior from Germany to France. They remind us of Alexander honoring the remains of his friend Hœphestion. Paris had never witnessed a grander procession than that which conveyed the remains of Lannes from the Invalides to the Pantheon. It was not a cortege; it was a whole army marching in mourning for a hero, with arms lowered and flags bound with crape, and bearing a magnificent cenotaph. The funeral march was composed by the greatest composer of Germany, the peerless Beethoven, and it was performed by a band, the like of which had never been heard in Paris. Occasionally, the mournful strains were interrupted by the solemn roll of three hundred drums, and the firing of many guns reminded those who listened, of those tremendous storms of battle, in which the lion-hearted Lannes had so often bled for France. The whole funeral ceremony was eminently worthy of the Emperor and his illustrious friend.
