Vienna is situated at some distance from the Danube, which flows to the right of the city between wooded islands. The Austrians had placed explosive materials under the floorings of the wooden bridge which crosses the several arms of the river, and were ready to blow it up the moment the French should show themselves. They kept themselves in readiness on the left bank, with their artillery pointed, and a corps of 7000 or 8000 men, commanded by Count Auersberg. The French, nevertheless, got possession of the bridge by stratagem. Murat, Lannes, Belliard, and their staff, leaving their troops behind them, crossed the bridge, told the Austrians that an armistice was agreed on, and asked to see their general. He was sent for. Meanwhile, the French officers kept the Austrian gunners in conversation, and gave time for a column of French grenadiers to come up unseen, under cover of the woods, seize the cannon, and disarm the artillerymen. The Austrian commander who had come to the spot just at the critical moment, fell completely into the trap. He himself led the French column over the bridge, and ordered the Austrian troops to be drawn up on parade to receive them as friends. The possession of the bridge afforded the French troops the means of reaching Znaim sooner than Kutusov, and thus preventing his junction with Buxhövden.
Meanwhile, Alexander had gone to Berlin, to exert his personal influence over the timorous king, and prevail on him to abandon his wretched neutral policy, in which there was neither honour, honesty, nor safety. Alexander was warmly seconded by the beautiful queen of Prussia, and by the archduke Anthony, who arrived at the same time on a special mission from Vienna. French influence rapidly declined in Berlin; Duroc left it on the 2nd of November, without having been able to obtain an audience, for some days previously, either from the king or the emperor; and on the following day a secret convention was signed between the two monarchs for the regulation of the affairs of Europe, and the erection of a barrier against the ambition of the French emperor.
The Prussian minister Haugwitz, who had signed this convention only to gain time, and with a secret determination to elude its provisions, was to be entrusted with the notification of it to Napoleon, with authority, in case of its acceptance, to offer a renewal of the former friendship and alliance of the Prussian nation; but in case of refusal, to declare war, with an intimation that hostilities would begin on the 15th of December—when they would be too late. Before that day came, Prussia relapsed into her old temporising habits; her armies made no forward movement towards the Danube, and Napoleon was permitted to continue without interruption his advance to Vienna, while 80,000 disciplined veterans remained inactive in Silesia; a force amply sufficient to have thrown him back with disgrace and disaster to the Rhine.
A characteristic scene took place at Potsdam during Alexander’s visit. The king, the queen, and the emperor went one night by torchlight into the vault where lay the coffin of Frederick the Great. They knelt before it. Alexander’s face was bathed in tears; he pressed his friend’s hands, he clasped him in his arms, and together they swore eternal amity: never would they separate their cause or their fortunes. Tilsit soon showed what was the value of this oath, which probably was sincere for the moment when it was taken.
During the retreat of the Austrians and Russians under Kienmayer and Kutusov from Passau to Krems, the imprudence of Mortier, who had crossed to the left bank of the Danube at Linz, gave occasion to engagements at Stein and Dirnstein, in which the French lost more men than they ever acknowledged. Mortier’s army of 30,000 men consisted of three divisions, under Generals Gazan, Dupont, and Dumonceau. This army had positive orders to keep always near to the main body, which was pursuing its march along the right bank, and never to advance beyond it. Kutusov had long retreated on the right bank; but on the 9th of November he crossed to the left at Grein, as before mentioned, and lay in the neighbourhood of Krems, when Mortier’s troops advanced. The French divisions maintained the distance of a whole day’s march one from another, because they thought they were following a fleeing army; but between Dirnstein and Stein they fell in with the whole Russian army, 20,000 strong, at a place where the French were obliged to pass through a frightful ravine. On the 11th of November, Mortier ventured to make an attack with Gazan’s division alone; but near Dirnstein (twenty hours from Vienna), he got into a narrow way, enclosed on both sides by a line of lofty walls, and there suffered a dreadful loss. When the French, about noon, at length supposed themselves to have gained some advantage, the Russians received reinforcements, outflanked the French, cut them off, and would have annihilated the whole division, had not Dupont’s come up at the decisive moment. The latter division had also suffered severely on the same day. Whilst Kutusov was sharply engaged with Mortier, whose numbers were being rapidly diminished, and his cannon taken, the Austrian general Schmidt attacked Dupont at Stein, where the contest was as murderous as at Dirnstein, till Schmidt fell, and the French forced their way out.
Kutusov, on his march to Znaim, was overtaken by the van of the French, under Belliard, near Hollabrunn; and everything depended on detaining the latter so long as might enable Kutusov to gain time for getting in advance. For this purpose, Bagration, with about six thousand men, took up a position in the rear of the main body. Nostitz served under Bagration, and had some thousand Austrians and a number of Russians under his immediate command. He occupied the village of Schöngraben, in the rear of the Russians, and in the very centre of their line of march. Belliard ought to have attacked him first; but as his corps was not superior in number to that of Bagration, he had again recourse to the expedient which he had already tried, with such signal success, at the bridge of Vienna. He entered into a parley; declared that peace with Austria was already concluded, or as good as concluded; assured them that hostilities henceforth affected the Russians alone; and by such means induced Nostitz to be guilty of a piece of treachery unparalleled in war. Nostitz, with his Austrians, forsook the Russians, even those whom he had under his own command; and they being unable to maintain the village of Schöngraben, it was taken possession of without a shot; and Bagration and Kutusov seemed lost, for Murat’s whole army was advancing upon them.
In the meantime the Russians at Hollabrunn extricated themselves from their difficulty; for they were not so stupidly credulous as the Austrians, but knew how to deceive the Gascons, by whom they were pursued, as Belliard had deceived the Austrians. For this purpose, they availed themselves of the presence in Kutusov’s camp of Count von Winzingerode, the adjutant-general of the emperor of Russia, who had been employed in all the last diplomatic military negotiations in Berlin. Murat having sent his adjutant to call upon Kutusov, whose line of march had come into the power of the enemy, in consequence of Nostitz’s treachery in capitulating, the Russian general assumed the appearance of being desirous to negotiate, and Winzingerode betook himself to the French camp. Belliard and Murat, without taking the trouble to inquire what powers the count and Kutusov had to conclude a treaty which should be generally binding, came to an agreement with Winzingerode, by virtue of which all the Russians, within a certain number of days, were to evacuate every part of the Austrian territory. This capitulation was to be sent to the emperor Napoleon, at Schönbrunn, for confirmation; and to this condition there was necessarily attached another, for the sake of which Kutusov had commenced the whole affair. There was to be a suspension of hostilities till the arrival of Napoleon’s answer; and it was agreed that in the meantime both parties should remain in their then positions.
Bagration, with seven or eight thousand Russians, complied with this condition, and remained in his position at Hollabrunn, because he could be observed by the French; but Kutusov, with all the rest of the army, which lay at a greater distance, quietly continued his route to Znaim; and this, with a full knowledge of the danger of Bagration being afterwards overwhelmed by a superior force. On being made acquainted with the capitulation, Napoleon was enraged, for he immediately perceived how grievously his brother-in-law had suffered himself to be deceived; and he ordered an immediate attack. This was indeed made; but eighteen hours had been irreparably lost, and Kutusov gained two marches on Murat; the whole French army, above thirty thousand strong, therefore fell upon Bagration.
Bagration, who had still with him the Austrian regiment of hussars of the crown-prince of Homburg, commanded by Baron von Mohr, offered a vigorous resistance to the whole French army with his seven or eight thousand men. The Russian bombs set fire to the village in which was stationed the corps which was to fall upon Bagration’s flank; the consequence was, that this corps was thrown into confusion, and the Russians opened up a way for themselves at the point of the bayonet. The Russian general, it is true, was obliged to leave his cannon in the hands of his enemy, and lost the half of his force; it must, however, always be regarded as one of the most glorious deeds of the whole campaign, that, after three days’ continued fighting, he succeeded in joining the main body under Kutusov, at his headquarters at Wischau, between Brünn and Olmütz, and, to the astonishment of all, with one-half of his little army. Even the French admit that the Russians behaved nobly, that they themselves lost a great number of men, and that, among others, Oudinot was severely wounded.
On the same day on which Bagration arrived in Wischau, a junction had been formed by Buxhövden’s army, with which the emperor Alexander was present, with the troops under Kutusov, who thenceforward assumed the chief command of the whole. Napoleon himself came to Brünn, and collected his whole army around him, well knowing that nothing but a decisive engagement could bring him safely out of the situation in which he then was, and which was the more dangerous the more splendid and victorious it outwardly appeared to be. It is beyond a doubt that the precipitation and haughtiness of the Russians, who were eager for a decisive engagement, combined with the miserable policy of the Prussian cabinet and the cowardice of the king, as well as the fears and irresolution of the poor emperor Francis, and the want of spirit among his advisers, contributed more to the success of Napoleon’s plans respecting Prussia, Germany, and Italy, than his victories in the field.