Day was now dawning, and showed us the Austrian army in retreat by the two great roads toward Landshut. Every rising spot of ground was occupied by artillery, and in some places defended by stockades, showing plainly enough that all hope of saving the guns was abandoned, and that they only thought of protecting their flying columns from our attack. These dispositions cost us heavily, for as we were obliged to carry each of these places before we could advance, the loss in this hand-to-hand encounter was very considerable. At length, however, the roads became so blocked up by artillery, that the infantry were driven to defile into the swampy fields at the road side, and here our cavalry cut them down unmercifully, while grape tore through the dense masses at half musket range.
Had discipline or command been possible, our condition might have been made perilous enough, since, in the impetuosity of attack, large masses of our cavalry got separated from their support, and were frequently seen struggling to cut their way out of the closing columns of the enemy. Twice or thrice it actually happened that officers surrendered the whole squadron as prisoners, and were rescued by their own comrades afterward. The whole was a scene of pell-mell confusion and disorder; some abandoning positions when successful defense was possible, others obstinately holding their ground when destruction was inevitable. Few prisoners were taken; indeed, I believe, quarter was little thought of by either side. The terrible excitement had raised men’s passions to the pitch of madness, and each fought with all the animosity of hate.
Massena was always in the front, and, as was his custom, comporting himself with a calm steadiness that he rarely displayed in the common occurrences of every-day life. Like the English Picton, the crash and thunder of conflict seemed to soothe and assuage the asperities of an irritable temper, and his mind appeared to find a congenial sphere in the turmoil and din of battle. The awkward attempt of a French squadron to gallop in a deep marsh, where men and horses were rolling indiscriminately together, actually gave him a hearty fit of laughter, and he issued his orders for their recall, as though the occurrence were a good joke. It was while observing this incident, that an orderly delivered into his hands some maps and papers that had just been captured from the fourgon of a staff-officer.
Turning them rapidly over, Massena chanced upon the plan of a bridge, with marks indicative of points of defense at either side of it, and the arrangements for mining it, if necessary. It was too long to represent the bridge of Moosburg, and must probably mean that of Landshut; and so thinking, and deeming that its possession might be important to the Emperor, he ordered me to take a fresh horse, and hasten with it to the head-quarters. The orders I received were vague enough.
“You’ll come up with the advance guard some eight or nine miles to the north’ard; you’ll chance upon some of the columns near Fleisheim.”
Such were the hurried directions I obtained, in the midst of the smoke and din of a battle; but it was no time to ask for more precise instructions, and away I went.
In less than twenty minutes’ sharp riding, I found myself in a little valley, inclosed by low hills, and watered by a small tributary of the Danube, along whose banks cottages were studded in the midst of what seemed one great orchard, since for miles the white and pink blossoms of fruit-trees were to be seen extending. The peasants were at work in the fields, and the oxen were toiling along with the heavy wagons, or the scarcely less cumbersome plow, as peacefully as though bloodshed and carnage were not within a thousand miles of them. No high road penetrated this secluded spot, and hence it lay secure, while ruin and devastation raged at either side of it. As the wind was from the west, nothing could be heard of the cannonade toward Moosburg, and the low hills completely shut out all signs of the conflict. I halted at a little way-side forge, to have a loose shoe fastened, and in the crowd of gazers who stood around me, wondering at my gay trappings and gaudy uniform, not one had the slightest suspicion that I was other than Austrian. One old man asked me if it were not true that the “French were coming?” and another laughed, and said, “They had better not;” and there was all they knew of that terrible struggle—the shock that was to rend in twain a great empire.
Full of varied thought on this theme, I mounted and rode forward. At first, the narrow roads were so deep and heavy, that I made little progress; occasionally, too, I came to little streams, traversed by a bridge of a single plank, and was either compelled to swim my horse across, or wander long distances in search of a ford. These obstructions made me impatient, and my impatience but served to delay me more, and all my efforts to push directly forward only tended to embarrass me. I could not ask for guidance, since I knew not the name of a single village or town, and to have inquired for the direction in which the troops were stationed, might very possibly have brought me into danger.
At last, after some hours of toilsome wandering, I reached a small way-side inn, and resolving to obtain some information of my whereabouts, I asked whither the road led that passed through a long, low, swampy plain, and disappeared in a pine wood.
“To Landshut,” was the answer.