After the youth had departed the lady and her attendants were wont to take their spinning to the spot at which the lovers had parted, and there it was that she suddenly realized that her young Crusader had been killed, and she herself expired with the shock. It will be seen that those who visit the cross on the Wienerberg can take a legend with a tragic or a happy ending in accordance with their mood.
Returning to the Danube we find that the Danube canal rejoins the river some miles below the city. Some of the steamers for Budapest leave the quay by the palatial offices of the Danube Steamship Company on the banks of the canal instead of the landing place on the main stream, and pass along part of the tree-grown Prater. Canal and river join again opposite the large island of Lobau on the left—one of the largest of the many islands formed by the branching river. Beyond this island lie some way inland little villages that have given their names to battles on which for a time the fate of Napoleon—and therefore, in a sense of Europe—depended. These villages are Aspern and Wagram, one the name of the place where Napoleon’s credit as a victorious general received a rude shock, and the other that of a place where six weeks later he retrieved his fortunes in a splendid fashion.
It was in 1809 that the Emperor, having seized upon Vienna, found a great Austrian army upon the Marchfeld on the left bank of the Danube and knew that no peace was possible until it had been attacked and beaten. He selected the island of Lobau as a starting point for his operations where the narrow northern branch of the river could be rapidly bridged. On 20 May, forty thousand French troops were allowed to make an unopposed crossing to the left bank. They occupied the villages of Aspern and Essling, and on the following day were attacked by the Austrians, the army of whom under the Archduke Charles numbered eighty thousand. For two days the battle raged, a further forty thousand Frenchmen crossing the river and making the forces equal. During the struggle the village of Aspern was five times lost and won, but at length Napoleon was forced to order a retreat on to the island of Lobau. The bridges were carried away, and the great army was encamped for two days without food and without ammunition, cut off from Vienna.
Had the Archduke pressed his advantage, Napoleon’s force might have been entirely destroyed; but he did not do so. Communication over the main stream was restored, Napoleon matured his plans, and on 5 and 6 July, there was fought “between the two largest armies that had ever been brought face to face in Europe,” the indecisive Battle of Wagram—a victory for Napoleon, but a victory that did no more than drive the enemy from their vantage ground on and about the Wagram plateau, “so regularly shaped as to seem as if constructed by art.” Mr. Thomas Hardy in one of the “dumb show” scenes of his great epic-drama, “The Dynasts” vividly sums up the event at the moment when Napoleon began his great coup:
“The first change under the cloak of night is that the tightly packed regiments on the island are got under arms. The soldiery are like a thicket of reeds in which every reed should be a man....
“At two o’clock in the morning the thousands of cooped soldiers begin to cross the bridges, producing a scene which, on such a scale, was never before witnessed in the history of war. A great discharge from the batteries accompanies this manœuvre, arousing the Austrians to a like cannonade.
“The night has been obscure for summer-time, and there is no moon. The storm now breaks in a tempestuous downpour, with lightning and thunder. The tumult of nature mingles so fantastically with the tumult of projectiles that flaming bombs and forked flashes cut the air in company, and the noise from the mortars alternates with the noise from the clouds.
“From bridge to bridge and back again a gloomy-eyed figure stalks, as it has stalked the whole night long, with the restlessness of a wild animal. Plastered with mud, and dribbling with rain-water, it bears no resemblance to anything dignified or official. The figure is that of Napoleon, urging his multitudes over.
“By daylight the great mass of the men is across the water. At six the rain ceases, the mist uncovers the face of the sun, which bristles on the bayonets and helmets of the French. A hum of amazement rises from the Austrian hosts, who turn staring faces southward and perceive what has happened, and the columns of their enemies standing to arms on the same side of the stream with themselves, and preparing to turn their left wing.”
Thus graphically does Mr. Hardy bring before us the scene of a hundred years ago. An earlier poet had also sung the battle, but in a widely different vein, for Byron among the memorable battle scenes in “Childe Harold” describes Napoleon’s army emerging from the island of Lobau as—