Battle of Wagram

“ His first battle showed his intrepid spirit. When cut down at Saint Bartholomew by a ball, his comrades wished to bear him away, "No, no," cried he; "don't waste time over me. The Spaniards! the Spaniards!"— "Shall we leave you to the enemy?" said one of those who had advanced towards him. "Well, drive them back if you do not wish me to be left with them." At the beginning of the campaign of Wagram, he was colonel of the Ninth regiment of the line, and was made general of brigade on the evening before the battle, his corps forming part of the left wing commanded by Massena. ”

“ In these operations, which are of an exceedingly delicate character, the essential thing is to keep the bridges safe. If, after effecting the passage, a general should throw the mass of his forces toward the right or the left with a view of taking possession of some decisive point, or of driving his enemy back upon the river, whilst the latter was collecting all his forces in another direction to seize the bridges, the former army might be in a very critical condition in case of a reverse befalling it. The battle of Wagram is an excellent example in point,—as good, indeed, as could be desired. ”

“ The French armies in Spain and Portugal suffered reverses. At Aspern and Esslingen, Austria, Napoleon was defeated; but he retrieved this disaster in the great battle of Wagram, in which sixty thousand men fell on both sides, and Austria sought an armistice, Napoleon exacting an indemnity of forty-seven million dollars. The British destroyed a French fleet at Aix. At Talavera, Wellington defeated the French, but was forced later to retreat. The Spaniards were defeated at Ocana, and the French captured Cordova, Seville, and Gerona. ”

“ While crossing the courts, which are very spacious, the prince pointed out the spot where, while Napoleon was inspecting some troops, a young fanatic attempted to kill him about the time of the battle of Wagram. If a crime of that nature is calculated to inspire anything but a feeling of indignation, that young fellow might have been pitied in virtue of the courage and fortitude he showed at the moment of his death. ”

“ At the great battle of Wagram Napoleon lost but about 5 per cent. At Wurzburg the French lost but 31⁄2 per cent., and yet the army gave [53] up the field and retreated to the Rhine. At Racour Marshal Saxe lost but 21⁄2 per cent. At Zurich Massena lost but 8 per cent. At Lagriz Frederick lost but 61⁄2 per cent. At Malplaquet Marlborough lost but 10 per cent., and at Ramillies the same intrepid commander lost but 6 per cent. At Contras Henry of Navarre was reported as cut to pieces, yet his loss was less than 10 per cent. At Lodi Napoleon lost 11⁄4 per cent. ”

“ The question here presents itself, whether it is ever proper to place two corps one behind the other, as Napoleon often did, particularly at Wagram. I think that, except for the reserves, this arrangement may be used only in a position of expectation, and never as an order of battle; for it is much better for each corps to have its own second line and its reserve than to pile up several corps, one behind the other, under different commanders. However much one general may be disposed to support a colleague, he will always object to dividing up his troops for that purpose ”

“ So eager and engrossed were the said assailants with slaughter that they seemed hardly to remember his presence. The vibration of whoops and yells was deafening, stunning, in the pearly dawn. But the scenes of butchery and bloodshed oppressed Wagram’s senses no longer. For now he was in the thick of the fight, and every nerve was strained to take care of himself. What if his “followers” ruthlessly slaughtered every living thing that showed?—here was he, with a cloud of spiky-headed fiends driving at him with their broad-headed spears. ”

“ The allies in their march on Paris would ignore him, and, moving by a much more direct road, would reach the capital first. The triple line of fortresses across the line of advance of the enemy, were expected to bar his approach, but they were weakly garrisoned by ill-disciplined and raw troops, whose whole spirit was shaken by Napoleon’s great defeat.
So far-reaching is the effect of a defeat as great as Waterloo that armies, districts, even capitals, miles from the real theatre of war, possibly in other countries, seem to crumble to dust before the conqueror ”

“ Those who have fallen among barbarians have seldom been without the experience of their detainers desiring to hold some kind of converse with them, however hostile the burden of such might be. Wagram, however, was absolutely without this experience, for these people were not only totally unable to communicate with him by word of mouth but showed absolutely no inclination to do so. ”

“ So much has been written on the Waterloo Campaign that, even in the smallest details, nothing new can be revealed; but the dazzling magnitude of the great battle itself has obscured a part of the campaign which is seldom studied—the battle against Thielemann, and Grouchy’s skilful retreat from Wavre. ”

“ Till the waters of the Wabash dyed crimson flowed along.
"They ask us, in their pride,
To idly stand aside,
To be false to our allies, and neutral in this war;
They think that Indian men
Will never think again
Of wrongs by Yengee spoilers, how false their treaties are.
"Allies both firm and true,
For our Father's sake to you,
Our Great Father round whose throne the mighty waters meet;
When din of battle's high,
Only coward curs will fly;
It is not Shawnee braves show foes their flying feet," ”

“ The difficulties encountered by the Prussians on their march from Wavre, by St.-Lambert, to the field of Waterloo, would have put the endurance of any troops to the test. From the heavy rains, the roads were ancle deep, and the defiles of St.-Lambert turned into a regular swamp, almost impassable for men and horses; still worse for the guns and tumbrels of ammunition. ”

“ Thirty-six thousand, seven hundred and seventy-three officers and soldiers of both armies lay killed or wounded on the field and round the walls of Vienna; while, as related in the memoir of Count O'Reilly, corpses in every variety of uniform, gashed and bloody, floated in hundreds down the dark waters of the Danube, or were daily thrown upon its shores to feed the wolves or to fester and decay. Such was the field of Wagram, and it was the culminating point in the fortunes of Stephen Macdonald. ”

“ On the contrary, they now went in to the closest ranges and, by actually annihilating a portion of the enemy’s line with case-shot fire, “covered” the assault so effectively that columns of cavalry and infantry reached the gap thus created without striking a blow. It is unnecessary to give examples. Every one of Napoleon’s later battles illustrates the principle. The most famous case is that of the great battery of 100 guns at Wagram (q.v.) ”

“ A timid pursuit is almost worse than none. Every nerve must be strained to make the most of the situation.
Yet, in history, how many instances are there in which pursuits have been carried out? What are the reasons which 155 account for so many battles ending without a pursuit? There are few instances, indeed, where it has been possible for the victor to follow up his victory as is advised in the books. To mention the most noted cases:—The pursuit of the French after Waterloo; the pursuit after Jena; the cavalry advance on Cairo after Tel-el-Kebir ”

“ What we admire before all, in an encounter like Waterloo, is the prodigious skill of chance. The night raid, the wall of Hougoumont, the hollow way of Ohain, Grouchy deaf to the cannon, Napoleon's guide deceiving him, Bulow's guide enlightening him—all this cataclysm is marvelously managed.
There is more of a massacre than of a battle in Waterloo. Waterloo, of all pitched battles, is the one which had the smallest front for such a number of combatants. Napoleon's three-quarters of a league. Wellington's half a league, and seventy-two thousand combatants on either side. ”

“ Should the enemy have evacuated Namur, write to the general in command of the Second Military Division at Charlemont, to occupy this town with a few battalions of National Guards. It is important to discover what Wellington and Blucher mean to do, and whether they meditate uniting their armies to cover Brussels and Liège by risking the fate of a battle. At all events, keep your two Infantry Corps continually together, within a mile of each other, reserving several ways of retreat ”

“ If he had marched straight and swiftly on the cannon-thunder of Waterloo, he might perhaps have been in time to effect something in the nature of a diversion, although it is extremely improbable that he could have materially changed the fortune of the day; but instead, acting on the letter of Napoleon's instructions despatched to him on the morning of the battle, he moved on Wavre and engaged in a futile action with the Prussian 3rd Corps there. A shrewd and enterprising man would have at least seen into the spirit of his orders ”

“ I have chosen this tail-end of the campaign because little is known about it; because it serves useful lessons even for to-day; because the operations leading up to the battle round Wavre are of great interest; and because a campaign full of mistakes should be studied as carefully as a campaign free from error. From history we obtain experience, and experience teaches us how to act for the future. We learn how great men of old time fought their battles and managed their retreats ”

“ The order in very deep masses (see Figs. 33 and 34) is certainly the most injudicious. In the later wars of Napoleon, twelve battalions were sometimes deployed and closed one upon the other, forming thirty-six ranks closely packed together. Such masses are greatly exposed to the destructive effects of artillery, their mobility and impulsion are diminished, while their strength is not increased. The use of such masses at Waterloo was one cause of the French being defeated. Macdonald's column was more fortunate at Wagram, but at a great sacrifice of life ”

“ The Czar therefore assured himself that if war must come, there could be no question as to the policy of bringing it on before Austria had entirely recovered from the effects of the campaign of Wagram, and, above all, while the Peninsula continued to occupy 200,000 of Napoleon's troops. ”

“ As a rule, a flank march, being away from the general line of advance or retreat, has necessarily to be made on lesser roads, and the difficulty of ample movement from one to another, or of rapid deployment or change of front, becomes prodigious. Blucher, if attacked during this march, would most probably have left one corps to detain the enemy, while he, with the other three corps, resumed his march towards Wellington; for to turn back would have been as dangerous as to advance. ”

“ Arduous and painful, indeed, must have been that struggle, in which upwards of 200,000 men on both sides, were engaged in the work of death for nine or ten hours.— We may readily conceive what a horrible thing it would be, to behold two columns of infantry charging one another in the greatest fury, with the bayonet, and occasionally pouring well-directed vollies of musketry into each others ranks ”

“ It may be believed that every fresh onset swept away multitudes of our infantry; still the survivors gave not an inch of ground, but made good the lines, and firm the squares.—No men in Europe could have endured more than they did.—Again and again the enemy’s cannon rebounded from their adamantine front, dismayed and scattered. ”

“ They struck the spoor of the waggons three days ago and followed it. To-night they sleep upon their spears, to-morrow at daybreak they will attack the laager and kill everybody. They are very bitter against the Boers, because of the battle at Blood River and the other fights, and that is why they followed the waggons instead of going straight north after Mosilikatze. ”

“ Napoleon’s last victorious phase, in the campaign of France in 1814, coincides with his use of a fresh army of raw conscripts, and his surrender took place when the men of the ranks had once more learnt the lessons of their predecessors.
Waterloo, the last battle of the Empire, epitomizes all these observations. The French attacked with dash, but a single reverse was sufficient to weaken the infantry so much that no support was forthcoming for the later cavalry attacks. A powerful counter-attack by the enemy brought about, not merely retreat, but unspeakable panic. ”

“ In vain, for the second time' the iron cases, their cannon was deserted and taken; and the columns of infantry were thrown into such confusion, that they had just time to get beyond the range of the prudent pursuit of their adversaries, whose warfare was yet defensive. The dragoons and infantry, with their captured cannons and eagles, calmly returned to their place in position, to await the next advance of the enemy. ”

“ To follow up his victory, to pursue the retreating force, and to leave no vestige of fighting power 73 in the vanquished, is the aim and object of every general who wins a battle. When the Prussians were defeated at Ligny, the advantage of vigorous pursuit with all the available cavalry and Lobau’s Corps would have been enormous. The whole aim of Napoleon’s strategy had been to crush the Prussians, and to prevent them from interfering with his attack on Wellington. He had found Blucher ready to fight at Ligny, and he had beaten him. ”

“ Thus the last great siege of what may be called the Vauban period of military history, presents the unique spectacle of a fortress never invested and yet reduced, of the resources of the defending power being poured into it till they were exhausted before the superior strength of the enemy.
Two days after the battle of the Alma, the allies moved southwards. Lord Raglan's resolution of "keeping his cavalry in a bandbox," so long as they were so few, most praiseworthy on the battle-field, was inexpedient on the march; and the Russian general habitually neglected to use his cavalry. ”