BATTLE OF WAGRAM
Napoleon’s Grande Armée faced a worthy adversary in Archduke Charles I and his revamped Austrian army
Shells from French guns screamed over the heads of the Austrian cannoneers and musketeers and slammed into the village of Wagram on the evening of 5 July 1809. Yellow and orange flames licked skyward as the buildings caught fire. When the French guns fell silent, Saxon troops of Emperor Napoleon’s Grande Armée splashed through the Russbach stream and climbed the slopes leading towards the Austrian position. As the Saxons reached the first line of the Austrian army, they fired crashing volleys that drove the first line back against the second line.
The Saxons fought their way into Wagram, but their progress was soon halted by a wall of Austrian fire. When Saxon reinforcements arrived, they mistakenly fired into the back of their comrades. Fired on from the front by enemies and the rear by friends, the Saxons in the village broke under the strain. They did not stop until they ran headlong into the bayonets of the French Imperial Guard who formed up to halt the Saxon flight.
Napoleon’s Saxon troops had nearly succeeded in piercing the Austrian line on the first day of the Battle of Wagram. But after they retreated, the French emperor had nothing to show for four hours of fighting that ended at around 11pm. Napoleon and his worthy foe, Archduke Charles, both drafted orders for morning attacks.
Austrians thirst for revenge
Four years after Napoleon’s great victories over the Austrians at Ulm and an Austrorussian army at Austerlitz in 1805, the Austrians seethed with hatred for the French. They resented having lost Venetia, Istria and Dalmatia to Napoleon through the Treaty of Pressburg. The Austrians also resented the replacement of the Austrian-controlled Holy Roman Empire with the French-controlled Confederation of the Rhine.
The Austrians took heart when the Spanish revolted against the occupying French army in 1808, and when French forces suffered several defeats in battle to both Spanish and Angloportuguese forces.
As the Austrians geared up to go to war again with Napoleon, they sought aid from their former allies. Although Great Britain agreed to furnish funds, it was not interested in furnishing troops to assist the Austrians. Nevertheless, the two nations had forged an alliance, and the ensuing conflict was known as the War of the Fifth Coalition. Russia technically was a French ally, and Tsar Alexander was not yet ready to go to war again with the French.
The Austrians had confidence in their army, based in large part on the sweeping reforms that Archduke Charles had carried out over the past few years to put the Austrian army on par with the French army. Charles had instituted a corps system similar to that of the French, trained the army to concentrate in large masses to deliver powerful attacks, overhauled its supply system and modernised its artillery.
France’s army had evolved from a primarily citizen army into a professional army that
“NAPOLEON’S SAXON TROOPS HAD NEARLY SUCCEEDED IN PIERCING THE AUSTRIAN LINE ON THE FIRST DAY OF THE BATTLE OF WAGRAM”
included a substantial number of German and Polish troops. Specifically, Marshal Francois Joseph Lefebvre’s VII Corps comprised 30,000 Bavarians, and Marshal Jean Bernadotte’s 18,000-man IX Corps was predominantly Saxon.
On 9 April Archduke Charles crossed the Inn River into Bavaria. When Napoleon learned that the Austrians had invaded Bavaria, he made preparations to leave Paris to take command of his army. On his orders, French forces in Germany and adjoining regions converged immediately on southern Bavaria. Napoleon arrived at the battlefront along the Danube River on 17 April. He subsequently defeated Charles on 21-22 April in the Battle of Eckmühl.
Following his defeat at Eckmühl, Charles retreated to Bohemia to refit. This move exposed Vienna, which Napoleon occupied on 13 May. Charles subsequently emerged with his army from Bohemia and took up a position on the Marchfeld, the expansive plain on the opposite side of the Danube from the Austrian capital.
Napoleon soon began moving troops across the river to engage the Austrians. He used the island of Lobau and adjacent smaller river islands as stepping stones to get his army across the wide Danube, utilising pontoon bridges and hastily constructed wooden bridges. On 21-22 May the Austrians defeated the French in heavy fighting in the villages of Aspern and Essling. During the battle, the Austrians sent debris and fireboats downstream in an effort to wreck Napoleon’s bridges. The tactic, which was aided by rising waters during springtime, compelled Napoleon to withdraw to the south bank, as without secure bridges he could neither supply nor reinforce his troops on the north bank.
The Battle of Aspern-essling marked the first time that Napoleon was defeated in a pitched battle. The Austrian victory gave encouragement to those subjugated by the French. The French emperor had no intention of quitting his campaign against Austria, because if he were to retreat it would show that he could be defeated strategically as well as tactically. Napoleon therefore resolved that he would vanquish the Austrians on the Marchfeld to show Europe that the Grande Armée was still a force to be feared.
Napoleon strikes
Napoleon decided to cross the Danube again at the same location but knew he had to strengthen his bridges. The French drove piles into the river upstream of their new bridges to protect them from floating obstacles. Napoleon also established a small force of gunboats to disrupt Austrian spoiling attacks conducted on the river. By the end of June the French had stockpiled supplies and ammunition on Lobau island to support another offensive move.
Meanwhile, Archduke Charles was embroiled in a heated debate with his generals whether to contest another French crossing near the river bank or whether to deploy further back on higher ground. Charles favoured the former tactic, and the generals favoured the latter.
The archduke ultimately heeded the advice of his generals and issued orders for his army to deploy on the high ground.
When French forces began crossing to the north bank on the morning of 5 July a heavy rainfall masked their movements. Napoleon was on hand to urge the first of the forces to hurry across a dozen pontoon bridges, leading from the east side of the island of Lobau to the north shore. The first forces to cross were those commanded by Napoleon’s most experienced commanders: Davout, Masséna and Oudinot. Once the II, III and IV Corps at the front had a stable position, Napoleon sent Prince Eugène’s Army of Italy (the V and VI Corps) and Bernadotte’s Saxon IX Corps across in the early afternoon. In the late afternoon, the Imperial Guard and cavalry reserve crossed. This gave Napoleon sufficient forces for a general attack, even though it was growing late in the day.
Archduke Charles had deployed his left wing, consisting of the Austrian II, III and IV Corps, behind the Russbach facing southwest. The infantry of the Austrian left wing held a particularly strong position on an escarpment behind the Russbach. The steep banks of the narrow stream were lined with tangled foliage that was unsuitable for cavalry action and precluded the passage of artillery. The Austrian right wing, which was composed of the III, V, VI Corps, Reserve Corps and Reserve Grenadier Division, was deployed in front of the Bissam Heights facing southeast.
Fearing that Archduke John might arrive from Pressburg with Austrian reinforcements, Napoleon decided to launch an attack against the Russbach line in the hope of a quick victory. The French emperor issued orders at 6pm for his right wing to assail the Austrian left wing. Marshal Davout would attack towards Markgrafneusiedl, Marshal Oudinot and
Prince Eugène’s corps would attack towards Baumersdorf, and Bernadotte would attack towards Wagram. It took the French forces an hour to get into position. At 7pm, French
“THE FRENCH EMPEROR HAD NO INTENTION OF QUITTING HIS CAMPAIGN AGAINST AUSTRIA, BECAUSE IF HE WERE TO RETREAT IT WOULD SHOW THAT HE COULD BE DEFEATED STRATEGICALLY AS WELL AS TACTICALLY”
batteries began firing on the Austrian positions to soften them up for the infantry assault.
When the guns stopped, the three divisions that constituted Oudinot’s II Corps surged forward. The divisions attacked abreast across a three-kilometre (two-mile) front. Grey-uniformed Jägers and a battalion of the Archduke Charles Legion had taken up positions in the village of Baumersdorf, and they blunted the force of Oudinot’s second division, so he sent the 10th Light Infantry and the 57th Line regiments from his third division to carry out a flank attack against the village from the east. The flank attack failed to rattle the crack Austrian force in the village, which tenaciously held its ground. Elements of the 10th then stormed the escapement and ran into a wall of fire from General Wenzel von Buresch’s brigade of the Austrian II Corps. Moving forward to assist the Austrian infantry were 500 green-jacketed horsemen of the crack Vincent Chevauleger, led by the corps commander Friedrich of Hohenzollern. Their attack sent Oudinot’s dispirited soldiers scurrying south.
Next into action were Prince Eugène's V and VI Corps and Bernadotte’s Saxon IX
Corps. General Pierre-louis Dupas’s mixed division of French and Saxons spearheaded the attack. They were followed by one division from the V Corps and two divisions from the VI Corps. Napoleon had instructed Eugène and Bernadotte to capture Wagram so as to drive a wedge between the two Austrian wings.
The attack initially went well, with the Saxons securing the village of Aderklaa and reaching Wagram while Eugène's troops grappled with the Austrian I Corps men on the top of the escarpment. The regiments of General Jean Lamarque’s division fought exceptionally well, driving the Austrians off before they became engaged in a slugfest with the men of the
35th Infantry Regiment. While the Austrians on the escarpment sought to hold their ground, Dupas’s men angled west and fought their way into Wagram. Austrian I Corps commander Bellegarde personally rallied his troops on the escarpment. Austrian heavy musketry drove back Lamarque’s men, and Archduke Charles arrived to help Bellegarde rally his troops. On the opposite end of the French line, Davout’s attack made no headway.
The second day
Both army commanders resolved to continue the fight on 6 July. The availability of fresh troops from General Auguste de Marmont’s XI Corps and General Karl Philipp Wrede’s Bavarian Division of the VII Corps gave Napoleon the superior force on the second day of battle.
Napoleon believed that his best chance for success lay in crushing the Austrian right wing. He ordered Davout to capture the key village of Markgrafneusiedl. The veteran III Corps commander would then roll up the Austrian left flank, while the French forces adjacent to Davout’s corps to the west would pin the Austrians in place.
As for Archduke Charles, he felt his only chance for victory was to catch the French by surprise. At midnight he issued orders to his corps commanders. Charles ordered Prince Rosenberg, who commanded the Austrian IV Corps, to strike the French at dawn. Meanwhile, the three corps on the Austrian right wing were to align themselves for a co-ordinated attack against the weak French line between Aspern and Wagram. But when Charles learned shortly after sunrise that the Austrian right wing was not ready to attack, he ordered Rosenberg to call off his plan.
Napoleon also had his share of problems the second day. When he learned that Bernadotte had withdrawn his infantry from Aderklaa, the emperor ordered Bernadotte, with the assistance of Masséna’s IV Corps, to retake the village. Since the demoralised Saxons were no longer combat effective, the brunt of the attack fell to Masséna’s veteran troops. To support the Austrian force in Aderklaa, General Bellegarde ordered three of his divisions to deploy in two lines between Aderklaa and Wagram.
At 7am Claude Carra Saint-cyr ordered his French troops to storm Aderklaa. Several thousand French soldiers from the 4th and
24th Line Regiments spearheaded the assault. They were well supported by the Hessendarmstadt brigade. As the French swept forward through fields of half-grown corn, they came under murderous musketry from the Austrians, firing from windows of houses and from behind garden walls. Because of their superior numbers, the attackers pried loose the defenders, who fled north.
The French continued their advance. They shattered the first of Bellegarde’s infantry lines beyond the village, but the second line held firm, as the corps commander was on hand to rally them. The exhausted attackers reeled before the heavy volleys of the Austrians. The Saxons joined the assault, but they had the bad fortune to get cut up by 800 horsemen of the Klenau Chevauleger regiment. Once again the unlucky Saxons fled for the safety of the French rear, but this time they ran into Napoleon. He stopped their retrograde movement and proceeded to berate Bernadotte for his incompetence.
By that time, the Austrian Grenadier
Reserve had arrived just west of Aderklaa.
Three grenadier battalions joined Bellegarde’s infantry in a counterattack that drove the
French back and recaptured Aderklaa. The French did not give ground easily, and musket volleys were traded at close range. In some instances, the opponents fell on each other with clubbed muskets and bayonets, in bloody melees that swirled through the fields like cyclones. Masséna was not willing to concede the advantage to the Austrians, and he therefore ordered a fresh division into the battle. General Gabriel Molitor sent two brigades to support Carra Saint Cyr’s hard-pressed troops. Fresh battalions from the French brigades of generals Francois-joseph Leguay and Raymond Vivies rushed forward in a quest to retake Aderklaa. The 67th Line Regiment gained a foothold in Aderklaa, but it was ejected by the crack grenadiers of the Austrian reserve. When Masséna’s attack ebbed, the Austrians were in firm control of Aderklaa.
By 9am the three corps of the Austrian right wing had aligned with each other, but they did not yet have orders authorising them to proceed with a general attack, so they did not attack in unison. It was a great lost opportunity, for Archduke Charles might have been able to shatter Napoleon’s left wing, which was held only by Masséna’s overstretched corps.
From his position behind the French right wing at Raasdorf, Napoleon had issued orders for Davout’s III Corps to capture Markgrafneusiedl, which was occupied by a force from Rosenberg’s IV Corps. The divisions of generals Jacques Puthod and Charles-étienne Gudin set out at 10am for the village, which was defended by the 2,200 musketeers of General Robert Freiherr Swinburne’s brigade. The French, who outnumbered the defenders of the village, launched a headlong attack into a firestorm of musketry. Unable to withstand the withering fire,
“IN SOME INSTANCES THE OPPONENTS FELL ON EACH OTHER WITH CLUBBED MUSKETS AND BAYONETS, IN BLOODY MELEES THAT SWIRLED THROUGH THE FIELDS LIKE CYCLONES”
the French fell back. Reinforcements were fed into the village by Louis de Rohan in a desperate effort to hold it in the face of French assaults.
On the escarpment north of Markgrafneusiedl was a watchtower that could be seen from a great distance. When Davout’s horse was shot from under him during the fighting, his subordinates rode to check on his condition. Fixated on the attack, Davout pointed to the north, where a sea of Austrian infantry was massed around the base of the watchtower, and motioned to his officers to drive them from the high ground.
About that time, General Charles Morand’s division stormed the escarpment behind the village, but was hurled back by crashing volleys from General Georg von Mayer’s brigade, facing east in anticipation of a flanking attack on the village. Davout sent his last division forward to reinforce Morand, and together they succeeded in dislodging the Austrians from the east end of the escarpment. At noon Swinburne withdrew from the village.
When Swinburne quit Markgrafneusiedl, Rosenberg was in the process of establishing a new line further back on the escarpment. This meant abandoning the part of the escarpment where the watchtower stood to the French. It was at this time that Archduke Charles arrived with reinforcements. He brought with him General Wenzel von Buresch’s brigade from the Austrian II Corps, and also the imposing Hohenzollern Cuirassiers with their black cuirasses and helmets. Charles sent the cuirassiers to reinforce Field Marshal Lieutenant Johann von Nostitz’s light cavalry, who Charles directed to counterattack the French cavalry, which were menacing the rear of the Austrian army.
While Rosenberg was forming a new line, Napoleon ordered Oudinot’s II Corps, facing the Russbach to the west of Davout’s corps, to launch a frontal assault on the Austrian II Corps in order to pin it down and prevent its commander from detaching units to reinforce Rosenberg’s corps on his right. The French emperor also began to feed large numbers of fresh troops into the fight. To the west of Oudinot, Auguste de Marmot’s 10,000-strong XI Corps, which had just arrived behind the French right wing, was ordered to go into action against that portion of Hohenzollern’s II Corps deployed west of Baumersdorf.
The final thrust
With the Austrian left wing giving ground on the east side of the battlefield, the focus shifted at 1pm to the west of the battlefield and the line formed by the villages of Sussenbrunnaderklaa-wagram, where Napoleon had issued orders for a major attack against the Austrian centre. Napoleon massed 112 guns into a grand battery under the direction of General Jacques Lauriston of the Guard Artillery. Lauriston had orders to pummel the Austrian centre and open gaps in the enemy’s line that the French foot might exploit. The guns sent a storm of iron raining down on the Austrians.
Napoleon entrusted the business of penetrating the Austrian centre to General Jacques Macdonald. Under Napoleon’s direction, the V Corps commander formed a massive hollow square with his two divisions and one division from General Paul Grenier’s VI Corps. They were followed by the remaining troops from Grenier’s corps.
33,000 soldiers asembled for the assault against the Austrian centre. On their right were cuirassiers and carabineers from Marshal Bessieres’s cavalry reserve, and on their left was General von Wrede’s Bavarian Division, who would face General Kollowrat’s III Corps, still waiting to play an active role in the battle.
Macdonald’s square advanced at 1pm into a wall of fire from the Austrian infantry and artillery. When they engaged the Austrians, von Wrede and the troops on the left side of the square battled Genral Kollowrat’s III Corps infantry, while the French heavy cavalry and the troops on the right grappled with the grenadiers of Johann I Joseph's Reserve Corps. The grenadiers poured a withering fire into the square’s right side, and inflicted massive casualties on Macdonald’s square. In so doing, the grenadiers shattered the attack by the French heavy cavalry.
Only about one-tenth of the troops from the square and the supporting formations survived the Austrian fire to pass through the gaps opened by the French artillery. But Napoleon sent the Young Guard into action to fully exploit the breaches in the Austrian line. Shortly afterwards, Napoleon issued orders for his entire army to push forward against the Austrians. With his centre breached, his left wing rolled up and his right wing falling back, Archduke Charles ordered his force to retreat in good order.
The French lost 32,500 men, and the Austrians lost 37,000 men in the battle. Through the Treaty of Schönbrunn, signed on 14 October, France took additional Austrian territory, which it distributed to Bavaria and the Duchy of Warsaw. Austrian Emperor Francis I was outraged that his younger brother had negotiated terms, believing Charles had overstepped his authority, and he dismissed Charles from command.
Napoleon’s victory at Wagram enabled him to save face after the debacle at Aspern-essling, but other powers noted that he could be defeated. As the Austrians showed at Aspernessling, the formula to defeat Napoleon was a talented commander, proper equipment and training and high morale.
“LAURISTON HAD ORDERS TO PUMMEL THE AUSTRIAN CENTRE AND OPEN GAPS IN THE ENEMY’S LINE THAT THE FRENCH FOOT MIGHT EXPLOIT. THE GUNS SENT A STORM OF IRON RAINING DOWN”