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When we recall the early republicanism of Bernadotte, his repeated failures in critical moments, as on the Marchfeld and elsewhere, the impatient and severe reproofs administered to the inefficient and fiery Gascon by his commander, we are not amazed that the crown prince Charles John, as his style now ran, began immediately after his installation at Stockholm to vent his spleen on Napoleon.
There was nothing possible as the result of their victory but to take up a more comfortable position on the same Marchfeld which had witnessed their losses. Before them were the bodies of ten thousand dead and four times that number had been wounded: losses which were about equally divided between their brethren and their foes. The Archduke urged that now was the time for diplomacy.
When the armistice was signed the Prussians lay on the Marchfeld within dim sight of the Stephanien-Thurm, it is true; but with the strong and strongly armed and held lines of Florisdorf, the Danube, and the army of the Archduke Albrecht between them and the Austrian capital. On the 9th of October 1806 Napoleon crossed the Saale.
Throughout the following years he followed Bonaparte in all his enterprises, and Napoleon on the Marchfeld, in 1809, wept bitterly when his faithful monitor was shot to pieces. Masséna advanced up the Piave against Lusignan, captured his rear-guard, and drove him away northward beyond Belluno, while the Archduke, thus separated from his right, withdrew to guard the road into Carniola.
On the first occasion, when Ottocar II had extended his power into the German lands between Bohemia and the Adriatic, he was overthrown by Rudolf of Hapsburg at the battle of the Marchfeld ; and a new Hapsburg principality was formed out of the reconquered lands to guard the south-east frontier against future incursions of Czech or Magyar.
Nevertheless, Nature is at work; neither shall these Powder-Devilkins with their utmost devilry gainsay her: but all that gore and carnage will be shrouded in, absorbed into manure; and next year the Marchfeld will be green, nay greener.
It was in the very time while Ottocar was getting finished in the Marchfeld; much mutiny still abroad, and the new Kaiser Rudolf very busy. Otto's Wife, all streaming in tears, and flaming in zeal, what shall she do?
Bismarck closed his field-glasses with a snap and exclaimed, "No, these are not plough furrows; the spaces are not equal; they are marching lines!" And he was right. Eighteen days after the victory of Koeniggraetz the Prussian hosts were in line on the historic Marchfeld whence the spires of Vienna could be dimly seen through the heat-haze.
The archduke's advance- guard had alone appeared, till at three o'clock in the afternoon of the 21st May, the Austrian army, 70,000 to 80,000 men strong, at last poured on the plain of Marchfeld. The large bridge thrown from the right bank to the island of Lobau had been broken for the second time during the night, and therefore only 35,000 or 40,000 Frenchmen were there to meet the enemy.
His cavalry was again sent to clear the Marchfeld of the Austrian light horse, who were coursing from one vantage-point to another; and he himself, in order to survey the country, advanced to the first slight rise beyond the low meadows which border the river.
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