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"It is four o'clock," he wrote to Davout, "I have resolved to march, and shall be upon Eckmuehl about midday, and ready to attack the enemy vigorously at three o'clock. I shall have with me 40,000 men. I shall be at Ergoltsbach before midday. If the cannon are heard I shall know I am to attack.
On the 12th of April he left Paris, passed the Rhine, plunged into Germany, gained the victories of Eckmuehl and Essling, occupied Vienna a second time on the 15th of May, and overthrew this new coalition by the battle of Wagram, after a campaign of four months.
The bridges on the Isar were all attacked at once, and bravely defended by the Austrians: when carried they were already in flames. The Archduke Charles, however, attacking Ratisbon, which Davout was obliged to leave protected only by one regiment, easily took possession of that important place, commanding both banks of the Danube. He was thus, on the 22nd, before Eckmuehl opposite Davout.
Informed of this movement, which he had partly guessed from the noise of the cannon on the 21st, the emperor directed the main body of his army towards Eckmuehl. His troops had already been fighting for three days, and Napoleon asked a fresh effort from them.
A rumor had spread that the battle of Eckmuehl had been a brilliant victory for the Austrians, and Marie Louise wrote to her father, April 25: "We have heard with delight that Napoleon was present at the great battle which the French lost. May he lose his head as well! There are a great many prophecies about his speedy end, and people say that the Apocalypse applies to him.
"One would think that the Prince of Eckmuehl commanded the army," they said constantly in the emperor's presence. Some even accused him of aiming at the throne of Poland.
At the head of his military household, the Emperor had four colonel-generals of the Imperial Guard, all four marshals of France, Davoust, Duke of Auerstadt and Prince of Eckmuehl; Soult, Duke of Dalmatia; Bessieres, Duke of Istria; Mortier, Duke of Treviso. Moreover, there were ten aides-de-camp, nine of whom were generals of divisions, and thirteen orderly officers.
Having made up his mind, the emperor in the evening sent his orders to the Duke of Trevisa: "My cousin," said Napoleon to the Marshal Berthier, "give orders to the Duke of Trevisa to put on march, to- morrow, at daybreak, all the tired and lame soldiers of the corps of Prince Eckmuehl and the viceroy, of the foot-cavalry, and the young guard, and to direct the whole upon Mojaisk.
You have gloriously proved the difference which exists between the soldiers of Caesar and the armed hordes of Xerxes. "In a few days we have triumphed in the three pitched battles of Thann, Abensberg, and Eckmuehl, and in the engagements of Peising, Landshut, and Ratisbon.
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