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Updated: June 1, 2025
You will ask me why it was that during all this time I had said nothing of that which was nearest my heart, the need for guarding the Emperor. As a fact, I had tried to speak of it both to Soult and to Lobau, but their minds were so overwhelmed with the disaster and so distracted by the pressing needs of the moment that it was impossible to make them understand how urgent was my message.
After drawing in reinforcements from France, the Rhenish Confederation, and Eugène's army of Italy, the French Emperor disposed of 180,000 highly-trained troops, whom he massed in the Lobau Island, or on the right shore of the Danube. Every preparation was made for deceiving the Austrians as to the point of crossing and with complete success.
Some cannon-balls also for the first time fell close to where Napoleon was stationed; the enemy seemed to be approaching; Borelli insisted, and the emperor promised his young guard. But, scarcely had it advanced a few paces, when he himself called out to it to halt. The Count de Lobau, however, made it advance by degrees, under pretence of dressing the line.
I learned from the Comte de Lobau that the Emperor was reluctant to sign, but that he eventually yielded to the insistence of the worthy director who had come to add weight personally to the only request he had yet made on the behalf of his family. So Barain was promoted to colonel.
He went over, with Count Lobau, the statistics of the different regiments and the detachments in charge of generals at a distance. "There, six thousand." "Four thousand, sire," said the general. "Ten thousand here." "Five at the most." "You are perhaps right," the emperor admitted.
But on coming to sum up the total of his resources, he always went back to his first inaccurate reckoning, the truthful and blunt obstinacy of Lobau being unable to overcome his master's voluntary illusions. Nevertheless, Napoleon understood that he could now no longer, by the mere superiority of his genius, take his lieutenants along with him without discussion or hesitation.
Towards 5 o'clock the Prussian cannon opened fire on the horsemen of Domont and Subervie, who soon fell back on Lobau. Bülow pressed on with his 30,000 men, and, swinging forward his left wing, gained a footing in the village of Planchenoit, while Lobau fell back towards La Belle Alliance.
Quiot retreats before Vivian, Kellermann before Vandeleur, Lobau before Bulow, Morand before Pirch, Domon and Subervic before Prince William of Prussia; Guyot, who led the Emperor's squadrons to the charge, falls beneath the feet of the English dragoons. Napoleon gallops past the line of fugitives, harangues, urges, threatens, entreats them.
But, as at Eylau, Napoleon's iron will imposed on his foes, and, under cover of darkness, the French were withdrawn into the island of Lobau, after losing some 25,000 men. Among them was that prince of vanguard leaders, Lannes. On hearing that his old friend was mortally wounded, the Emperor hurried to him, and tenderly embraced him.
Next came breakfast; then the parade in the meadows of Osterwise, about one hundred paces distant from the palace, to which the Emperor always went on horseback, and dismounted on arriving; the troops filed before him, and cheered him three times with their customary enthusiasm. The evolutions were commanded sometimes by the Emperor, sometimes by the Count of Lobau.
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