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The incident recorded in this sketch took place towards the end of the month of November, 1809, the moment when Napoleon's fugitive empire attained the apogee of its splendor. The trumpet-blasts of Wagram were still sounding an echo in the heart of the Austrian monarchy. Peace was being signed between France and the Coalition.
In the annals of the Chateau de Grosbois, belonging to-day to the Prince de Wagram, are the accounts of an early nineteenth century hunt, which shows that the game cost dear. The "Grand Veneur" of the Napoleonic reign was a master sportsman, indeed, and to-day, in a gallery of the chateau, are preserved the guns of the master, his hunting crop and saddle, his "colours" and his hunting horn.
If Alexander did not consider the guarantees given by France after Friedland and Wagram to be sufficient, could Napoleon see in this reiterated demand anything more or less than a determination of the Czar not to abide by the engagements of Russia unless new ones were given by himself?
When the flask became low, and was replaced by another, he appeared to have lost much of his constrained air, and seemed forgetting rapidly the suspicious circumstances which he supposed attached to me waxed wondrous confidential and communicative, and condescended to impart some traits of a life which was not without its vicissitudes, for he had been, as I suspected, one of the "Guarde" the old guarde was wounded at Marengo, and received the croix d'honneur in the field of Wagram, from the hands of the Emperor himself.
M. le Baron Larrey was always most disinterested in his kind services, a fact which was well known and often abused. General d'A , the son of a rich senator, had his shoulder broken by a shell at Wagram; and an exceedingly delicate operation was found necessary, requiring a skilled hand, and which M. Larrey alone could perform.
Austria was covered with ruins, its hospitals were crowded with wounded French and Austrians, and in the ears of Viennese still echoed the cannon of Wagram, when salvos of artillery announced not war, but this marriage.
This squadron lay up for the enemy under all sail, with every appearance of being able to cut off the rear ships, the Wagram of 130 guns, with four two-deckers and four frigates.
Under Napoleon, whose discerning eye no soldier of ability escaped, Bernadotte became one of the most successful of the French generals, was made governor of a province, ambassador, and minister of war, and had much to do with winning the great victories of Austerlitz, Jena, and Wagram. Finally he was made a marshal of France and prince of Ponte Corvo in Italy. But Napoleon had doubts of him.
'They are the wife and child of the velocipede-maker in the Avenue de Wagram. If you will go and break the news to him, you will do us a kindness." The velocipede-maker may have been probably was a good, peaceable citizen, with no sympathy for disorder or anarchy; but doubtless from the moment that news was broken to him, he became a furious Communist.
The heights which ranged from Neusiedel to Wagram, well occupied by excellent troops, were not furnished with redoubts; it was, however, these same heights the conqueror was about to attack. The bridges which united the right bank to the island of Lobau were at present out of danger from all inundations and accidents.
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