United States or Northern Mariana Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
These arrangements were all completed by July first, on which date the Emperor left Schönbrunn for the Lobau. During the fighting at Aspern he had observed the field from the swinging rungs of a rope-ladder fastened to one of the tall trees on the island. This time he brought with him a long step-ladder, one of those used in the palace gardens to trim high shrubs.
John, whose appearance but a short time earlier would have turned his brother's defeat into victory, drew back his thirteen thousand men in good order to guard Hungary. As Napoleon himself had been in a dangerous condition of over-confidence before Aspern, so now his soldiery were clearly in the same plight. Self-conceit had made them unreliable.
There was something touching to me in all that, and my imagination frequently went back to the period. If Miss Bordereau carried it there of course Jeffrey Aspern at other times had done so a great deal more. It was a much more important fact, if one were looking at his genius critically, that he had lived in the days before the general transfusion.
"You do not know Bonaparte," he said, "if you think he will, because he has suffered a defeat, be immediately ready to make peace and return to France. Now he will not rest before he gains a victory and repairs the blunders he has committed. There is wild and insidious blood circulating in Bonaparte's veins, and the battle of Aspern has envenomed it more than ever.
In the five weeks intervening between Aspern and Wagram, that able and devoted man had virtually reorganized his country and cleared it of intruders. Even the double invasion of French and Bavarians, on one side from Klagenfurth, on the other down the valley of the Inn, was successfully repelled.
On the 20th May, Marshal Massena's troops crossed the river entirely, and took up position in the villages of Aspern, and Essling; a ditch full of water joined the two villages, and its banks were immediately covered with troops.
But at Aspern the numbers engaged were greater, Legrand being sent in toward nightfall. The Archduke intended to take and hold the village if possible, and the fighting continued there until midnight. Weakened and inferior in numbers though the French were, they understood better than their foes the defense of such a place, and when firing ceased they still held half of the long main street.
Napoleon's defeat, about this time, at Aspern having however compelled Lefebvre to return hastily to the Danube, leaving merely a part of the Bavarians with General Deroy in Innsbruck, the Tyrolese instantly seized the opportunity, and Hofer, Eisenstecken, and the gallant Speckbacher boldly assembled the whole of the peasantry on the mountain of Isel.
Near where he stood was the comfortable hamlet of Aspern, composed like the others round about of one-story stone houses and high stone barns, some of which are of great size, with walls many feet thick. The farmsteads and churchyards are inclosed with ordinary masonry walls.
The French were in possession of both Aspern and Essling. At seven the Emperor called a council of war; the generals advised recrossing the Danube and a retreat into Vienna. "You must mean to Strasburg," said their chief; "for if Charles should follow, he might drive me thither, and if he should march to cut me off at Linz, I must march thither, too, to meet him.
Word Of The Day