12 failures of Napoleon Bonaparte. So, by the morning of May 22, Napoleon already had more than 70 thousand people at hand, and the 30-thousandth 3rd corps of Davout was already starting to cross to the island of Lobau. However, the Austrians were the first to attack from the dominant heights of Marchfeld, who almost immediately recaptured Lann Essling. But then Massena regained control of Aspern, and Molitor's division repulsed all of Hiller's attempts to seize a small wooded island on the left flank.
With the approach of the Guards, the Buda division regained Essling with a fight, and under the command of Marshal Lann, more than 20 thousand infantrymen were already concentrated on a narrow front of 1,700 meters, whom Napoleon decided to throw into the attack on the Austrian center.
All this time, the fierce battles for Aspern and Essling did not stop, both villages again and again passed from hand to hand. The Austrians brought more and more guns to the flanks, which actually took the rear of the French under crossfire. However, it was unlikely that something could interfere with the attack conceived by Napoleon, and at seven in the morning the Lann column began to advance. The enemy was overturned almost immediately, many Austrian battalions fled even before the bayonet strike.
The time has come for another cavalry strike. Marshal Bessière, who the day before was more than once indignant at the fact that orders were given to him not by the emperor, but by another marshal, Lannes, finally waited for Napoleon's personal go-ahead. His cuirassiers again, as on the eve, crushed the cavalry of Prince Liechtenstein, walked through the battalion square on the left flank of the Hohenzollern with a roller, and broke through to the very village of Breitenlee, where the Austrian grenadiers of Prince Reiss who were in reserve barely fought them off.
The grenadiers were inspired by the personal example of the commander-in-chief - Archduke Karl grabbed the banner of the legendary Zach regiment, rushed forward himself, and the battalions that had faltered were stopped. After several volleys, they were already going to the aid of the broken Austrian lines, not paying attention to Lann's column.
It was at this time that something happened that many historians still believe to be the main reason for Napoleon's defeat. Bridges on the Danube have been blown off. Not only Austrian rafts and fire-ships worked, but also nature, as the water rose sharply due to the downpours, and besides, the wind intensified, helping the fire-ships to set fire to the pontoons. The crossing of Davout's corps was disrupted, and Napoleon immediately gives the order to Lann to suspend the attack.
This damn "blue" Danube
Bessieres' cuirassiers leave behind the backs of the infantrymen, while the infantry itself, while still in good order, begins to retreat to the line of farms between Aspern and Essling. The Austrian grenadiers attack, feeling the support of the larger Austrian artillery. Again, they almost took Aspern and Essling. The French are holding on for now.
Under the most severe artillery fire, the formidable column of Lann could no longer advance. The French battalions began to rebuild in line and exchange volleys with the Austrian squares. Meanwhile, Austrian guns, mostly of large caliber, which were opposed mainly by the light regimental guns of the French, continued to smash the Lannes column. Bessière, in spite of the fact that the day before he almost called Lann to a duel, several times led his cuirassiers to attack, giving the infantry an opportunity to get out of the fire. But on that day, not a single Austrian square wavered.
The fact that the battle was most likely already lost became clear when the prince of Liechtenstein with the Austrian dragoons, in turn, attacked the French cuirassiers. The brilliant cavalry of Bessières has never again and no one succeeded in overturning so powerfully. Retreating, the iron men threw their own infantry into confusion, which, however, having made several friendly volleys, did not even allow the dragoons of Liechtenstein to approach themselves.
The corps of the Prince of Hohenzollern, repelling the attack of Lannes, went on the offensive himself, he struck with six regiments of Hungarian grenadiers on the western outskirts of Essling. The French lines were unexpectedly easily broken through, and the Austrians effectively surrounded Essling. Soon the Austrians finally took possession of Aspern. The French battalions have already begun to retreat along the entire front - in the direction of the only crossing to the island of Lobau. The sappers barely had time to repair and couple the pontoons, and there could be no question of any reinforcements from Marshal Davout.
Another terrible news spread very quickly along the entire front - the fire ships and rafts of the Austrians destroyed the lower, or south bridge, which connected Lobau with the right bank of the Danube. The French had practically nowhere else to retreat, while the Austrian artillery bombarded their rear on the island with cannonballs and buckshot. The fire from the cannons advanced from Aspern and Essling had already fully reached the French bridges, which were caught in the crossfire. Its action was devastating: almost every shot hit the masses of people and horses, who literally left the northern coast in droves.
But the French rearguards continued to hold out, until midnight they did not allow the pressing Austrians to strike at the crossings. The French regiments, right down to the last, managed to leave the battlefield in relative order amid the roar of the Austrian batteries, which were silenced only by the darkness of the night.
I found him a pygmy and lost him a giant
Under Aspern, Napoleon lost the first of his marshals - Jean Lannes, a true friend, who was one of the few who spoke to the emperor in “you”. In his last battle, the marshal was never able to overturn the Austrian troops, moreover, he was cut off from the main army and forced to begin a slow retreat.
On May 21, when the battle was just beginning, Lannes commanded the French vanguard, which also included Masséna's 4th Corps and Bessieres' Guards Cavalry. On the evening of May 22, when he already had to lead the withdrawal of troops at the crossing, Napoleon again handed over to Lann the command of the army at Essling.
It was at this time, taking advantage of a slight lull, Lann, along with his old friend, General Pose, decided to bypass the battlefield. However, almost immediately, a stray Austrian bullet, hitting the general exactly in the head, struck Pose. Frustrated, Lannes, who had lost another friend, General Saint-Hilaire, a few hours earlier, barely had time to sit down on a small mound next to his friend's body. And then he himself was seriously wounded - a cannonball crushed both his legs at the end.
"Nothing special!" - exclaimed the marshal, trying to get up. It was not possible to get up, and the soldiers who were nearby carried the marshal to the dressing station. He proudly refused to lie down on the cloak of the murdered Pose, and he was dragged on crossed guns. The Marshal was hastily transported across the Danube to the island of Lobau, where the chief surgeon of the Imperial Guard, Dominic Larrey, had to amputate Lanna's leg in the field hospital.
Soon the marshal even began to recover, and Napoleon, who visited him, managed to write to Fouche on May 25: "The Duke of Montebello will get off with a wooden leg." However, doctors still failed to prevent gangrene. For several days Lann fell into unconsciousness, and contemporaries recalled that he began to have the strongest delirium. There were almost no effective painkillers then, and Marshal Lann "continued to command the troops, and even tried several times to jump out of bed to participate in battles."
He managed to recover only shortly before his death, when the fever and delirium receded a little, and his consciousness became clear. "The Marshal began to recognize the people who approached his bed." There are still disputes about the last conversation of the marshal with the emperor, who, in that pretentious form, most likely did not exist.
But there was a short epitaph from Napoleon, who said already on St. Helena that he found Lann "a pygmy, and lost a giant." And there remained among the Napoleonic veterans the conviction that "the only person in the Great Army who was never afraid to tell Napoleon the truth was dead, and the army considered this loss irreplaceable."
To his adjutant Marbo, who was near the bed on the night of May 31, the dying Marshal Lann talked about his wife, about children, about his father. On the same day, at dawn, the marshal quietly departed to another world at the age of 40. Subsequently, the body of the fallen marshal was transported to Paris. But only on July 6, 1810, the solemn burial of his ashes took place in the Pantheon. It was decided to bury the heart of the marshal in the Montmartre cemetery.
Almost seven thousand more French were buried by the Austrians right on the battlefield. Hundreds of wounded and prisoners were taken to Vienna. The total losses of the Napoleonic army exceeded 24 thousand people, including 977 officers. The Austrians alone killed almost 4,500 people, and the list of losses included 13 generals, 772 officers and 21,500 lower ranks.
The victory won by the Austrians under the very walls of their capital, almost in full view of its inhabitants, was complete. The French, clearly broken and depressed by the unexpected defeat, had to remain locked up on the island of Lobau for six weeks. The defeat could well have been much more complete if his brother Johann with more than 40,000 army had managed to arrive at the Archduke.
However, in reality, it was to Napoleon that the army of the Italian Viceroy Eugene soon approached, which made a significant contribution to the subsequent victory at Wagram. Friedrich Engels, in his article "Aspern" for the New American Encyclopedia, noted that "Napoleon's hour had not yet struck, and the peoples were doomed to another four years of suffering, until the final fall of the colossus of war returned their lost freedom in the fields of Leipzig and Waterloo."
The victor at Aspern - Archduke Charles, almost equal to Napoleon as a commander, was quite obviously inferior to him in ambition and willpower. Many in Vienna, and not only there, predicted the Habsburg throne for him, but the Archduke chose to go into the shadows just when the best conditions were for this. Schönbrunn knew many upheavals, but the Habsburgs tried to avoid internal squabbles, like the Romanovs or the Bourbons, realizing that they only weaken the dynasty.
