The Napoleonic era, an era of almost continuous wars, made famous many generals who fought under the command of the great Corsican or against him, and sometimes on both sides of the front. In this brilliant galaxy, the Austrian Archduke Karl occupies a special place, since he was the first who managed not only to defeat Napoleon, but to put his army on the brink of complete defeat.
This happened in a two-day battle at Aspern and Essling on the banks of the Danube in the 1809 campaign. However, even before that, it was Karl Habsburg who was rightfully considered the military leader who was able to resist the French Grand Army and its commander-in-chief. His military talent was noticed already during the revolutionary wars and combined the qualities of a true warrior and an excellent organizer.
In imperial Vienna, there are many monuments to the heroes of the past, about which the crowns themselves have almost no idea. However, the monument to Archduke Karl on Heldenplatz, where the sculptor depicted the commander on the battlefield near Aspern, with the banner of Tsach's regiment in his hands, is not just loved. When modern tourist pavilions were erected next to it, almost the entire city protested.
Charles was the third son of the future emperor Leopold II and Marie-Louise of Spain, who then ruled in Tuscany. He was born in 1771 in Flanders, with an almost negligible chance of becoming the Habsburg throne. Charles grew up in Tuscany, not distinguished by good health, he often had epileptic seizures and was prepared for a career as a priest. However, from an early age, the Archduke became seriously interested in military affairs.
At the age of five, the offspring of the august surname, according to the tradition of the Habsburgs, was appointed commander of the regiment. In 1790, his father, having received the imperial crown, invited his aunt, Archduchess Maria-Christina and her husband, Duke Albert of Saxe-Teshensky, who had no children, to adopt, or rather, to recognize their third son as the heir. So Karl-Ludwig-Johann became Teschensky at the age of 19.
A year later, together with his foster parents, he moved to the Netherlands, and already in 1792, when the revolutionary wars with France began, he received his baptism of fire in the battle of Jemappa. It was miserably lost by the Austrians, who, by the way, were commanded by the archduke's adoptive father, but already in the battle of Altenhoven, Karl-Ludwig very successfully commanded a cavalry regiment. Soon he was appointed governor of the Austrian Netherlands (now part of Belgium), with the title of field marshal-lieutenant.
At the same time, he remains in the active army of the Prince of Coburg, soon receiving the title of field assistant. The young energetic Karl constantly conflicts with the passive Coburg, and after the defeat at Fleurus, he is forced to go to Vienna, where he will spend three years practically inactive.
Brilliant debut
His return to the active army took place only in 1796, when two French armies - the Sambre-Meuse of General J. B. Jourdana and Rhine-Moselskaya J. V. Moreau invaded Germany. According to the plan, which was developed by Lazar Carnot himself, Moreau was supposed to divert the Austrian army to himself in order to ensure the entry of Jourdan into Bavaria. Subsequently, two French armies were to go to Vienna, where they would join up with Bonaparte's Italian army.
The Austrians also hatched far-reaching plans, but Archduke Karl simply skillfully took advantage of the division of enemy forces. He inflicted successive defeats on both French armies, which even led to the resignation of Jourdan, in whose place the popular General L. Gauche was appointed. It is surprising that the 25-year-old Austrian Archduke managed to get the rank of Field Marshal General before his brilliant victories, as if in advance, when he first assumed command.
After a series of maneuvers and battles (near Neresheim, Amberg, Friedberg), the armies of Gosh and Moreau were forced to retreat beyond the Rhine. For a long time, military historians, until the French fanned the Napoleonic legend, believed that the campaign of Archduke Charles on the Danube and Rhine surpassed even the Italian General Bonaparte.
At the same time, oddly enough, the retreat of General Moreau beyond the Rhine is recognized as a masterpiece of military art. 16 years will pass, and Archduke Charles will not accept the offer of the Russian emperor to lead the allied armies in the fight against Napoleon. And his old adversary, General Moreau, who specially arrived from emigration in America, will not be allowed to take command by the French core, which defeated the general in the battle of Dresden.
Meanwhile, the young General Bonaparte, who, incidentally, was two years older than Archduke Charles, defeated the Austrian armies in northern Italy. The Austrian gofkriegsrat, the military council, which consisted mainly of retired generals, which immediately replaced both the Ministry of War and the main headquarters, urgently sent Charles there, but the two outstanding generals were not destined to converge on the battlefield at that time.
The Austrian commander-in-chief offered to transfer the liberated troops from the Rhine to Italy, but Vienna was seriously planning an invasion of France. As a result, Karl had only to save the surviving units, calmly bringing the matter to the Armistice of Löoben, which ended not only the campaign, but the entire war of the first anti-French coalition.
On an equal footing with Suvorov?
Three years later, a new coalition was formed against revolutionary France. In the spring of 1799, the army of Archduke Charles successfully pressed the French from Northern Italy, occupying Milan, but in this theater it was soon replaced by Russian troops led by Suvorov. The Archduke himself went to Bavaria, and immediately began to insist on the transfer of the victorious Suvorov army, which practically cleared Lombardy and Piedmont, to Switzerland.
It was in this way that Karl-Ludwig-Johann, together with the gofkrisrat, began to implement the plan proposed by the Russian emperor Paul. This plan involved a consistent maneuver to the north by all allied forces in order to ultimately conduct an expedition to the Netherlands together with the British and thereby radically change the course of the war. The army of Karl-Ludwig was to besiege Mainz and capture the entire territory of present-day Belgium.
Suvorov smashed the future Napoleonic marshals, and the Archduke fought again on German soil. The army commanded by Karl, already a field marshal, first concentrated on the banks of the Lech River, where it was attacked by the troops of the same General Jourdan, against whom Karl had fought back at Fleurus, and then in the campaign of 1796. But Jourdan could not achieve success at Stockkach and was forced, for the umpteenth time, to retreat beyond the Rhine.
Fulfilling the order of the Gofkriegsrat, Suvorov moved part of his troops to Switzerland, from where significant forces of the Austrians had already left, including those commanded by the Archduke. The barrier left by Karl against the powerful French army of General Massena, it seems, she simply did not notice, and after him she defeated the Russian corps of Rimsky-Korsakov in the battle at Zurich.
And Suvorov led his regiments just to join with him, and as a result he was in a semi-encirclement. There are many historians, and not only Russian ones, who accuse the Austrian field marshal, who was almost three times younger than Suvorov, for simply abandoning an ally. The correspondence of the great Russian commander with the Austrian gofkriegsrat and personally with the Archduke Karl, as well as other sources, do not give direct grounds for this, but Suvorov himself would not have gotten into such a trap.
At the cost of an unprecedented exertion of strength and unparalleled heroism, having won a series of brilliant victories, the great Russian commander led his army virtually along the French rear. He carried out it with minimal losses - out of almost 20 thousand soldiers and officers, he had slightly less than 16 thousand left.
However, by the time the Russians united with the Austrians, the outcome of the war was still unclear, but Paul I decided to withdraw from the coalition.
Meanwhile, the 28-year-old Austrian commander also won a number of victories, but his successes, like Suvorov before, were hampered by the extremely contradictory orders of the Austrian gofkrigsrat. Archduke Karl, who by this time was nominally already the commander-in-chief of the Austrian army in the field, did not hide his displeasure.
After the Austrians were beaten by Bonaparte at Marengo, and General Moreau at Hohenlinden, Karl-Ludwig-Johann left his high post in 1801 and left for Prague with the permission of the emperor. However, an envoy from Vienna immediately followed him there with a request to lead the defense of Bohemia from the French. For this, Archduke Karl formed the Bohemian corps of volunteers, but he could not lead it due to an aggravated illness.
Reformer
With the end of the next campaign, the Archduke focused on reforming the Austrian army. He had no intention of abandoning the legacy of the "great" opponents of Frederick of Prussia and completely rebuilding it in the French way. At the same time, the skills of small-scale combat, formation in squares or deep columns for a bayonet strike began to be taught to soldiers virtually anew. The time to abandon linear tactics and cordon strategy for the Austrians will come a little later.
Until the next campaign, 1805, the Archduke failed to introduce a corps organization in the Habsburg army, but the supply system, the organization of artillery and engineering troops underwent significant changes. In the empire, instead of recruiting, a landwehr was introduced - a whole system of training military personnel, and at the same time a significant part of the cavalry was reformed, the light infantry was transformed into rangers, the Austrian and all other regiments were equalized in rights.
Finally, the ill-fated Hofkriegsrat, which was eventually headed by the Archduke Karl himself, was transformed into a ministry of war and supplemented with a full-fledged general staff. With adjutant service under the command of the Quartermaster General, with a topographic department and a military archive. The changes were most likely for the better, although in the 1805 war the French did not really feel it.
After marching from the Bois de Boulogne, Napoleon's Grand Army defeated first the Austrian army of General Mack at Ulm, and then the combined forces of the Allies at Austerlitz. At the same time, the Archduke Charles himself, who became the head of the army in Northern Italy, which was again considered the main theater of military operations, fought quite successfully. Having not lost the battle at Caldiero, he was forced to retreat in order to unite with the Russians in the vicinity of Vienna. However, he did not have time.
The defeat at Ulm and the equally terrible defeat at Austerlitz were perceived quite soberly at the court of Franz II. The emperor, whom Napoleon recently forced to change his title from German to Austrian, and even become Franz I, gave Charles the go-ahead to continue the reforms. To begin with, he dismissed 25 generals, and also proposed introducing complete one-man command in the army.
The Archduke wrote to his crowned brother:
"The first step towards this goal, I think, Your Majesty, I must become the Generalissimo at the head of the entire army."
Franz did not object and made Karl commander-in-chief with the rank of generalissimo. The Archduke's hands were completely untied, and he immediately took Count Philip Grün as his assistants, appointed Baron Wimpffen as his personal adjutant, and his friend Mayer as Quartermaster General. And to edit the new charter, he hired the famous poet F. Schiller.
The peacetime army was immediately actually transferred to martial law, establishing a permanent arrangement of regiments, divisions and corps. The regiments began to consist of two battalions of six companies and a four-company reserve battalion. It remained unchanged, and even developed the national principle of the formation of many regiments, which at that stage brought a good result. At least, patriotism and loyalty to the ruling dynasty was added.
The reformers re-established the army's elite reserve of grenadiers and guards, and continued transformations into cavalry and artillery. Field artillery in general was almost completely reduced to single brigades, which made it possible to concentrate battery fire in certain important areas, without spraying cannons on regiments and battalions.
The system of territorial reserves also developed, which became the actual development of the idea of the people's militia. It was defensive in nature, but it greatly disturbed Napoleon, who later demanded that Austria liquidate this institution. As a result, the reform of Archduke Charles worked. And although four years is clearly not enough time for the complete transformation of the army, already in the next war with Napoleon the Austrians showed themselves to be real warriors.
Winner
In the spring of 1809, Austria literally craved revenge for 1805, and tried to take advantage of the fact that Napoleon was seriously stuck in Spain. The invasion of Bavaria threatened the collapse of the Rhine Confederation and the entire system of government of Germany, which Napoleon fostered. In this campaign, Austria fielded 280,000 soldiers with 790 guns under the command of Archduke Charles.
At first, he was lucky, he dealt several serious blows to the scattered French corps. But the bold maneuvers of Marshal Davout and the arrival of Napoleon personally turned the tide. In five days of battles in the vicinity of Regensburg, the French snatched victory literally from the hands of Archduke Charles. From 19 to 23 April 1809, two huge armies fought at Teigen, Abensberg, Landshut, Eckmühl and Regensburg. The Austrians, having lost up to 45 thousand people, retreated to the outskirts of Vienna.
The Austrian troops failed to defend the capital under the pressure of the French. Archduke Karl led the army away from the attack of Napoleon's main forces, but he, breaking into Vienna, literally split the Austrian forces in two. However, the crossings across the Danube were destroyed in good time. Napoleon had to cross the river south of Vienna with clearly insufficient forces.
As a result, the Emperor of the French suffered his first heavy defeat in the field battle at Aspern and Essling. In addition, he lost the first of his marshals - Jeanne Lanne, one of the few who spoke to Napoleon on you and was his personal friend.
After Aspern and Essling, there was also a great confrontation at Wagram, in which Napoleon was again on the verge of defeat. The Austrians simply did not have enough strength to cut off the French from the crossings on the Danube while Massena made his perilous flanking march. Davout did not dare to go deeper around the left flank of Archduke Charles, and Bernadotte, leveling the line, left the village of Aderklaa to the Austrians - the most important position in the very center.
On the second day of the battle, Napoleon had to clean up the rubble that the marshals had heaped up. The powerful almost 40-thousand-strong column of MacDonald literally broke through the Austrian front, and Archduke Charles began to retreat, admitting defeat. He took an organized army to Croatian, preparing to defend the last possessions of the Habsburgs.
The main of the Habsburgs, Emperor Franz, went to the conclusion of peace in Schönbrunn, and after only a few months he agreed to the marriage of Napoleon with his daughter - Marie-Louise. The fact that the French monarch chose the Archduke Charles as his representative during the matchmaking is considered a sign of Napoleon's special respect for his strongest opponent.
Theorist
After a truly epic rivalry with the French genius, Archduke Charles no longer took part in the wars. And if he twice turned down the opportunity to take the throne - first in Portugal, and then in Belgium, is it any wonder that he was no longer tempted by the prospect of fighting the French again - albeit at the head of the entire allied army.
There is information that after defeats by the French, many Austrian officers were ready to plot in favor of Archduke Charles, but he himself prudently denied such a prospect. The august commander decided to arrange his personal life, got married, had children and was seriously engaged in theoretical developments in the field of military art.
The Archduke wrote several volumes in a style that was characteristic not of the 19th century, but of the previous century. The author was carried away by minor details and attached too much importance to the geographical factor. Karl-Ludwig-Johann drew and counted a lot, and someone called his "science of winning" "the geometry of victory."
The talented Russian military historian Alexander Svechin drew attention to the fact that the Archduke himself, "despite his innovative ideas and admiration for Napoleon, was by nature a man who constantly looked back." The works of the Archduke Karl, of course, are of great interest to specialists, but here it will be enough to cite only a few quotes that most clearly characterize one of the victors of Napoleon.
War is the greatest evil that can befall a state or a nation. Therefore, the main concern of the ruler … must be immediately to gather all the forces … and make every effort to make the war as short-lived as possible … The goal of every war should be to achieve a beneficial peace; only the benefits of peace are sustainable, and only lasting peace can bring happiness to peoples.
Major goals can only be achieved with decisive blows … A decisive blow is possible only if there is superiority in forces at the point of delivery.
Nothing can serve as an excuse for a state deciding to wage a defensive war, except for the inevitable necessity or … confidence that in the near future … the commander will be able to move from a defensive war to an offensive one.
A correct operational plan can be drawn up only after accurate information is obtained about the enemy's weapons and the terrain on which they will have to operate.
The main rule of both offensive and defensive war is this: never choose an operating line or position for the main forces that allows the enemy to be closer to our communication line, to our shops, etc., than we ourselves will be.
Despite all the health problems, Archduke Charles lived a long enough life, having survived not only Napoleon, but also the Austrian Emperor Franz. A real relic of the past, he died already at the age of 75 in 1847, just a few months before the notorious "ghost" seriously wandered across Europe. Shaken, among others, and the thousand-year-old empire of the Habsburgs.
