704 



BRITAIN. 



Britain. 



Battles of 



Eckmuhl 

 and Hatis- 

 bon. 



Viennafur- 

 renders to 

 Bonaparte. 



Battle of 



Aspern, 



9Itt:od 



22dofMay. 



hemian army, entered Ratisbon, and crossed to the 

 right of the Danube, occupied the same position in 

 which the Archduke Louis had been beaten. This 

 movement compelled Bonaparte to leave the Iser, and 

 return to the Danube. On the 22d of April, the 

 French emperor arrived opposite Eckmuhl. where 

 tlv f:uir corps of the Austrian army, amounting to 

 1 10,000 men, were posted. Here a dreadful engage- 

 ment took place, in which the left of the Aubtrians 

 was turned ; and, after their first discomfiture, they 

 were driven, in a second attack, from Ratisbon and 

 its neighbourhood. In the battles of Eckmuhl and 

 Ratisbon, the French took upwards of 20,000 pri- 

 soners, and the greater part of the Austrian artillery. 

 Bonaparte advanced upon Vienna, which surrendered 

 after a short resistance. The Archduke Charles, af- 

 ter his first defeat, retreated in the direction of Bohe- 

 mia ; but, returning towards the Danube, in the vain 

 expectation of saving the Austrian capital, he learned, 

 when he reached Meissau, that it had surrendered. 

 He then moved down the northern side of the river, 

 till on the 16th of May he fixed his head quarters at 

 Ebersdorf. Bonaparte resolved to cross the Danube, 

 and attack the Archduke in this position. At the 

 distance of six miles from Vienna, he threw bridges 

 from the southern bank to two islands in the Danube, 

 and from thence to the northern bank ; the Austrian 

 general not disputing the passage, but allowing the 

 French to post their right wing on the village of 

 Essling, and their left on the village of Aspern. The 

 Austrian commander here gave battle to the French ; 

 and by the judicious disposition of his columns, and 

 a most extraordinary exertion of valour, the French 

 were driven from their position on Aspern, and though 

 the Austriaus did not succeed in gaining the position 

 of the other wing of the enemy at Essling, they com- 

 pletely repulsed the troops of Napolean in the char- 

 ges which they made from that quarter. The battle 

 of Aspern began on the 21st of May, and continued, 

 with short intermissions, for two days. During the 

 first day's combat, the Archduke had ordered five 

 ships to be sent down the river, and succeeded in 

 burning two bridges, which connected the sides of 

 the Danube across the island of Lobau, and another 

 island of smaller size. At the close of the second 

 day's combat, the French had been driven from As- 

 pern, and could with difficulty maintain themselves 

 in the village of Essling. By keeping that village, 

 however, they covered their retreat into the island of 

 Lobau, where they took up their position in the night 

 between the22d and 23d. Their loss could not be less 

 than 30,000 men. That of the Austrians was acknow- 

 ledged to be 20,000. Yet, though the victory on 

 the side of the Archduke is indisputable, and though 

 he took ten times more prisoners than he lost, it marks 

 no unskilful retreat in the only pitched battle in which 

 Bonaparte ever was beat, that he lost only 3 pieces 

 of cannon. From the day of the battle of Aspern, 

 to the sixth of July, the grand armies continued in 

 sight, and even within a few hundred yards of each 

 other ; the French still possessing the island of Inder- 

 lobau, and the left shore of the river, strengthening 

 their position and their bridges, and waiting for fresh 

 reinforcements. The Austrians also received im- 

 mense reinforcements, although their whole force 



Britaia 



B.ittle of 

 Znaim. 



could not be concentrated. The emperor Alexander, 

 who had made common cause with his ally Napoleon, 

 had dispatched an army into Poland ; and to meet the 

 Russians, a considerable corps of the Archduke'sarmy 

 had been necessarily detached. The Archduke John 

 had been also recalled from Italy ; but he was tuo 

 distant to reach his brother, before the fatal day of 

 Wagram. The Austrians entrenched themselves in fl.ittle of 

 the front of Essling, but unhappily neglected the W agrau 

 same precaution of entrenching their left flank. It 

 was to that point accordingly that Bonaparte direct- 

 ed his effort?. To oppose his movements, the Arch- 

 duke extended his flanks, and weakened his centre. 

 His opponent immediately marked his fa lit, penetra- 

 ted through that part of his army, and drove it from 

 the village of Wagram. The Austrian wings were 

 thus thrown into contusion, and the whole army re- 

 treated, after an immense loss, towards Moravia. 

 They were closely pursued by the French, and 

 overtaken at Znaim, where another battle took 

 place ; but it was shortly terminated, by the con- Armi.v 

 elusion of an armistice proposed by Francis, and agreed 

 dictated by his conqueror. Trieste, with its ter- "" 

 ritory Fiume, and the Croatian Littorale, part of ' " 

 Carinthia, almost all Carniola, a small part of upper 

 Austria, with Salzburgh and Berchtolsgaden, and a 

 wide territory in Gallicia, were ceded by Austria to 

 France, or to its allies the Rhenish League and Rus- 

 sia. But the moat humiliating article was that whick 

 obliged Francis to abandon the brave and loyal inha- 

 bitants of the Tyrol and Voralberg, who, m former 

 wars, had never suffered French armies to obtain a 

 footing in their territory, and, in this war, had driven 

 them from their mountains, and pursued them as tar 

 as Ulm in Bavaria. Even when abandoned by Aus- 

 tria, these brave people fought with occasional suc- 

 cess against General LeFebre and a powerful Fr iich 

 force, till the capture and death of their leader Hof- 

 fer, a' man of obscure birth, and of no experience in 

 war, but who displayed a genius and energy worthy 

 of the greatest cause, a man, whose memory is not 

 tarnished but endeared by an execution infamous on- 

 ly to his murderers. 



In turning our view to Spanish affairs during the Affairs i 

 year 180Q, we find, that after th: embarkation of the Spain. 

 British army from Corunna, the arms of the French 

 seem to have met with no material resistance except 

 at Saragossa. The Duke del Infantado's army was 

 chased out of Valencia, and took the route to Grana- 

 da. Ferrol, before which the Duke of Dalmatia 

 (General Soult) presented himself eleven days after 

 the battle of Corunna, surrendered without resist- 

 ance. King Joseph again made his public entry into Joseph 

 Madrid, on the 22d of January 1809. Saragossa g.'.inmal 

 alone, which had before made the French fly from be- a P ut>l 

 fore its walls, made a second and most honourable de tV'j^-j 

 fence, till the ravages of an epidemical distemper had 2 . 2 ii Jan! 

 thinned the ranks of its defenders. Palafox, who 

 had so nobly guided the courage of the Spanish pa- 

 triots, was, immediately after the surrender of the 

 town, sent under a strong escort to France. From 

 the time that Bonaparte left the peninsula, to organ 

 ize the Austrian campaign, the operations of the 

 French grew for some time more desultory, and less ' 

 effective. The Spanish army of CuesU, howerer, 



of Sara 

 gossa. 



