A VISIT TO ASTERN AND WAGRAM. 
597 
whereever he was brought encouragement and opportune advice, while 
the latter, better perhaps remembered as the Count Lobau of Waterloo, 
placing himself at the head of the Fusiliers of the Guard charged the 
last Austrian reserves with the bayonet, and checked their onward 
rush. Napoleon himself retired to the Lobau and directed the position 
of certain batteries to cover the passage of the river, while he brought 
up some guns opposite Enzersdorf which enfiladed the Austrian attack 
on Essling and checked its progress materially. 
The last charge of the French, though almost a despairing effort, was 
enough to check their foes, and the Archduke perceived too late that he 
had broken his strength and wasted precious moments in throwing his 
forces repeatedly against the strong bastions at the extremities of the 
French line, when he might have grasped victory by a resolute and sus¬ 
tained effort against their weak centre. It was not till one or two 
o’clock on the second day that he prepared to deliver the decisive blow 
that the French must have dreaded since the very beginning of the 
fight, and then his men were too disheartened and weary after thirty 
hours’ battle to be able to persist in their efforts as they might have 
done earlier in the day. Shaken and weary the last rally of the French 
stalled them off, and little by little their ardour died away, and they 
contented themselves while daylight lingered with fiercely cannonading 
with most destructive effect the heavy masses of their foes, which were 
now crowded closely together round the bridge into the island. Both 
armies were in truth worn out and exhausted by the almost unexampled 
carnage. Many Generals and superior officers were dead or wounded 
on both sides—not less than 50,000 men had fallen in that narrow field— 
and the result, though unquestionably to be counted a victory for the 
Austrians, was by no means so decisive as it might have been. Their 
feelings of triumph were tempered by the terrible loss they had su¬ 
stained, while on the French side the most gloomy forbodings filled 
every breast as the shattered battalions filed into the Lobau and lay 
down utterly wearied and worn out. Napoleon had only narrowly 
escaped sustaining a desperate calamity. His army which had 
previously carried all before it had been cut in two. Part of it was 
driven into an island short of ammunition and provisions, the bridge 
which formed its sole connection with the remaining portion was partly 
swept away, and in its front, only divided from it by a strip of water, 
not more than 20 or 30 yards across, lay a victorious army. 
At the hurried council of war which was held close to the water’s 
edge, his bravest Marshals, Massena, Oudinot, Bessieres, and Davout, 
pronounced the case hopeless, and advised a retreat to the right bank 
of the Danube. Napoleon’s nerve, however, did not desert him. He 
pointed out that it was nearly impracticable to cross, since in boats 
alone could the passage be accomplished, the political effects of a retreat 
would be even more damaging to the French cause than the other no 
less serious results such a course would entail. He explained how it 
would be wisest to remain where they were and await the arrival of the 
reinforcements which were moving towards them from the Alps of 
Styria and the Tyrol, when, even if the enemy menaced their existing 
line of retreat, they would retire into Italy and soon regain their ascen- 
