The Battle of Wagram (July 5–6, 1809) was the most important military engagement of the War of the Fifth Coalition and took place on the Marchfeld plain, on the north bank of the Danube. An important site of the battle was the village of Deutsch-Wagram, 10 kilometres northeast of Vienna, which would give its name to the battle. The two-day struggle saw an Imperial French, German and Italian army under the command of Emperor Napoleon I defeat an army of the Austrian Empire under the command of Archduke Charles of Austria-Teschen.
At the end of May, following a setback at the battle of Aspern-Essling, Napoleon remained with his army on the right (southern) bank of the Danube and concentrated significant resources on the great island of Lobau, northeast of the occupied Austrian capital. Using the island as a springboard for another crossing, the French and their German and Italian allies began crossing the river to the north bank, as night fell, on 4 July. During the next morning, they had successfully deployed on the Marchfeld, pushing back all Austrian opposition in the area. The evening saw a series of violent French and Allied attacks on the strong Austrian positions, the latter managing to hold their ground. On 6 July, at dawn, the Austrians moved forward and launched an aggressive series of attacks, seeking to take the opposing army in double envelopment. Despite the fact that this offensive nearly shattered the French and Allied centre and left flank, Napoleon masterfully redeployed his forces to counter the Austrian plan. Then, by setting up a Grand Battery and ordering a violent attack on the Austrian left and centre, the Emperor of the French managed to push back Archduke Charles' line, the latter promptly organising a phased retreat. Hostilities ended at about 20:00 hours, with the Austrians retreating in relatively good order, while the exhausted French and Allies were unable to launch a proper pursuit. Commanding a secondary army, Archduke John of Austria was in the vicinity of the battlefield on 6 July, but was unable to join the main Austrian force and thus played no part in the battle of Wagram. After the battle, Archduke Charles remained in command of a significant and still cohesive force and decided to retreat to Bohemia, where he clashed again with the French and was again defeated, at the battle of Znaim. This forced him to sign an armistice, which was to be sanctioned by Emperor Francis I of Austria.
The two-day battle of Wagram was particularly bloody, mainly due to the extensive use of artillery on a flat battlefield packed with some 300,000 men. Despite the fact that Napoleon was the uncontested winner, he failed to secure a complete victory and the Austrian casualties were only slightly greater than those of the French and Allies. Nonetheless, the defeat was serious enough to shatter the morale of the Austrians, who could no longer find the will to continue the struggle, hence deciding to accept a harsh peace treaty, which meant the loss of one sixth of the Empire's subjects, alongside significant territories.
Background
After defeat at the
battle of Austerlitz in 1805,
Emperor Francis II signed the
Treaty of Pressburg with France. Its terms were harsh. Austria paid France a
war indemnity of 40 million
francs and ceded 2.5 million of the Austrian Empire's 24 million subjects, which also amounted to giving up one-sixth of the Austrian Empire's revenues. The population lost went mostly to expand French
client kingdoms, such as those of
Italy and
Bavaria, and also to elements of the
Confederation of the Rhine, created by Napoleon to act as a
buffer against enemies in the east and to provide him with troops. In 1806, after Napoleon's comprehensive defeat of
Prussia and under French pressure, Francis II relinquished the centuries-old title of
Holy Roman Emperor and became (simply) Francis I,
Emperor of Austria—not at least aiming to preserve the imperial title to his family, the danger of Napoleon becoming Roman Emperor was imminent. Not surprisingly, the Treaty of Pressburg was unpopular in
Habsburg ruling circles and a war party began to form. The Archduke Charles, the emperor's brother and Austria's ablest general, was appointed
Generalissimus (supreme commander) with a remit to reform the army and the military establishment, whose incompetence had been exposed by the 1805 defeat. Austria also began to seek allies for the coming conflict, but met with little success. Following the 1807
Treaty of Tilsit, Russia was a French ally. Prussia procrastinated and eventually declined to participate. Britain, already at war with France, was receptive but her army was already fully committed in
Spain and was unable to offer more than the prospect of a diversionary intervention in northern Europe, which eventually did not take place until after Austria's defeat. Austria therefore went to war essentially alone, although with high hopes of rallying nascent nationalism in Germany and northern Italy to her cause. In the end, although a pro-Austrian revolt under
Andreas Hofer erupted in the
Bavarian Tyrol, Napoleon's German clients and allies remained aligned to the French cause.
Initial hostilities
at Wagram (July 1809), painted by
January Suchodolski]]
On 9 April 1809, armies under the overall command of Archduke Charles invaded Bavaria and northern Italy. There was no
declaration of war. A simple message from Charles was conveyed to the outlying outposts of the French army—"I have orders to advance with my forces and to treat as enemies any who oppose me"—and hours later the Austrian army attacked. Although Napoleon was aware that an Austrian attack was likely, it came sooner than he expected, and he was still in Paris when the Archduke Charles advanced. Though slow-moving, the Austrian attack was initially successful, capturing
Munich and almost splitting the French army in Bavaria in two. When Napoleon arrived with the
Imperial Guard, however, he counter-attacked vigorously and defeated various Austrian columns at
Abensberg,
Landshut,
Eckmühl and
Ratisbon. Charles retreated along the north bank of the
Danube with Napoleon in pursuit. On 12 May the French captured
Vienna, on the Danube's south bank. The Austrians did not capitulate or ask for terms despite the loss of their capital, and Charles' main body, north-east of Vienna, was still undefeated. Napoleon's bridging trains had not caught up with the main body, but on 21 May, he crossed the Danube east of Vienna, aiming to find and attack the Archduke's army. Napoleon chose a crossing point where sandbars and islands broke the Danube up into several smaller, relatively manageable spans that could be bridged with the extemporised pontoons and trestles available. Archduke Charles, who had anticipated this move, waited until part of Napoleon's army had occupied the Mühlau salient and the villages of
Aspern and Essling, which flanked it, and then attacked the bridgehead. Napoleon's attempts to reinforce the outnumbered defenders were thwarted by the Austrians' successful ploy of sending heavy stone-laden barges—and even, at one point, an entire floating watermill—downstream to ram and break the flimsy French bridges. This prevented both reinforcements and ammunition from reaching the French defenders. After a fierce two-day battle in which
Marshal Lannes, one of Napoleon's abler subordinates, was mortally wounded, the Austrians took Aspern and forced Napoleon to abandon the bridgehead. He withdrew to the island of
Lobau, a large island in the middle of the Danube that the French army was using as a staging post across the river.
Lobau, with its masses of densely-packed French troops, was a lucrative artillery target within easy range of the opposite shore, but Charles made no attempt to bombard it. Instead he left an observation force on the left bank and withdrew several miles. Napoleon recognised that a second attempt to cross the Danube would have to be made, and would require much more thorough preparation this time. On 1 June, French engineers and naval battalions began construction of pontoon and trestle bridges across each span, built far more robustly than the previous efforts. The works, which amounted to three major bridges and eight smaller ones swung into position on commencement of the assault, were completed on 21 June. Upstream of the bridges, piles were driven into the river bed to form an 800-metre long double palisade to prevent a repeat of the previous ramming tactics. Boats were requisitioned, fitted with guns, and used to patrol the river to prevent attacks on the bridges. Lobau remained the main staging post, but became an armed camp filled with ammunition, supplies, and troops. In early July, the French army recrossed the Danube and created a decoy bridgehead in the Mühlau salient, directly north of Lobau. On the night of 4 to 5 July, all was ready and 162,000 French troops executed a masterly crossing of the river onto the opposite bank east of Lobau. There, pivoting on Gross-Enzersdorf, they began to fan out across the Marchfeld, a plain enclosed on the south by the Danube, on the west by the Bisamberg escarpment, on the north by the hills of the Weinviertel, and on the east by the river Morava (March). The Danube floodplain ist limited on the north by the "Wagram", the southern slope of an old river terraces, which next to the village of Deutsch-Wagram is about 10 m high and to the south is followed by the Russbach, a small watercourse. The Marchfeld was regularly used in peacetime by the Austrian army for manoeuvres and was familiar ground to Archduke Charles, who had deployed the center of his army in defensive positions on higher ground along the Wagram behind the Russbach.
Opposing armies
The Austrian Army
During the two-day battle,
Archduke Charles of Austria would be able to count only on the troops of the
Kaiserlich-königliche Hauptarmee, the main Austrian army. Archduke Charles had planned for the small Army of Inner Austria under
Archduke John of Austria to participate in the battle, but this force would arrive towards the end of the second day of battle, too late to have any effect on the outcome. Thus, the forces that Charles had available for the two days of battle were about 145,000 men, with 414 artillery pieces.
The Austrian army was divided into several corps, as follows.
The French Army
As opposed to his Austrian counterpart, Napoleon managed to muster two secondary armies for the upcoming battle. The first, called the Army of Italy, had marched from northern Italy to the main theatre of operations north of
Vienna and was led by Napoleon's stepson, the Viceroy of Italy, Prince
Eugène. The second was the XI Corps, which formed the Army of Dalmatia, under general of division
Auguste de Marmont. However, the Army of Dalmatia, as well as much of the Army of Italy only arrived on the battlefield towards midday on 6 July, at about the same time as an additional force, a
Bavarian division under general
Karl Philipp von Wrede from VII Corps.
Thus, Napoleon could muster an army of around 166,000 men, with 433 artillery. They were organized in the usual French Corps system and the main army, La Grande Armée d'Allemagne ("the Grand Army of Germany") was divided as follows:
The Imperial Guard, under the direct command of Napoleon;
II Corps under Général de division Nicolas Oudinot;
III Corps under Maréchal d'Empire Louis-Nicolas Davout;
IV Corps under Maréchal d'Empire André Masséna;
VII Corps under Maréchal d'Empire François Joseph Lefebvre (absent): one Bavarian division under general von Wrede;
IX Corps (Franco-Saxon) under Maréchal d'Empire Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte;
XI Corps ("Army of Dalmatia") under Général de division Auguste de Marmont;
The Cavalry Reserve Corps (3
heavy cavalry divisions), under
Maréchal d'Empire Jean-Baptiste Bessières. These troops would not see action at Wagram, although the batteries would open an artillery barrage when Austrians from
Klenau's VI Corps came within range, on the second day of the battle. All the forces that remained on this island were placed under the command of general Aubry, later under the command of general
Jean-Louis Reynier.
Battlefield
The battle took place approximately 10 km northeast of
Vienna, on the Marchfeld. Situated on the left bank of the
Danube, the city of
Pressburg, where
Archduke John of Austria’s secondary army was situated, was only 40 km away from this field of battle. The Marchfeld was a wide, almost entirely flat plain, which at the time of the battle, however, was partially covered with high corn crops that did obstruct observation of certain parts of the battlefield. In 1809, several small villages existed and were situated at a small distance one of the other. At the northern limit of the Marchfeld, there was a small river called the
Russbach, flowing from northwest to southeast; while unimpressive in width and depth, the banks of the river were covered by underbrush and trees, and beyond the river there was an area of around 100 metres of boggy ground. Thus, the Russbach did represent a formidable obstacle for cavalry and it needed to be bridged in order for artillery to cross. North of the Russbach there was an escarpment called Wagram (between 10 and 20 metres high), situated in the sector of the villages of
Deutsch-Wagram and
Markgrafneusiedl. Along the Russbach, the villages of Deutsch-Wagram, Baumersdorf and Markgrafneusiedl would represent key positions for the Austrian defensive system. Behind the Russbach lay the Wagram escarpment, which constituted an excellent observation point. The 9-km long, 6-km wide battlefield would be delimited by the village of Kagran and the 350-m high Bisamberg plateau at the west, Glinzerdorf at the east,
Aspen and
Essling at the south and Deutsch-Wagram at the north.
Battle of Wagram
By the day of the battle, Lobau Island was a massive warehouse and Napoleon was ready to move out.
Plans
Napoleon's plan was to create a diversion to the north of Lobau, in the same area as the battle of Aspern-Essling had been fought, that would pin the Austrians in place. Crossing the Danube east of that point, he hoped to swing his army around the Austrian flank in a right hook that would enable him to roll the position up without a direct assault across the Russbach. Ultimately, he would encircle the Austrian army against the Danube.
Charles, for his part, recognised that Napoleon would have to cross the river in much the same place as previously. Rather than defending likely stretches of the river bank, under heavy French fire from the island of Lobau, or attempting to hold the Marchfeld itself — whose broken terrain he thought would offer too much advantage to the French light troops — he pulled most of his army back behind the Russbach, a semicircular watercourse to the north. His army, deployed behind the Russbach, formed a V-shaped line nearly twelve miles long, anchored in the west on Süssenbrunn, at the apex on Wagram and Aderklaa, and in the east on Markgrafneusiedl. Charles vacillated between offensive and defensive battle plans and only on the very eve of the battle did he decide to hold this position and to use one wing to pin and the other to outflank any French attack. This revised plan was not communicated effectively to his formation commanders, with the result that FML Nordmann, commanding the Advance Guard corps on the Austrian left, was incorrectly left in an exposed position that he mistakenly thought he was supposed to hold.
Initial moves
Using a fortified bridgehead, Napoleon started a full-scale crossing of the island with his 162,000 men on the night of 5–6 July. His army was composed of
Nicolas Oudinot's 2nd Corps,
Louis Davout's 3rd Corps, 4th Corps under
André Masséna, the Army of Italy under de Beauharnais, the Saxon 9th Corps under
Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, and Auguste Marmont's 11th Corps. Additionally present were the Imperial Guard and
Jean-Baptiste Bessières's Cavalry Reserve, and
Karl Wrede's Bavarian contingent, which marched 120 miles in 6 days to arrive on the second day.
On the other side of the Marchfeld, Archduke Charles had neglected to concentrate every man available. A brigade of Johann Kollowrat's Corps was not recalled, the 5th Corps of Prince Heinrich XV of Reuss-Plauen was left to the north-west as a reserve upon which to rally, and the Archduke John's 15,000 men were allowed to loiter at Bratislava (Pressburg). Other formations were left doing little useful in Galicia and Bohemia. Had all these troops been recalled, Charles could have faced Napoleon with over 60,000 more troops than he actually did. The force he did have was composed of Armand von Nordmann's Advance Guard, Heinrich Graf von Bellegarde's 1st Corps, Prince Friedrich of Hohenzollern-Hechingen's 2nd Corps, Kollowrat's 3rd Corps, Prince Franz Seraph of Rosenberg-Orsini's 4th Corps, Johann von Klenau's 6th Corps (Klenau took over command of this formation from Johann von Hiller on the eve of the battle), and Johann Liechtenstein's Reserve Corps of grenadiers and cavalry.
Marshal Louis Berthier, Napoleon's chief of staff, when giving orders to the various corps, accidentally assigned the same bridge to two of them. Although a delay ensued, Davout, Masséna and Oudinot and their corps were across. Bernadotte and his Saxons joined them, and on the 5th of July, Napoleon began his deployment near Aspern and Essling.
First day
Artillery smashed up the area around the two towns whilst the French army deployed. A few outpost divisions under generals Nordmann and Klenau were sent reeling back, Nordmann's troops suffering 50% losses but remaining cohesive and effective. By noon all of the area around Aspern and Essling was in the hands of the French. By late afternoon, the French army formed a semicircle with Masséna on the extreme left, Bernadotte, Eugène and Oudinot in the centre, and Davout on the right flank, with two extra brigades of cavalry to cover his own right against the anticipated arrival of the Archduke John.
At around 6 o'clock, in an attempt to decide the battle in a single day and to prevent the Austrian reserves under Archduke John coming up, Napoleon ordered an attack on the Austrian centre. This was manned by the corps of Bellegarde and Hohenzollern along the line of the Russbach. This extemporised attack was poorly co-ordinated and went in piecemeal. It initially carried the high ground beyond Wagram. But Archduke Charles personally rallied his troops and the attack faltered under the heavy Austrian fire and was bloodily repulsed. Austrian counterattacks then retook all the lost ground. In a foretaste of the following day's fighting, the encounters in the streets and hedgerows of Aderklaa were fierce and characterised by friendly-fire incidents, as French troops followed Saxons into action and mistook their white uniforms for those of the Austrians. The fighting drew Masséna's corps to the north, leaving few troops in the area.
Second day: Austrian offensive
Reflecting on the tactical position, Charles determined that the shorter front of the French position and their greater depth would enable Napoleon to attack and break his line almost anywhere he chose. To forestall this, he issued orders for a dawn general attack on both French flanks and the centre. One attack, against the right, was a feint to draw French reserves away. The real attack was aimed at the French left around the village of Aderklaa. Had this plan succeeded, it would have resulted in a veritable Cannae as the French were encircled with a river at their backs. The length of the Austrian front, poor staffwork, and Archduke John's non-arrival prevented any such success. At 4 am the following day, the Austrians' first attacks went in against the French right flank. Poorly co-ordinated, this attack was stopped by Davout's men. However, the Austrian III and VI corps launched a dangerous attack against the weakened French left flank.
In the centre, the Austrians succeeded in throwing back Bernadotte's 9th Corps. Bernadotte had abandoned Aderklaa without orders and this key village fell to the Austrians without a shot. Advancing past the village, the Austrians broke the Saxons, who fled the field with Bernadotte galloping in front of them trying to rally them. Napoleon met Bernadotte as he was doing this and dismissed him from command of his corps on the spot. To stem the Austrian attack, Napoleon created a Grand Battery of 112 cannon which poured shot into the advancing Austrian formations. The effects of this fire and cavalry attacks halted Kollowrat's corps. Klenau brushed aside a single French division but then ran into a ferocious bombardment from Jean Reynier's massed cannon on Lobau Island. Masséna's Corps pulled out of the center and executed a five-mile march south, within gunshot of the Austrian positions, to fall upon Klenau's left flank as he fought his way into Napoleon's left rear. This stabilised the French left flank.
Second day: French counterstroke
Meanwhile, on the French right flank, things were going better, with Oudinot and Davout advancing towards the village of Markgrafsneusiedl. A large conflict erupted around the village and Davout's Corps forced back the troops under Orsini-Rosenberg and eventually took the village around 3 pm. Soon Davout was rolling up the Austrian left.
A major attack was now launched against the advancing Austrian centre by General of Division Jacques MacDonald's corps, which formed part of Eugene's command. MacDonald formed 27 battalions into a hollow square about 8,000 strong and launched this formation at the Austrian centre. The Austrians responded with intense artillery fire and local charges by their light cavalry. Hussar Gen. Antoine Lasalle rode to Macdonald's support with French light cavalry, but was killed doing so. After ferocious fighting at bayonet point, Macdonald's attack ground to a halt without breaking through the Austrian centre. He succeeded, however, in preventing Charles from reinforcing his left flank, and the Austrians now began to evacuate the position, falling back in an orderly fashion towards Znaim to the north-west.
Exhausted by forty hours of marching and fighting, the French army followed rather than pursued Charles. MacDonald was granted a Marshal's baton on the field of battle.
Aftermath
Charles had sent for help from his brother, Archduke John, but John only got his troops on the road by the next morning, far too late to help Charles. Five days after the battle, the French defeated the rear guard of the retreating Austrians at
Znaim and Charles proposed an armistice, to which Napoleon agreed.
MacDonald was promoted to Marshal on the battlefield, for his leadership in attacking the Austrian centre. Oudinot and Marmont received Marshal's batons at Znaim, Marmont being somewhat surprised to receive his. The army soon had a new chant about the three men: La France a nommé MacDonald, L'armée a nommé Oudinot, L'amitié a nommé Marmont (France chose MacDonald, the army chose Oudinot, friendship chose Marmont).
Avenue de Wagram, one of the avenues leading up to the Arc de Triomphe on the Place de l'Etoile in Paris, France, was renamed after this battle in 1864.
Analysis
Wagram was the first battle in which Napoleon failed to score an uncontested victory with relatively few casualties. The French forces suffered 34,000 casualties, a number compounded by the 20,000 suffered only weeks earlier at Aspern-Essling. This would be indicative of the gradual decline in quality of Napoleon's troops and the increasing experience and competence of his opponents, who were learning from previous errors. The heavy losses suffered, which included many seasoned troops as well as over thirty generals of varying rank, was something that the French would not be able to recover from with ease. Bernadotte's dismissal from the Grande Armée for his failure would have severe consequences for Napoleon in later years. Unexpectedly elected heir to the throne of Sweden the following year, the former Marshal would eventually prove an asset to the Allies. According to I. Castle, Austrian casualties were as follows: 41,250 total, of which 23,750 killed or wounded, 10,000 missing, 7,500 captured, while French and Allied casualties amounted to 37,500, with 27,500 killed or wounded and 10,000 missing or captured.
References
David Chandler, Napoleon's Marshals, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1998, pp 247–251.
Bowden, Scotty & Tarbox, Charlie. Armies on the Danube 1809. Arlington, Texas: Empire Games Press, 1980.
Footnotes
External links
Battle of Wagram 1809—maps, order of battle, detailed account
Category:Conflicts in 1809
Category:1809 in Austria
Category:1809 in France
Category:Battles involving Austria
Category:Battles involving Bavaria
Category:Battles involving France
Category:Battles involving Italy
Category:Battles involving Saxony
Category:Battles of the War of the Fifth Coalition
