Battle of Wagram (1809): Napoleon Defeats Austria Again

The Battle of Wagram, fought on 5–6 July 1809 on the Marchfeld plain north-east of Vienna, was Napoleon’s decisive victory over the Austrian army of Archduke Charles. With around 300,000 soldiers engaged, it was one of the largest battles in history up to that time. Wagram ended the War of the Fifth Coalition, forced Austria into a harsh peace and opened the way to Napoleon’s marriage to the Habsburg archduchess Marie Louise.

Background

Austria had been humiliated at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805, but by 1809 it had rebuilt its army under Archduke Charles. With large French forces tied down in the Peninsular War in Spain, Vienna saw a chance for revenge and, with British backing, formed the Fifth Coalition. Austrian troops invaded Bavaria, a French ally, in April 1809.

Austria hoped that a German national uprising would follow its declaration of war, and it also counted on the popular revolt in the Tyrol led by Andreas Hofer against Bavarian rule. In the event, the wider German rising did not happen, and Prussia and Russia stayed out of the conflict.

Napoleon reacted quickly. Arriving from Paris, he took command of the scattered French and German forces and won a series of engagements around Abensberg, Landshut and Eckmühl between 19 and 22 April, then stormed Regensburg on 23 April. Charles retreated into Bohemia, leaving the road along the Danube open. Napoleon marched down the Danube and occupied Vienna on 13 May. To destroy the Austrian army, however, he had to cross the wide Danube to the north bank. His first attempt led to the Battle of Aspern-Essling on 21–22 May, his first major defeat in more than a decade.

Preparations

Napoleon spent six weeks preparing a second crossing much more carefully. He turned the large island of Lobau into a fortified base, built solid bridges protected by stockades against floating debris, and brought up reinforcements from Italy and elsewhere, including the army of his stepson Eugène de Beauharnais and the corps of Marshal Marmont.

Archduke Charles expected Napoleon to cross at the same point as before and fortified the villages of Aspern and Essling. Instead, on the stormy night of 4–5 July, the French threw several bridges across a side arm of the Danube further east and crossed in force, outflanking the Austrian defences.

The battle

The first day: 5 July

By the afternoon of 5 July, the French army had deployed on the Marchfeld. Charles’s main line ran along the Russbach stream, a small river with a low escarpment behind it, around the village of Deutsch-Wagram.

Napoleon ordered an evening attack on this line, hoping to break it before the Austrians were ready. The assault failed. In the poor light, French and allied Saxon units under Marshal Bernadotte fired on each other near Wagram, and some units fell back in confusion.

The second day: 6 July

Charles took the initiative at dawn on 6 July. He launched attacks on both French wings, particularly on the French left near the Danube, where Austrian corps advanced towards the bridges to Lobau and threatened to cut Napoleon’s line of retreat.

Napoleon responded with a series of bold moves. Marshal Masséna’s corps marched across the battlefield, parallel to the enemy, to block the Austrian advance on the left. In the centre, Napoleon massed a great battery of more than 100 guns under General Lauriston, which poured fire into the Austrian line. On the French right, Marshal Davout’s corps turned the Austrian left flank at Markgrafneusiedl and began rolling up the Russbach line.

Around midday, General Jacques MacDonald led a huge attack column into the Austrian centre. It suffered heavy losses but helped to break the Austrian position. With his flank collapsing and the expected reinforcements of his brother, Archduke John, still too far away, Charles ordered a withdrawal in the early afternoon. Archduke John’s troops arrived only in the late afternoon, too late to change the outcome.

The French were too exhausted to pursue effectively. The cavalry general Antoine Charles Louis de Lasalle, one of the most famous light cavalry commanders of the age, was killed late in the day. After the battle Napoleon dismissed Marshal Bernadotte, who had issued his own order of the day praising his Saxon troops in terms the emperor considered both inaccurate and insubordinate.

Why Wagram was so costly

Wagram was fought on an open plain by armies far larger than those of earlier campaigns, and artillery played a greater role than ever before. Many of Napoleon’s soldiers were young conscripts or allied contingents with less training than the veterans of 1805, so he relied more on massed guns and dense attack formations such as MacDonald’s column, which were effective but suffered heavy losses. The Austrian army, reformed by Archduke Charles after 1805, fought with determination and inflicted casualties almost equal to its own.

Key people

• Napoleon – Emperor of the French, who planned the crossing and directed the battle.
• Archduke Charles (1771–1847) – Austria’s most capable general, victor at Aspern-Essling.
• Louis-Nicolas Davout – French marshal whose flank attack was decisive.
• Jacques MacDonald – led the great central assault and was made a Marshal of France soon after the battle.
• André Masséna – commanded the French left, directing his corps from a carriage because of an earlier injury.

By the numbers

Consequences

Wagram was not a crushing rout like Austerlitz. The Austrian army retreated in order and fought again at Znaim on 10–11 July, but Charles then asked for an armistice, signed on 12 July 1809.

The Treaty of Schönbrunn, signed on 14 October 1809, cost Austria about 3.5 million subjects. It gave Salzburg to Bavaria, western Galicia to the Duchy of Warsaw, and Austria’s Adriatic lands to the new French-controlled Illyrian Provinces. Austria also had to pay a large indemnity, limit its army and join Napoleon’s continental blockade of Britain. The Tyrolean rebels, abandoned by Vienna, were defeated by the end of 1809, and Andreas Hofer was captured and executed by the French at Mantua in February 1810. Britain’s attempt to help Austria by landing an army on the island of Walcheren in the Netherlands also ended in failure, with thousands of soldiers dying of fever.

The new Austrian foreign minister, Klemens von Metternich, decided that Austria must make peace with France for the time being. He supported a marriage between Napoleon and Emperor Francis I’s daughter Marie Louise, which followed Napoleon’s divorce from Josephine and took place in 1810.

Legacy

Wagram showed that Napoleon could still win great battles, but also that his victories were becoming bloodier and less decisive. The Austrian army had fought well, and the huge use of artillery foreshadowed the mass warfare of the later Napoleonic battles, including the campaign of 1812 and the French invasion of Russia. Wagram is often described as Napoleon’s last great victory over a major power.

Timeline

• 1809, 10 April: Austrian forces invade Bavaria, starting the War of the Fifth Coalition.
• 1809, 13 May: Napoleon occupies Vienna.
• 1809, 21–22 May: French defeat at Aspern-Essling.
• 1809, 4–5 July (night): French army crosses the Danube from Lobau island.
• 1809, 5 July: Failed French evening attack on the Russbach line.
• 1809, 6 July: Main day of battle; Austrians retreat.
• 1809, 12 July: Armistice of Znaim.
• 1809, 14 October: Treaty of Schönbrunn.

Why it matters

Wagram ended Austria’s attempt to overturn Napoleon’s dominance of Central Europe and brought the Habsburgs into a temporary alliance with France. It marked the high point of Napoleon’s power on the continent, only three years before his disastrous campaign in Russia.