Arguably the high water mark of Napoleon Bonaparte's career was his campaign against Austria in 1809. This is the subject of an epic three-volume history by John H. Gill, associate professor at the Faculty of the Near East-South Asia centre, former U.S. Army officer in South Asia and author of With Eagles to Glory: Napoleon and his German Allies in the 1809 Campaign. He has dedicated the first volume of 1809, Thunder on the Danube to a late colleague, U.S. Army Colonel John R. Elting (1912-2000).
Central Europe's Austrian empire had suffered many humiliations at the hands of both the revolutionary and imperial French armies by 1808. The French invasion of Spain in that year, however, raised new fears among the Viennese Habsburgs that they might soon share the fate of their deposed cousins in Madrid. On the other hand, early French setbacks in Spain stirred hopes among Vienna's more warlike circles for military success, revenge, or both.
The soul of Austria's new militancy was Emperor Francis II's foreign minister, Johann Philipp Graf von Stadion. The author describes Stadion's efforts to create a ring of alliances for the future war with France and the reasons for his failure: primarily other countries' fear of the Napoleonic war machine and Austria's selfish attitude regarding her future role as the sole power in Germany. Only Britain ultimately helped, and then only financially, by providing the Austrians with 250,000 pounds sterling on Malta, with the intention of expanding that war chest to as much as 1,000,000 pounds. Stadion depended too much on the information that Austrian ambassador Clemens von Metternich sent him from Paris, especially the claim that “Napoleon has but one army—his Grande Armée,” which proved to be completely wrong. Even after a series of disasters, France's army rose from the ashes in 1813, 1814, and even after Waterloo in 1815.
Gill describes the Herculean efforts that Archduke Charles made to mould a new Austrian army, which depended too much on the French model of the corps, as well as his concerns over a war in which his army would have to face Napoleon alone. Charles introduced two unique infantry formations: the “division mass” and “battalion mass,” the latter of which became the favourite battle formation of the Austrian army. Filling the traditional hole in the centre of the infantry square made for a very good defence against French cuirassiers, but offered a very good target for enemy artillery.
Finally on 8 April, 650,000 Austrian troops (including a newly organized Landwehr) began to move against the Bavarian border. Charles' decision to strike there put him initially up against two of Napoleon's marshals, André Massena and Louis-Nicholas Davout, under the supreme leadership of Alexandre Berthier. Politically the decision to attack Bavaria proved a mistake, since the Bavarian army welcomed its Austrian “brothers” with cold steel. Militarily it was even more dangerous, because Napoleon would be able to move there in response even faster than he had in Poland two years earlier.
Gill takes the side of critics who regard Berthier as being overly prudent, hesitant and misunderstanding Napoleon's orders, but one might also note that the attitude of the emperor's chief of staff allowed the Emperor to call up a vast amount of reserves for the future bloody battles to come. Napoleon's arrival in French headquarters on 17 April breathed new life into his army and with the Battle of Regensburg on 23 April, the Austrian army was thrown into continuous retreat. Napoleon himself commented that the Battle of Abensberg, the manoeuvres at Landshut and the Battle of Eggmühl were the most brilliant and most skilful manoeuvres of his career.
Although defeated, the Austrian army was not broken and the battles Napoleon had yet to fight against Archduke Charles continue in Volume II. John Gill spent 15 years researching elements for that campaign and in 1809, Thunder on the Danube, he has succeeded in making an extremely important contribution to military history.
Book review: Thunder on the Danube: vol. 1: Abensberg
Author(s) : ZAKHARIS Thomas