Who won the Battle of Wagram?
Napoleon won. On 5 and 6 July 1809 his French and allied army crossed the Danube from the island of Lobau and fought Archduke Charles's Austrians on the Marchfeld plain north of Vienna. Charles broke off the battle and retreated in good order, and on 12 July Austria accepted the armistice of Znaim.1
In July 1809 some 300,000 soldiers met on a flat plain just north of Vienna. Marmont, one of Napoleon's marshals, later called it the largest battle of modern times by the number of men fighting. Six weeks earlier, at Aspern, Napoleon had lost his first battle in person. Now he crossed the Danube again, by night and in a thunderstorm, and for two days fought Archduke Charles of Austria between the river and the village of Deutsch-Wagram. Napoleon won, but the two days cost both sides together about 80,000 men.2
This is the story of Wagram from both sides: why Austria went to war again, how Napoleon got across the Danube, how Charles nearly turned the tables on the second morning, why Archduke John never arrived, what the battle cost, and how it ended the war. It belongs to our guide to the Napoleonic Wars. See also our life of Napoleon Bonaparte, the military history of Austria, the Polish campaign of the same war at Raszyn, and our ranking of the greatest Napoleonic battles.
Why was the Battle of Wagram fought?
Austria went to war again in the spring of 1809. Its leaders hoped to break French domination by stirring a national rising in the German lands, and for the first time the monarchy raised a Landwehr, a militia modeled on the French nation in arms. The army's commander, Archduke Charles, brother of Emperor Francis I, had argued for a long peace and gave way only reluctantly to the war party at court, writes his biographer in the Neue Deutsche Biographie, Johann Christoph Allmayer-Beck.3
The campaign began badly for Austria, with defeats in Bavaria at Landshut and Regensburg, and Napoleon reached Vienna. Then, on 21 and 22 May, Charles beat him at Aspern and Essling, on the far side of the Danube. The Heeresgeschichtliches Museum in Vienna calls it Napoleon's first personal defeat. Charles did not follow it up, and the Austrian national encyclopedia notes that this gave Napoleon time to call in reinforcements.4
Napoleon spent the next six weeks turning the island of Lobau, in the middle of the Danube, into a fortress. His engineers named it the Ile Napoléon and built solid bridges across the main arm of the river. Thiers counts 109 heavy guns, mortars and howitzers mounted on the small islands around Lobau and aimed at the Austrian bank. The Fondation Napoléon notes that Napoleon also held Vienna, with its arsenals and stores.5
How big were the armies at Wagram?
Napoleon brought in everything within reach: the corps of Davout, Masséna and Oudinot, the Saxons under Bernadotte, the Army of Italy under Eugène de Beauharnais, Marmont's corps, the Imperial Guard and Bavarian troops. The Royal Collection Trust notes that the French side included troops from Saxony, Bavaria, Italy and the Duchy of Warsaw. Marmont, who saw the army's returns before the crossing, remembered 187,000 men under arms, 164,000 of them infantry and cavalry in the ranks.6
Counts of the two armies vary with what each author includes. Oskar Criste, writing from the Austrian war archives, gives the Austrians about 112,000 infantry, 14,600 cavalry and roughly 450 guns, against about 134,000 French infantry and 27,700 cavalry on 5 July and 159,500 infantry and 29,000 cavalry on 6 July. Adolf Strobl of the Austrian General Staff gives about 105,000 Austrian infantry and 12,600 horse. The Prussian staff historian Yorck von Wartenburg counts 202,000 men on the French side.7
Charles held a strong line along the Russbach, a small stream with steep banks that runs below a low plateau from Deutsch-Wagram to Markgrafneusiedl, and he had fortified the old battlefield of Aspern and Essling facing Lobau. His brother Archduke John stood with his army at Pressburg (Bratislava), down the Danube. Only at seven in the evening on 4 July did Charles order John to march at once to the battlefield.8
How did Napoleon cross the Danube?
Napoleon did not repeat the May crossing. On 2 July his men seized a small island facing Essling to draw Austrian fire there, while the real crossing was prepared on the eastern side of Lobau, opposite Gross-Enzersdorf. Late on the evening of 4 July voltigeurs of Oudinot's corps crossed in boats escorted by Colonel Baste's gunboats, and the island batteries opened on Enzersdorf and set the little town on fire. A violent storm and pouring rain hid the operation.9
The engineers then swung a bridge built in one piece across the arm of the river, the first of its kind according to the bulletin, and laid more bridges beside it. By two in the morning the army had four bridges and was crossing. At first light on 5 July it stood on the left bank beyond the Austrian works, which were now useless. Colonel Sainte-Croix, Masséna's aide-de-camp, took Enzersdorf against little resistance and captured its garrison.10
What happened on the first day, 5 July?
All day the French wheeled north across the Marchfeld while the Austrian advance guard fell back. Essling and Aspern, with the redoubts Charles had built there, were occupied without serious resistance, because the French had come around them. By evening the French stood before Charles's main army on the Russbach heights, and Napoleon decided to try to break that line before nightfall.11
At nightfall Oudinot attacked Baumersdorf, Bernadotte's Saxons pushed into Wagram, and between them General Dupas and two columns of the Army of Italy under Macdonald and Grenier crossed the Russbach and climbed the plateau. In the dusk the Italian columns took the Saxons for Austrians and fired on them, panic spread, and Charles, rallying Bellegarde's corps himself, drove the attackers back down the slope. Marbot, on Masséna's staff, recorded that Saxon battalions fired on Lamarque's division in the confusion.12
How did Archduke Charles nearly win on 6 July?
Both commanders planned to attack at dawn. Charles struck first. His plan was a great concentric attack: Rosenberg would pin the French right at Markgrafneusiedl, the center would hold Aderklaa and push on, and Klenau and Kolowrat on the Austrian right would march down the Danube toward Aspern to cut Napoleon off from his bridges. Yorck von Wartenburg saw in it an early example of the modern turning attack, at the price of a long and thin line.13
Around four in the morning Rosenberg came down from the heights of Markgrafneusiedl against Davout, who held firm and threw him back across the Russbach. In the center an Austrian attack drove Bernadotte's Saxons back onto Masséna's troops, and the grenadiers took Aderklaa. Masséna, still injured by a fall from his horse, directed his corps from an open carriage under heavy fire. On the Austrian right Klenau crushed Boudet's division and pushed it back toward Aspern and the bridges, close to the French line of retreat.14
What decided the Battle of Wagram?
Napoleon answered with mass. To stop the Austrian advance he gathered a grand battery of about 100 guns, 60 of them from the Guard, under General Lauriston. The bulletin says the guns advanced at the trot to half range before opening a prodigious fire, which, writes the American historian Theodore Dodge, checked the Austrian advance. Marshal Bessières, leading the cavalry, had his horse killed under him.15
Around one in the afternoon General Macdonald led the divisions of Broussier and Lamarque forward in one huge, deep formation toward Süssenbrunn, with cavalry and the Guard behind. Austrian guns tore gaps in it from the front and the flank. Thiers describes it halting to beat off Liechtenstein's cuirassiers and the French cavalry failing to exploit the moment. Dodge called it a costly advance that would have failed on its own, and Criste, telling the Austrian story, says the attempt to break through failed completely.16
The battle was being won on the other wing. Napoleon kept watching the old square tower of Markgrafneusiedl, which could be seen from all over the field. Once Davout's guns were firing from beyond it, he knew the Austrian left was turned, and he sent word to Masséna and the others that the battle was won and ordered a general attack. Davout and Oudinot climbed the Russbach heights and took Deutsch-Wagram, and Masséna recovered the ground lost near the Danube.17
At about one o'clock Charles, watching from the heights of Wagram, received word from an aide returning from Marchegg that John could not reach the battlefield in time. Between two and three in the afternoon, by the various accounts, he ordered a retreat. His army fell back in good order toward the Bisamberg hills and the road to Znaim, and the French did not press it hard.18
Where was Archduke John during the battle?
John received the first marching order early on 5 July, at five in the morning by his own account, but his troops were spread around the bridgehead at Pressburg and he wrote back that he could not leave before one in the morning on the 6th. Strobl puts his force at about 12,000 men with three divisions of Hungarian insurrection cavalry, and Simon at 13,000. John reached Marchegg around noon on 6 July, and his advance guard came near Ober-Siebenbrunn about six in the evening, hours after the battle was decided. He then withdrew.19
In Austria the delay became a bitter quarrel. Charles blamed the defeat partly on his brother, and so did the official Austrian account. Kurt Simon, who studied the orders and replies in 1900, notes that the two brothers were reconciled only in November 1810, and he concluded that John's delay alone could not be called the cause of the defeat. The Austrian national encyclopedia still records that John came too late to help.20
His outriders did cause one scare. As the battle ended, they appeared near the French rear and set off a panic: thousands of stragglers, wagon drivers and soldiers carrying the wounded fled toward the Danube, and Napoleon had to mount again. Marmont, whose corps took up arms, called such panics a sad sign of the state of an army.21
How many died at the Battle of Wagram?
Both armies paid heavily. Criste gives Austrian losses from the official returns as about 5,600 killed, 18,100 wounded and 7,600 captured, 31,329 in all, with 4 generals killed and 13 wounded. Strobl, who notes that the returns also cover the fighting at Znaim, estimates about 25,000 Austrians put out of action at Wagram itself.22
French losses were never counted exactly. Strobl estimates about 20,000, Criste about 27,500 including 7,000 prisoners, and Marmont 27,000 men put out of action. The Fondation Napoléon puts the total for both sides at about 80,000 killed, wounded and taken prisoner.23
Napoleon's 25th Bulletin, by contrast, admitted only 1,500 killed and 3,000 to 4,000 wounded and claimed 10 flags, 40 guns and 20,000 prisoners. Criste, from the Austrian side, counts only 1 flag and 9 guns lost by the Austrians, against 12 eagles and battalion flags and 21 guns taken from the French. Marmont, a French marshal, was blunter still: apart from wounded men left on the field, he wrote, the army took no prisoners, no flag and only seven guns, and he called Wagram a victory without result.24
Why did Napoleon win at Wagram?
Napoleon won because he kept his army concentrated while Charles stretched his. Yorck von Wartenburg argued that a capable general with a good army can beat a wide turning attack by holding his forces in a close, deep formation and striking the thin center or crushing one wing. At Wagram, Yorck wrote, Napoleon did both, sending Eugène against Deutsch-Wagram while Davout and Oudinot crushed the Austrian left. The Fondation Napoléon credits Davout's tenacity, Masséna's skill and General Boudet's firepower.25
Yet the victory was not crushing. Yorck wrote that, as after Regensburg, the enemy was not annihilated and was soon ready to fight again, and he judged that Charles was right to give up the battle to save his army for his country. Dodge called it one of Napoleon's great victories but also one of Charles's most skillful battles.26
What happened after the Battle of Wagram?
Charles retreated toward Bohemia. The French caught up with him at Znaim, and after fighting there an armistice was signed on 12 July 1809, which in practice ended the war. On 23 July Charles laid down his command, and he did not lead an army in the field again during the Napoleonic Wars, while the Austrian national encyclopedia records that Emperor Francis relieved him as commander in chief.27
Napoleon also turned on one of his own marshals. In an order of the day of 7 July Bernadotte praised his Saxons as if they had pierced the Austrian center and stood like bronze under fire. Napoleon answered with a secret order of the day, sent only to the marshals, which called the claim contrary to the truth and said the Saxon corps had been the first to retreat. Bernadotte was sent away from the army.28
By the Treaty of Schönbrunn, signed on 14 October 1809, Austria lost lands with about three and a half million inhabitants. Salzburg went to Bavaria, the Adriatic provinces became the French Illyrian Provinces, secret articles limited the army to 150,000 men, and an indemnity of 85 million francs was to be paid.29
For Poland the treaty was a gain. The Duchy of Warsaw, whose army had fought the Austrians that spring, received West Galicia, the lands Austria had taken in the third partition, with Kraków and the Zamość district. Russia, nominally Napoleon's ally, took part of East Galicia.30
Wagram was above all an artillery battle. Writing to his war minister on 8 July, Napoleon reckoned that his army had fired 100,000 rounds from 550 guns, against seven or eight hundred Austrian guns, and said he would raise the Guard artillery to 120 pieces. Marmont counted 84,000 rounds fired and some 1,200 guns on both sides together.31
Where was the Battle of Wagram fought?
The battle was fought on the Marchfeld, the plain that stretches north and east of Vienna, between the Danube and the line of villages from Aspern and Essling to Deutsch-Wagram and Markgrafneusiedl. The Austrian national encyclopedia places the main fighting at Deutsch-Wagram in Lower Austria. Napoleon claimed that the Viennese watched from their roofs and towers, which his aide Savary also remembered, and that Emperor Francis, who had left his quarters at Wolkersdorf at dawn, followed the battle from a belvedere.32
The field is still giving up its dead. Rescue excavations ahead of the S8 Marchfeld expressway began in March 2017 on the plateau between Deutsch-Wagram and Parbasdorf. In the account of the archaeologist Sławomir Konik, of the excavation firm Novetus, metal detectors located more than 7,000 objects there, among them 782 coins, uniform buttons, musket balls and weapon fittings, and the diggers recorded more than 500 features, including 25 graves from the battle and the Austrian camp before it, some of them mass graves.33
