the barricade that Margont was defending. The soldiers riddled each other with gunfire, standing within a few paces of each other. The white coats fell, again and again, but others came to replace them. The air was heavy with the smell of burnt powder. Lefine, who was standing near Margont, shouted something to him, but all Margont could hear were cries of rage or pain and the rattling of the explosions hammering against his eardrums.
‘What did you say?’
‘… lost!’
Margont knew how the rest of the sentence went. The French were falling back in disarray, hotly pursued by the Austrians. Every house had been turned into a bastion, and from the windows people were pelting the assailants. The church and its perimeter wall acted as a fortress. The French were sheltering behind sections of wall and the ruins of houses destroyed by the artillery. Some even crouched behind gravestones in the village cemetery, and piles of horse manure … A corporal collapsed in front of Margont.
‘These idiots are killing as many of our men as they are Austrians!’
He grabbed Lefine by the sleeve and knocked loudly against the door of a stone building.
‘France! France!’ he thundered, knocking fit to break his fist.
They couldn’t retreat any further. The mass of withdrawing soldiers clogged the streets, and bullets were raining down on the panicking dark blue mêlée. Lieutenant Saber arrived at a run, forced a passage, stepped through a window and edged his way to the middle of the crush of muskets pointed at the Austrians. A moment later, he opened the door to his friends.
‘What would you have done if I hadn’t been here …?’
Margont shoved him forward so that he could take cover, only to be jostled himself from behind by Lefine and other frightened soldiers.
The Austrian advance slowed, then stopped altogether. The determined resistance of the French had somewhat dented their confidence. Margont climbed to the first floor. He forced his way through the injured and the shooters to get to a skylight. Every window in the street was bristling with muskets, which were crushing the Austrians with their fire power. Were they winning? Were they losing? The situation was increasingly unclear. Before Margont’s very eyes, the building opposite collapsed to the ground with its crowd of defenders. All that could be seen of it now were dancing flames and twirling tendrils of black smoke dotted with orange sparks. The aide-de-camp whom he had been conversing with earlier was galloping back towards them, but his horse turned tail almost immediately at the sound of the explosion. The sight of the building collapsing terrified him.
‘They make everything jump!’ cried a voice, referring to the cannon the Austrians had installed in the part of Aspern they controlled, and which they used to bombard the French point-blank. The French, decimated and discouraged, withdrew, houses collapsing in their path.
The minute Napoleon heard that Aspern was lost, he ordered its immediate recapture. If Aspern fell, the plains where his centre was concentrated would become indefensible. The French would have control only of the village of Essling, which would find itself encircled, and would also fall. The Emperor’s line of defence was like a row of dominoes. If one stronghold fell, all the others would automatically follow suit. It was all or nothing. Aspern-plains-Essling or the very bottom of the Danube.
Margont hurried towards the back, trying to restore some order amongst the crush of survivors. No one understood what was going on except the very highest ranks – and even they were not absolutely sure … He saw French troops milling about in the south of the village. Which ones and what they were doing he had not the faintest idea. The blue lines were spread out in the fields and the meadows as if on a training exercise. Were they not even going to launch another assault on this pile of stones and embers? Officers were giving signals to the survivors of Aspern to hasten their retreat.
‘I agree, let’s get on with it,’ fumed Lefine. ‘You don’t just hang about waiting to be killed, that makes no sense.’
They barely had time to get into line formation. A general – was it Molitor? No, it was another general whom Margont did not know – drew his sword and pointed it at Aspern’s steeple, which was still standing but riddled with holes made by round shot, its roof caved in and smoking, a laughable spike.
‘Advance!’
This counterattack, led by the Carra Saint-Cyr Division (which had just got across the river before the collapse of the bridge) and by the remains of the Legrand Division, was effective. The French drove back the white coats or trapped them in the gutted houses. The Austrians took their revenge by counterattacking in turn.
Finally the sky began to darken. No reinforcements had arrived, but night would bring relief – surely the fighting was not going to continue in darkness? The French were now losing house after house. On the Danube, the repaired bridge, repeatedly damaged by the skiffs the Austrians sent downriver, collapsed once again, hurling the troops of the 2nd Regiment of Cuirassiers into the brine where they sank like stones.
Finally the intensity of combat diminished. Margont, overjoyed at having survived, walked towards Lefine, to celebrate with him. He was so relieved and happy that, without thinking, he passed in front of the breach in a wall. A sharp report rang out. Instinctively Margont dived for cover. He was not sure he had been hit because he had strained his muscles so much that he hurt all over. Lefine’s face was distorted in terror. Margont followed his friend’s gaze and looked at his side. A dark stain was spreading there.
‘I can’t believe I did that,’ said Margont, as he lay carefully down.
MARGONT spent an interminable amount of time lying by the Danube in the company of a mass of other wounded. Groans and entreaties mingled with the deep rumbling of cannon fire. Medical orderlies, far too few of them, ran from casualty to casualty. One very young orderly regarded Margont with disdain and, without even taking the time to examine his wound, announced: ‘It’s nothing.’ Another, however, looked horrified whenever he passed him. Finally a small boat brought a handful of voltigeurs overburdened with munitions, a pathetic reinforcement, and left with several lucky patients, one of whom was Margont.
Napoleon had planned to cross the Danube very quickly. He had not believed that the Austrians could hold out against his army and had thought they would withdraw. The totally unexpected turn of events generated utter confusion. Lobau was acting as a stopping-off point for the divisions who found themselves stranded, and also as a temporary hospital. Soldiers accumulated on the island like grains of wheat in a granary. A hundred thousand Austrian soldiers still firmly held the east bank of the Danube, while Vienna, whose population was hostile to the French, lay on the west bank. Only yesterday Napoleon had controlled most of Europe, and now his empire appeared to have been reduced to the Isle of Lobau, two and a half miles long by two and a half miles wide.
Margont was treated by an orderly who was well-intentioned but intimidated by the officer’s rank. He apologised as he clumsily pricked Margont’s skin again and again. The wound was superficial; the bullet had only grazed his side, biting into the flesh without piercing his abdomen. Gangrene was what Margont was worried about. Was it going to devour his body like rot in an apple? He spent the night in a terrible state of anxiety.
The next day, at four in the morning, the battle resumed.
The groaning multitude of casualties on Lobau increased, spreading like a tide of agony. Medical orderlies and volunteers offered them pails of water that they refilled from the Danube.
