which every retreat performed before an advancing enemy is necessarily liable. At one time the archduke proposed to recross the Danube and join General Hiller on the right bank; at another he intended to cross the stream in rear of the French army, and thus take the enemy in reverse; but neither of these projects was acted upon, and the preparations for carrying them into effect retarded, to some extent at least, the progress which the army made in the direction of the capital.

The effect of these uncertain measures was severely felt in the action of Ebelsberg, the most obstinately contested of all those which were fought during this short war. The retreat of the Austrians had not been pressed, and yet when, on the morning of the 3d May, they reached the banks of the Traun, they found the avenues leading to the bridge so completely obstructed by carts, wagons, and carriages of every description, that the time to destroy the bridge was lost before the retiring troops had fairly cleared it. Massena, who commanded the pursuing corps, pressed hard upon the Austrians, and a Colonel Cohorn, at the head of his regiment, passed the bridge and entered the gate along with them.

Corps followed corps, and the small town was soon in possession of the bold assailants; but parties of Austrians rallied in the churchyard, the market, and the ruins of an old castle. From the former posts they were dislodged after the most valiant efforts; but time had been gained, the defeated had re-formed, and after a murderous combat the French were driven back to the very gate. Before it could be closed a fresh division arrived, and the combat had to be fought over again. The French once more obtained possession of the town, and were again forced to give way, and this second overthrow was attended with so heavy a loss that General Hiller was strongly urged to follow it up and complete the defeat of the enemy. This he declined, and as some divisions of French cavalry had already turned his left wing, he retired from the combat, in which a third only of his troops had taken a part. For the numbers engaged the slaughter was dreadful, nearly 6000 men had

been killed and wounded in the streets of a town that had not so many hundred inhabitants. Never had war presented a more frightful spectacle; heaps of slain gathered together in this narrow space, bodies blackened by fire and half consumed amid the burning fragments of houses, the maimed and wounded crawling from beneath the ruins and imploring with maddening shrieks to be removed beyond the reach of the flames, formed a scene that appalled the men who had so long been familiar with sights of horror, and even Napoleon is said to have shrunk from the havoc he had occasioned.

Though the Austrians left the field it was not without trophies; they had taken three eagles and 1400 prisoners. About 2000 captives had fallen into the hands of the French. It would almost seem as if the fierceness engendered by this combat had continued to cling to the hearts of the soldiers who fought it, for at every subsequent stage of the march hamlets and villages were given to the flames, both parties accusing each other of the wanton cruelty.

General Hiller having crossed the Danube at Mantern and joined the Archduke Charles, the road to Vienna was left open to Napoleon, who hurried on to gain that important prize. He was riding between Marshal Lannes and Berthier, when the guide pointed out the Castle of Diernstein, once the prison of our gallant king Richard Coeur de Lion. Napoleon halted, and, gazing on the ruins, said, "He, too, had warred in Palestine and Syria. He was more fortunate than we were at Acre; but not braver than you, my gallant Lannes. He had defeated the great Saladin, yet hardly touched the soil of Europe before he fell into the power of men who were not his equals, and was sold to an emperor by a Duke of Austria, who is only known in history by that act of cruelty. But his subjects made great sacrifices for his deliverance." After a pause he continued, "Yet such were those times of barbarism that folly represents as so beautiful. The father sacrificed his children, the wife her husband, the soldier his general, and the subject his sovereign, all openly and without disguise, from

the mere thirst of gold and power. How much are these times now improved, how much progress civilisation has made. You have seen kings and emperors in my power, and I have demanded of them neither ransom nor sacrifices derogatory to their honour."

We cannot altogether agree in the views here advanced by the imperial speaker. No one has, we believe, upheld the dark ages as very "beautiful," but the chivalrous feelings and institutions held in honour during the period of which Napoleon was speaking have been entitled to deserved praise, for they constituted the best auxiliaries of civilisation, and helped more than any other cause we can discover to have been in action, to soften the manners of the age and pave the way for letters, learning, and general improvement. That in many cases knights and nobles partook of the barbarism of the times in which they lived is true-there are, no doubt, noble barbarians even in our own time; but the spirit of chivalry was eminently of an ennobling tendency, and no country has yet emerged from darkness in which knighthood was unknown. Orders of chivalry may be, and probably are, out of date, even as monastic institutions are, notwithstanding the vast benefits they conferred on society. But it is one of the evil signs of our time that the high feelings and lofty sentiments out of which chivalry arose, and which it fostered in return, should be slighted and scoffed at in favour of what is termed the "superior wisdom of an enlightened age," though that wisdom would have been more distinctly shewn had it added to knowledge and civilisation the chivalrous sentiments to which they were due; for a time must come to which our age will be what the dark ages are to us, and when we shall not, like our predecessors, have redeeming chivalry to fall back upon.

There was besides some little forgetfulness displayed in Napoleon's speech. He never had kings and emperors in his power, except under the safeguard of flags of truce and of the very civilisation of which he speaks, and this safeguard, which no Christian prince had violated in modern times was violated by the Ti

berius of Bayonne. Charles V. threw himself without permit, passport, or invitation, on the loyalty and generosity of his enemy, Francis I., and had no cause to repent the rashness of his step; Charles XII. trusted to his vanquished adversary Augus tus II. and was respected in his misfortunes by the Turks themselves; but Napoleon respected no one, and imprisoned even an aged prince and prelate, the very head of his religion.

On the 10th May the French arrived before Vienna. The old, or central portion of the city was still surrounded by a good bastioned and stone-faced rampart, the same which had resisted the Turks in 1683, and was fully capable of making some defence. But the extensive suburbs, which form by far the greater part of the capital, reach to the very glacis of the works, and were protected only by an unflanked wall, too feeble to resist the fire of artillery and far too extensive to be occupied unless by an army. As an assailant in possession of these suburbs can commence operations and erect batteries within pistol-shot of the body of the place, it was only by burning them down that the city could be rendered defensible as a fortress, and to this extremity it was not intended to resort. The suburbs were abandoned to the French, and the garrison, consisting of about 10,000 men, commanded by the Archduke Maximilian, retired within the main ramparts. Having refused to surrender, twenty howitzers, sheltered by the houses of the suburbs, soon opened upon the city. The often-repeated assertion that the Archduchess Marie Louise remained at Vienna in consequence of ill health, and that Napoleon, informed of the circumstance, caused the fire of the artillery to spare the palace, is only one of the thousand idle tales invented to honour the man in whose favour truth could say so little. During the night troops were thrown over the narrow arm of the Danube that separates the Island of the Prater from the right bank; and the garrison, seeing their communication thus threatened, and believing that they could not hold out till the arrival of the Archduke Charles, who was still at the distance of two marches, retired during the

following night, destroying the bridge as they fell back and leaving only a few hundred men to secure the gates and capitulate on the morning of the 13th, when it was given over to the French.

The enmity of the people towards the invaders was not, it seems, disguised. "Their patriotism," says Pelet, "even that of the women, broke out in many demonstrations, and it was easy to perceive the changes which the intrigues of the coalition had produced since the campaign of Austerlitz." The idea that it required the intrigues of coalitions to excite the patriotism of the Austrians is neither flattering to that brave and generous people, nor is it very noble in itself; but it is perfectly consistent with the views adopted by the worshippers of Napoleon, who would willingly have it believed that all enmity against their idol was the result of unworthy and criminal machinations. It would almost seem as if Napoleon himself had entertained some idea of the sort, for his proclamation to the army after the capture of Vienna breathes the very extravagance of hatred to the impe

rial family. "Soldiers," it says, "these landwhers, these general levies, these ramparts, created by the impotent rage of the princes of the house of Lorraine, have not sustained your looks. These princes have abandoned their capital, not like honourable soldiers, yielding to the fortunes of war, but like perjured men pursued by their own remorse. In flying from Vienna their farewell to its inhabitants has been murder and incendiarism. Like Medea, they have butchered their children, even with their own hands." It is really not easy to see what rational object could be gained by rhapsodies of this kind, which were as little creditable to the taste as to the judgment of

the author.

The loss of Vienna was a heavy blow to the Austrians; the vast military stores its arsenals contained went to strengthen the hands of the French, the moral effect tended also to deepen the gloom already prevailing, and the loss of the capital deprived the archduke of a bridgehead on the right of the Danube and of the power of operating on both banks of the stream, and of selecting

a battle-field whence he could retire with perfect safety in case of reverse. As a military post Vienna was almost invaluable at this moment, and yet it does not appear that any great effort was made to save it, for the Austrian ariny had a shorter march to perform than the French, and as the place held out for three days it gave them this additional time over their adversaries. We have been induced to think that the fear of bringing ruin on the ancient capital of his house may have influenced the imperial commander on this occasion; it is, at least, our only method of solving the difficulty.

The Austrian army moving on the other side of the Danube had arrived

opposite to Vienna, and the destruction of the bridges rendered it necessary that others should be constructed to enable the invaders to advance against the foe. The valuable stores found in the arsenals facilitated the work, and the number of islands formed by the river rendered the undertaking comparatively easy. Nevertheless, the attempt to cross at Nussdorf failed; but a second was more successful. Nor was any effort made to impede it, the archduke having resolved to allow the French to pass and to fall upon them before they could gather strength for efficient resistance.

Three miles below Vienna the Danube forms a large island of several miles in circumference, called the Isle of Lobau; it is partially covered with wood and separated from the left bank by an arm of the river not more than 150 yards in breadth. Here the French established their place of arms, and having joined it to the right bank, began on the 19th to throw bridges over to the mainland. These were finished next day, and a great part of the army being assembled on the island commenced filing across the bridges, taking post as they arrived on the Marchfeld, a wide and open plain many miles in extent, and on which arms had before decided the fate of the house of Austria. The village of Esslingen formed the right, that of Aspern the left, of the position which the French took up on entering the plain; the former is a few hundred yards distant from the river, the latter close to its banks, they are almost a mile

and a half asunder, but connected by a straight and level road. Like all the villages in this part of the country, they are of stone, strongly and massively built. At Essling a large fire-proof store, several stories in height, formed almost a citadel, and in both villages the church and churchyards offered posts of strength. On right, on left, and in front, the ground was perfectly open and suited to the action of all arms ; in rear some wood and a few slight embankments, constructed by the peasantry to secure the adjoining fields from the floods of winter, now served to cover the bridges and protect the retreat in case of disaster.

From the Bisamberg, a steep hill opposite Vienna, the Austrians had observed the works carried on in the

Isle of Lobau, and were thus directed to the very point where the French intended to cross the river. The Archduke Charles, therefore, assembled his army in the plain, the troops as they arrived taking post behind the villages of Gerardsdorf and Souring, concealed from the enemy by the swelling ground that interposed between them: and swarms of light cavalry kept the French reconnoitring parties at a distance. At an hour after noon on the 21st, all being prepared, the Austrian army, formed in five columns and consisting of 75,000 men with 288 pieces of artillery, broke up from their position and moved on to the attack.

The troops were in the highest possible spirits, and the loud exult