The battle

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The battle ( French : La Bataille ) is an award-winning historical novel by the French writer Patrick Rambaud from 1997 (German edition: 2000). From a French point of view, he describes the battle near Aspern between Napoleonic and Austrian troops in 1809 very realistically and largely based on historical facts. Among other things, the novel was awarded the prestigious French Prix ​​Goncourt literary prize.

Map of the status of the Battle of Aspern on May 21, 1809 in the afternoon.

Historical background

The Battle of Aspern on May 21 and 22, 1809 was part of the military conflict between France and its allies with Austria in the Fifth Coalition War . After Napoléon Bonaparte's troops entered Vienna on May 13th, they were supposed to cross the Danube in order to advance on the left bank of the river against the army of the Austrian Archduke Karl .

Napoléon chose a point about a mile below Vienna on the Danube island of Lobau as a transition point . The French initially succeeded in crossing the Danube over pontoon bridges with part of their army there on May 20, 1809 and occupying the two places Aspern and Eßling (today parts of Vienna). The Austrians succeeded several times in destroying these bridges, so that Napoléon's troops were cut off from supplies and reinforcements. In the following two days there were bitter and extremely costly battles in Aspern and Eßling as well as on the Marchfeld plain . The French troops finally had to retreat to the island of Lobau and the right bank of the Danube.

The Battle of Aspern and Eßling was one of the bloodiest in history with more than 50,000 wounded, missing and fallen. It is also considered Napoleon's first defeat on land. The French emperor was able to make up for his defeat with his victory in the battle of Wagram on July 5 and 6, 1809, which was even more lossy for both sides. This Napoleonic victory led to the Schönbrunn Peace Treaty on October 14, 1809 , which ended the Fifth Coalition War in France's favor.

action

The battle describes the events surrounding the battles at Aspern and Eßling from a purely French point of view. The novel begins on May 16, 1809 and ends on May 30, including the days before and after the battle. The book is divided into seven chapters and an appendix. The first two chapters describe the preparation for battle, chapters three to six the fighting and the last chapter the days after. The central figure for Patrick Rambaud is Colonel Louis-François Lejeune , who is an authentic historical person. Lejeune is a liaison officer in the General Staff , so he travels a lot between the individual locations and interlinks the individual levels of action. In the appendix, Rambaud describes how he came up with the idea for the novel (he took up an idea from Honoré de Balzac ), which sources he used and what has become of some of the historical persons dealt with in the novel.

Napoléon Bonaparte on a painting by Jacques-Louis David from 1812.

First chapter: Vienna 1809

The novel begins with the French Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte choosing the spot on the Danube below Vienna with his chief of staff , Marshal Louis-Alexandre Berthier , on May 16, 1809 , where they and their troops want to cross the river. Napoléon orders that two pontoon bridges be built within four days over the main stream of the Danube to the island of Lobau and from there over a branch to the left bank of the river. Berthier then sends one of his adjutants , Colonel Louis-François Lejeune , to Marshal André Masséna to take care of everything else. Lejeune informs Masséna, who has moved into his quarters in a summer palace in a suburb of Vienna, about Napoléon's orders. Masséna, in turn, sends Lejeune to the headquarters in Schönbrunn Palace to see the director , Pierre Daru , to commission him with the procurement of the material for the bridge construction.

After speaking to Daru, Lejeune meets his old friend Henri Beyle in the castle, who takes part in the campaign as a military officer in the directorate and who years later becomes famous as a writer under the pseudonym Stendal . Lejeune and Beyle decide to ride to Vienna, where Lejeune and his friend Edmond de Périgord have quartered in a confiscated town house . Once there, they find out that French cuirassiers are ransacking the house. Lejeune furiously beats the looters out of the house, particularly beating a soldier named Fayolle.

Another reason Lejeune reacted so angry was that he was concerned about the safety of the 17-year-old eldest daughter in the family, Anna Krauss. She stayed behind in Vienna with her younger sisters and a governess , and Lejeune fell in love with the young woman in the few days of his stay in Vienna. Beyle, who also moves into the house at Lejeune's request, falls in love with her instantly. While Lejeune returns to Schönbrunn Palace, Beyle and Périgord take a look at Vienna teeming with French soldiers in the evening, where they briefly meet the fusilier Vincent Paradis. In the meantime Napoléon informs Berthier and Lejeune of his battle plan in Schönbrunn and orders the occupation of Lobau Island before the pontoon bridges are completed.

Chapter two: what soldiers dream of

The island is occupied two days later by a vanguard , which also includes the Fusilier Paradis. Another two days later, on May 20, 1809, Marshal Masséna and his troops crossed the first pontoon bridge over the main river of the Danube to the island of Lobau. There Paradis meets Colonel Lejeune, which it temporarily as reconnaissance is under his direct command and takes along. Then Lejeune, who comes from Alsace and speaks German , interrogates some captured Austrian soldiers.

In the meantime, the French pioneer soldiers have also completed the second pontoon bridge from the island to the left bank of the Danube and the first troops are being relocated there - among them the cuirassier Fayolle. This is also part of the mounted vanguard that first explored Aspern and then Eßling . Both villages are almost deserted, but Fayolle and his comrade Pacotte come across a young woman and a man on the upper floor of a house in Essling, who attacks them with a knife. Fayolle kills the man with his saber and demonstratively throws the body out of the window onto the street when his General Espagne and other troops arrive. They then secretly handcuff and gag the woman with the intention of rape her at a later opportunity when no officers are around.

Lejeune also explored the area on horseback with Paradis and is now reporting to Masséna, who in turn had a look around Eßling. There he noticed a massive storage building in which one can hide well. Masséna sends Lejeune to the General Staff on the island of Lobau with information about the granary, where Napoléon and some high-ranking officers have settled down for the night. Lejeune, his friend Edmond de Périgord and Paradis also spend the night on the island. Fayolle and Pacotte, on the other hand, return under cover of darkness to the house in Essling where they left the young woman tied up. They find her dead (apparently the woman choked on the gag ), but this does not prevent Fayolle from violating the body. Disgusted, Pacotte leaves the house alone and is surprised and killed on the street by soldiers from an Austrian patrol .

Meanwhile, the military officer Henri Beyle, who suffers from syphilis , can stay in Vienna thanks to a medical certificate. In the afternoon he meets in the Prater with his lover, the French actress Valentina, who has followed him from Paris. Beyle has grown tired of her (not least because of the encounter with Anna Krauss) and wants to break up with her, but cannot do so. After they separated again, he returned to his quarters in the Kraussschen house and met a new tenant there - the mysterious German Friedrich Staps from Erfurt , who absolutely wanted to meet Napoléon.

Third chapter: the first day

On the morning of the first day of the two-day battle, May 21, 1809, Napoleon gave the final orders for the French battle formation. Marshal Masséna and his troops are assigned the left wing in Aspern and Marshal Jean Lannes the right wing with Eßling. In the center between the two villages, Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bessières commands the cuirassiers and the light cavalry .

Meanwhile, Colonel Lejeune and the Fusilier Paradis watch on the island of Lobau as more troops cross the Danube over the two pontoon bridges - including units of the Imperial Guard . With a heavy heart, Lejeune has to send his scout Paradis back to his original regiment , where the risk of being wounded or killed is significantly greater than in the general staff. Shortly afterwards the larger of the two makeshift bridges broke after the Austrians had managed to damage it with the help of barges loaded with stones. The French troops at Aspern and Essling are thus cut off from supplies and reinforcements.

The battle begins while Lejeune starts repairing the bridge. The Austrian troops under Archduke Karl attack the French positions, with the focus of the attacks initially on Aspern. In front of the village, the Fusilier Paradis, near the banks of the Danube, experienced his first exchange of fire. After a surprise attack by Austrian hussars , his already severely decimated company had to retreat to Aspern. Marshal Masséna recognizes from his observation post in the church tower of Aspern that the Austrians are trying to break through to Aspern near the Danube in order to encompass the French troops from behind. He therefore lets the Austrians bombard the Austrians with cannons, which in turn fire at Aspern and set it on fire. In addition, despite being clearly numerically inferior, Masséna ordered several counter-attacks in order to disrupt and delay the Austrian deployment. Before that, he has his soldiers dispensed with wine , because when they are drunk they have less fear and inhibitions.

Meanwhile, in nearby Vienna, numerous onlookers watch what is happening east of the city from roofs, towers and the old city wall. Henri Beyle also looked for a vantage point with Anna Krauss and her sisters. He is annoyed when he happens to meet his lover Valentina and some of her fellow actors there. In the meantime, Friedrich Staps has bought a large kitchen knife in a hardware store. Beyle later observes Staps kneeling on the floor of his room in Krauss's house and praying with the knife in his hand.

Napoléon has in the meantime formed a picture of the situation in front of Eßling (whereby he was almost killed by a cannonball). While Marshal Masséna's troops on the left wing in Aspern are falling more and more behind, the units of Marshal Lannes on the right wing near Essling are able to hold their positions. Back in the headquarters of the General Staff on the island of Lobau, Napoléon is reported that the Austrians are thinning out their troops in the center between the two villages by concentrating their attacks on Aspern and Eßling. The French Emperor therefore orders Marshal Bessières to launch a surprise relief attack in the center to eliminate Austrian artillery positions and capture cannons. The cuirassier Fayolle also took part in the cavalry attacks at Aspern and Eßling. In the countless attacks against the Austrian artillery and in cavalry battles with Uhlans , he barely escaped death several times and had to watch how many of his comrades were killed - including his General Espagne.

At Aspern, after the wine has been served, the Fusilier Paradis experiences the exchange of fire and bayonet attacks against Austrian positions only as if in a trance . He too is in constant danger of death and has to watch the death of numerous comrades. Finally, after a cannonball has struck in its immediate vicinity, Paradis also sinks, stunned and covered in blood. The soldiers of Marshal Massénas have to withdraw more and more from the Austrian superiority and hide behind the cemetery wall and in the church in Aspern as a last refuge. Colonel Lejeune, who has brought new orders from the General Staff and is now locked up in Aspern, observes the special courage of the Marshal in defending the Church. When it gets dark, Lejeune, Masséna and his surviving soldiers manage to escape from Aspern.

Fourth chapter: the first night

When the first night fell, the battle was interrupted. The French soldiers are exhausted, thousands fatally wounded or have already died. Hundreds of injured people are brought to a makeshift field hospital on Lobau Island, which is operated by the surgeon Doctor Percy and a few helpers. The fusilier Paradis, who is physically completely intact and only looked disfigured by the blood and shreds of flesh of his comrades, also gets there. However, after the atrocities experienced, Paradis is severely traumatized . Percy therefore decides to keep the strong young man as an assistant to save him further combat missions.

The cuirassier Fayolle also survived the first day of the battle unharmed, but in the darkness he is plagued by cruel memories of the fighting, the deaths of many comrades and his general. Most of all, however, he is plagued by the thought of the young woman he killed and abused in Essling. Driven by an unrestrained inner urge, Fayolle makes his way past French and Austrian outposts to Eßling. In front of the house in which he left his victim, he then stands as if spellbound without entering it.

Even on the General Staff on Lobau Island, only a few can sleep. Colonel Lejeune uses the time to write a love letter to Anna Krauss. Meanwhile, Emperor Napoléon is issuing the battle plan for the second day of the fighting: Marshal Masséna is to recapture Aspern with fresh troops on the left wing, while Essling is only to be defended on the right wing. In the plain between the two villages, Marshals Lannes and Bessières, on the other hand, are supposed to smash the center of the Austrian army with their units and roll up the opponent's wings. In line with these plans, the news comes that the large makeshift bridge over the main river of the Danube has been re-established, so that the soldiers and material urgently needed for the attack can be brought in. When Napoléon mounts his horse to take over the march of the new troops, he is barely missed by the bullet of an Austrian sniper .

Chapter five: the second day

At the beginning of the second day of the battle, on May 22nd, 1809, Marshal Masséna gave the order to retake Aspern. He hopes to be able to surprise the Austrians in the morning mist, but his units encounter well-prepared resistance. Only after fresh French troops arrive on the battlefield, Masséna's soldiers manage to occupy the village and the largely destroyed church after bloody fighting. Shortly afterwards, under the personal leadership of Marshals Lannes and Bessières, the main attack begins in the center, and they can quickly put the Austrians on the defensive here too. From Lannes' point of view, Napoléon's battle plan seems to be working and victory is within reach.

Meanwhile, Colonel Lejeune is at the large pontoon bridge over the Danube, urging the French reinforcement troops to hurry. He also sends his orderly officer over the swaying bridge to bring the love letter he wrote that night to Anna Krauss in Vienna. As soon as the orderly (happy about this easy task far away from the action) has disappeared, Lejeune has to watch as the Austrians set fire to a watermill that was coated with pitch and made floatable with boats and let the Danube drift down. The French bridge pioneers cannot stop the burning monster and the bridge over the main river of the Danube is destroyed again. Thus Napoléon's troops at Aspern and Eßling are again cut off from supplies and reinforcements.

Napoléon angrily realizes that he cannot continue the battle, which is currently going well for him, and angrily orders the offensive to be broken off. In order to prevent a complete defeat against the numerically superior Austrians, his troops had to hide in Aspern and Eßling in order to prepare an orderly retreat on the Danube island Lobau the next night. However, the French units have to hold out until the next sunset, i.e. about ten hours. Lejeune brings Lannes the order to retire to Essling - even the marshal, who already believed his victory is certain, is furious.

In Vienna, Friedrich Staps , who spent the night away from home, wants to go to his quarters in the Krauss family with a friend in the morning. However, the friend realizes that the house is being watched by the police and they both go on unobtrusively. It becomes clear that Staps is planning an assassination attempt on Napoléon. Staps decides to go into hiding and accepts his friend's offer to hide him. In the meantime, Lejeune's orderly has handed the letter to Anna Krauss and tells her and Henri Beyle about the course of the battle so far. However, since he does not yet know about the renewed destruction of the makeshift bridge, he assumes an approaching French victory.

The Fusilier Paradis spends the first hours of the new day as the new assistant to field surgeon Doctor Percy, together with other paramedics, searching the battlefield for more wounded. Those who are still given a chance of survival are loaded onto a wooden cart and taken to the field hospital on the Danube island of Lobau. Then he helps to collect horse carcasses in order to obtain meat for the field kitchen. Paradis does his new gruesome job with a certain pride: instead of killing people, he can help here to save at least some from death.

Meanwhile, the cuirassier Fayolle prevents a comrade from killing himself. His injured hand was bandaged as a makeshift bandage and his head was torn off from a cannonball during the next cavalry attack on Austrian artillery positions. Fayolle, who has to watch this and whose horse's leg is torn off, falls exhausted into a grain field and falls asleep.

The French soldiers are running out of ammunition more and more because it is hardly possible to get supplies by boat across the Danube. The troops get more and more distress in the course of the day at all sections. Napoléon therefore orders the reserves to be deployed - including units from his Imperial Guard . The fighting is now concentrated on Eßling, where the French have to hide in a massive storage building from the numerically superior Austrians . It was only through a counterattack by Napoléon's guard that the Austrians were able to be pushed back from Eßling. Guards then cut the throats of around 700 Hungarians captured on the grounds that they could not burden themselves with prisoners.

At the edge of the plain between Aspern and Eßling, Marshal Lannes is injured by a cannonball that ricochets off a wall and smashes his left knee. In the (relatively well-equipped) field hospital of the Imperial Guard on the island of Lobau, three doctors decide to amputate Lannes' leg despite the inadequate hygienic conditions and despite the risk of gangrene . In the meantime, more units of the Imperial Guard are sent into battle to enable the other troops to withdraw in an orderly manner. The fighting ends when it gets dark. In the evening Napoléon visits the bed of Lannes, who is meanwhile dying.

Chapter Six: The Second Night

After the end of the second day of the battle, Napoléon struggled with fate in the quarters of the General Staff on the island of Lobau. Less depressing than the deaths of tens of thousands of soldiers, however, is the fatal injury of his friend and long-time companion Marshal Lannes and the military defeat. However, he does not blame his own wrong decisions for the lost battle, such as the hasty construction of the correspondingly unstable temporary bridges over the Danube within just four days or the hasty attack on the Austrian troops without waiting for the planned reinforcements to arrive. Rather, Napoleon attributes his defeat to the incomprehension of his general staff and to the enemy General Danube . Marshal Masséna succeeds in encouraging the emperor again and both decide to initiate an orderly retreat to the island of Lobau.

Meanwhile, the cuirassier Fayolle is awakening again on the battlefield between Aspern and Eßling. He is unharmed, but exhausted and depressed - and he has to think again of the young woman he killed and abused in Eßling. He only gets up when some French paramedics (among them the Fusilier Paradis) come by with a wooden cart to pick up pieces of equipment and weapons that have been left lying around. A few meters away they find a fallen cuirassier captain, and Fayolle takes his pistol. He follows the paramedics to Essling and then separates from them. He finds a bag of powder and bullets near a dead hussar . Equipped in this way, Fayolle finally goes into the half-destroyed house in which he had left the young woman. Her body is no longer there, and the cuirassier shoots himself in the temple.

In Vienna, Henri Beyle observed during the night how Anna Krauss, her sisters and the governess secretly leave the house and depart in a carriage. Beyle learns that the 17-year-old has left to see her lover - an Austrian officer in Archduke Karl's general staff . He is disappointed to note that Anna Krauss had not been honest with him and Colonel Lejeune, who courted the young woman. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, the bells of St. Stephen's Cathedral and other churches in Vienna begin to ring. Rumors circulate among residents of the Austrian capital that the French have been defeated and (falsely) that Napoléon has been captured or even killed.

In the meantime, Marshal Lannes has fallen into delirium in the field hospital on the Danube island of Lobau . He fantasizes that he is still in battle and talks incoherent things. Meanwhile, Emperor Napoléon gives the final orders for the French to retreat to the island and allows a boat to take them to the right bank of the Danube. He reached Schönbrunn Palace safe and sound that night . Colonel Lejeune brings the orders to Marshal Masséna, where he barely escapes an Austrian post in the pitch black night near Aspern and is almost struck down by his own soldiers. At dawn the Fusilier Paradis observes how the last remaining French troops withdraw over the smaller pontoon bridge from the left bank of the Danube to the island of Lobau. This bridge will then be demolished in order to repair the larger one to the right bank of the Danube with the building material obtained in this way and to complete the retreat.

Chapter Seven: After the Carnage

Since Colonel Lejeune has to supervise the repair of the makeshift bridge, he can only ride to the Krauss House in Vienna two days later. Extremely disappointed and angry about Anna Krauss' secret departure, he devastated her room and fell into apathy for days afterwards . To alleviate his lovesickness , Henri Beyle and another friend persuade him to travel together to the nearby spa town of Baden near Vienna . After her return a few days later, Beyle introduced the colonel to Valentina on a visit to the theater in Vienna, and both quickly fell in love with each other.

Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte is now doing everything possible to make up for his defeat at Aspern and Eßling . He has more troops brought in from Italy and preparations are made for a new offensive against the Austrian troops on the left bank of the Danube. This includes the construction of a solid bridge on the island of Lobau and a fortified outpost on the same. In addition, he shows himself to the population at a parade of his Imperial Guard at Schönbrunn Palace, in order to impress them and at the same time to raise the morale of his soldiers again. On the sidelines of the parade, Friedrich Staps is arrested when he tries to get to Napoléon and a knife is discovered on him.

During the subsequent interrogation, which Napoleon carried out personally, Staps frankly confessed that he wanted to kill the French emperor because he had plunged Germany into disaster. Napoléon has the young man examined by his personal doctor, who can discover no signs of mental illness. The emperor then offers Staps a pardon if he promises to give up his plan and return home. But when Staps emphasizes that if he is released he would attempt another assassination attempt, Napoléon gives the order to take him away, which amounts to a death sentence .

In addition, Napoléon visits his Marshal Lannes, who is still struggling with death, who has since been moved to better quarters, but whose second leg also had to be amputated. Lannes no longer recognizes the Kaiser and only talks confused things. Finally, on May 30, 1809, during a visit by Napoleon to the now fortified island of Lobau, Lannes' death was reported to him. In a conversation with Marshal Masséna, the emperor announced that he would soon advance again against the Austrians and defeat them in a battle near Wagram .

Main themes

By Patrick Rambauds novel The Battle undergo two main themes, namely as men on the one hand with women like her and the other with violence round. Using the various actors, Rambaud describes examples of different male behavioral patterns, sometimes juxtaposing opposing patterns.

This is particularly clear with the two simple soldiers, the fusilier Vincent Paradis and the cuirassier Fayolle. Paradis (the name was obviously chosen with care by Rambaud) is the (sexually) innocent boy from the country. He goes almost insane in the face of the violence, but ultimately survives all battles unscathed. Fayolle, on the other hand, is a ruthless urban proletarian. He only knows women as prostitutes or as spoils of war - and ultimately breaks down because of his loveless life and the senseless violence that surrounds him and that he himself commits.

Even for Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte , women and violence are only means in the novel that have to serve their respective ends when necessary. As a man of power, it is completely natural for him to give orders and see them carried out - regardless of whether he orders tens of thousands of men to the front or a young widow who caught his eye with her black mourning clothes in the colorful crowd at a parade Bedchamber. When Napoléon has to go through a field camp of wounded soldiers after a lost battle, he ignores the misery around him.

Colonel Louis-François Lejeune is portrayed in the novel as a consummate gentleman who gallantly woos the 17-year-old Viennese Anna Krauss, whom he adores, without offending her. He embellishes the horrors of battle with thoughts of her and he even finds the time and leisure to write her a love letter. But when he returns to her house after surviving the battle (now perhaps expecting less aloofness) and does not find her, his behavior turns into violence. He has a fit of rage and ravages Anna's room. But just a few days later he got over this emotional defeat and comforted himself with someone else.

rating

The German publisher describes the book as a " historical novel about the madness of war ". However, despite the realistic portrayal of the battle, it is not an anti-war novel. Patrick Rambaud describes the events consistently like a neutral observer in the third person , which means that the reader always maintains a certain distance from the events. In addition, he does not really question the real meaning and ultimate success of Napoléon's campaign in Austria. Instead, the book even ends with a preview of the coming victorious battle of Wagram , so that the novel has an optimistic ending (from a French point of view).

Press reviews

The novel Die Schlacht received intensive reviews in the German-language press. Here are some examples:

  • The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said that " violence loses its charm, a terrible automatism develops and human puppets, left alone with the futility of their efforts, degenerate into callous fighting machines ."
  • The Neue Zürcher Zeitung rated The Battle as a " gripping, sometimes extremely disturbing novel ".
  • The Süddeutsche Zeitung , on the other hand, criticized the novel as " involuntarily grotesque in an elegant manner ".

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.suhrkamp.de/titel/titel.cfm?bestellnr=39818
  2. ^ All quotations from Perlentaucher