A Conspiracy of the Carbonari.

by Louise Muhlbach.

CHAPTER I.

AFTER ESSLINGEN.

It was the evening of the 22d of May, 1809, the fatal day inscribed in blood-stained letters upon the pages of history, the day which brought to Napoleon the first dimming of his star of good fortune, to Germany, and especially to Austria, the first ray of dawn after the long and gloomy night.

After so many victories and triumphs; after the battles of Tilsit, Austerlitz, and Jena, the humiliation of all Germany, the triumphal days of Erfurt, when the great imperial actor saw before him a whole "parterre of kings;" after a career of victory which endured ten years, Napoleon on the 22d of May, 1809, had sustained his first defeat, lost his first battle. True, he had made this victory cost dearly enough. There had been two days of blood and carnage ere the conflict was decided, but now, at the close of these two terrible days, the fact could no longer be denied: the Austrians, under the command of the Archduke Charles, had vanquished the French at Aspern, though they were led by Napoleon himself.

Terrible indeed had been those two days of the battle of Aspern or Esslingen. The infuriated foes hurled death to and fro from the mouths of more than four hundred cannon. The earth shook with the thunder of their artillery, the stamping of their steeds; the air resounded with the shouts of the combatants, who a.s.sailed each other with the fury of rage and hate, fearing not death, but defeat; scorning life if it must be owed to the conqueror's mercy, neither giving nor taking quarter, and in dying, praying not for their own souls, but for the defeat and humiliation of the enemy!

Never since those years of battle between France and Austria has the fighting been characterized by such animosity, such fierce fury on both sides. Austria was struggling to avenge Austerlitz, France not to permit the renown of that day to be darkened.

"We will conquer or die!" was the shout with which the Austrians, for the twenty-first time, had begun the battle against the enemy, who pressed forward across three bridges from the island of Lobau in the middle of the Danube, and whom the Austrians hated doubly that day, because another painful wound had been dealt by the occupation of their capital--beautiful, beloved Vienna--the expulsion of the emperor and his family, and the possession of the German city.

Thus conquest to the Austrians meant also the release of Vienna from the mastery of the foe, the opening the way to his capital to the Emperor Francis, who had fled to Hungary.

If the French were vanquished, it meant the confession to the world that the star of Napoleon's good fortune was paling; that he, too, was merely a mortal who must bow to the will of a higher power; it meant destroying the faith of the proud, victorious French army in its own invincibility.

These were the reasons which rendered the battle so furious, so bloodthirsty on both sides; which led the combatants to rend each other with actual pleasure, with exulting rage. Each yawning wound was hailed with a shout of joy by the person who inflicted it; each man who fell dying heard, instead of the gentle lament of pity, the sigh of sympathy, the jeering laugh, the glad, victorious shout of the pitiless foe.

Then Austrian generals, eagerly encouraging their men by their own example of bravery, pressed forward at the head of their troops. The Archduke Charles, though ill and suffering, had himself lifted upon his horse, and, in the enthusiasm of the struggle, so completely forgot his sickness that he grasped the standard of a wavering battalion, dashed forward with it, and thereby induced the soldiers to rush once more, with eager shouts of joy, upon the foe.

More than ten times the village of Aspern was taken by the French, more than ten times it was recaptured by the Austrians; every step forward was marked by both sides with heaps of corpses, rivers of blood. Every foot of ground, every position conquered, however small, was the scene of furious strife. For the church in Aspern, the churchyard, single houses, nay, even single trees, bore evidence of the furious a.s.sault of the enemies upon each other; whole battalions went with exulting shouts to death.

On account of this intense animosity on both sides, this mutual desire for battle thus stimulated to the highest pitch, the victory on the first day remained undecided and the gathering darkness found the foes almost in the same position which they had occupied at the beginning of the conflict. The Austrians were still in dense ma.s.ses on the sh.o.r.e of the Danube; the French still occupied the island of Lobau, and their three bridges conveyed them across to the left bank of the Danube to meet the enemy.

But the second day, after the most terrible butchery, the most desperate struggle, was to see the victory determined.

It belonged to the Austrians, to the Archduke Charles. He had decided it by a terrible expedient--the order to let burning vessels drift down the Danube against the bridges which connected the island of Lobau with the left sh.o.r.e. The wind and the foaming waves of the river seemed on this day to be allies of the Austrians; the wind swept the ships directly upon the bridges, densely crowded with dead bodies, wounded men, soldiers, horses, and artillery; the quivering tongues of flame seized the piles and blazed brightly up till everything upon them plunged in terrible, inextricable confusion down to the surging watery grave below.

At the awful spectacle the whole French army uttered cries of anguish, the Austrians shouts of joy.

Vainly did Napoleon himself ride through the ranks, calling in the beloved voice that usually kindled enthusiasm so promptly: "I myself ordered the destruction of the bridges, that you might have no choice between glorious victory or inevitable destruction."

For the first time his soldiers doubted the truth of his words and did not answer with the exultant cheer, "_Vive l' Empereur_."

But they fought on bravely, furiously, desperately! And Napoleon, with his pallid iron countenance, remained with his troops, to watch everything, direct every movement, encourage his men, and give the necessary orders.

His generals and aids surrounded him, listening respectfully though with gloomy faces to every word which fell, weighty and momentous as a sentence of death, from the white, compressed lips. But a higher power than Napoleon was sending its decrees of death even into the group of generals gathered around the master of the world; cannon b.a.l.l.s had no reverence for the Caesar's presence; they tore from his side his dearest friend, his faithful follower, Marshal Lannes; they killed Generals St. Hilaire, Albuquerque and d'Espagne, the leaders of his brave troops, the cura.s.siers, three thousand of whom remained that day on the battlefield; they wounded Marshal Ma.s.sena, Marshal Bessieres, and six other valiant generals.

When evening came the battle was decided. Archduke Charles was the victor; the French army was forced back to the island of Lobau, whose bridges had been severed by the burning ships; the triumphant Austrians were encamped around Esslingen and Aspern, whose unknown names have been illumined since that day with eternal renown.

The island of Lobau presented a terrible chaos of troops, horses, wounded men, artillery, corpses and luggage; the wounded and dying wailed and moaned, the uninjured fairly shrieked and roared with fury. And, as if Nature wished to add her bold alarum to the mournful dirge of men, the storm-lashed waves of the Danube thundered around the island, dashed their foam-crested surges on the sh.o.r.e, and, in many places, created crimson lakes where, instead of boats, blood-stained bodies floated with yawning wounds. It seemed as if the Styx had flowed to Lobau to spare the ferryman Charon the arduous task of conveying so many corpses to the nether world, and for the purpose transformed itself into a single vast funeral barge.

Napoleon, the victor of so many battles, the man before whom all Europe trembled, all the kings of the world bowed in reverence and admiration; he who, with a wave of his hand, had overturned and founded dynasties, was now forced to witness all this--compelled to suffer and endure like any ordinary mortal!

He sat on a log near the sh.o.r.e, both elbows propped on his knees, and his pale iron face supported by his small white hands, glittering with diamonds, gazing at the roaring waves of the Danube and the throng of human beings who surrounded him.

Behind him, in gloomy silence, stood his generals--he did not notice them.

His soldiers marched before him--he did not heed them. But they saw him, and turned from him to the mountains of corpses, to the moaning wounded men, the pools of blood which everywhere surrounded them, then gazed once more at him whom they were wont to hail exultingly as their hero, their earthly G.o.d, and whom to-day, for the first time, they execrated; whom in the fury of their grief they even ventured to accuse and to scorn.

But he did not hear. He heard naught save the voices in his own breast, to whose gloomy words the wails and groans of the wounded formed a horrible chorus.

Suddenly he rose slowly, and turning toward Marshal Bessieres, who, with his wounded arm in a sling, stood nearest to him, Napoleon pointed to the river.

"To Ebersdorf!" he said, in his firm, imperious voice. "You will accompany me, marshal. You too, gentlemen," he added, turning to the captured Austrian General Weber, and the Russian General Czernitschef, who had arrived at Napoleon's headquarters the day before the battle on a special mission from the Czar Alexander, and been a very inopportune witness of his defeat.

The two generals bowed silently and followed the emperor, who went hastily down to the sh.o.r.e. A boat with four oarsmen lay waiting for him, and his two valets, Constant and Roustan, stood beside the skiff to help the emperor enter.

He thrust back their hands with a swift gesture of repulse, and stepped slowly and proudly down into the swaying, rocking boat which was to bear the Caesar and his first misfortune to his headquarters, Castle Ebersdorf.

He darted a long angry glance at the foaming waves roaring around the skiff, a glance before which the bravest of his marshals would have trembled, but which the insensible waters, tossing and surging below, swallowed as they had swallowed that day so many of his soldiers. Then, sinking slowly down upon the seat which Roustan had prepared for him of cushions and coverlets, he again propped his arms on his knees, rested his face in his hands, and gazed into vacancy. The companions whom he had ordered to attend him, and his two valets followed, and the boat put off from the sh.o.r.e, and danced, whirling hither and thither, over the foam-crested waves.

But amid the roar of the river, the plash of the dipping oars, was heard the piteous wailing of the wounded, the loud oaths and jeers of the soldiers who had rushed down to the sh.o.r.e, and, with clenched fists, hurled execrations after the emperor, accusing him, with angry scorn, of perfidy because he left them in this hour of misfortune.

Napoleon did not hear the infuriated shouts of his soldiery; he was listening to the tempest, the waves, and the menacing voices in his own breast.

Once only he raised himself from his bowed posture and again darted an angry glance at the foaming water as if he wished to lash the hated element with the look, as Xerxes had done with iron chains.

"The Danube, with its furious surges, and the storm with its mad power, have conquered me," he cried in a loud, angry voice. "Ay, all Nature must rise in rebellion and wrath to wrest a victory from me. Nature, not Archduke Charles, has vanquished me!"

The waves roared and danced recklessly on, wholly unmindful of the emperor's wrathful exclamation; they sang and thundered a poem of their might, jeering him: "Beware of offending us, for we can avenge ourselves; we hold your fate in our power. Beware of offending us, for we are bearing you on our backs in a fragile boat, and the Caesar and his empire weigh no more than the lightest fisherman with his nets. Beware of offending us, for you are nothing but an ordinary man; mortal as the poorest beggar, and, if we choose, we will drag you down to our cold, damp grave. Beware of offending us!" Did he understand the song of the mocking waves? Was that why so deep a frown of wrath rested on his brow?

He again sank into his gloomy reverie, which no one ventured to disturb--no one save the jeering surges.

Yet he seemed to think that some one addressed him, that some one whom he must answer had spoken.

"Why, yes," he cried, shrugging his shoulders, "yes, it is true, I have lost a battle! But when one has gained forty victories, it really is not anything extraordinary if he _loses_ one engagement."[A]

No one ventured to answer this exclamation. The emperor did not seem to expect it; perhaps he did not even know that any one had heard what he answered the menacing voice in his own soul.

Now the boat touched the sh.o.r.e, where carriages were ready to convey the emperor and his suite to Ebersdorf.

His whole staff, all his marshals and generals, were waiting for him before the door of the castle. With bared heads, in stiff military att.i.tude, they received their lord and master, the august emperor, expecting a gracious greeting. But he pa.s.sed on without looking at them, without even saluting them by a wave of his hand. They looked after him with wondering, angry eyes, and, like the glittering tail of a comet, followed him into the castle, up the steps, and into the hall.

But as they entered the reception-room where he usually talked with them, Napoleon had already vanished in his private office, whose door swiftly closed behind him.

The marshals and generals, aids and staff officers, still waited. The emperor would surely return, they thought. He still had to give them his commands for the next day, his orders concerning what was to be done on the island of Lobau, what provision should be made for the care of the wounded, the sustenance of the uninjured, the rescue of the remains of his army.

But they waited in vain; Napoleon did not return to them, gave them no orders. After half an hour's futile expectation, Roustan glided through the little door of the private room into the hall, and, with a very important air, whispered to the listening officers that the emperor had gone to bed immediately, and had scarcely touched the pillows ere he sunk into a deep sleep.

Yes, the Emperor Napoleon was sleeping, and his generals glided on tiptoe out of the hall and discussed outside the measures which they must now adopt on their own account to rescue the luckless fragment of the army from the island of Lobau, and make arrangements for building new bridges.

Yes, the Emperor Napoleon was sleeping! He slept all through the night, through the broad light of the next day--slept when his whole staff had gone to Lobau--slept when bodies of his infuriated guards rushed into the castle and, unheeding the emperor's presence, plundered the cellars and storerooms[B]--slept when, in the afternoon of that day, his marshals and generals returned to Castle Ebersdorf, in order at last to receive the emperor's commands.

They would not, could not believe that the commander-in-chief was still sleeping It seemed perfectly impossible that he, the ill.u.s.trious strong-brained Caesar, could permit himself to be subjugated by the common petty need of human nature in these hours when every second's delay might decide the destiny of many thousands. This sleep could be no natural one; perhaps the emperor, exhausted by fatigue and mental excitement, had fallen into a stupor; perhaps he was sleeping never to wake again. They must see him, they must convince themselves. They called Roustan and asked him to take them to the emperor's couch.