Description

50 signed and numbered prints

Of the many savage town fights in the Napoleonic wars, few lasted longer, or consumed more lives, than the epic struggle for Aspern over the course of 21-22 May 1809.  Ghastly

scenes of carnage, taken to the grandest scale, overwhelmed the countless individual acts of heroism, such as the moment depicted here.  Each bullet-scarred building, barricaded

and occupied, would exact a high price each time it fell.  Many places changed hands over a dozen times.  The Battle of Aspern depicts on canvas one such attack by helmeted German

infantrymen against the French line soldiers of General Molitor’s Division.  Hasty defenses made from piles of the former occupants’ furniture, shield the defenders from the

determined Austrians, one wielding a sapper’s axe.  On the ground, casualties from this and previous attacks await their fate; note the Hungarian infantrymen to the right, and the

French officer on the left.  In the archway a French grenadier prepares to lob a piece of masonry, while an Austrian officer fires his pistol.

J.J. Pelet, one of Marshal Massena’s aides-de-camp, wrote a memorable description (quoted from James Arnold’s excellent ‘Napoleon Conquers Austria):

“Aspern was erased by a hail of balls, burned by howitzer shells, choked by the intermingled dead of the contestants….We fought without letup, inside, outside; we disputed every foot

of the church, the church tower, each street, each house, each wall….The furious combat continued along the streets, driven out of one alleyway, we awaited for them at the next.”

General Molitor’s Division, outnumbered by General Hiller’s and Bellegrade’s Austrians by well over three to one, fought back and forth for the town for the better part of the 21^st,

when the fighting ended in the evening, with the Austrians in possession of the key Church, at the far left of Aspern.  Molitor’s division lost nearly half of its men in the struggle.  General

Legrand’s men opened the second day by storming up the corpse strewn streets and seizing the church.  After the retreat of Lannes in the center, and the epic cavalry fights, the Austrians

focused again on Aspern.  French Historian Louis Adolphe Thiers relates:

“Hiller and Bellegarde now make reiterated attacks on the unfortunate village of Aspern, which is but a mass of ruins and corpses.  The Tirailleurs of the Guard, not withstanding their

youthful ardor and the efforts of their veteran officers, are driven out of the village.  Immediately, Legrand with the wreck of his division, amongst them broken down with fatigue,

but elevated above the weakness of human nature by the force of his soul.  Legrand, who is charged with the execution of his orders, appears everywhere, with the point of his hat cut

off by a cannonball, and often obliged to use his sword to parry the thrusts of the enemy’sbayonets—-Thanks to this heroic resistance, Aspern remained ours.”