tion, under calamities generally considered as utterly CHAP. destructive of political independence. LVII. 71. Archduke obedience of Nor would this heroic constancy have failed in obtain- 1809. ing its appropriate reward, if the admirable directions of the Archduke Charles for the conduct of the campaign Disastrous had been implicitly obeyed. It was the disobedience of effects of the his orders by the Archduke John which deprived the John's disAustrians of all the results of the battle of Aspern, and orders. enabled Napoleon to extricate himself with success from the most perilous situation in which he had yet been placed since ascending the consular throne. Had that prince obeyed the instructions which he received from the generalissimo on the 17th May, and marched direct from Carinthia to Lintz, he would, in conjunction with Kollowrath, who was in that neighbourhood some days before, have been at the head of an imposing mass at least sixty thousand strong, even on the 23d, to which Bernadotte, with his inefficient corps of Saxons, could have opposed no adequate resistance. Can there be a doubt that the concentration of such a force directly in his rear, and on his principal line of communication, at the very moment when he was driven with a defeated army into the island of Lobau, would have compelled Napoleon to retreat; and that the battle of Aspern would have been the commencement of a series of disasters, which would speedily have brought the Imperial eagles back to the Rhine? The instantaneous effect which a similar concentration of force from the north and the south at Borissow, near the Berezina, produced on Napoleon at Moscow, three years afterwards, affords the clearest illustration, both of the importance of this movement, and the prodigious effects which it was fitted to have had, if properly executed, upon the issue of the campaign. No hazard was incurred by such a direction to part of the Imperial forces; for the Tyrol afforded a vast fortress, in which, aided by its gallant mountaineers, the detached corps, though separated from the main forces of the monarchy, might have long maintained themselves against all the efforts of the enemy. And it is impossible to estimate too highly the fortitude and talent of the illustrious general, who, when still reeking with the slaughter of a recent defeat, could conceive so admirable a plan for the circumvention of the CHAP. 1809. 72. portance of central fortresses on the defence of nations. enemy, and, undismayed by the fall of the capital, see in that catastrophe only the lure which was to seduce the invader to his ultimate ruin. Had From the important consequences which followed the occupation of Vienna, and the seizure of its immense Immense im-military resources by the French, may be deduced one conclusion of lasting value to every independent state. This is the incalculable importance of every metropolis either being adequately fortified, or possessing, in its immediate vicinity, a citadel of approved strength, capable of containing twenty or thirty thousand soldiers, and of serving as a place of secure deposit for the public archives, stores, wealth, and government, till the national strength can be fairly roused for their rescue. Austria possessed such a fortress, either in or near Vienna, the invasions of 1805 and 1809 would have terminated in the invader's ruin: had the heights of Belleville and Montmartre been strongly fortified, the invasions of 1814 and 1815 would have been attended with nothing but disaster to the Allied armies. Had Berlin been of as great strength as Dantzic, the French armies, after the disaster of Jena, would have been detained round its walls till the Russian hosts advanced, and six years of bondage saved to the Prussian monarchy. Had the Kremlin been a citadel capable of holding out six weeks, the terrible sacrifice of Moscow would not have been required: had Vienna not been impregnable to the Mussulman arms, the monarchy I would have sunk in the dust before the standards of Sobieski gleamed on the Bisamberg. Had the lines of Torres Vedras not proved an impassable barrier to Massena, the fire of patriotic resistance in the Peninsula would have been extinguished in blood: had the walls of Rome not deterred the Carthaginian hero from a siege, the fortunes of the republic would have sunk after the disaster of Cannæ. It is by no means necessary for these important ends, that the whole metropolis should be environed by fortifications; it is enough that a citadel of great strength is at hand to contain all the warlike and civil resources of the kingdom. Let no nation imagine that the magnitude of its resources relieves it from this necessity, or that the CHAP. 1809. 73. Infatuation spect. effulgence of its glory will secure it from ultimate danger. It was after the battle of Austerlitz that Napoleon first felt the necessity of fortifying Paris;1 it was in nine short years afterwards that the bitter consequences of the national vanity, which prevented his design from of England being carried into effect, were experienced by the Pari- in this resians. England now slumbers secure under the shadow Nap. in of Trafalgar and Waterloo; but let not her infatuated Month. ii. 278, 280. children suppose that they are for ever removed from the chances of disaster, or that the want of citadels to surround the vast arsenals of Woolwich, Chatham, and the Tower, will not, and that perhaps ere long, be bitterly felt either against foreign or domestic enemies. These ideas, indeed, are not popular with the present age, with whom foresight is the least cultivated of national virtues, and in which the democratic character of the legislature has tinged the government with that disregard of remote consequences, which is the invariable characteristic of the masses of mankind; and, doubtless, if any minister were now to propose the expenditure of one or two millions on such central fortifications, it would raise such a storm as would speedily prove fatal to his administration. It does by no means, however, follow from this circumstance, that it is not a measure which wisdom dictates and national security enjoins; and in despair of effecting, at present at least, any change on public opinion on this particular, the historian has only to bequeath this counsel to the generation after the next, and mark these words, if they should live so long, for the judgment of the world after the expiration of two centuries. CHAPTER LVIII. WAR IN THE TYROL, NORTHERN GERMANY, AND POLAND. LVIII. 1809. 1. Extraordi of the Tyrolese war. IT is neither on the greatest fields of battle, nor the CHAP. places where the most calamitous bloodshed has taken place, that the recollection of future ages is chiefly riveted. The vast theatres of Asiatic conflict are forgotten; the slaughtered myriads of Timour and Genghis Khan lie nary interest in undistinguished graves; hardly a pilgrim visits the scenes where, on the fields of Chalons and Tours, the destinies of civilisation and Christendom were fixed by the skill of Aëtius or the valour of Charles Martel. It is moral grandeur which produces a durable impression; it is patriotic heroism which permanently attracts the admiration of mankind. The pass of Thermopylæ, the graves of Marathon, will warm the hearts of men through every succeeding age: the chapel of Tell, the field of Morgarten, still attract the generous and brave from every civilised state: the name of Wallace, the plain of Bannockburn, have rendered Scottish story immortal in the annals of the world. The time may come when the vast and desolating wars of the French Revolution shall be dimmed in the obscurity of revolving years; when the great name of Napoleon is recollected only as a shadow of ancient days, and the fields of his fame are buried in the waves of succeeding change; but even then, the siege of Saragossa will stand forth in undecaying lustre from amid the gloom of ages; and the war in the Tyrol, the strife of La Vendée, survive unshaken above the floods of time. The country now immortalised under the name of СНАР. 1809. 2. the Tyrol, the land of Hofer and Spechbacher, lies on the southern frontier of Germany, and is composed of the mountains which, stretching eastward from the Alps of Switzerland, are interposed between the Bavarian plains Description and the fields of Italy. Less elevated than those of the of Tyrol. Helvetian cantons, without the awful sublimity of the Alps of the Oberland, or the savage wildness of the Aiguilles of Chamouny, those of the Tyrol are still more romantic, from the singular and imposing character which they in general bear, and the matchless beauty of the narrow valleys, or rather clefts, which are interspersed around their feet. Their summits, though in one or two cases little inferior in height to the Jungfrau or the Titlis,* are more rugged than those of Switzerland, from being, in general, somewhat lower, and in consequence less charged with snow, and exhibiting their various strata, ravines, and peaks, in more undisguised grandeur than where a silver mantle has been for ever thrown over the higher regions. The general level of the country is less elevated than the central parts of Helvetia, and hence it is often more beautiful: the pine and larch do not appear in such monotonous masses; but noble forests of beech and oak 1 Personal clothe the mountain sides to a greater height than any Malte Brun, hills in Britain, and a dark zone of pine separates their Inglis's brilliant hues from the gray piles of rock, or snow- Tyrol, i. 241. besprinkled peaks which repose in undisturbed serenity on the azure firmament.1 The northern and southern slopes of the Alps exhibit here, as elsewhere on the sides of the great stony girdle 1 Observation. vii. 510, 511. 3. character of sides of the of the globe, the same remarkable difference in the pro- Opposite ductions of nature, the character of the landscape, and the northern the disposition of the human species. To the north of and southern the central chain of the Brenner, every thing wears a mountains. frigid aspect. Vast forests of pine and fir clothe the middle regions of the mountains; naked rock or masses of snow compose their highest peaks; extensive pastures afford nourishment to numerous flocks and herds; barley and oats constitute the principal food of the inhabitants, and Indian corn is cultivated only in the rich and shel * The Gross Glockner is 12,400, and the Orteler-Spitz 14,500 feet high: those on the frontiers of Salzburg of little less elevation.-MALTE BRUN, vii. 511; and INGLIS's Tyrol, ii. 250. |