MAPS PLANS BATTLE ASPERN ESSLING DANUBE NAPOLEONIC WAR

BATTLE
OF
ASPERN OR ESSLING

21 & 22 MAY 1809

 2 Maps/Plans showing the different positions of the French and Austrian cavalry, infantry and artillery, one with inset map of the Environs of Vienna, explanatory of the battles of Aspern and Wagram.

Having succeeded in capturing his Austrian enemy’s capital of Vienna on 13^th May, Napoleon Bonaparte needed to cross the Danube to seek out and destroy Archduke Charles and his main army.

The emperor’s problem centred on the successful destruction of bridges across the rain-swollen Danube by the retreating Austrians and he finally found a potential crossing point at Lobau Island, some four miles away. The island was occupied and a bridge constructed by engineers.

 On 20^th May, Marshal Massena led his IV Corps across to form a bridgehead and to check for enemy troops. By the next morning more than 24,000 men with 60 cannon were occupying the villages of Aspern and Essling.

 The first thing the French command knew about the Austrian army was when more than 95,000 troops, supported by 200 cannon, moved against them.

 While not a true defeat, Aspern – Essling marked the first serious reverse suffered by Bonaparte at the hands of his foes.

 More than 21,000 French soldiers became casualties and the army suffered the grievous loss of one of its finest commanders, when Marshal Lannes died after losing a leg to a cannonball wound.

Original antique steel plate engraving published
in 1848 with original hand colour

This is one of a series of maps and plans of sieges and battles drawn up by Alexander Keith Johnston, geographer at Edinburgh to Queen Victoria, and published as an atlas to accompany Sir Archibald Alison’s Monumental History Of Europe.
Paper size is 9 by 7¼ inches.
 Slight foxing [see image]

A genuine antique not a reproduction.