Memoirs of Napoleon — Volume 10 by Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
page 97 of 100 (97%)
page 97 of 100 (97%)
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Vienna before England had even organised the expedition to which I have
just alluded. He left Paris on the 11th of April, was at Donauwerth on the 17th, and on the 23d he was master of Ratisbon. In the engagement which preceded his entrance into that town Napoleon received a slight wound in the heel. He nevertheless remained on the field of battle. It was also between Donauwerth and Ratisbon that Davoust, by a bold manoeuvre, gained and merited the title of Prince of Eckmuhl. --[The great battle of Eckmuhl, where 100,000 Austrians were driven from all their positions, was fought on the 22d of April.-Editor of 1836 edition.]-- At this period fortune was not only bent on favouring Napoleon's arms, but she seemed to take pleasure in realising even his boasting predictions; for the French troops entered Vienna within a month after a proclamation issued by Napoleon at Ratisbon, in which he said he would be master of the Austrian capital in that time. But while he was thus marching from triumph to triumph the people of Hamburg and the neighbouring countries had a neighbour who did not leave them altogether without inquietude. The famous Prussian partisan, Major Schill, after pursuing his system of plunder in Westphalia, came and threw himself into Mecklenburg, whence, I understood, it was his intention to surprise Hamburg. At the head of 600 well-mounted hussars and between 1500 and 2000 infantry badly armed, he took possession of the little fort of Domitz, in Mecklenburg, on the 15th of May, from whence he despatched parties who levied contributions on both banks of the Elbe. Schill inspired terror wherever he went. On the 19th of May a detachment of 30 men belonging to Schill's corps entered Wismar. It was commanded by Count Moleke, who had formerly been in the Prussian service, and who |
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