`Crisis on the Danube’ chronicles 1809 campaign

CRISIS ON THE DANUBE, by James R. Arnold, Paragon House, 286 pages, $22.95.

“Crisis on the Danube” is not a book for every reader. It will, however, appeal strongly to the European history buff and the person consumingly interested in military tactics and strategy, particularly as they were practiced during the Napoleonic era. For this detailed book chronicles the preparation for and the execution of the 1809 campaign between the French and Austrian forces. The key to military balance in Europe on this occasion lay with the occasionally vacillating Czar Alexander of Russia, who ultimately opted to throw his weight against Napoleon.

James Arnold, obviously an expert in the intrigues and machinations that characterized both sides of the 1809 war, limns in the political background that underlay military plans. The volatile Napoleon, a military genius who modernized the French army, was undermined to a considerable degree at home by his Minister of Foreign Affairs Karl Talleyrand, often in league against his master with Count Clemens Metternich, the wily Austrian whose influence over the European scene profound. One of his brilliant strokes was to bring in the Russian czar on the side of the Allies when Napoleon decided to march against the Austrians in Bavaria. Had Napoleon’s political savvy been the equal of his military knowledge, he probably could have remained master of the continent. But he was politically an innocent, his naivete buttressed by the fact that he was away from his capital so much that he did not have access to the latest promulgations against his regime. Indeed, while Talleyrand and Metternich were plotting his downfall, Napoleon was waging war against the British under Wellington in the Peninsula Campaign.

Among the most fascinating insights of this book is the way in which the armies were constituted. Under Archduke Karl of Austria, his troops continued to be deployed in old-fashioned groupings so that they were often sitting ducks for Napoleon’s more flexibly arranged units. One comes away with a renewed appreciation for the way in which campaigns of this era were fought, especially in the schemes Napoleon used to outwit his enemies. As in every war, the infantry rather than the cavalry and the artillery took the brunt of the battle and suffered the greatest loss of life. Despite almost certain death on the front lines for the infantryman, Napoleon had the personal magnetism to urge on his troops, making them unmindful of their subsequent brushes with death.

With an admirable grasp of detail, Arnold shows conclusively how Napoleon, despite all the political intrigues arrayed against him, managed to out-maneuver the Austrians in all the skirmishes and battles that he engaged in from his march into Bavaria to his triumph at Ratisbonne, all this despite flawed and incomplete information as to the movements of the enemy. Frequently he had to second-guess his opponents, but he did so with innate perspicacity.

To make this segment of Napoleonic history more sanguine, Arnold has supplied plenty of pictures of those leading men in these affairs and of maps. His appendices, full of pertinent desiderata concerning military maneuvers, is impressive.

The book, as suggested above, is not easy reading despite Arnold’s fluent style. Its appeal is largely restricted to those engrossed in military affairs, particularly in those of this era. Within this framework Arnold has achieved a notable success, for he has indisputably brought alive a fabulous — if bloody — epoch.

Robert H. Newall is a free-lance writer who resides in Hampden.