For the first time his soldiers doubted the truth of his words and did not answer with the exultant cheer, “Vive l’ Empereur.”

But they fought on bravely, furiously, desperately!  And Napoleon, with his pallid iron countenance, remained with his troops, to watch everything, direct every movement, encourage his men, and give the necessary orders.  His generals and aids surrounded him, listening respectfully though with gloomy faces to every word which fell, weighty and momentous as a sentence of death, from the white, compressed lips.  But a higher power than Napoleon was sending its decrees of death even into the group of generals gathered around the master of the world; cannon balls had no reverence for the Caesar’s presence; they tore from his side his dearest friend, his faithful follower, Marshal Lannes; they killed Generals St. Hilaire, Albuquerque and d’Espagne, the leaders of his brave troops, the curassiers, three thousand of whom remained that day on the battlefield; they wounded Marshal Massena, Marshal Bessieres, and six other valiant generals.

When evening came the battle was decided.  Archduke Charles was the victor; the French army was forced back to the island of Lobau, whose bridges had been severed by the burning ships; the triumphant Austrians were encamped around Esslingen and Aspern, whose unknown names have been illumined since that day with eternal renown.

The island of Lobau presented a terrible chaos of troops, horses, wounded men, artillery, corpses and luggage; the wounded and dying wailed and moaned, the uninjured fairly shrieked and roared with fury.  And, as if Nature wished to add her bold alarum to the mournful dirge of men, the storm-lashed waves of the Danube thundered around the island, dashed their foam-crested surges on the shore, and, in many places, created crimson lakes where, instead of boats, blood-stained bodies floated with yawning wounds.  It seemed as if the Styx had flowed to Lobau to spare the ferryman Charon the arduous task of conveying so many corpses to the nether world, and for the purpose transformed itself into a single vast funeral barge.

Napoleon, the victor of so many battles, the man before whom all Europe trembled, all the kings of the world bowed in reverence and admiration; he who, with a wave of his hand, had overturned and founded dynasties, was now forced to witness all this—­compelled to suffer and endure like any ordinary mortal!

He sat on a log near the shore, both elbows propped on his knees, and his pale iron face supported by his small white hands, glittering with diamonds, gazing at the roaring waves of the Danube and the throng of human beings who surrounded him.

Behind him, in gloomy silence, stood his generals—­he did not notice them.  His soldiers marched before him—­he did not heed them.  But they saw him, and turned from him to the mountains of corpses, to the moaning wounded men, the pools of blood which everywhere surrounded them, then gazed once more at him whom they were wont to hail exultingly as their hero, their earthly god, and whom to-day, for the first time, they execrated; whom in the fury of their grief they even ventured to accuse and to scorn.