22 April in military history: First gas attack at Ypres, 1915

In the early evening of 22 April 1915, at about 5 p.m. by the British official history and the Canadian War Museum, German troops on the northern side of the Ypres salient in Belgium released chlorine gas against the French line. The clouds, greenish-yellow in the official history and greenish in the Juno Beach Centre's account, drifted on a light wind onto two French divisions, the 45th (Algerian) and the 87th Territorial. Veterans Affairs Canada puts the chlorine released at 160 tons, the Juno Beach Centre at 171 tonnes. Veterans Affairs Canada calls it the first poison gas attack of the war, and the British official history heads its account "First gas attack".¹

Almost all of the Algerian and Territorial troops broke and fled. The Canadian War Museum describes a hole several kilometers wide in the Allied line; Veterans Affairs Canada puts it at 6.5 kilometers and the Juno Beach Centre at five. The Germans, prepared only for a limited attack, advanced about three kilometers and dug in.²

The 1st Canadian Division held the line on the right of the Algerians and turned to cover the open flank. Near midnight the 10th and 16th Canadian Battalions counter-attacked Kitchener's Wood, west of St. Julien, at heavy cost. On 24 April the Germans released gas again, this time directly against the Canadian line. Veterans Affairs Canada gives 6,035 Canadian casualties in 48 hours, one man in three, more than 2,000 of them killed; the Canadian War Museum gives some 6,000 over the four-day battle and the Juno Beach Centre more than 6,000 dead, wounded or taken prisoner. The earlier fighting around the town is told in our article on the First Battle of Ypres, 1914.³

Austria strikes first

Archduke Charles's Austrians crossed the Inn and invaded the Kingdom of Bavaria, Napoleon's ally, on 10 April 1809 according to the Fondation Napoléon and the Austrian War Archive's official history, and on 9 April according to the army's first bulletin. According to J. Holland Rose, Austria struck too soon to gain the full benefit from her recent army reforms.⁴

The French were caught spread out. Rose writes that Napoleon, hurrying from Paris, found his forces strung out over sixty miles from Ratisbon to positions south of Augsburg, and that Austrian slowness averted the danger. Napoleon reached the front on 17 April; the army's first bulletin has him arrive at Donauwörth at two in the morning that day. Sloane puts his arrival there on the 16th.⁵

From 19 to 23 April the French won on five successive days, a run that French history, writes the historian William Milligan Sloane, knows as the Battle of Five Days. On 19 April Davout beat off the Austrians at Teugen-Hausen, on the 20th Napoleon defeated them at Abensberg, and on the 21st the French took Landshut, where Napoleon beat the Austrian left wing under General Hiller. According to the Fondation Napoléon, Charles meanwhile fell back east toward Eckmühl.⁶

Davout holds, Napoleon marches

In R. P. Dunn-Pattison's account of Napoleon's marshals, Napoleon had given Davout the task of containing the main Austrian force while he dealt with the rest, and Davout held his own until the Emperor arrived with reinforcements. The Fondation Napoléon dates the battle of Eckmühl to 21 and 22 April.⁷

According to Sloane, Napoleon left Marshal Bessières to pursue Hiller, turned back from Landshut at three in the morning of 22 April and, after a march of eighteen miles, reached the Austrian outposts before Eckmühl at one o'clock. Charles, reinforced, had begun his own advance at noon. Sloane writes that Napoleon ordered General Vandamme to seize Eckmühl and sent Marshal Jean Lannes across the Laber to get around the Austrians, while Davout threw his corps against their columns; the Austrians gave ground slowly, fighting as they went, until seven in the evening.⁸

A map, a cannonball, a village street

Marcelin de Marbot, one of Lannes's aides-de-camp, described the day in his memoirs. He wrote that while Lannes explained his orders over a map held by himself, the marshal and General Cervoni, a cannonball tore through it and killed Cervoni on the marshal's shoulder; Cervoni, a friend of Lannes, had arrived from Corsica only the day before.⁹

Marbot then led General Saint-Sulpice's cuirassiers down the high road, which formed the main street of Eckmühl. A regiment of Croats held the houses; instead of firing from the windows, he wrote, they came down into the street and were cut down, though one battalion resisted hard. A bayonet thrust killed Marbot's horse, which fell on his leg; the whole division galloped over him without touching him, and two Croat grenadiers cut him free.¹⁰

As the Austrians withdrew toward the open plain before Ratisbon, Marbot recalled, Charles threw his cavalry forward to cover the retreat of his infantry, guns and baggage, and Napoleon sent in his light cavalry backed by the strong divisions of Saint-Sulpice and Nansouty. Of the clash that followed he wrote (our translation): "This combat, at once terrible and majestic, was lit only by a faint twilight and the light of the rising moon." He put the French success down to armor: the Austrian cuirassiers were protected only in front, the French front and back.¹¹

Counting the cost

Figures for the losses differ widely between accounts, so each is given here with its source. The Fondation Napoléon puts Charles's loss at Eckmühl at more than 11,000 men. Marbot wrote that the Austrians admitted to 5,000 killed, 15,000 prisoners, 12 flags and 16 guns lost, and that they killed 1,500 Frenchmen. Sloane, summing up the five days of fighting, writes that Austria "had lost fifty thousand men".¹²

The market town of Schierling's page on museum.de calls the fight of 22 April 1809 the Battle of Eggmühl, the present spelling of the village's name, and says its fallen found their final resting place in mass graves. In 1909, a hundred years after the battle, the people of Eggmühl raised a monument to them: a bronze Bavarian lion on a tall pedestal of shell limestone, set on a symbolic burial mound.¹³

There was no pursuit that night. Marbot wrote that Lannes urged Napoleon to drive the beaten army against the Danube and enter Ratisbon with it, but the other marshals pointed to the exhausted infantry, the three leagues still to cover and the risks of a night battle, and Napoleon halted the army on the plain. Sloane likewise writes that Napoleon yielded to his generals' protest that the troops were exhausted.¹⁴

Ladders at Ratisbon

Charles used the night to reach Ratisbon, whose bridge carried his baggage and most of his troops over the Danube; Sloane adds that he threw a pontoon bridge across next to the stone one. Napoleon could not march on Vienna while an Austrian army could recross the river behind him, Marbot explained, so the town had to be taken. On 23 April, to avoid a long siege, Napoleon attacked it; his guns opened a breach and the Austrian battalions inside had to surrender.¹⁵

That day Napoleon himself was hit. His valet, Louis Constant Wairy, recalled (in Walter Clark's English translation) that Napoleon turned to Marshal Berthier and exclaimed, "I am wounded!" Constant and the Fondation Napoléon both say a ball struck his heel; the Fondation calls it a stray bullet, and both say he was treated on the field and at once got back on his horse. Other accounts place the wound elsewhere: Marbot at the right ankle, Sloane in the great toe. Marbot, who dates the wound to the moment before the assault, wrote that thousands of soldiers crowded around the Emperor until he rode along the lines to reassure them.¹⁶

Two storming parties were shot down before they could plant their ladders, and when no volunteers came forward for a third, Lannes seized a ladder himself; his staff held him back, two of his aides-de-camp led the next attack, and the town was taken. Marbot, who carried the first ladder, gives the marshal's words (our translation): "Well then! I will show you that before I was a marshal I was a grenadier, and I still am!"¹⁷

A masterpiece without a knockout

The Fondation Napoléon calls Eckmühl decisive for the rest of the campaign: caught out by the Austrian invasion, Napoleon had taken back the initiative within two weeks. The Austrian army escaped, however. Charles made for the Bohemian Forest, and Napoleon marched on Vienna, whose surrender the Fondation Napoléon and Rose date to 13 May. On 21 and 22 May Charles fought the French at Aspern-Essling as they crossed the Danube, inflicting what Rose calls a severe defeat on the Emperor, and Napoleon won the battle of Wagram on 5 and 6 July.¹⁸

Sloane writes that to the end of his life Napoleon regarded the strategic operations that culminated at Eckmühl as his masterpiece in that line, and that his critic Jomini held the same opinion. Davout's tenacity was rewarded with the title Prince of Eckmühl, which, according to the Fondation Napoléon, Napoleon conferred at Schönbrunn on 15 August 1809. Wagram has a place in our ranking of the greatest Napoleonic battles, and the Emperor's career is told in our article on Napoleon Bonaparte.¹⁹