oral defeat. The Austrians celebrated the battle as their
victory, the honors of which they accorded to the last cavalry charge
under Prince John Liechtenstein; and in the peaceful churchyard at
Aspern lies the effigy of a majestic lion stricken to the heart, as a
reminder to patriotic Austrians of those two days' victorious
fighting, which literally drenched the spot with blood. "We could not
use the victory," wrote Charles's chief of staff on the twenty-fourth;
"for the enemy's strong position made pursuit impossible." This he
well knew, because the night before the Austrians had tried with
signal failure to dislodge the French army from the Lobau.

The respective feelings of the two forces are mirrored in two facts.
On the twenty-third Napoleon again visited Lannes, who was now fully
conscious and aware that he was doomed. He was as fearless as ever and
with the stern candor of an old republican poured out to the Emperor
all that he felt. The army, he said, was weary of bloodshed, the
nation of its sense of exhaustion; for both were alike aware that they
suffered and bled no longer for a principle, but for the boundless
ambition of one man. The veteran marshal refused all sympathy or
consolation, and turned his face to the wall. Both Marbot and Pelet
declare that this story of Cadet de Gassicourt is an invention; if so,
it is a clever one, for we know from other sources that the language
ascribed to Lannes expressed the sentiments of the soldiery. As there
was little chance for booty in such rapid marching and constant
fighting, the youth and the poor were disheartened. The great fortunes
won by the officers were of little use while peace was denied for
their enjoyment; the millions of Massena did not save him from the
exposures and hardships of the battle-field, and he confessed that he
loved luxury and immoral self-indulgence. Such voices had created an
undercurrent of discontent.

The feeling of Charles and his soldiers was not greatly different.
There was nothing possible as the result of their victory but to take
up a more comfortable position on the same Marchfeld which had
witnessed their losses. Before them were the bodies of ten thousand
dead and four times that number had been wounded: losses which were
about equally divided between their brethren and their foes. The
Archduke urged that now was the time for diplomacy. The battle of
Aspern had softened Napoleon, he said, and Austria might secure an
advanta