#wagram

Lasalle at Wagram (1809)

Café Parisien, by Francisco Segarra

Primitive copy of that painting of Napoleon before the battle of Wagram. (pinterest, no info)

Bivouac de Napoléon sur le champ de bataille de Wagram

Wagram, 6 July 1809

Antoine Lasalle is said to have once declared that any cavalryman not dead by the age of 30 was a blackguard. He was two months into his 34th year at the time of his final battle, immediately before which he had felt, according to Savary, 

a strange presentiment of the fate that awaited him. The acquisition of glory had been a much greater solicitude to him than the advancement of fortune; but on the night previous to the battle he seems to have had the fate of his children strongly impressed on his mind, and he awoke to draw up a petition to the Emperor on their behalf, which he placed in his sabre-tasche. When the Emperor passed in the morning in front of his division, Lasalle did not address him; but he stopped M. Maret, who was a few paces behind, and told him that, never having asked any favour of the Emperor, he begged he would take charge of the petition which he then handed to him, in case any misfortune should befall him; a few hours afterwards he was no more. [Savary, Memoirs, Vol II part II, 1928 edition, pgs 125-6]

Lasalle’s death occurred towards the very end of the battle. Having so far contributed little towards what was shaping up to be a very costly French victory, Lasalle, looking to grab some glory in its final moments, spotted some Hungarian infantry in the distance, and led several squadrons of the 1st Cuirassiers at them in a charge. Soon after, he was shot between the eyes by a Hungarian grenadier, dying instantly. 

On the 23rd of July, Lasalle’s widow received the following letter from him, written in Vienna three weeks earlier:

I am going to bed for two or three hours, ma bonne amie, after having had the honour of dining with His Imperial Highness and the Viceroy... The whole army is assembled, and in two of three hours we shall see who is going to reign on the Danube. We have five or six hundred pieces of cannon and are willing as angels. Goodnight, mon amie; you are in my thoughts. [Johnson, Napoleon’s Cavalry and its Leaders, 2007, pg 87.]

In 1891 his remains, originally buried in Austria, were finally interred at Les Invalides.