Excerpt from The Memoirs of Baron De Marbot, Vol. 2 of 2: Late Lieutenant-General in the French Army Meanwhile the day of the great battle was drawing on. Napoleon had assembled round Ebersdorf the Army of Italy, the corps of Davout and Bernadotte with the guard, and transformed the island of Lobau into a vast fortress. Three strong bridges secured the passage of the large arm of the Danube, and everything was ready for throwing several across the small arm. T o confirm the archduke in the belief that he intended to cross again between Essling and Aspern, Napoleon had the small bridge by which we had retreated after the battle of Essling reconstructed after the night of July 1, and sent across two divisions whose skirmishers might attract the attention of the enemy while all was making ready for our attack on Enzersdorf. It is hard to understand how the arch duke could have supposed that Napoleon would make a front attack upon the huge fortifications with which he had sur rounded Essling and Aspern; this would indeed have been taking the bull by the horns. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.