The Marchfeld

The battle of Wagram was fought over a large area shown on the map above. It’s about 10 miles from Aspern to Wagram, and all of the villages shown on the map were involved in the fighting. The whole area is very flat, similar to Salisbury Plain in the UK. And in 1809 it served a similar purpose, it was a military training area. The modern roads tend to by pass the area, except for one which goes through the centre. But all of the villages are connected by a series of farm tracks. This would make it difficult to explore by car. It is too large to explore on foot. So we tackled it by bike.

The big advantage of cycling is that you can go where you want, and stop when you want. The big disadvantage is that it is all manual work. On the day we spent exploring the Marchfeld was warm and sunny, and being unused to cycling we were soon hot and saddle sore. But it was well worth it to be able to go just where we wanted.

I knew that just north of Raasdorf there is a small rise covered in trees, and it was from this spot that Napoleon observed the battle. We were delighted to find the very tree, which has a plaque confirming that it was his observation post.

All of the villages have changed a lot since 1809. We particularly wanted to visit Aderklaa, which was critical to both sides. We found it easily enough, but it did not bear any resemblance to the village shown above. The most interesting part was exploring the area between the villages, which can not have changed much, and reading accounts of the fighting in that part of the Marchfeld.