Death
On 22 May, during a lull in the second day of the Battle of Aspern-Essling, Marshal Lannes went and sat down at the edge of a ditch, his hand over his eyes and his legs crossed. As he sat there, plunged in gloomy meditation, a small three-pound shot, fired from a gun at Enzersdorf, ricochetted, and struck him just where his legs crossed. The knee-pan of one was smashed, and the back sinews of the other torn. The Marshal said, "I am wounded; it's nothing much; give me your hand to help me up." He tried to rise, but could not. He was carried to the tête de port, where the chief surgeons proceeded to dress his wound. One of the marshal's legs was amputated. He bore the operation with great courage; it was hardly over when Napoleon came up and, kneeling beside the stretcher, wept as he embraced the marshal. Lannes' other leg was later also amputated. On 23 May he was transported by boat to the finest house in Kaiserebersdorf. Eight days later he succumbed to his wounds at daybreak on 31 May.
Read more about this topic: Jean Lannes
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste;
I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday.”
—John Donne (1572–1631)
“But the life of Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself.... Spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it. This tarrying with the negative is the magical power that converts it into being. This power is identical with what we earlier called the Subject.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)