But the storming of the castle of Ebelsberg was not yet over. The burning town had been cleared of the Imperialists, who were now pouring a veritable hail of shot on the besiegers from the surrounding heights, and their situation was perilous in the extreme, cut off as they were from their friends and surrounded only by their foes. Why the Austrians should have begun to retreat when such an opportunity was offered them to annihilate the enemy is beyond comprehension. Such was the case, and they hastened towards Enns, leaving two thousand killed and wounded, and over that number of prisoners. The French also lost very heavily. Late in the afternoon Napoleon came up, and in company with Savary, entered the town. He was by no means pleased with the terrible sights which met him on all sides, and bitterly lamented the heavy losses which his troops had suffered. Savary states that the Emperor remarked: “It were well if all promoters of wars could behold such an appalling picture. They would then discover how much evil humanity has to suffer from their projects.” If he did thus speak, it shows how blinded he had become by his own egotism; for Napoleon had certainly forced the war on unhappy Austria, now sorely discomfited by the turn events had taken. CHAPTER XXV The Austrian Campaign--_continued_ (1809) On the 10th May 1809, the French were before Vienna, and preparations were made for a vigorous attack. Late in the evening of the 11th the Emperor’s artillerymen began to hurl shells into the city, which was but ill-defended by Archduke Maximilian, who thought too much of his own skin to be of any considerable service, and speedily retired with his troops from the capital. Within forty-eight hours of the first shot being fired many of the French troops were in Vienna, the Emperor taking up his quarters in the palace of Schönbrünn near by. Here he issued a decree annexing Rome, to which Pius VII. retorted with a Bull of excommunication. Napoleon, always an admirer of Charlemagne, referred to that monarch as “our august predecessor.” He had already hinted that the Pope should be no more than Bishop of Rome, as was the case under the rule of the founder of the Empire of the West. Several weeks later the Holy Father was escorted from the Quirinal to Avignon, and thence to Savona, in which quiet retreat the Emperor hoped he would come to his senses, in other words, to Napoleon’s way of thinking. This is exactly what the aged and determined Pontiff did not do, however. He preferred to remain virtually a prisoner and to pray for the recovery of his temporal kingdom rather than to submit to the dictatorship of the Emperor. The latter did not see fit to relent until 1814, the Pope then being at Fontainebleau. He offered to restore a portion of his states, but Pius VII. refused to discuss any terms except from Rome, to which city he returned on the Emperor’s abdication.