Austria was struggling to avenge Austerlitz, France not to permit the renown of that day to be darkened.
"We will conquer or die!" was the shout with which the Austrians, for the twenty-first time, had begun the battle against the enemy, who pressed forward across three bridges from the island of Lobau in the middle of the Danube, and whom the Austrians hated doubly that day, because another painful wound had been dealt by the occupation of their capital--beautiful, beloved Vienna--the expulsion of the emperor and his family, and the possession of the German city.
Thus conquest to the Austrians meant also the release of Vienna from the mastery of the foe, the opening the way to his capital to the Emperor Francis, who had fled to Hungary.
If the French were vanquished, it meant the confession to the world that the star of Napoleon's good fortune was paling; that he, too, was merely a mortal who must bow to the will of a higher power; it meant destroying the faith of the proud, victorious French army in its own invincibility.
These were the reasons which rendered the battle so furious, so bloodthirsty on both sides; which led the combatants to rend each other with actual pleasure, with exulting rage.

Each yawning wound was hailed with a shout of joy by the person who inflicted it; each man who fell dying heard, instead of the gentle lament of pity, the sigh of sympathy, the jeering laugh, the glad, victorious shout of the pitiless foe.
Then Austrian generals, eagerly encouraging their men by their own example of bravery, pressed forward at the head of their troops.

The Archduke Charles, though ill and suffering, had himself lifted upon his horse, and, in the enthusiasm of the struggle, so completely forgot his sickness that he grasped the standard of a wavering battalion, dashed forward with it, and thereby induced the soldiers to rush once more, with eager shouts of joy, upon the foe.
More than ten times the village of Aspern was taken by the French, more than ten times it was recaptured by the Austrians; every step forward was marked by both sides with heaps of corpses, rivers of blood.

Every foot of ground, every position conquered, however small, was the scene of furious strife.

For the church in Aspern, the churchyard, single houses, nay, even single trees, bore evidence of the furious assault of the enemies upon each other; whole battalions went with exulting shouts to death.
On account of this intense animosity on both sides, this mutual desire for battle thus stimulated to the highest pitch, the victory on the first day remained undecided and the gathering darkness found the foes almost in the same position which they had occupied at the beginning of the conflict.