Ile Espagne – named after the highly regarded General d’Espagne who was killed commanding the French 3rd Heavy Cavalry Division at Aspern-Essling – lay closer to Lobau Island than Ile du Moulin and was occupied sooner by the French. According to Scotty Bowden and Charles Tarbox’s map in Rothenberg’s Napoleon’s Great Adversary (see 1809 Reference) some bridging had already taken place as early as 8.30 am on the 22 May. According to the map, Ile Espagne was also lined with fieldworks at this time. This all seemed somewhat surprising so soon in the conflict when resources were extremely limited and every effort had to be put into repairing the all- important damaged bridges over to Lobau Island.
The islets on the Stadtler Arm were, like Lobau Island, mostly covered in brush and woodland. The tree bases that featured in Post 64 were made specially as four tree bases for my model of Ile du Moulin. For Ile Espagne, I needed another tree base. I put together one more, this time using a Hornby Skale Scenics birch tree and a sea moss stem sprinkled with fine foam flock.

Ile Espagne

© Bowden and Tarbox
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