might be waiting for him there? To guard against this danger, Napoleon planned
the corps’ movements in such a way that, marching in parallel, they should do so
roughly at the same time. To Soult, who was leading the other wing, he wrote:
‘once at Hof [on the other side of the Frankenwald], your first concern is to
establish communication with Lobenstein, Ebersdorf, and Schleiz’. 39 All of these
were places where theGrande Arme ́ehad to pass and where the enemy, assuming
he had finally understood what was going on, might present himself to oppose it.
In the event, the cavalry brigade and Lannes’ corps on the leftdidcome under
enemy attack at the time when, tired after weeks of almost non-stop marching
and out of touch with the imperial headquarters, they emerged from the forest at
Saalfeld. The emperor, who was still inside it, could hear the ensuing cannonade;
however, since it did not last for very long, he did not allow it to perturb him. 40
On 9 October, with theGrande Arme ́enow operating on Saxon territory, the
centre column, with Murat at its head, met a Prussian detachment at Schleiz. He
defeated it, making it fall back, and sent back news to Napoleon who was
marching directly behind him at Ebersdorf.
Throughout these days, the riddle of where the Prussian army was, and, even
more so, what its intentions were, remained unsolved. It is true that, on paper, the
French enjoyed a small numerical advantage over their enemy. However, they
were now far away from their bases at Bamberg and even further from their
starting positions on the Rhine. Some of Napoleon’s corps, notably the Guard,
were still dozens of miles behind, desperately trying to catch up. By contrast, the
Prussians were already concentrated and operating not far from their own border.
To use the terminology developed by the greatest contemporary expert, Antoine
Jomini, 41 the emperor only had one possible line of retreat open to him. Had he
been forced to take it, he would have been pressed against the Saale and might
have been annihilated; not so the Prussians who had two or three. A lesser
commander less certain of his troops’ ability to fight, even if outnumbered,
might have allowed these facts to delay operations or even bring them to a
temporary halt until the situation clarified itself. Not so, of course, in this case.
The news of the engagement at Schleiz, which was brought to Napoleon by one
of his senioradjutants genereaux, clarified the situation to a certain extent. From
it, as well as some prisoners’ reports that were attached to it, he was finally able to
cobble together what he thought was a coherent estimate of where the enemy was,
and what he was up to. To Soult, who was leading the right wing and thus almost
as likely to come under Prussian attack as Lannes had been, he wrote:
It seems clear to me that the Prussians were planning to attack; their left was going to
debouch through Jena, Saalfeld, and Coburg, commanded by Prince Louis at Saalfeld. The
other column was going to proceed via Meiningen and Fulda. The Prussians being located
further to the west than had been anticipated, it thus seems you have nothing between you
[at Plauen] and Dresden, perhaps not even 10,000 men.
To this missive, which was written at 08.00 hours on 10 October, he appended
another:
Napoleon and the Dawn of Operational Warfare 27