I have just received your dispatch of 9 October, 18.00 hours [as the crow flies the distance
between Plauen and Ebersdorf is less than twenty miles, which gives us an idea of how fast,
or how slow, news travelled in those days]....The news that 1,000 Prussians are retreating
from Plauen to Gera leaves no doubt in my mind that Gera is the meeting point selected by
the enemy. I doubt whether they can concentrate there before I get there first. I hope that
the day will bring information that will give me a better idea of their plans. 42
Yet, at this time, he had not yet re-established communications with two out of
his eight corps operating on the left.
The day passed without further enemy news. ‘Once we arrive at Gera’, Napo-
leon wrote to Soult at 18.00 hours, ‘things will clarify themselves’. 43 Meanwhile,
acting on the little information he had, he issued a series of orders that would
have led to the concentration of all his forces in a semicircle around Gera by noon
on 11 October. This proved to be a blow in the air; when Murat’s cavalry, closely
followed by Bernadotte’s corps, entered Gera in the morning, it found the place
empty. Only around midnight did two other reports arrive. One, coming from
Soult, said that the enemy had left Gera (in fact, only small forces had taken up
positions there; the bulk of their army was between Erfurt and Jena, much further
to the west). The other, written by Murat, gave a more correct picture by
explaining that a captured Saxon officer had placed the king of Prussia with
200,000 men at Erfurt. Clearly, Brunswick was not going to exploit the opportu-
nity and offer battle as far south as Napoleon had feared. For all he knew, the
Prussians might be preparing to retreat north, in the direction of Magdeburg, or
east, towards Dresden: wrong again. In fact, the Prussians had been as much in
the dark as he had been, perhaps more so. On 10 October, they had only just
become alerted to the danger to their southern (left) flank. They were forced to
give up whatever plan they may have had to attack west towards Gotha, but there
still could be no question of a general retreat. 44
At this point, based solely on two reports and a hurried glance at the map, the
great manoeuvre that was to place theGrande Arme ́eacross the Prussian com-
munications and force Brunswick to give battle with his front inverted got under
way. Between 02.30 and 06.00 hours on 12 October, a series of curt orders went
out to the marshals. While Napoleon personally wrote to those in the forefront of
the advance, he left it to Berthier to inform the rest. On average, the orders moved
at 5.6 miles an hour, 45 a rather slow pace that was probably a result of the fact that
they were travelling at night over unfamiliar terrain. Whatisimpressive, and
seems to confirm everything said about thecorps d’arme ́esystem so far, is the
speed with which they were carried out. Again, on average, just two hours passed
from the moment each one was received to the moment execution began. For all
the electronic marvels at its disposal, no modern force of similar size could have
done better and a great many do very much worse.
Following its orders, the entireGrande Arme ́eswung to the north-east. Pro-
ceeding, this time, from the army’s left wing to its right, Lannes was ordered to
march directly north-east towards Jena with Augereau following him as far as
Khala. In the centre, Murat was to proceed to Zeitz, on the road to Dresden.
Bernadotte and Davout, who previously had been marching right behind Murat,
28 The Evolution of Operational Art