commanded 6o,ooo Prussians; another mixed force of so,ooo Prussians
and Saxons were under the Prince of Hohenlohe; and a third fo rce of
30,000 was under Ri.ichel. Napoleon planned to intercept the armies
before they could unite. He began crossing the Franconian fo rest on 2
October with a 18o,ooo-strong army drawn up in a square fo rmation,
ready to deal with an enemy attack from any direction.
By 8 October Napoleon was expecting an engagement on the Elbe near
Leipzig. But as he emerged from the fo rest and began to move across
Saxony towards Leipzig, intelligence reached him that the main Prussian
army was at Erfurt, to the west. Mentally calculating march times, he
estimated that he would be fighting a battle on the 16th and faced his
army round towards the river Saale. On 13 October Lannes, commanding
the advance guard, reported that the Prussians were present in strength at
Jena on the Saale. During the night of 13-14 October Napoleon ordered
12o,ooo of his men to converge on Jena while I and III Corps under,
respectively, Bernadotte and Davout, were to advance north to Auerstiidt
to cut off the Prussian retreat to the Elbe.
Once again Bernadotte elected not to obey his orders, peeled away
from Davout and marched to Dornburg. But at Jena confusion was
compounding uncertainty as the main Prussian army streamed away
northwards, leaving Hohenlohe at Jena (supported by Ri.ichel at Weimar)
to cover the retreat. Meanwhile Napoleon, expecting to encounter the
main enemy army, caught up with Lannes on the evening of the 13th and
next morning got so,ooo men on to the projected battlefield, with 70,000
more coming up fast. Around 6 a.m. Lannes, Soult and Augereau began
by driving off the Prussian vanguard and enlarging the bridgehead on the
west bank of the Saale. There was then a short pause to allow new
fo rmations to come up. Once Ney's VI Corps arrived, Napoleon sent him
and Lannes in a two-corps attack on the Prussians. An outnumbered
Hohenlohe fo ught back fiercely and called up reinforcements. The
headstrong Ney attacked furiously but allowed himself to be cut off from
Lannes and Augereau (this around 10 a.m.). Napoleon had to intervene in
person with a massed artillery battery to rescue Ney.
By midday Augereau and Soult were in their proper positions on the
flanks. An hour's slaughter took place as the Prussian infantry, in an
exposed position, was cut to pieces. Napoleon ordered a general advance
at 1 p.m.; the Prussians retreated and the retreat soon became a rout. By
3 p.m. the French had inflicted 25,000 casualties (including I5,ooo
prisoners) and sustained losses of s,ooo themselves. Although roughly
equal in numbers of big guns (120), the two sides were otherwise ill-
marcin
(Marcin)
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