army. Napoleon now set to work to devise a master plan that would
suddenly unite the two wings of his army in a lightning stroke and
pulverize the enemy.
Having sent orders to Ney to 'mask' Berlin and send part of his force
south hidden from the enemy, Napoleon advanced across the Elbe. The
Allies were slightly inferior numerically but had more seasoned man
power and a good defensive position, with the river Spree in fr ont of
them. Napoleon was trading on the confidence his enemy presumably felt
to bring off a spectacular victory of the Austerlitz kind. His battle-plan
was a strategic conception based on Alexander the Great's envelopment
of the Persian flank at Gaugamela in 331 BC. He would begin by pinning
the enemy - gradually committing more and more units in the centre.
Ney meanwhile would proceed south by forced marches, ready to appear
in the Allied rear and fall on the right flank. Once the Emperor was
convinced that all enemy reserves had been drawn into the fr ontal
engagement, the outflanking force would attack, forcing their opponents
to switch forces from the centre to deal with the new threat; the French
reserves would then deliver the coup de grace in the centre.
Had the plan worked out, Bautzen would have been in the pantheon
along with Friedland, Jena and Marengo. But, apart fr om his old fault of
issuing imprecisely worded orders, Napoleon did not really have the
generals for the job. This was a conception that required the skills of the
late and lamented Lannes, of Massena who was back in Spain, or of
Davout who was on the lower Elbe. Instead, Napoleon had to use his
worst marshals: Soult, Ney and MacDonald. Ney once again proved
incapable of fo llowing orders. Instead of leaving a holding force at Berlin,
he marched south with his entire army; he then failed to implement the
clear order to wheel to the east of Bautzen to cut off the Allied retreat.
On 19 May Napoleon drew up his forces in battle order: Bertrand was
on the left, Oudinot on the right, Marmont and MacDonald in the
centre, with Soult's corps and the Guard in reserve. The initial French
aim was to seize the village of Hochkirk and to wear out the enemy in the
centre while Ney completed his outflanking movement on the right;
Bertrand would then move across to deliver the knock-out blow. But Ney
sent word that he would not be in position by the 19th; Napoleon
therefore opted for a slugging match on the 2oth, hoping to lull the
enemy before the envelopment on the 2rst. Facing him were the
Prussians under Blucher and the Russians under Czar Alexander: their
battle-plans were almost the mirror image of Napoleon's, since they
intended to mass their attack on the French left and expected the main
marcin
(Marcin)
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