onslaught from the Grande Armee to come on their own left, where they
kept their reserves.
Battle commenced on 20 May. After a cannonade from the French,
their sappers bridged the Spree and the frontal assault by three French
corps went well. Oudinot's corps performed valiantly on the right,
reinforcing the Allied idea that their left was the real target. By nightfall
everything had gone largely to plan and the French were in possession of
Bautzen. But it soon became clear that Ney had bungled his part of the
operation. Improvising swiftly, Napoleon ordered Ney to dig in and await
the enemy while General Lauriston was detached with a separate task
force to try to perform Ney's original task of appearing in the Allied rear.
Next morning the Emperor massed Soult's forces and the Guard ready
for the knock-out blow. Despairing of his original outflanking plan, he
now intended to punch right through the centre while holding on the
flanks, in effect substituting Marlborough's tactics at Blenheim for
Alexander's at Gaugamela. On the right Oudinot's conquering heroes of
the 2oth began to come under increasingly heavy pressure fr om the Allied
left. Oudinot appealed fo r reinforcements, but Napoleon told him to hold
until 3 p.m., noting that as the enemy sent more and more units after the
slowly retreating marshal, they thinned their centre.
At 2 p.m. he ordered Soult and his zo,ooo men of IV Corps forward
for the masterstroke in the centre. IV Corps fought its way on to Bautzen
plateau but then the assault faltered and gradually petered out. There
were three main reasons: the Russians fought with all the tenacity of men
determined not to be outdone by the 'new look' Prussians; Blucher
spotted the danger and pulled back some of the units pursuing Oudinot;
and Napoleon could not get his artillery forward because of the lack of
horses. By late afternoon the two centres had fought each other to
stalemate and Oudinot was still being pressed hard. The Emperor asked
himself the question he had often asked in the past, and would again in
the fu ture: what is Ney doing?
The answer was that since I I a.m. Ney had been bogged down in a
pointless fight for Preititz village. Apparently unable to understand the
import of the Emperor's commands, Ney failed to see that he should
simply have 'masked' the village and pressed on into the enemy rear.
Instead he insisted on costly attacks against the well-defended village, all
of them repulsed; to make matters worse, his retreating troops collided
with Lauriston's men, making even more hopeless the idea of outflanking
the Allied army. Even when he finally managed to take Preititz, Ney
compounded his previous errors by attacking Blucher head-on instead of
manoeuvring behind him and forcing a Prussian withdrawal.
marcin
(Marcin)
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