had neglected to keep the emperor informed as to his whereabouts. He was still with Davout, but, concluding that he had missed an order directing him to Dornburg, he thought to conceal his error by assuming the receipt of the order evidently alluded to in the last words, and as a result he marched towards Dornburg, and his whole corps was lost to the emperor at the crisis of the next day’s battle.
On the road from Gera to Jena Napoleon was met by intelligence from Lannes announcing his occupation of Jena and the discovery of Prussian troops to the northward. Knowing the emperor’s methods, he wisely restrained the ardour of his subordinates and asked for instructions whether to attack or wait. The emperor rode forward rapidly, reached Jena about 3 p.m., and with Lannes proceeded to the Landgrafenberg to reconnoitre. From this point his view was, however, restricted to the immediate foreground, and he only saw the camps of Hohenlohe’s left wing. At this moment the Prussians were actually on parade and ready to move off to attack, but just then the “evil genius” of the Prussian army, von Massenbach, an officer of the Headquarter Staff, rode up and claiming to speak with the authority of the king and commander-in-chief, induced Hohenlohe to order his troops back to camp. Of all this Napoleon saw nothing, but from all reports he came to the conclusion that the whole Prussian army was actually in front of him, and at once issued orders for his whole army to concentrate towards Jena, marching all night if need be. Six hours earlier his conclusion would have been correct, but early that morning the Prussian headquarters, alarmed for the safety of their line of retreat on Berlin by the presence of the French in Naumburg, decided to leave Hohenlohe and Rüchel to act as rear-guard, and with the main body to commence their retreat towards the river Unstrutt and the Eckhardtsberge where Massenbach had previously reconnoitred an “ideal” battlefield. This belief in. positions was the cardinal principle of Prussian strategy in those days. The troops had accordingly commenced their march on the morning of the 13th, and now at 3 p.m. were settling down into bivouac; they were still but a short march from the decisive field.
17. Battle of Jena.—On the French side, Lannes’ men were
working their hardest, under Napoleon’s personal supervision,
to make a practicable road up to the Landgrafenberg, and all
night long the remaining corps struggled through darkness
towards the rendezvous. By daybreak on the 14th, the anniversary
of Elchingen, upwards of 60,000 men stood densely
packed on the narrow plateau of the mountain, whilst, below
in the ravines on either flank, Soult on the right, and Augereau
on the left, were getting into position. Fortunately a dense
fog hid the helpless masses on the Landgrafenberg from sight of
the Prussian gunners. Hohenlohe had determined to drive the
French into the ravine at daybreak, but had no idea as to the
numbers in front of him. For want of room, only a few Prussian
battalions were sent forward, and these, delaying their advance
till the fog had sufficiently lifted, were met by French skirmishers,
and small columns, who rapidly overlapped their flanks and
drove them back in confusion. Hohenlohe now brought up the
remainder of his command, but in the meanwhile the French
had poured across the neck between the Landgrafenberg and the
main plateau, and the troops of Soult and Augereau were working
up the ravines on either hand. In view of these troops the
Prussian line, which had advanced faultlessly as if on parade,
halted to prepare its bayonet attack by fire, and, once halted, it
was found impossible to get them to go on again. The French
who had thrown themselves into houses, copses, &c., picked off
the officers, and the flanks of the long Prussian lines swayed and
got into confusion. The rival artilleries held each other too
thoroughly to be able to spare attention to the infantry, whilst
the Prussian cavalry, which had forgotten how to charge in
masses of eighty or more squadrons, frittered away their strength
in isolated efforts. By 10 a.m. the fourteen battalions which had
initiated this attack were outnumbered by three to one, and
drifted away from the battlefield. Their places were taken by
a fresh body, but this was soon outnumbered and outflanked
in its turn. By 2 p.m. the psychic moment had come, and
Napoleon launched his guards and the cavalry to complete the
victory and initiate the pursuit. Rüchel’s division now arrived
and made a most gallant effort to cover the retreat, but their
order being broken by the torrent of fugitives, they were soon
overwhelmed by the tide of the French victory and all organized
resistance had ceased by 4 p.m.
Briefly summarized, the battle came to this—in four successive efforts the Prussians failed because they were locally outnumbered. This was the fault of their leaders solely, for, except for the last attack, local superiority was in each case attainable. Organization and tactics did not affect the issue directly, for the conduct of the men and their junior officers gave abundant proof that in the hands of a competent leader the “linear” principle of delivering one shattering blow would have proved superior to that of a gradual attrition of the enemy here, as on the battlefields of the Peninsula and at Waterloo, and this in spite of other defects in the training of the Prussian infantry which simultaneously caused its defeat on the neighbouring field of Auerstädt.
18. Battle of Auersädt.—Here the superiority of French
mobility, a consequence of their training and not necessarily of
their system, showed its value most conclusively. Davout
in obedience to his orders of the previous morning was marching
over the Saale at Kosen, when his advanced guard came in
contact with that of the Prussian main army. The latter with
at least 50,000 men was marching in two columns, and ought
therefore to have delivered its men into line of battle twice as
fast as the French, who had to deploy from a single issue, and
whose columns had opened out in the passage of the Kösen
defile and the long ascent of the plateau above. But the Prussians
