Part 12

At this moment the two divisions of Lannes were assailed by fresh discharges of artillery and musketry. These were from the Saxon grenadiers of the Cerini brigade, who, after taking up the advanced posts of General Tauenzien, continued to move forward, firing battalion volleys with as much precision as if they had been at a review. The 17th light infantry, which formed the head of Suchet’s division, having exhausted its cartridges, was sent to the rear. The 34th took its place, kept up the fire for some time, then encountered the Saxon grenadiers with the bayonet, and broke them. The route having soon extended to the whole corps of General Tauenzien. Gazan’s and Suchet’s divisions picked up about twenty pieces of cannon and many fugitives. From the Landgrafenberg, the undulated plateaux, on which the French had just deployed, gradually subsided to the little valley of the Ilm. Hence they marched rapidly upon sloping ground, to the heels of a fleeing enemy. In this quick movement they encountered two battalions of Cerini, and also Pelet’s fusiliers, which had been left in the environs of Closewitz. These troops were flung back for the rest of the day towards General Holzendorf, commissioned on the preceding day to guard the _debouche_ of Dornburg.

This action had not lasted two hours. It was nine o’clock, and Napoleon had thus early realized the first part of his plan, which consisted in gaining the space necessary for deploying his army. At the same moment his instructions were executed at all points with remarkable punctuality. Towards the left, Marshal Augereau, having sent off Heudelet’s division, and likewise his artillery and cavalry, to the extremity of the Muhlthal, on the high road from Weimar, was climbing with Desjardin’s divisions, the back of the Landgrafenberg, and coming to form on the plateaux to the left of Gazan’s division. Marshal Soult, only one of whose divisions, that of General St. Hilaire, had arrived, was ascending from Lobstedt, in the rear of Closewitz, facing the positions of Nerkwitz and Alten-Krone, occupied by the relics of Tauenzien’s corps and by the detachment of General Holzendorf. Marshal Ney, impatient to share in the battle, had detached from his corps a battalion of voltigeurs, a battalion of grenadiers, the 25th light infantry, two regiments of cavalry, and had gone on before with this body of _elite_. He entered Jena at the very hour when the first act of the engagement was over. Lastly, Murat, returning at a gallop, with the dragoons and cuirassiers, from reconnoisances executed on the Lower Saale, was mounting in breathless haste towards Jena. Napoleon resolved, therefore, to halt for a few moments on the conquered ground, to afford his troops time to get into line.

Meanwhile, the fugitives belonging to General Tauenzien’s force had given the alarm to the whole camp of the Prussians. At the sound of the cannon, the Prince of Hohenlohe had hastened to the Weimar road, where the Prussian infantry was encamped, not yet believing the action to be general, and complaining that the troops were harassed by being obliged needlessly to get under arms. Being soon undeceived, he took his measures for giving battle. Knowing that the French had passed the Saale at Saalfeld, he had expected to see them make their appearance between Jena and Weimar, and had drawn up his army along the road running from one to the other of these towns. As this conjuncture was not realized, he was obliged to change his dispositions, and he did it with promptness and resolution. He sent the bulk of the Prussian infantry, under the command of General Grawert, to occupy the positions abandoned by General Tauenzien. Towards the Schnecke, which was to form his right, he left the Niesemuchel division, composed of the two Saxon brigades of Burgsdorf and Nehroff, of the Prussian Boguslawski battalion, and of a numerous artillery, with orders to defend to the last extremity the winding slopes by which the Weimar road rises to the plateaux. To aid them, he gave them the Cerini brigade, rallied and reinforced by four Saxon battalions. In rear of his centre, he placed a reserve of five battalions under General Dyherrn, to support General Grawert. He had the wrecks of Tauenzien’s corps rallied at some distance from the field of battle, and supplied with ammunition. As for his left, he directed General Holzendorf to push forward, if he could, and to fall upon the right of the French, while he would himself endeavor to stop them in front. He sent General Ruchel information of what was passing, and begged him to hasten his march. Lastly, he hurried off himself with the Prussian cavalry and the artillery horses, to meet the French, for the purpose of keeping them in check and covering the formation of General Grawert’s infantry.

It was about ten o’clock, and the action of the morning, interrupted for an hour, was about to begin again with greater violence, while, on the right, Marshal Soult, debouching from Lobstedt, was climbing the heights with St. Hilaire’s division; while in the centre Marshal Lannes, with Suchet’s and Gazan’s divisions, was deploying on the plateaux won in the morning; and while, on the left, Marshal Augereau, ascending from the bottom of the Muhlthal, had reached the village of Iserstedt, Marshal Ney, in his ardour for fighting, had advanced with his three thousand men of the _elite_, concealed by the fog, and had placed himself between Lannes and Augereau, facing the village of Vierzehn-Heiligen, which occupied the centre of the field of battle. He arrived at the very moment when the Prince of Hohenlohe was hastening up at the head of the Prussian cavalry. Finding himself all at once facing the enemy, he engaged before the Emperor had given orders for renewing the action. The horse artillery of the Prince of Hohenlohe having already placed itself in battery, Ney pushed the 10th chasseurs upon this artillery. This regiment, taking advantage of a clump of trees to form, dashed forward on the gallop, ascended by its right upon the flank of the Russian artillery, cut down the gunners, and took seven pieces of cannon, under the fire of the whole line of the enemy. But a mass of Prussian cuirassiers rushed upon it, and he was obliged to retire with precipitation. Ney then dispatched the 3d hussars. This regiment, manœuvring as the 10th chasseurs had done, took advantage of the clump of trees to form, ascended upon the flank of the cuirassiers, then fell upon them suddenly, threw them into disorder, and forced them to retire. Two regiments of light cavalry, however, were not enough to make head against thirty squadrons of dragoons and cuirassiers. The chasseurs and hussars were soon obliged to seek shelter behind the infantry. Marshal Ney then sent forward the battalion of grenadiers and the battalion of voltigeurs which he had brought, formed two squares, then placing himself in one of them, opposed the charges of the Prussian cavalry. He allowed the enemy’s cuirassiers to approach within twenty paces of his bayonets, and terrified them by the aspect of a motionless infantry which had reserved its fire. At his signal, a discharge within point-blank range strewed the ground with dead and wounded. Though several times assailed, these two squares remained unbroken.

Napoleon, on the top of the Landgrafenberg, had been highly astonished to hear the firing recommence without his order. He learned with still more astonishment that Marshal Ney, whom he had supposed to be in the rear, was engaged with the Prussians. He hastened up greatly displeased, and on approaching Vierzehn-Heiligen, perceived from the height Marshal Ney defending himself, in the middle of two weak squares, against the whole of the Prussian cavalry. This heroic demonstration was enough to dispel all displeasure. Napoleon sent General Bertrand with two regiments of light cavalry, all that he had at hand, in the absence of Murat, to assist in extricating Ney, and ordered Lannes to advance with his infantry. During the time that elapsed before relief arrived, the intrepid Ney was not disconcerted. While, with four regiments of horse, he renewed his charges of cavalry, he moved the 25th infantry to his left, in order to station himself on the wood of Iserstedt, which Augereau, on his part, was striving to reach; he made the battalion of grenadiers advance as far as the little wood which had protected his chasseurs, and dispatched the battalion of voltigeurs to gain possession of the village of Vierzehn-Heiligen. But, at the same instant, Lannes, coming to his assistance, threw the 21st regiment of light infantry into the village of Vierzehn-Heiligen, and, putting himself at the head of the 100th, 103d, 34th, 64th, and 88th of the line, debouched in the face of the Prussian infantry of General Grawert. The latter deployed before the village of Vierzehn-Heiligen, with a regularity of movement due to long exercises. It drew up in order of battle, and opened a regular and terrible fire of small arms. Ney’s three little detachments suffered severely; but Lannes, ascending on the right of General Grawert’s infantry, endeavored to turn it in spite of repeated charges of the Prince of Hohenlohe’s cavalry, which came to attack him in his march.

The Prince of Hohenlohe bravely supported his troops amidst the danger. The regiment of Sanitz was completely broken; he formed it anew under the fire. He then purposed that the Zastrow regiment should retake the village of Vierzehn-Heiligen at the point of the bayonet, hoping thereby to decide the victory. Meanwhile he was informed that more hostile columns began to appear; that General Holzendorf, engaged with superior forces, was incapable of seconding him; that General Ruchel, however, was on the point of joining him with his corps. He then judged it expedient to wait for this powerful succor, and poured a shower of shells into the village of Vierzehn-Heiligen, resolved to try the effect of flames before he attacked it with his bayonets. He sent at the same time officers to General Ruchel, to urge him to hasten up, and to promise him the victory if he arrived in time; for, according to him, the French were on the point of giving way. At that very hour fortune was deciding otherwise. Augereau debouching at last from the wood of Iserstedt with Desjardin’s division, disengaged Ney’s left, and began to exchange a fire of musketry with the Saxons who were defending the Schnecke, while General Heudelet attacked them in column on the high road from Jena to Weimar. On the other side of the field of battle, the corps of Marshal Soult, after driving the remains of the Cerini brigade, as well as the Pelet fusiliers, out of the wood of Closewitz, and flinging back Holzendorf’s detachment to a distance, opened its guns on the flank of the Prussians. Napoleon, seeing the progress of his two wings, and learning the arrival of the troops which had been left in rear, was no longer afraid to bring into action all the forces present on the ground, the guard included, and gave orders for advancing. An irresistible impulse was communicated to the whole line. The Prussians were driven back, broken, and hurled down the sloping ground which descends from Landgrafenberg to the valley of the Ilm. The regiments of Hohenlohe and the Hahn grenadiers, of Grawert’s division, were almost entirely destroyed by the fire or by the bayonet. The Cerini brigade, assailed with grape, fell back upon the Dyherrn reserve, which in vain opposed its five battalions to the movement of the French. That reserve, being soon left uncovered, found itself attacked, surrounded on all sides, and forced to disperse. Tauenzien’s corps, rallied for a moment, and brought back into the fire by the Prince of Hohenlohe, was hurried away, like the others, in the general rout. The Prussian cavalry, taking advantage of the absence of the heavy French cavalry, made charges to cover its broken infantry; but the chasseurs and hussars kept it in check; and though driven back several times, returned incessantly to the charge. A terrible carnage followed this disorderly retreat. At every step prisoners were made; artillery was taken by whole batteries.

In this great danger, General Ruchel at length made his appearance, but too late. He marched in two fines of infantry, having on the left the cavalry belonging to his corps, and on the right the Saxon cavalry, commanded by the brave General Zeschwitz, who had come of his own accord and taken that position. He ascended at a foot-pace those plateaux, sloping from the Landgrafenberg to the Ilm. While mounting, Prussian and French poured down around him like a torrent, the one pursued by the other. He was thus met by a sort of tempest, at the moment of his appearance on the field of battle. While he was advancing, his heart rent with grief at this disaster, the French rushed upon him with the impetuosity of victory. The cavalry which covered his left flank was first dispersed. That unfortunate general, an unwise but ardent friend of his country, was the first to oppose the shock in person. A ball entered his chest, and he was borne off dying in the arms of his soldiers. His infantry, deprived of the cavalry which covered it, found itself attacked in flank by the troops of Marshal Soult, and threatened in front by those of Marshals Lannes and Ney. The battalions placed at the left extremity of the line, seized with terror, dispersed, and hurried along the rest of the corps in their flight. To aggravate the disaster, the French dragoons and cuirassiers came up at a gallop, under the conduct of Murat, impatient to take a share in the battle. They surrounded those hapless and dispersed battalions, cut in pieces all who attempted to resist, and pursued the others to the banks of the Ilm, where they made a great number of prisoners.

On the field of battle were left only the two Saxon brigades of Burgsdorf and Nehroff, which, after honorably defending the Schnecke against Heudelet’s and Desjardin’s division of Augereau’s corps, had been forced in their position by the address of the French tirailleurs, and effected their retreat, formed into two squares. These squares presented three sides of infantry and one of artillery, the latter being the rear side. The two Saxon brigades retired, halting alternately, firing their guns, and then resuming their march. Augereau’s artillery followed, sending balls after them; a swarm of French tirailleurs ran after them, harassing them with their small arms. Murat, who had just overthrown the relics of Ruchel’s corps, fell upon the two Saxon brigades, and ordered them to be charged to the utmost extremity by his dragoons and cuirassiers. The dragoons attacked first without forcing an entrance; but they returned to the charge, penetrated and broke the square. General d’Hatpoul, with the cuirassiers, attacked the second, broke it, and made that havoc which a victorious cavalry inflicts on a broken infantry. Those unfortunate men had no other resource but to surrender. The Prussian battalion of Boguslawski was forced in its turn, and treated like the others. The brave General Zeschwitz, who had hastened with the Saxon cavalry to the assistance of its infantry, made vain efforts to support it, and was driven back, and forced to give way to the general rout.

Murat rallied his squadrons, and hastened to Weimar, to collect fresh trophies. At some distance from that town were crowded together, pell-mell, detachments of infantry, cavalry, artillery, at the top of a long and steep slope, formed by the high road leading down to the bottom of the valley of the Ilm. These troops, confusedly huddled together, were supported upon a small wood, called the wood of Webicht. All at once, the bright helmets of the French cavalry made their appearance. A few musket-shots were instinctively fired by this affrighted crowd. At this signal, the mass, seized with terror, rushed down the hill, at the foot of which Weimar is situated: foot, horse, artillerymen, all tumbled over one another into this gulf—a new and tremendous disaster. Murat now sent after them a part of his dragoons, who goaded on this mob with the points of their swords, and pursued it into the streets of Weimar. With the others he made a circuit to the other side of Weimar, and cut off the retreat of the fugitives, who surrendered by thousands.

Out of the seventy thousand Prussians who had appeared on the field of battle, not a single corps remained entire, not one retreated in order. Out of one hundred thousand French troops, composed of the corps of Marshals Soult, Lannes, Augereau, Ney, Murat, and the guard, not more than fifty thousand had fought, and they had been sufficient to overthrow the Prussian army. The greater part of that army, seized with a sort of vertigo, throwing away its arms, ceasing to know either its colors or its officers, covered all the roads of Thuringin. About twelve thousand Prussians and Saxons, killed and wounded, about four thousand French killed and wounded also, strewed the ground from Jena to Weimar. On the ground were seen stretched a great number—a greater number, indeed, than usual—of Prussian officers, who had nobly paid for their silly passions with their lives; Fifteen thousand prisoners, two hundred pieces of cannon, were in the hands of the French, intoxicated with joy. The shells of the Prussians had set fire to the town of Jena, and from the plateaux where the battle was fought, columns of flame were seen bursting from the dark bosom of night. French shells ploughed up the city of Weimar, and threatened it with a similar fate. The shrieks of fugitives while running through the streets, the tramp of Murat’s cavalry, dashing through them at a gallop, slaughtering without mercy all who were not quick enough in flinging down them arms, had filled with horror that charming city—the noble asylum of letters.

At Weimar, as at Jena, part of the inhabitants had fled. The conquerors, disposing like masters of their almost deserted towns, established their magazines and their hospitals in the churches and public buildings. Napoleon, on returning from Jena, directed his attention, according to his custom, to the collecting of the wounded, and heard shouts of _Vive l’Empereur!_ mingled with the moans of the dying.

But Napoleon knew not yet the full measure of his victory. In the course of the day, he had heard the distant thundering of the cannon in the direction of Naumberg, where he had posted Marshal Davoust. He had the greatest confidence in the wisdom, valor, and inflexible resolution of that great general, but he did not know of the immensely superior forces the Marshal had to fight, to maintain his position. The facts were soon learned. Marshal Davoust, with only twenty-six thousand men, had not only sustained his position for many hours against the impetuous attack of seventy thousand Prussians, commanded by the Duke of Brunswick, and cheered by the presence of Frederick William himself, but had routed his enemy, and thus achieved the victory of Auerstadt. Never had there been a grander display of heroic firmness by general and soldiers. The Prussians had lost three thousand prisoners, nine or ten thousand men, killed or wounded, besides the Duke of Brunswick, Marshal Mollendorf and General Schwettan mortally wounded, together with a prodigious number of their gallant officers. Davoust had suffered a loss of seven thousand men, killed or wounded, and half the generals of brigade and colonels were placed _hors de combat_. The king was denied the consolation of his army retreating in good order. Nearly every corps was broken and disbanded, being seized with a panic. The roads were crowded with fear-stricken fugitives.

During the terrible night, which followed the bloody day of Jena and Auerstadt, the victors suffered not less than the vanquished. The night was intensely cold, and they were obliged to bivouac on the ground, having scarcely any thing to eat. Many of them wounded, more or less severely, were stretched on the cold earth beside wounded enemies, mingling their groans. Napoleon made every effort in his power to relieve their sufferings, and many a poor soldier, almost fainting from loss of blood, exerted his feeble strength to shout “_Vive l’Empereur!_”

But the Prussian army was annihilated. The road to Berlin was open, and thither the French Emperor hastened, in following up his decisive victory. A few small actions were fought and the French made thousands of prisoners almost every day. Frederick William solicited an armistice, but the Emperor refused to grant it for wise military reasons. He was destined to enter the Prussian capital in triumph. Never did Europe dread the name of Napoleon so notably as when that Prussian army, upon which the last hope was founded, vanished before his resistless arms.

THE CAMP-FIRE ON THE NAREW.

Napoleon, having vanquished the Prussians, once more turned his arms against the Russians, who, under the command of Kamenski and Bennigsen, numbered about one hundred and fifteen thousand men. They were posted upon the Vistula; but as Napoleon easily passed that great river, they retired behind the Narew. The passage of this stream was one of the remarkable achievements of the French, during this portion of the Emperor’s splendid career.

Having arrived in the night, between the 18th and 19th of December, 1806, Napoleon reconnoitred the position of Marshal Davoust on the Narew, but a thick fog prevented him from attaining much accurate intelligence. He made his dispositions for attacking the enemy on the 22d or 23d of December. It is high time, he wrote to Marshal Davoust, to take our winter quarters; but this cannot be done till we have driven back the Russians.

The four divisions of General Bennigsen first presented themselves. Count Tolstoy’s division, posted at Czarnowo, occupied the apex of the angle formed by the junction of the Ukra and the Narew. That of General Sacken, also placed in rear towards Lopaczym, guarded the banks of the Ukra. The division of Prince Gallitzin was in reserve at Pultusk. The four divisions of General Buxhovden were at a great distance from those of General Bennigsen, and not calculated to render support to him.

It is easy to perceive that the distribution of the Russian corps was not judiciously combined in the angle of the Ukra and the Narew, and that they had not sufficiently concentrated their forces. If, instead of having a single division at the point of the angle, and one on each side at too great a distance from the first, lastly, five out of reach, they had distributed themselves with intelligence over ground so favourable for the defensive; if they had strongly occupied, first the conflux, then the two rivers, the Narew from Czarnowo to Pultusk, the Ukra from Pomichowo to Kolozomb; if they had placed in reserve in a central position, at Nasielsk, for example, a principal mass, ready to run to any threatened point, they might have disputed the ground with advantage. But Generals Bennigsen and Buxhovden were on bad terms; they disliked to be near each other; and old Kamenski, who had arrived only on the preceding day, had neither the necessary intelligence nor spirit for prescribing other dispositions than they had adopted in following each of them his whim.