Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume III

Buonaparte, in the meantime, commenced the campaign, according to his custom, by a series of partial actions fought on different points, in which his usual combinations obtained his usual success; the whole tending to straiten the Prussians in their position, to interrupt their communications, separate them from their supplies, and compel them to fight a decisive battle from necessity, not choice, in which dispirited troops, under baffled and outwitted generals, were to encounter with soldiers who had already obtained a foretaste of victory, and who fought under the most renowned commanders, the combined efforts of the whole being directed by the master spirit of the age.

Upon the 8th October, Buonaparte gave vent to his resentment in a bulletin, in which he complained of having received a letter of twenty pages, signed by the King of Prussia, being, as he alleged, a sort of wretched pamphlet, such as England engaged hireling authors to compose at the rate of five hundred pounds sterling a-year. "I am sorry," he said, "for my brother, who does not understand the French language, and has certainly never read that rhapsody." The same publication contained much in ridicule of the Queen and Prince Louis.234 It bears evident marks of Napoleon's own composition, which was as singular, though not so felicitous, as his mode of fighting; but it was of little use to censure either the style or the reasoning of the lord of so many legions. His arms soon made the impression which he desired upon the position of the enemy.

The French advanced, in three divisions, upon the dislocated and extended disposition of the large but ill-arranged Prussian army. It was a primary and irretrievable fault of the Duke of Brunswick, that his magazines, and reserves of artillery and ammunition were placed at Naumburg, instead of being close in the rear of his army, and under the protection of his main body. This ill-timed separation rendered it easy for the French to interpose betwixt the Prussians and their supplies, providing they were able to clear the course of the Saale.

ACTION AT SAALFIELD.

With this view the French right wing, commanded by Soult and Ney, marched upon Hof. The centre was under Bernadotte and Davoust, with the guard commanded by Murat. They moved on Saalburg and Schleitz. The left wing was led by Augereau against Coburg and Saalfield. It was the object of this grand combined movement to overwhelm the Prussian right wing, which was extended farther than prudence permitted; and, having beaten this part of the army, to turn their whole position, and possess themselves of their magazines. After some previous skirmishes, a serious action took place at Saalfield, where Prince Louis of Prussia commanded the advanced guard of the Prussian left wing.

In the ardour and inexperience of youth, the brave prince, instead of being contented with defending the bridge on the Saale, quitted that advantageous position, to advance with unequal forces against Lannes, who was marching upon him from Graffenthal. If bravery could have atoned for imprudence, the battle of Saalfield would not have been lost. Prince Louis showed the utmost gallantry in leading his men when they advanced, and in rallying them when they fled. He was killed fighting hand to hand with a French subaltern, who required him to surrender, and, receiving a sabre-wound for reply, plunged his sword into the prince's body. Several of his staff fell around him.235

The victory of Saalfield opened the course of the Saale to the French, who instantly advanced on Naumburg. Buonaparte was at Gera, within half a day's journey from the latter city, whence he sent a letter to the King of Prussia, couched in the language of a victor, (for victorious he already felt himself by his numbers and position,) and seasoned with the irony of a successful foe. He regretted his good brother had been made to sign the wretched pamphlet which had borne his name, but which he protested he did not impute to him as his composition. Had Prussia asked any practicable favour of him, he said he would have granted it; but she had asked his dishonour, and ought to have known there could be but one answer. In consideration of their former friendship, Napoleon stated himself to be ready to restore peace to Prussia and her monarch; and, advising his good brother to dismiss such counsellors as recommended the present war and that of 1792, he bade him heartily farewell.236

Buonaparte neither expected nor received any answer to this missive, which was written under the exulting sensations experienced by the angler, when he feels the fish is hooked, and about to become his secure prey. Naumburg and its magazines were consigned to the flames, which first announced to the Prussians that the French army had gotten completely into their rear, had destroyed their magazines, and, being now interposed betwixt them and Saxony, left them no alternative save that of battle, which was to be waged at the greatest disadvantage with an alert enemy, to whom their supineness had already given the choice of time and place for it. There was also this ominous consideration, that, in case of disaster, the Prussians had neither principle, nor order, nor line of retreat. The enemy were betwixt them and Magdeburg, which ought to have been their rallying point; and the army of the Great Frederick was, it must be owned, brought to combat with as little reflection or military science, as a herd of school-boys might have displayed in a mutiny.

AUERSTADT.

Too late determined to make some exertion to clear their communications to the rear, the Duke of Brunswick, with the King of Prussia in person, marched with great part of their army to the recovery of Naumburg. Here Davoust, who had taken the place, remained at the head of a division of six-and-thirty thousand men, with whom he was to oppose nearly double the number. The march of the Duke of Brunswick was so slow, as to lose the advantage of this superiority. He paused on the evening of the thirteenth on the heights of Auerstadt, and gave Davoust time to reinforce the troops with which he occupied the strong defile of Koesen. The next morning, Davoust, with strong reinforcements, but still unequal in numbers to the Prussians, marched towards the enemy, whose columns were already in motion. The vanguard of both armies met, without previously knowing that they were so closely approaching each other, so thick lay the mist upon the ground.

The village of Hassen-Hausen, near which the opposite armies were first made aware of each other's proximity, became instantly the scene of a severe conflict, and was taken and retaken repeatedly. The Prussian cavalry, being superior in numbers to that of the French, and long famous for its appointments and discipline, attacked repeatedly, and was as often resisted by the French squares of infantry, whom they found it impossible to throw into disorder, or break upon any point. The French, having thus repelled the Prussian horse, carried, at the point of the bayonet, some woods and the village of Spilberg, and remained in undisturbed possession of that of Hassen-Hausen. The Prussians had by this time maintained the battle from eight in the morning till eleven, and being now engaged on all points, with the exception of two divisions of the reserve, had suffered great loss. The Generalissimo, Duke of Brunswick, wounded in the face by a grape-shot, was carried off; so was General Schmettau, and other officers of distinction. The want of an experienced chief began to be felt; when, to increase the difficulties of their situation, the King of Prussia received intelligence, that General Mollendorf, who commanded his right wing, stationed near Jena, was in the act of being defeated by Buonaparte in person. The King took the generous but perhaps desperate resolution, of trying, whether in one general charge he could not redeem the fortune of the day, by defeating that part of the French with which he was personally engaged. He ordered the attack to be made along all the line, and with all the forces which he had in the field; and his commands were obeyed with gallantry enough to vindicate the honour of the troops, but not to lead to success. They were beaten off, and the French resumed the offensive in their turn.

Still the Prussian monarch, who seems now to have taken the command upon himself, endeavouring to supply the want of professional experience by courage, brought up his last reserves, and encouraged his broken troops rather to make a final stand for victory, than to retreat in face of a conquering army. This effort also proved in vain. The Prussian line was attacked every where at once; centre and wings were broken through by the French at the bayonet's point; and the retreat, after so many fruitless efforts, in which no division had been left unengaged, was of the most disorderly character. But the confusion was increased tenfold, when, as the defeated troops reached Weimar, they fell in with the right wing of their own army, fugitives like themselves, and who were attempting to retreat in the same direction. The disorder of two routed armies meeting in opposing currents, soon became inextricable. The roads were choked up with artillery and baggage waggons; the retreat became a hurried flight; and the King himself, who had shown the utmost courage during the battle of Auerstadt, was at length, for personal safety, compelled to leave the high-roads, and escape across the fields, escorted by a small body of cavalry.

BATTLE OF JENA.

While the left of the Prussian army were in the act of combating Davoust at Auerstadt, their right, as we have hinted, were with equally bad fortune engaged at Jena. This second action, though the least important of the two, has always given the name to the double battle; because it was at Jena that Napoleon was engaged in person.

Oct. 14.

The French Emperor had arrived at this town, which is situated upon the Saale, on the 13th of October, and had lost no time in issuing those orders to his mareschals, which produced the demonstrations of Davoust, and the victory of Auerstadt. His attention was not less turned to the position he himself occupied, and in which he had the prospect of fighting Mollendorf, and the right of the Prussians, on the next morning. With his usual activity, he formed or enlarged, in the course of the night, the roads by which he proposed to bring up his artillery on the succeeding day, and by hewing the solid rock, made a path practicable for guns to the plateau, or elevated plain in the front of Jena, where his centre was established.237 The Prussian army lay before them, extended on a line of six leagues, while that of Napoleon, extremely concentrated, showed a very narrow front, but was well secured both in the flanks and in the rear. Buonaparte, according to his custom, slept in the bivouac, surrounded by his guards.238 In the morning he harangued his soldiers, and recommended to them to stand firm against the charges of the Prussian cavalry, which had been represented as very redoubtable. As before Ulm, he had promised his soldiers a repetition of the battle of Marengo, so now he pointed out to his men that the Prussians, separated from their magazines, and cut off from their country, were in the situation of Mack at Ulm. He told them, that the enemy no longer fought for honour and victory, but for the chance of opening a way to retreat; and he added, that the corps which should permit them to escape would lose their honour. The French replied with loud shouts, and demanded instantly to advance to the combat. The Emperor ordered the columns destined for the attack to descend into the plain. His centre consisted of the Imperial Guard, and two divisions of Lannes. Augereau commanded the right, which rested on a village and a forest; and Soult's division, with a part of Ney's, were upon the left.

General Mollendorf advanced on his side, and both armies, as at Auerstadt, were hid from each other by the mist, until suddenly the atmosphere cleared, and showed them to each other within the distance of half-cannon shot. The conflict instantly commenced. It began on the French right, where the Prussians attacked with the purpose of driving Augereau from the village on which he rested his extreme flank. Lannes was sent to support him, by whose succour he was enabled to stand his ground. The battle then became general; and the Prussians showed themselves such masters of discipline, that it was long impossible to gain any advantage over men, who advanced, retired, or moved to either flank, with the regularity of machines. Soult at length, by the most desperate efforts, dispossessed the Prussians opposed to him of the woods from which they had annoyed the French left; and at the same conjuncture the division of Ney, and a large reserve of cavalry, appeared upon the field of battle. Napoleon, thus strengthened, advanced the centre, consisting in a great measure of the Imperial Guard, who, being fresh and in the highest spirits, compelled the Prussian army to give way. Their retreat was at first orderly; but it was a part of Buonaparte's tactics to pour attack after attack upon a worsted enemy, as the billows of a tempestuous ocean follow each other in succession, till the last waves totally disperse the fragments of the bulwark which the first have breached. Murat, at the head of the dragoons and the cavalry of reserve, charged, as one who would merit, as far as bravery could merit, the splendid destinies which seemed now opening to him. The Prussian infantry were unable to support the shock, nor could their cavalry protect them. The rout became general.239 Great part of the artillery was taken, and the broken troops retreated in disorder upon Weimar, where, as we have already stated, their confusion became inextricable, by their encountering the other tide of fugitives from their own left, which was directed upon Weimar also. All leading and following seemed now lost in this army, so lately confiding in its numbers and discipline. There was scarcely a general left to issue orders, scarcely a soldier disposed to obey them; and it seems to have been more by a sort of instinct, than any resolved purpose, that several broken regiments were directed, or directed themselves, upon Magdeburg, where Prince Hohenloe endeavoured to rally them.

The French accounts state that 20,000 Prussians were killed and taken in the course of this fatal day; that three hundred guns fell into their power, with twenty generals, or lieutenant-generals, and standards and colours to the number of sixty.240

The mismanagement of the Prussian generals in these calamitous battles, and in all the manœuvres which preceded them, amounted to infatuation. The troops also, according to Buonaparte's evidence, scarcely maintained their high character, oppressed probably by a sense of the disadvantages under which they combated. But it is unnecessary to dwell on the various causes of a defeat, when the vanquished seem neither to have formed one combined and general plan of attack in the action, nor maintained communication with each other while it endured, nor agreed upon any scheme of retreat when the day was lost. The Duke of Brunswick, too, and General Schmettau, being mortally wounded early in the battle, the several divisions of the Prussian army fought individually, without receiving any general orders, and consequently without regular plan or combined manœuvres. The consequences of the defeat were more universally calamitous than could have been anticipated, even when we consider, that no mode of retreat having been fixed on, or general rallying place appointed, the broken army resembled a covey of heathfowl, which the sportsman marks down and destroys in detail and at his leisure.

Next day after the action, a large body of the Prussians, who, under the command of Mollendorf had retired to Erfurt, were compelled to surrender to the victors, and the marshal, with the Prince of Orange Fulda, became prisoners. Other relics of this most unhappy defeat met with the same fate. General Kalkreuth, at the head of a considerable division of troops, was overtaken and routed in an attempt to cross the Hartz mountains. Prince Eugene of Wirtemberg commanded an untouched body of sixteen thousand men, whom the Prussian general-in-chief had suffered to remain at Memmingen, without an attempt to bring them into the field. Instead of retiring when he heard all was lost, the prince was rash enough to advance towards Halle, as if to put the only unbroken division of the Prussian army in the way of the far superior and victorious hosts of France. He was accordingly attacked and defeated by Bernadotte.

PRINCE HOHENLOE – BLUCHER.

The chief point of rallying, however, was Magdeburg, under the walls of which strong city Prince Hohenloe, though wounded, contrived to assemble an army amounting to fifty thousand men, but wanting every thing, and in the last degree of confusion. But Magdeburg was no place of rest for them. The same improvidence, which had marked every step of the campaign, had exhausted that city of the immense magazines which it contained, and taken them for the supply of the Duke of Brunswick's army. The wrecks of the field of Jena were exposed to famine as well as the sword. It only remained for Prince Hohenloe to make the best escape he could to the Oder, and, considering the disastrous circumstances in which he was placed, he seems to have displayed both courage and skill in his proceedings. After various partial actions, however, in all of which he lost men, he finally found himself, with the advanced guard and centre of his army, on the heights of Prenzlow, without provisions, forage, or ammunition. Surrender became unavoidable; and at Prenzlow and Passewalk, nearly twenty thousand Prussians laid down their arms.

The rear of Prince Hohenloe's army did not immediately share this calamity. They were at Boitzenburg when the surrender took place, and amounted to about ten thousand men, the relics of the battle in which Prince Eugene of Wirtemberg had engaged near Weimar, and were under the command of a general whose name hereafter was destined to sound like a war trumpet – the celebrated Blucher.

In the extremity of his country's distresses, this distinguished soldier showed the same indomitable spirit, the same activity in execution and daringness of resolve, which afterwards led to such glorious results. He was about to leave Boitzenburg on the 29th, in consequence of his orders from Prince Hohenloe, when he learned that general's disaster at Prenzlow. He instantly changed the direction of his retreat, and, by a rapid march towards Strelitz, contrived to unite his forces with about ten thousand men, gleanings of Jena and Auerstadt, which, under the Dukes of Weimar and of Brunswick Oels, had taken their route in that direction. Thus reinforced, Blucher adopted the plan of passing the Elbe at Lauenburg, and reinforcing the Prussian garrisons in Lower Saxony. With this view he fought several sharp actions, and made many rapid marches. But the odds were too great to be balanced by courage and activity. The division of Soult which had crossed the Elbe, cut him off from Lauenburg, that of Murat interposed between him and Stralsund, while Bernadotte pressed upon his rear. Blucher had no resource but to throw himself and his diminished and dispirited army into Lubeck. The pursuers came soon up, and found him like a stag at bay. A battle was fought on the 6th of November, in the streets of Lubeck, with extreme fury on both sides, in which the Prussians were overpowered by numbers, and lost many slain, besides four thousand prisoners. Blucher fought his way out of the town, and reached Schwerta. But he had now retreated as far as he could, without violating the neutrality of the Danish territory, which would only have raised up new enemies to his unfortunate master.

On the 7th November, therefore, he gave up his good sword, to be resumed under happier auspices, and surrendered with the few thousand men which remained under his command.241 But the courage which he had manifested, like the lights of St. Elmo amid the gloom of the tempest, showed that there was at least one pupil of the Great Frederick worthy of his master, and afforded hopes, on which Prussia long dwelt in silence, till the moment of action arrived.

SURRENDER OF FORTRESSES.

The total destruction, for such it might almost be termed, of the Prussian army, was scarcely so wonderful, as the facility with which the fortresses which defend that country, some of them ranking among the foremost in Europe, were surrendered by their commandants, without shame, and without resistance, to the victorious enemy. Strong towns, and fortified places, on which the engineer had exhausted his science, provided too with large garrisons, and ample supplies, opened their gates at the sound of a French trumpet, or the explosion of a few bombs. Spandau, Stettin, Custrin, Hamelen, were each qualified to have arrested the march of invaders for months, yet were all surrendered on little more than a summons. In Magdeburg was a garrison of twenty-two thousand men, two thousand of them being artillerymen; and nevertheless this celebrated city capitulated with Mareschal Ney at the first flight of shells. Hamelen was garrisoned by six thousand troops, amply supplied with provisions, and every means of maintaining a siege. The place was surrendered to a force scarcely one-third in proportion to that of the garrison. These incidents were too gross to be imputed to folly and cowardice alone. The French themselves wondered at their conquests, yet had a shrewd guess at the manner in which they were rendered so easy. When the recreant governor of Magdeburg was insulted by the students of Halle for treachery as well as cowardice, the French garrison of the place sympathized, as soldiers, with the youthful enthusiasm of the scholars, and afforded the sordid old coward but little protection against their indignation. From a similar generous impulse, Schoels, the commandant of Hamelen, was nearly destroyed by the troops under his orders. In surrendering the place, he had endeavoured to stipulate, that, in case the Prussian provinces should pass by the fortune of war to some other power, the officers should retain their pay and rank. The soldiers were so much incensed at this stipulation, which carried desertion in its front, and a proposal to shape a private fortune to himself amid the ruin of his country, that Schoels only saved himself by delivering up the place to the French before the time stipulated in the articles of capitulation.

It is believed that, on several of these occasions, the French constructed a golden key to open these iron fortresses, without being themselves at the expense of the precious metal which composed it. Every large garrison has of course a military chest, with treasure for the regular payment of the soldiery; and it is said, that more than one commandant was unable to resist the proffer, that, in case of an immediate surrender, this deposit should not be inquired into by the captors, but left at the disposal of the governor, whose accommodating disposition had saved them the time and trouble of a siege.242

While the French army made this uninterrupted progress, the new King of Holland, Louis Buonaparte, with an army partly composed of Dutch and partly of Frenchmen, possessed himself with equal ease of Westphalia, great part of Hanover, Emden, and East Friesland.243

Oct. 25.

To complete the picture of general disorder which Prussia now exhibited, it is only necessary to add, that the unfortunate King, whose personal qualities deserved a better fate, had been obliged, after the battle, to fly into East Prussia, where he finally sought refuge in the city of Königsberg. L'Estocq, a faithful and able general, was still able to assemble out of the wreck of the Prussian army a few thousand men, for the protection of his sovereign. Buonaparte took possession of Berlin on the 25th October, eleven days after the battle of Jena. The mode in which he improved his good fortune, we reserve for future consideration.

FALL OF PRUSSIA.

The fall of Prussia was so sudden and so total, as to excite the general astonishment of Europe. Its prince was compared to the rash and inexperienced gambler, who risks his whole fortune on one desperate cast, and rises from the table totally ruined. That power had, for three quarters of a century, ranked among the most important of Europe; but never had she exhibited such a formidable position as almost immediately before her disaster, when, holding in her own hand the balance of Europe, she might, before the day of Austerlitz, have inclined the scale to which side she would. And now she lay at the feet of the antagonist whom she had rashly and in ill time defied, not fallen merely, but totally prostrate, without the means of making a single effort to arise. It was remembered that Austria, when her armies were defeated, and her capital taken, had still found resources in the courage of her subjects, and that the insurrections of Hungary and Bohemia had assumed, even after Buonaparte's most eminent successes, a character so formidable, as to aid in procuring peace for the defeated Emperor on moderate terms. Austria, therefore, was like a fortress repeatedly besieged, and as often breached and damaged, but which continued to be tenable, though diminished in strength, and deprived of important outworks. But Prussia seemed like the same fortress swallowed up by an earthquake, which leaves nothing either to inhabit or defend, and where the fearful agency of the destroyer reduces the strongest bastions and bulwarks to crumbled masses of ruins and rubbish.