The main body of the Prussian army was stationed around Weimar and Jena, a small corps under General Tauenzien was pushed forward to cover the rich magazines at Hof, and a reserve of seventeen thousand men under Eugene, duke of Wurtemberg, lay to the rear at Halle. It was remarked that this position, in case of an attack being made by Napoleon, was extremely dangerous, the only alternatives left for the Prussian army being either to advance, form a junction with the gallant Hessians and render the Rhine the seat of war, or to fall back upon the reserve and hazard a decisive battle on the plains of Leipzig. That intriguing impostor, Lucchesini, the oracle of the camp, however, purposely declared that _he_ knew Napoleon, that Napoleon would most certainly not attempt to make an attack. A few days afterward Napoleon, nevertheless, appeared, found the pass at Kosen open, cut off the Prussian army from the right bank of the Saal, from its magazines at Hof and Naumburg, which he also seized, from the reserve corps stationed at Halle, and from Prussia. Utterly astounded at the negligence of the duke of Brunswick, he exclaimed, while comparing him with Mack, "Les Prussiens sont encore plus stupides que les Autrichiens!" On being informed by some prisoners that the Prussians expected him from Erfurt when he was already at Naumburg, he said, "Ils se tromperont furieusement, ces perruques." He would, nevertheless, have been on his part exposed to great peril had the Prussians suddenly attacked him with their whole force from Weimar, Jena, and Halle, or had they instantly retired into Franconia and fallen upon his rear; but the idea never entered the heads of the Prussian generals, who tranquilly waited to be beaten by him one after the other. After Tauenzien's repulse, a second corps under Prince Louis of Prussia, which had been pushed forward to Saalfeld, imprudently attempting to maintain its position in the narrow valley, was surrounded and cut to pieces. The prince refused to yield, and, after a furious defence, was killed by a French horse-soldier. The news of this disaster speedily reached the main body of the Prussians. The duke of Brunswick, at that time holding a military council in the castle of Weimar, so entirely lost his presence of mind as to ask in the hearing of several young officers, and with embarrassment depicted on his countenance, "What are we to do?" This veteran duke would with painful slowness write down in the neatest hand the names of the villages in which the various regiments were to be quartered, notwithstanding which, it sometimes happened that, owing to his topographical ignorance, several regiments belonging to different corps d'armee were billeted in the same village and had to dispute its possession. He would hesitate for an hour whether he ought to write the name of a village Munchenholzen or Munchholzen.