Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume III.Scott, Walter
History
Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume III.
Scott, Walter
France -- History -- 1789-1815; Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821
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.
[Sidenote: PRINCE HOHENLOE--BLUCHER.]
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