The sound of distant guns at Saalfeld alarmed the Prussian headquarters. The Prussian high command realized Napoleon was about to outflank them. Brunswick began to concentrate his army and shift it to the east to meet the advancing French. He hurriedly sent out orders to Rüchel to join the main army, which would move to Weimar, midway between Erfurt and Jena, about 12 miles west of the latter. Hohenlohe was to remain at Jena to cover the left flank.

When he received his orders, Hohenlohe decided to withdraw from Jena proper and form a defensive camp on the Landgrafenberg plateau, situated west of the Saale above the town. By then the nervousness in the Prussian high command had communicated itself to the rank and file. At noon of the 11th, as Hohenlohe’s soldiers were filing through the narrow streets of Jena, a hussar with a bloodstained bandage around his head came galloping down the road from Weimar shouting: ‘Get back! Get back! The French are upon us.’ Some frightened Prussian artillerymen turned around their gun teams and galloped back into the town, colliding with the infantry columns. In an instant Hohenlohe’s entire army dissolved in panic. It took hours for the Prussian officers to gather up their soldiers.

When word reached Napoleon of these Prussian movements, he issued orders to wheel the whole French army to the left, roughly onto the line of the Saale. By the time those moves had been completed, the army would be ranged on a 30-mile front from Kahla, about 10 miles south of Jena, to Naumburg, about 20 miles north of Jena. The French army was now to the east and north of the Prussians — and nearer to Berlin.

About noon on October 12, the Prussian high command received news of the French arrival at Naumburg, throwing it into something approaching panic. A council of war was ordered immediately, and first thing the following day the Prussian leaders gathered to decide what to do.

Meanwhile, at daybreak on October 13, while the Prussian leaders were still gathering for their meeting, Lannes’ V Corps was probing its way through a thick mist along the road to Jena. The French occupied Jena, and Lannes, accompanied by a handful of infantry, gained the Landgrafenberg plateau above the town. As the mist lifted, Lannes, observing from the Windknolle — a knoll occupied by a number of windmills — saw all 40,000 of Hohenlohe’s Prussians stretching before him upon the plateau of Jena. Within minutes Lannes’ aides-de-camp were spurring their horses down the road to Napoleon’s headquarters.

‘Enfin le voile est déchiré (At last the veil is torn aside),’ observed Napoleon. By early afternoon, he was on his way to Jena; Soult’s IV Corps, Ney’s VI Corps, Augereau’s VII Corps and the Imperial Guard were advancing to Jena by forced marches; and Davout’s III Corps and Bernadotte’s I Corps were alerted to march to the sound of the guns if they heard cannon fire at Jena.

Meanwhile the Prussians had had their meeting. Instead of facing the French in battle, they decided that Brunswick’s main army would withdraw toward Leipzig, 50 miles to the northwest — and 90 miles south of Berlin — to head off the French advance. Hohenlohe would defend the line of the Saale until Brunswick and Rüchel were safely away.

By nightfall, however, the head of Brunswick’s main army had reached Auerstädt, directly across the Saale from Naumburg. The rest of his force was stretched out all the way back to Weimar, 23 miles away, where Rüchel’s army was still waiting for the roads to clear, the victim of atrocious Prussian staff work. Meanwhile, on the Landgrafenberg stood Lannes’ V Corps and the Imperial Guard, while Soult’s IV Corps, Ney’s VI Corps and Augereau’s VII Corps were close by. Bernadotte’s I Corps was just south of Naumburg.

That night Napoleon, holding a lamp, personally directed his gunners as they struggled to move artillery pieces up the steep, narrow defiles toward the Landgrafenberg, where the French soldiers were packed like sardines. Jean-Roche Coignet, a grenadier in the Imperial Guard, recalled: ‘We were obliged to grope our way along the edge of the precipice; not one of us could see the other. It was necessary to keep perfect silence, for the enemy was near us.’

Hohenlohe believed the French constituted only an advance guard, screening the flank of the main French army while it passed to the east. Consequently he placed only 8,000 men to his front, anchored by the villages of Cospeda on his left and Closewitz on his right.

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