Battle of Jena: Napoleon’s Double Knock-out Punch

 | Military History  | 2 comments  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

At 6 a.m. on October 14, the French attack rolled forward through a thick morning mist. Napoleon’s first act was to secure sufficient space on the plateau to allow his close-packed army to deploy. To attain that goal, Lannes’ V Corps marched to attack Closewitz, a half mile ahead through the fog. As space opened up on the plateau, Augereau’s VII Corps swung up on Lannes’ left and struck for Cospeda, while Soult’s IV Corps deployed to support Lannes’ right. The Imperial Guard remained in reserve.

Lannes’ advance on Closewitz went astray in the heavy mist, but eventually he captured the village, while Augereau took Cospeda. Meanwhile Soult moved up on Lannes’ right. The weight of three French corps slowly forced the Prussians back across the plateau. About 9 a.m. it began to occur to Hohenlohe that he was facing something more than a French advance guard, and he sent urgent messages to Rüchel at Weimar begging for help. By 10 a.m., the fog had lifted. The Prussians had been forced back about two miles to a second line of villages, Vierzehnheiligen on the Prussian left and Isserstadt on the right. There, they repulsed repeated attacks, and the French advance ground to a halt. ‘The sun came out,’ recalled Coignet, ‘and lighted up the beautiful plateau. Then we could see in front of us. On our right we saw a handsome carriage drawn by white horses; we were told that it was the Queen of Prussia, who was trying to escape.’

By 11 a.m., Ney’s VI Corps was on the scene, and Napoleon launched another full-scale attack. Augereau captured Isserstadt, Ney took Vierzehnheiligen, and Soult turned the Prussian left. By 1 p.m., Hohenlohe had committed all his reserves; every one of his soldiers was in combat. Rüchel’s arrival was desperately awaited as more and more French troops swarmed onto the plateau. At that hour, Napoleon ordered an advance across the whole line, and the exhausted Prussians collapsed. Napoleon unleashed Murat’s reserve cavalry, and the collapse turned into a rout. By 3 p.m., the Prussians were streaming west from the field with the French cavalry in hot pursuit. The pursuit paused about two miles from the battlefield at the village of Capellendorf as the French ran into Rüchel coming up from Weimar. With an astonishing lack of appreciation for the situation, Rüchel, described by Clausewitz as a man who was ‘energetic but who lacked intellect,’ led his 15,000 men right through Hohenlohe’s madly fleeing soldiers and tried to attack the French. By 4 p.m., Rüchel’s men had joined Hohenlohe’s routed masses, and the Battle of Jena was over.

Some 50,000 panicky Prussians were now fleeing. The French had lost about 6,500 of the 54,000 men who had actually been engaged. Prussian losses are unknown but have been estimated at about 25,000.

Napoleon returned to his headquarters believing that he had just crushed the main Prussian army. He was wrong. At Naumburg, 18 miles north of the Jena battlefield, 36-year-old Louis Nicholas Davout — balding and myopic but determined to persevere — was locked in battle with Brunswick.

At 3 a.m. on October 14, Davout received orders from Napoleon, written at 10 p.m. on October 13 at his bivouac on the plateau above Jena. The emperor wrote he had identified a Prussian army deployed about 2 1/2 miles away and extending from the heights of Jena to his front as far as Weimar. He intended to attack in the morning. He directed Davout to march across the Saale pass through the village of Auerstädt, then swing south and fall on the rear of the Prussians. The message added, ‘If Marshal Bernadotte is with you, you will be able to march together, but the Emperor hopes that he will be in the position indicated to him, that is, at Dornburg.’

Davout issued orders for the III Corps to advance, then went to see Bernadotte, whose I Corps had marched into Naumburg the previous evening. Davout gave Bernadotte a copy of the emperor’s orders and invited him to join him in the advance on Auerstädt. Bernadotte, however, had no desire to be associated with Davout. He chose to assume that the emperor wished him to go to Dornburg, located on the east bank of the Saale halfway between Naumburg and Jena, and marched his I Corps off to the south, where he would fail to support either Napoleon or Davout. After the battle Napoleon prepared a court-martial indictment for Bernadotte, but the wily Gascon escaped with a severe tongue-lashing.

So it was that early on the 14th, when the III Corps moved through the heavy morning mist across the Saale to Auerstädt, Davout’s 28,000 men found themselves attacked by 52,000 Prussians, with no hope of support. Early in the fighting the French managed to capture the village of Hassenhausen, and Davout deployed his three divisions nearby despite repeated charges by Prussian cavalry led by 63-year-old Lt. Gen. Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher. By 8:30 a.m., Davout’s steady infantry had routed Blücher’s cavalry, but the Prussian infantry was arriving in force. Over the course of the day, the French repeatedly blocked Prussian attacks, largely because the Prussians attacked piecemeal, with each division advancing in isolation and being defeated in detail. At 11 a.m., when the Prussians had exhausted their efforts, Davout ordered a French advance, and the Prussians collapsed.

Brunswick was mortally wounded during the battle, leaving it for Friedrich Wilhelm to give the command to abandon the field. When it was over, Davout had inflicted 10,000 casualties and taken 3,000 prisoners, but his own casualties totaled 7,000 — very heavy relative to his strength. Only the lack of French cavalry for pursuit prevented another Prussian rout. Over the next few weeks a relentless French pursuit bagged enemy survivors and bluffed Prussian fortresses into surrender. By November 10, barely a month after Jena-Auerstädt, Prussian might was no more. In just 33 days, the Grande Armée had killed 20,000 Prussians and taken 140,000 prisoners, along with 800 pieces of artillery and 250 colors and standards. But the war did not end. The Monster would need two more campaigns to force Friedrich Wilhelm, Queen Louise and Alexander I to the conference table.

Still, each of the two French achievements on October 14 bore its distinctive stamp. ‘At Jena, Napoleon won a battle he could not lose,’ wrote historian François-Guy Hourtoulle. ‘At Auerstädt, Davout won a battle he could not win.’

On October 24, the Grande Armée began to parade through Berlin, led by the soldiers of Davout’s III Corps, whom Napoleon had given the honor of being the first to enter the city. ‘It was a fine autumn day,’ recalled Quartermaster Charles Parquin, a cavalryman in the French 20th Chasseurs. ‘The city was beautiful, yet it looked depressing. All the shops were closed, and no one was at the windows. In the streets there were a few people and no carriages at all. The only sound to be heard was the rumble of our guns and wagons.’

Lieutenant Marcellin de Marbot rode through the city too. ‘My first feeling on returning to Berlin,’ he wrote, ‘…was one of sympathy with a patriotic population thus brought low by defeat, invasion and the loss of relations and friends. The entry of the ‘Noble Guard,’ however, disarmed and prisoners aroused in me very different sentiments. The young officers who had sharpened their sabers on the steps of the French Embassy were now humble enough. They had begged to be taken round, not through Berlin; not caring to be paraded in view of the inhabitants who had been witnesses of their old swagger. For this very reason the Emperor gave directions to the troops guarding them to march them through the street in which the French Embassy stood.’

On October 26, Napoleon visited the tomb of Frederick the Great. ‘He walked rather hurriedly at first,’ wrote a witness, ‘but as he drew near the church, he moderated his pace, which became slower still and more measured as he approached the remains of the great king to whom he had come to pay homage. The door of the monument was open; and he stopped at the entrance in a grave and meditative attitude. His glances seemed to penetrate the gloom which reigned around these august ashes, and he remained there nearly ten minutes, motionless and silent, as if absorbed in profound thought.’

This article was originally published in the October 2006 issue of Military History magazine. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Military History magazine today!

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to

Tags: 19th Century, Historical Conflicts, Napoleonic Wars

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.