check Blucher. There is no doubt that the emperor remained very nervous about where Blucher’s aggressive nature would lead. After receiving the news of the Army of Silesia’s initial advance to the Bober, for instance, he wrote to Blucher that ‘your recent battles which have been so glorious must not lead you to involve yourself in a full-scale engagement’.32
Whether deliberate or accidental, the treatment of Langeron was deeply unfair to both him and Blucher. Langeron had some reason to believe that he was acting in accordance with Blucher’s instructions and Alexander’s own wishes. He also had excellent reason to fear that if Napoleon was allowed just a few more days to pursue Blucher, the latter would stand and fight, whatever the odds. The commander-in-chief might indeed have had no choice in the matter since there was a limit to how much more retreating the Landwehr regiments could take before they disintegrated. In fact Blucher himself wrote to Alexander that if need be he would stand and fight against Napoleon even if seriously outnumbered, providing he could find a strong defensive position where he could deploy his artillery to advantage. Inevitably, Blucher was furious about the many occasions during the first two weeks of the campaign when Langeron disobeyed his orders in the name of caution. By 25 August he and Gneisenau had lost all patience and were determined to get Alexander to remove the Russian general.33
Very fortunately for the Army of Silesia, the Trachenberg plan worked as intended. By 23 August it was clear to Napoleon that he could spare no more time chasing Blucher. Schwarzenberg’s army was invading Saxony and threatening the key supply base of Dresden. Turning back to confront this danger with the Guards and the corps of Marmont and Victor, Napoleon left Marshal MacDonald to cope with Blucher. Under his command would be Sebastiani’s Second Cavalry Corps and the Third, Fifth and Eleventh Infantry corps. Though Napoleon left Third Corps to MacDonald, he ordered its commander, Marshal Ney, to hand over command to General Souham and himself to take control of the army facing Bernadotte in front of Berlin.
Before departing for Dresden Napoleon ordered MacDonald to advance over the river Katzbach and drive Blucher back beyond Jauer.
After this his job was to keep the enemy pinned down in eastern Silesia, far away from the crucial theatre of operations in Saxony west of the Elbe. MacDonald ordered his men to advance over the Katzbach on 26 August. Meanwhile Blucher was immediately aware of the departure of Napoleon and much of the enemy army. He therefore ordered the Army of Silesia to resume offensive operations, beginning with an advance over the Katzbach, also planned for 26 August. The scene was set for the crucial battle which took place on that day. Neither commander expected the other to advance. The resulting confusion when the two advancing armies bumped into each other was increased because heavy rain greatly reduced visibility.
MacDonald’s army advanced on a wide front. Two of his divisions, under generals Ledru and Puthod, were deployed well to the south near Schonau and Hirschberg. Their job was to tackle the small Russian Eighth Corps commanded by Count Emmanuel de Saint-Priest, another royalist emigre and Petr Bagration’s former chief of staff, and threaten Jauer from the south-west. This move would outflank Blucher’s army and endanger its communications and its baggage, which was concentrated in and near Jauer. Meanwhile at the other end of MacDonald’s line the Third Corps, deployed near Liegnitz, was ordered to cross the Katzbach at that city and then push down the road from Liegnitz to Jauer behind the allied right flank. The remainder of MacDonald’s army, made up of his own Eleventh and Lauriston’s Fifth Corps was to advance directly over the Katzbach towards Jauer. Having detached Ledru and Puthod, these two corps only amounted to four infantry divisions but they would be supported by Sebastiani’s cavalry.
There were dangers in dispersing the French army so widely. MacDonald seems to have assumed that Blucher would be static or in retreat.
This was a very dangerous assumption when facing so aggressive an enemy. A senior Russian staff officer subsequently wrote that failure to reconnoitre the allied position was the key to the French defeat at the Katzbach. For this not just MacDonald but also the atrocious weather and the poor quality of the French cavalry was to blame.34
The terrain over which MacDonald was advancing and on which the battle was fought added to the dangers of poor reconnaissance. Roughly speaking, before the battle the two armies were divided by the river Katzbach, which flows south-westwards from Liegnitz. The French were on the north bank and the allies on the south. MacDonald’s troops crossed the river and the battle took place on the south bank between the Katzbach and Jauer. The battlefield was divided into two distinct halves by the river Wutender Neisse, which flows from Jauer and joins the Katzbach at something approaching a right angle.
The northern half of the battlefield – in other words the area north of the Wutender Neisse – was a flat and treeless plateau which falls steeply into the valleys of the Katzbach to the north-west and the Wutender Neisse to the south-west. The plateau is never more than 75 metres above the rivers but its steep and thickly forested slopes makes it impossible for anyone on the French side of the rivers to see what is happening there, even on a clear day. The roads across the Katzbach climbed on to the plateau through steep and narrow defiles, especially the one near Weinberg up which most of the French troops advanced. On a muddy or icy day this lane is troublesome even today in a car. Getting thousands of men, horses and guns up this lane in August 1813 amidst mud and driving rain was much worse. There was also a considerable danger of being surprised by what one might find on the plateau.
On 26 August 1813 the French encountered roughly 60 per cent of Blucher’s army on the plateau, in other words the whole of Yorck’s and Sacken’s army corps. Sacken was on the right, with his open flank anchored in the village of Eichholz, in which the 8th and 39th Jaegers of Johann von Lieven’s division were deployed. Beyond Eichholz to the north were Major-General Kretov’s Cossacks. To the left (i.e. south) of the village, Sacken deployed his infantry, with Neverovsky’s 27th Division in the front line and the remainder of Lieven’s 10th Division behind in reserve. Ilarion Vasilchikov’s hussar and dragoon regiments were deployed behind and just to the right of Eichholz. Between Sacken’s Army Corps and the Wutender Neisse stood Yorck’s Prussians.
Langeron’s troops were deployed in the southern half of the battlefield, in other words south of the Wutender Neisse. The ground here is very different to the plateau north of the river. It is dominated by two ridges which run from the banks of the Wutender Neisse to the wooded hills which mark the south-western border of the battlefield. These ridges provided commanding views and artillery positions. In addition, the two villages of Hennersdorff and Hermannsdorf could be turned into strong-points for Langeron’s infantry.
MacDonald’s plans began going wrong from early on 26 August. As a result of misunderstood orders Third Corps had marched away from Liegnitz on the previous day. By the time they got back to the area General Souham decided that it was too late to execute MacDonald’s order to cross the Katzbach at Liegnitz and march from there to Jauer. The main reason given by Third Corps for disobeying MacDonald’s orders was that the crossings at Liegnitz were no longer usable because of the heavy rain. This sounds dubious, because Sacken’s Russians crossed at Liegnitz on 28 August after two days of further continuous rain. Whatever the reason, on 26 August Souham decided to move his corps down the north bank of the Katzbach instead, thereby linking up with MacDonald’s main body and supporting their attack across the river.35
In principle this concentration of the French army sounds sensible. In practice, however, the narrow roads on the north bank of the Katzbach could not sustain the movement of so many men. Between the villages of Kroitsch and Nieder Crayn a massive traffic jam developed. It included Sebastiani’s cavalry, as well as artillery and baggage. Into this jam headed the four divisions of Third Corps. Only one of these divisions, General Brayer’s 8th Division, succeeded in pushing its way through this traffic jam and moving onto the plateau across the bridge and up the defile at Weinberg. Even Brayer was forced to leave all his artillery behind. MacDonald ordered the other three divisions of Third Corps to backtrack and seek to cross the river further towards Liegnitz. Two of these divisions ultimately forded the Katzbach near the village of Schmogwitz but by the time they approached the plateau the battle was over. In the end the only French units to play a role in the fight on the plateau were Brayer’s men, General Charpentier’s 36th Division of MacDonald’s corps and Sebastiani’s cavalry. Since Brayer’s artillery was stuck at Kroitsch on the wrong side of the Katzbach this force did not even have its full complement of guns. As the French were opposed by the entire army corps of both Yorck and Sacken, in other words 60 per cent of Blucher’s army, it is not at all surprising that they lost this battle.
Having given his own orders to advance across the Katzbach, Blucher was surprised to be informed at about 11 a.m. on 26 August that the French were also advancing across the river against both Langeron and Yorck. Since the picture provided by the retreating Prussian outposts was very confused, Colonel Baron von Muffling, the quartermaster-general, rode forward on his own to spy out French numbers and where they were headed. Muffling recalled that ‘I was mounted on a mouse-coloured horse, and had on a grey cloak, so that in the pouring rain I was not visible at 100 paces’. Muffling discovered French cavalry and artillery deploying on the plateau between Nieder
