Weinberg and Janowitz, with infantry moving up behind them in the valley near Nieder Weinberg. Informed of this situation, Blucher ordered Yorck to attack the French and Sacken to deploy artillery on the Taubenberg hill just south-west of Eichholz. The Russian artillery would distract French attention northwards and away from Yorck’s advance. They would also support the Prussian infantry as and when they made their attack. Meanwhile Sacken’s infantry would hold their position at Eichholz and watch out for possible further French columns coming onto the plateau from their right, north of Janowitz.36
At best it would take Yorck’s infantry an hour’s marching to reach the French. Meanwhile, however, long before Blucher’s orders arrived Sacken had posted Colonel Brahms’s 13th Russian Heavy Battery on the Taubenberg and had begun to bombard the French. The Taubenberg ‘hill’ is actually a very slight elevation but it commands the entire plateau north-westwards to the Katzbach and south-westwards to the Wutender Neisse. Having inspected the position allocated to his Army Corps, Sacken was far too good a general not to have spotted the Taubenberg’s advantages and acted immediately on his own initiative. Soon Brahms was joined by other Russian and Prussian batteries.
Meanwhile Yorck and Muffling had got into an argument as to how the Prussian troops were to advance. Yorck wanted them deployed in line, whereas Muffling argued that there was insufficient room for this on the plateau and that the manoeuvre would in any case waste precious time. When Blucher supported Muffling, Yorck sulkily complied and sent two of his brigades forward in column. Inevitably time was lost, but by about 3 p.m. Yorck’s men were in action against French infantry on the edge of the plateau near the defile which leads down into the river valley by Ober Weinberg. In the pouring rain few muskets would fire but after a brief hand-to-hand fight the outnumbered French infantry fled down the defile towards the river crossing. At this point some of Sebastiani’s cavalry charged the Prussians in order to rescue their infantry and allow them to disengage and re-form. With their muskets useless in the rain Yorck’s infantry were very vulnerable to cavalry, and Colonel Jurgas, commanding the Prussian reserve cavalry brigade, tried to come to their rescue. To Yorck’s rage, however, the Prussian cavalry’s attack was poorly coordinated and failed. According to Muffling, who was with Yorck all this time, there then followed a strange hiatus, lasting perhaps fifteen minutes, in which Yorck’s infantry and some 4,000 French cavalry faced each other without either quite daring to attack. Then suddenly, to Muffling’s great surprise, the French cavalry turned tail and fled down the defiles into the river valley.
The reason for their flight was that Sebastiani’s men had been attacked by Vasilchikov’s Russian cavalry. From where Sacken and Vasilchikov stood near Eichholz, the position taken up by Sebastiani and by Brayer’s infantry seemed the answer to a cavalryman’s prayer. The plateau was perfect ground for cavalry, with no ditches, walls, trees or other obstacles. Moreover, Sebastiani’s left flank was hanging in the air, open to attack. It seems that the French cavalry commander was expecting that the missing three divisions of Souham’s corps would soon be advancing through Janowitz to his support. Whatever the reason, to offer an open flank to a general of Vasilchikov’s calibre was asking for trouble. Vasilchikov sent out scouts to ensure that the villages to the north of Sebastiani’s line were not occupied by infantry and that his men would not be ambushed as they advanced. Having discovered that they were empty he advanced and attacked the French from three directions simultaneously.
The Alexandria and Mariupol Hussar regiments attacked the enemy front and were supported by a brigade of dragoons. Meanwhile the Akhtyrka and Belorussia Hussar regiments moved out behind the village of Klein Tinz and charged into Sebastiani’s flank. Between Klein Tinz and Janowitz, Vasilchikov’s Cossacks stormed into the rear of the French cavalry. The Count de Venancon, a Piedmontese emigre serving as Sacken’s quartermaster-general, wrote to Petr Volkonsky that ‘I am not exaggerating when I say that never was a manoeuvre executed with more precision and intelligence, and it was crowned with complete success because the entire enemy left flank was taken from the rear and overwhelmed’. Sebastiani’s cavalry fled down the defiles to the Katzbach, carrying with them Brayer’s infantry and abandoning all the guns that the French had succeeded in getting up to the plateau. According to French accounts, Brayer’s infantry retreated in good order and even covered the flight of Sebastiani’s cavalry. Disorder only set in when the infantrymen were forced to cross the Katzbach in the growing darkness, under enemy fire and amidst the chaos of roads blocked by carts, guns and cavalry.37
It was not until well after the rout of the rest of the French forces that two remaining divisions of Souham’s corps began to approach the battlefield from the ford at Schmogwitz. According to Russian accounts, their advance was slow and hesitant. As the French moved southwards from the ford at Schmogwitz towards the village of Schweinitz, they encountered skirmishers sent forward from Neverovsky’s 27th Division to slow them down. Skirmishing began at about seven in the evening. The bulk of Neverovsky’s and Lieven’s divisions then moved forward, supported by many batteries of allied artillery. Outnumbered, and informed of the disaster that had befallen the rest of the army, General Ricard ordered his men to retreat back over the ford at Schmogwitz. With this retreat ended the fighting on the northern half of the battlefield.38
Meanwhile a very different battle had been fought on the southern half of the battlefield, south of the Wutender Neisse. Langeron had detached Saint-Priest’s Eighth Corps to guard the approach routes to Jauer from Hirschberg and in his absence the rival forces were roughly matched. Langeron had more and better cavalry but faced superior numbers of infantry in the three French divisions deployed against him. Given the terrain, he should nevertheless have been able to hold his ground against the attacks of MacDonald, who led the French forces in person, all other things being equal.
In fact, however, they were anything but equal since Langeron appears to have been staging a fighting retreat rather than a battle. Obsessed with the threat to his left and to Jauer, Langeron put most of his effort into securing his line of retreat. Fearful that Maison’s division was seeking to push beyond his left, Langeron dispatched Kaptsevich’s Tenth Corps back to Peterwitz to guard the line of retreat to Jauer. This left him with just two small corps, Olsufev’s Ninth and Prince Shcherbatov’s Sixth, and Rudzevich’s detachment to hold off MacDonald. In his memoirs, however, Shcherbatov writes that his corps was held in reserve until late afternoon and played no part in the fighting until after 4 p.m. In addition, almost all Langeron’s heavy batteries had been dispatched to the rear in order not to block any retreat down the narrow, muddy roads. Of course, when all these detachments were added together, they gave the French overwhelming superiority on the battlefield in terms of both numbers and firepower. By late afternoon they had pushed Langeron off the heights between Hennersdorf and Schlaupe which commanded the whole southern half of the battlefield. The Russian troops fought hard but had no chance of holding on against such superior numbers.39
At this point Muffling arrived from Blucher’s headquarters, where the news that Langeron had been driven out of his strong position was greeted with scorn. In his memoirs Muffling recounts that he found Langeron on the hill behind Schlaupe, in company with Rudzevich, Olsufev and Shcherbatov. Muffling told them of the victory north of the Wutender Neisse, sang Sacken’s praises and urged them to counterattack and regain the Hennersdorf Heights immediately. The other Russian generals agreed with enthusiasm but Langeron responded: ‘Colonel, are you certain that the commander-in-chief is not deploying my corps to cover his retreat?’ Muffling added: ‘This was the fixed and firmly rooted idea of Count Langeron, which had misled him into his false measures.’ If Langeron had any doubts about the truth of Muffling’s message, however, it was dispelled by the evidence of his own eyes. Captain Radozhitsky, whose battery was deployed on the hill, recalled that through the rain it was suddenly possible to see Prussian troops in full pursuit of fleeing French battalions on the other bank of the Wutender Neisse. He heard Langeron, standing not far away, exclaim, ‘Good God, they are running.’40
All this was enough to persuade Langeron to order an immediate counter-attack to retake the Hennersdorf position. Rudzevich attacked on the left, Olsufev in the centre, and for the first time Shcherbatov’s corps came into action on the right. The momentum and unexpectedness of the attack drove the French back off the heights with little serious fighting, according to Russian sources. Thus the Pskov Regiment, part of Shcherbatov’s corps, had waited in reserve all day until ordered forward after 4 p.m. for the counter-attack. The regiment advanced at rapid pace in textbook fashion: it attacked in battalion columns with skirmishers out in front and artillery moving forward in the intervals between the columns. According to the regimental history, their skirmishers drove back the French light infantry screen and began to shoot down men in the ranks of the battalions behind. At this point, seeing the Russian columns advancing to storm their position, the French infantry decamped at speed. In good patriotic fashion, the regimental history forgets to mention that Shcherbatov’s attack towards Schlaupe was much helped by Prussian troops fording the Wutender Neisse to take the French in the rear. But the official Russian history of the campaign does mention this and pays tribute to the courage of the Prussian troops.41
For the French, the battle of the Katzbach was a defeat but not a disaster. What turned defeat into catastrophe was the pursuit which followed the battle. This was by far the most successful pursuit of a defeated enemy in 1813. On 26 August Langeron had, to put things mildly, not distinguished himself. His misunderstanding of
