After exertions so severe the troops imperatively needed some rest. The instructions from the supreme Headquarter were that the operations were not to be extended beyond a certain limit; and it was possible that the services of the IInd Army might almost immediately be required on the Seine and the Loire. Prince Frederick Charles therefore determined to follow up the retreating enemy with only a small force.
On the French side, that each Corps might have a separate road for the retreat to Alençon, two Corps had necessarily to draw out westward in the first instance. On the evening of the last day's fight the XVIth Corps reached Chauffour on the Laval road, and the XVIIth Conlie on the road to Mayenne, each covered by its rear-guard. The XXIst was assembled at Ballon, on the left bank of the Sarthe. From these points all were to march in a northerly direction. General Chanzy still deluded himself with the hope of coming up by Evreux to the assistance of the besieged capital. He would have had thus to make a wide circuit—an arc by moving on the chord of which the Germans could easily have anticipated him; and in a country where all arms were available, his army, in the condition to which it was now reduced, must have inevitably been destroyed. Ultimately the defeated French army retired in the direction to the westward of the Sarthe.
After the distribution of rations and forage, General von Schmidt set forth at mid-day on the 13th with four battalions, eleven squadrons, and ten guns, and reached Chauffour after some skirmishing. The XIIIth Corps advanced to the Sarthe, the 17th Division sending its outposts across the river at Neuville, and the 22nd drove the French out of Ballon, whence they retired in full flight to Beaumont. The XXIst French Corps had taken up quarters this day at Sillé. The National Guards of Brittany fled wildly to Coron, and thence made homeward toward their own province. They were joined by the troops left in camp at Conlie, after the camp there had been plundered. The XVIIth Corps also went off, without halting by the Vègre as it had been ordered to do, but retreating direct on Ste. Suzanne. The XVIth withdrew on Laval, leaving Barry's Division at Chassillé as rear-guard. Numbers of abandoned waggons and cast-away arms, everywhere testified to the demoralization of the defeated forces.
On the 14th the French were driven out of Chassillé. The XVIth Corps had by this time almost entirely lost its organization; it retired during the night to St. Jean sur Erve. In the camp at Conlie were found 8000 stands of arms and 5,000,000 cartridges, as well as various other war matériel.
The Grand Duke had marched on Alençon along the right bank of the Sarthe. The French in Beaumont made a feeble resistance to the advanced guard of the 22nd Division, and lost 1400 prisoners.
On the following day General von Schmidt advanced further on the road to Laval, but found that the French had concentrated at St. Jean and posted a strong force of artillery on the heights behind the Erve. The Oldenburg Regiment[70] forced its way as far as the church of the little town, and the Brunswickers drove the enemy back on Ste. Suzanne, higher up the river, but there the pursuit ended.
Barry's and Deplanque's Divisions, according to the French estimate, had now no more than 6000 fighting men, and Curten's Division had still not yet come up, but this strength was considerably superior to that of the weak German detachment confronting it. The rest of the Xth Corps was moving up in support, but had as yet only reached Chasillé. A battalion advancing from Conlie came into conflict at Sillé with the XXIst French Corps assembled there, and sustained heavy loss. The 22nd Division of the XIIIth Corps also met with serious opposition before reaching Alençon, from the National Guards and the volunteers under Lipowski; and the attack on the town was postponed till next day.
But on the following morning the French positions in Alençon as well as in Sillé and St. Jean were abandoned. Those places were at once occupied by the Germans, and General von Schmidt marched forward, close up to Laval. Numerous stragglers from the retreating army were taken prisoners.
Behind the Mayenne, whither now Curten's Division had arrived, the remnants of the IInd Army of the Loire re-assembled. Reduced to half its original strength, and its morale gravely shaken, it could but be unfit for service for a long time to come, and the object of the German advance on Le Mans was fully attained.