The French, therefore, had a vast mass of seasoned fighters, a good base of operations, and a clear plan of attack. The Prussians, on the contrary, could muster barely 128,000 men, including the Saxons, for service in the field; and of these 27,000 with Rüchel were on the frontier of Hesse-Cassel seeking to assure the alliance of the Elector. The commander-in-chief was the septuagenarian Duke of Brunswick, well known for his failure at Valmy in 1792 and his recent support to the policy of complaisance to France. His appointment aroused anger and consternation; and General Kalckreuth expressed to Gentz the general opinion when he said that the Duke was quite incompetent for such a command: "His character is not strong enough, his mediocrity, irresolution, and untrustworthiness would ruin the best undertaking." The Duke himself was aware of his incompetence. Why then, we ask, did he accept the command? The answer is startling; but it rests on the evidence of General von Müffling:
"The Duke of Brunswick had accepted the command in order to avert war. I can affirm this with perfect certainty, since I have heard it from his own lips more than once. He was fully aware of the weaknesses of the Prussian army and the incompetence of its officers."[102]
Thus there was seen the strange sight of a diffident, peace-loving King accompanying the army and sharing in all the deliberations; while these were nominally presided over by a despondent old man who still intrigued to preserve peace, and shifted on to the King the responsibility of every important act. And yet there were able generals who could have acted with effect, even if they fell short of the opinion hopefully bruited by General Rüchel, that "several were equal to M. de Bonaparte." Events were to prove that Gneisenau, Scharnhorst, and Blücher rivalled the best of the French Marshals; but in this war their lights were placed under bushels and only shone forth when the official covers had been shattered. Scharnhorst, already renowned for his strategic and administrative genius, took part in some of the many councils of war where everything was discussed and little was decided; but his opinion had no weight, for on October 7th he wrote: "What we ought to do I know right well, what we shall do only the gods know."[103] He evidently referred to the need of concentration. At that time the thin Prussian lines were spread out over a front of eighty-five miles, the Saxons being near Gera, the chief army, under Brunswick, at Erfurth, while Rüchel was so far distant on the west that he could only come up at Jena just one hour too late to avert disaster.
And yet with these weak and scattered forces, Prince Hohenlohe proposed a bold move forward to the Main. Brunswick, on the other hand, counselled a prudent defensive; but he could not, or would not, enforce his plan; and the result was an oscillation between the two extremes. Had he massed all his forces so as to command the valleys of the Saale and Elster near Jena and Gera, the campaign might possibly have been prolonged until the Russians came up. As it was, the allies dulled the ardour of their troops by marches, counter-marches, and interminable councils-of-war, while Napoleon's columns were threading their way along those valleys at the average rate of fifteen miles a day, in order to turn the allied left and cut the connection between Prussia and Saxony.[104]
The first serious fighting was on October the 10th at Saalfeld, where Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia with a small force sought to protect Hohenlohe's flank march westwards on Jena. The task was beyond the strength even of this flower of Prussian chivalry. He was overpowered by the weight and vigour of Lannes' attack, and when already wounded in a cavalry mêlée was pierced through the body by an officer to whom he proudly refused to surrender. The death of this hero, the "Alcibiades" of Prussia, cast a gloom over the whole army, and mournful faces at headquarters seemed to presage yet worse disasters. Perhaps it was some inkling of this discouragement, or a laudable desire to stop "an impolitic war," that urged Napoleon two days later to pen a letter to the King of Prussia urging him to make peace before he was crushed, as he assuredly would be. In itself the letter seems admirable—until one remembers the circumstances of the case. The King had pledged his word to the Czar to make war; if, therefore, he now made peace and sent the Russians back, he would once more stand condemned of preferring dishonourable ease to the noble hazards of an affair of honour. As Napoleon was aware of the union of the King and Czar, this letter must be regarded as an attempt to dissolve the alliance and tarnish Frederick William's reputation. It was viewed in that light by that monarch; and there is not a hint in Napoleon's other letters that he really expected peace.
He was then at Gera, pushing forward his corps towards Naumburg so as to cut off the Prussians from Saxony and the Elbe. Great as was his superiority, these movements occasioned such a dispersion of his forces as to invite attack from enterprising foes; but he despised the Prussian generals as imbeciles, and endeavoured to unsteady their rank and file by seizing and burning their military stores at the latter town. He certainly believed that they were all in retreat northwards, and great was his surprise when he heard from Lannes early on October 13th that his scouts, after scaling the hills behind Jena in a dense mist, had come upon the Prussian army. The news was only partly correct. It was only Hohenlohe's corps: for the bulk of that army, under Brunswick, was retreating northwards, and nearly stumbled upon the corps of Davoust and Bernadotte behind Naumburg.
Lannes also was in danger on the Landgrafenberg. This is a lofty hill which towers above the town of Jena and the narrow winding vale of the Saale; while its other slopes, to the north and west, rise above and dominate the broken and irregular plateau on which Hohenlohe's force was encamped. Had the Prussians attacked his weary regiments in force, they might easily have hurled them into the Saale. But Hohenlohe had received orders to retire northwards in the rear of Brunswick, as soon as he had rallied the detachment of Rüchel near Weimar, and was therefore indisposed to venture on the bold offensive which now was his only means of safety. The respite thus granted was used by the French to hurry every available regiment up the slopes north and west of Jena. Late in the afternoon, Napoleon himself ascended the Landgrafenberg to survey the plateau; while a pastor of the town was compelled to show a path further north which leads to the same plateau through a gulley called the Rau-thal.[105]
[Illustration: BATTLE OF JENA]
On the south the heights sink away into a wider valley, the Mühl-thal, along which runs the road to Weimar; and on this side too their wooded brows are broken by gulleys, up one of which runs a winding track known as the Schnecke or Snail. Villages and woods diversified the plateau and hindered the free use of that extended line formation on which the Prussians relied, while favouring the operations of dense columns preceded by clouds of skirmishers by which Napoleon so often hewed his way to victory. His greatest advantage, however, lay in the ignorance of his foes. Hohenlohe, believing that he was confronted only by Lannes' corps, took little thought about what was going on in his front, and judging the Mühl-thal approach alone to be accessible, posted his chief force on this side. So insufficient a guard was therefore kept on the side of the Landgrafenberg that the French, under cover of the darkness, not only crowned the summit densely with troops, but dragged up whole batteries of cannon.
The toil was stupendous: in one of the steep hollow tracks a number of cannon and wagons stuck fast; but the Emperor, making his rounds at midnight, brought the magic of his presence to aid the weary troops and rebuke the officers whose negligence had caused this block. Lantern in hand, he went up and down the line to direct the work; and Savary, who saw this scene, noted the wonder of the men, as they caught sight of the Emperor, the renewed energy of their blows at the rocks, and their whispers of surprise that he should come in person when their officers were asleep. The night was far spent when, after seeing the first wagon right through the narrow steep, he repaired to his bivouac amidst his Guards on the summit, and issued further orders before snatching a brief repose. By such untiring energy did he assure victory. Apart from its immense effect on the spirits of his troops, his vigilance reaped a rich reward. Jena was won by a rapid concentration of troops, and the prompt seizure of a commanding position almost under the eyes of an unenterprising enemy. The corps of Soult and Ney spent most of the night and early morning in marching towards Jena and taking up their positions on the right or north wing, while Lannes and the Guard held the central height, and Augereau's corps in the Mühl-thal threatened the Saxons and Prussians guarding the Schnecke.[106]