Russia Against Napoleon

Meanwhile Sacken’s attempts to get across the fords between Schmogwitz and Liegnitz were thwarted by the flooded river banks and the depth and current of the Katzbach river, which the constant heavy rain had turned into a torrent. The Russians lost a day by having to march all the way to Liegnitz and cross the Katzbach there. All this meant that the French had time to mount a relatively orderly, albeit dangerously rapid, retreat. Many stragglers and baggage were lost but no large units were cut off or destroyed. Nevertheless casualties were high. On 29 August, with the retreat far from over, Third Corps’s roll-call revealed that 930 men were dead, 2,722 wounded and 4,009 missing. On 3 September Sacken reported to Petr Volkonsky that his army corps had captured 2 generals, 63 officers, 4,916 men and 50 guns since 25 August. By then the French had retreated right back out of Silesia and over the border into Saxony.⁴³

Langeron’s men set off in pursuit of the French before dawn on 27 August. Their commander no doubt felt the need to redeem his poor performance on the previous day. Once again Rudzevich commanded the advance guard though he was now strengthened by regiments of Baron Korff’s cavalry corps and by the whole of Lieutenant-General Petr Kaptsevich’s Tenth Corps. Almost none of Korff’s and Kaptsevich’s men had fought on 26 August and they were therefore full of beans. By contrast the French troops were exhausted after two weeks of ceaseless marches, pouring rain, little food, and a day’s battle in which initial victory had turned suddenly into defeat and an exhausting night-time retreat. The chief of staff of Korff’s cavalry corps wrote in his memoirs that ‘it is incredible to what extent a lost battle and a few days of very bad weather depressed the morale of the French troops’. This is harsh. Even Wellington’s infantry might have gone to pieces if abandoned by their commissariat and cavalry, and forced to mount rearguard actions with muskets unusable because of the rain against a mass of well-disciplined enemy cavalry, supported by horse artillery and thousands of fresh infantry. But it is true that the exceptionally exhausting last few days played to the strengths of the tough Russian soldiers and to the weaknesses of Napoleon’s young conscripts. It is also true that although French élan was unmatchable when things were going well, in times of adversity French troops very often lacked the disciplined calm and solidity of the Russian infantry.⁴⁴

On 27 August, when the Russians caught up with the French rearguards, many of the latter collapsed. Near Pilgramsdorf, the Kharkov and Kiev Dragoon regiments under General Emmanuel rode down part of the French rearguard and captured 1,200 men. Another rearguard under Colonel Morand was overtaken by the Tver Dragoon Regiment and the Seversk and Chernigov mounted jaegers, commanded by Ivan Panchulidzev, a veteran cavalry general of Georgian origin. Morand fought bravely but with their muskets unusable his infantry squares caved in to a simultaneous assault from three sides by the Russian cavalry. With the infantry rearguards collapsing and the French cavalry nowhere to be seen, the floodgates threatened to open. Cossacks swarmed around the retreating French. Langeron reported that ‘the level of losses and the disorder in the enemy ranks reminded me of their disastrous flight from Moscow to the Vistula’.⁴⁵

MacDonald and his corps commanders decided that it would be fatal to try to rally their men or oppose the Russians. Their only chance was to outrun them and subsequently find a safe spot to regroup and rebuild the men’s shattered morale. This was probably realistic but it guaranteed that huge numbers of stragglers would desert or be scooped up by the Russian cavalry and Cossacks. It also meant abandoning the detached divisions of Ledru and Puthod to their fate. Ledru escaped but Puthod decided to try to link up with MacDonald’s fleeing corps. Marching north-westwards from Hirschberg, Puthod was shadowed all the way by Major-General Iusefovich’s cavalry. The Russians intercepted Puthod’s report to MacDonald which outlined his plans and his line of march. On 29 August they encircled and trapped his division near Löwenberg with its back to the river Bober, which the heavy rain had made impossible to ford. General Rudzevich waited to press his attack until Prince Shcherbatov’s Sixth Corps had arrived. Against such overwhelming odds resistance was pointless, and Puthod surrendered with more than 4,000 men and 16 guns. His division had begun the autumn campaign just two weeks before with over 8,000 men in its ranks. Very few of them escaped to serve Napoleon again.⁴⁶