Russia Against Napoleon

Nevertheless the Guards cavalry’s attack was a triumphant success. By their own estimate, French losses were very heavy and Philippon’s attack was shattered. Sir Robert Wilson wrote that ‘the lancers and dragoons of the guard charged through garden-ground and ravines upon the right column, which threw down its arms and fled with the most rapid haste, but many hundreds were killed and several hundred made prisoners. The other column retired with more order but not less speed.’ Though on a smaller scale, the episode reminds one of the attack of the British heavy cavalry on d’Erlon’s infantry in the first stage of the battle of Waterloo. On that occasion, too, French infantry advancing in column and convinced that victory was in their grasp were hit unexpectedly by a mass of enemy cavalry. The Russian cavalry were much more disciplined than their British equivalents, however. With Gobrecht’s cavalry brigade deployed in the rear of the French columns they needed to be. The Russian counter-attack was not followed, in British style, by a mad pursuit into the arms of the enemy’s reserves. The order of the day of the commanding general of the Guards cavalry praised not just the courage and timing of the attack but also the ‘perfect obedience and attention to words of command and trumpet calls’ shown by the troops, and the fact that they remained ‘always ready to resume excellent formation to confront and defeat the enemy’.⁷⁸

The rout of Philippon’s division ended the day’s fighting. For the Russians it had been a day of genuine glory. Roughly 14,700 Russian soldiers had kept some 30,000 French troops at bay. But glory had been very costly. No fewer than 6,000 Russians were dead or wounded. Until the very last stage of the battle all the fighting had been done by the infantry: of these 12,000 men, 5,200 were casualties, 2,800 of whom were Guardsmen and the rest from Eugen’s regiments. Among the wounded was Aleksandr Chicherin. Fixing a handkerchief to the tip of his sword so that his men could see him, Chicherin was hit in the shoulder blade while trying to lead forward his platoon of the Semenovskys. The doctors were unable to remove the bullet and he died in agony some weeks later in the Russian military hospital in Prague. On his deathbed he persuaded a rich relative to give 500 rubles to help soldiers of his regiment who had been wounded during the battle at Kulm.⁷⁹

That evening the allied leaders in Teplitz decided to counter-attack the next day in order to drive Vandamme further from the defiles out of the Erzgebirge before he was reinforced by Napoleon, as all the allied generals expected him to be. The mood in Teplitz was anything but triumphant. The Dresden campaign had been a disaster and had cost huge numbers of men, especially in the Austrian regiments. Now Alexander’s Guards had also suffered terribly. During the battle for Dresden leadership and coordination in the allied high command had been woeful. Tensions were now running high between the Russians and Prussians on the one hand and the Austrians on the other. The Austrians were accused of having marched slowly, which was true, and fought badly, which was mostly unfair. But it was the case that the new recruits from Bohemia who filled up the ranks of Mesko and Klenau’s regiments were poorly clothed and trained, and had not been ready for the rigours of the campaign. On the other hand Schwarzenberg approached Francis II requesting permission to resign, justifiably exhausted and indignant at frequent Russo-Prussian disobedience to his orders. Meanwhile large numbers of Russian and Prussian troops were still stuck in the Erzgebirge and needed to be extracted and given time to recover.

One of the largest of these contingents was Lieutenant-General von Kleist’s Prussian Army Corps, which had retreated from Dresden mostly down the Old Teplitz Road through Glashütte and Fürstenwalde.

Although Saint-Cyr was supposedly pursuing the Prussians, in fact he lost touch with them after they left Glashütte. Kleist’s men began to arrive at Fürstenwalde by four o’clock in the afternoon of 29 August. Shortly before then Frederick William’s aide-de-camp, Count von Schweinitz, arrived with orders from the king for Kleist to get through the defiles into the Teplitz valley and go to the aid of Ostermann-Tolstoy. As Kleist told Schweinitz, by now it was too late in the day to do this and in any case his exhausted troops had to rest before being called on for further efforts. Schweinitz informed Kleist that the defiles out of the Erzgebirge at Teplitz and Graupen were completely choked by Russian troops and baggage. This meant that it was impossible for Kleist to get into the Teplitz valley from Fürstenwalde by marching south or south-west.