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Updated: June 13, 2025
"I was a drummer at Auerstadt, a corporal at Austerlitz, a sergeant at Waterloo," rolled back the reply, in a high, quavering voice, as memories of great events blew in upon the ancient fires of his spirit. "Ah!" answered Valmond, nodding eagerly; "with Davoust at Auerstadt thirty against sixty thousand men.
At the beginning of October 1806, the armies of Napoleon were moving towards the Saale, and ere the middle of the month the battles of Auerstadt and Jena were fought and lost. Duke Charles Ferdinand was mortally wounded, and taken back to Braunschweig. A deputation waited on the offended Emperor at Halle, and begged him to allow the aged duke to die in his own house.
At the same time another battle was in progress near Auerstadt between Marshal Davoust and the forces of the Duke of Brunswick. This, too, ended in victory for the French. The king had been with the duke and was borne back by the flying host, the two bodies of fugitives finally coalescing. In that one fatal day Frederick William had lost his army and placed his kingdom in jeopardy.
"The letters I received," observed I, "state that you took no part in the battle of Auerstadt; that I did not believe, but I suppose you saw the bulletin which I received a little after the battle, and which stated that Bonaparte said at Nuremberg, in the presence of several officers, 'Were I to bring him before a court-martial he would be shot.
He knew that the French Empire would rise to the height of fame, and that the coalition of Russia, Prussia, and Austria would fall disastrously. "The Prussians wish to receive a lesson," Napoleon declared, flushed by the magnificence of his late efforts. He defeated them at Jena and Auerstadt, and entered Berlin to take the sword and sash of Frederick the Great as well as the Prussian standards.
The King's march was arrested at Auerstadt by Davoust, who, after a severely contested action, at length repelled the assailant. Napoleon himself, meanwhile, was engaged with the other great body of the Prussians.
At that point the fugitives met and mingled with their brethren flying, as confusedly as themselves, from Auerstadt. In the course of this disastrous day 20,000 Prussians were killed or taken; 300 guns, twenty generals, and sixty standards. The Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of Brunswick, being wounded in the face with a grape-shot, was carried early off the field, never to recover.
The victories of Jena and Auerstadt, great and decisive as they were, were nevertheless inadequate to such results; and if the genius of the Emperor had not been as prompt to follow up as to gain a battle, they never would have occurred.
It is well known how the victory of Jena was crowned by the glorious issue of the battle of Auerstadt, where the main body of the Prussians, under the command of the king himself, was completely beaten by Davoust with a force not half their number.
Our cordial greetings being over, I asked Maître François if he could give me any intelligence of D'Auvergne's division, or put me in the way to reach them. "They're some miles off by this time," said he, coolly. "When I was below the Plateau de Jena last night, that brigade you speak of got their orders to push forward to Auerstadt, to support Davoust's infantry.
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