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Updated: May 7, 2025
In obedience to Napoleon's order, he was falling back towards Leipzig, when he was sharply attacked by Yorck's corps at Möckern. Between that village and Eutritzsch further east the French Marshal offered a most obstinate resistance. Blücher, hoping to capture his whole corps, begged Sir Charles Stewart to ride back to Bernadotte and request his succour.
On reaching Mockern, Dagobert asked for the least expensive inn, and was told there was only one in the village the White Falcon. "Let us go then to the White Falcon," observed the soldier. Already had Morok several times opened with impatience the window shutters of the loft, to look out upon the inn-yard, watching for the arrival of the orphans and the soldier.
Relatively to the forces engaged, Albuera and Möckern are the bloodiest battles of the Napoleonic wars. On the whole, Napoleon had dealt the allies heavier losses than he had sustained. But they could replace them.
At this moment, the Prophet entered the porch, and, perceiving the soldier, eyed him attentively for several seconds; then approaching, he said to him in French, in a rather sly tone: "It would seem, comrade, that you have not much confidence in the washerwomen of Mockern?"
The Russians, behind the road to Mockern, prepared for a third attack toward three o'clock; our officers were making new dispositions to receive them; when a sort of shudder ran from one end of our lines to the other, and in a few moments all knew that the sixteen thousand Saxons and the Wurtemberg cavalry, in our very centre, had passed over to the enemy, and that on their way they had the infamy to turn the forty guns they carried with them, on their old brothers-in-arms of Durutte's division.
I do not understand that," said Blucher, bewildered. "That is to say, I remain general-in-chief of my Silesian army?" "Yes, but with enlarged power and independence, and with a greater number of troops. Your corps has suffered a great deal; on your victorious fields of Mockern and Leipsic you lost many brave soldiers.
While the above scene was passing in the White Falcon at Mockern, the three persons whose arrival Morok was so anxiously expecting, travelled on leisurely in the midst of smiling meadows, bounded on one side by a river, the current of which turned a mill; and on the other by the highway leading to the village, which was situated on an eminence, at about a league's distance.
The veteran paused; then, pointing with his staff to the village of Mockern, he added: "Yes, yes, I can recognize the spot. Yonder are the heights where your brave father who commanded us, and the Poles of the Guard overthrew the Russian Cuirassiers, after having carried the battery.
They said, too, that the Emperor had won the battle at Wachau, against the Austrians and Russians; but that the victory was useless, because they did not retreat, but stood awaiting masses of reinforcements. On the side of Mockern we knew that we had lost, in spite of Marmont's splendid defence; the enemy had crushed us beneath the weight of their numbers.
The Austrians, or the army of Bohemia, commanded by Schwartzenberg, the general-in-chief, had been defeated by the French at Wachau on the 16th of October; but the Prussians and Russians, under Blucher, had gained a brilliant victory at Mockern on the 16th of October; and though the Swedes, under Bernadotte, had not participated in the battle, and had, as usual, managed on that day to keep away from the carnage, they had at the same time contrived to participate in the glory of victory.
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