Jena Auerstadt
A Day of Lost Opportunities
Prussian Army of 1806
by Patrick E. Wilson
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The Prussian Army of 1806 was in many ways the inheritor of Frederick the Great’s legacy but this is not to say that it was a ‘Museum piece’ as certain writers would us believe. Instead in many ways it resembled the British Army at the time of the Crimean war, the soldiers were fine and brave and there was modicum advancement, particularly in the use of light infantry, but the officer corps, with certain exceptions, was living in the past. They were a relic resistant to change, or perhaps, more specifically, afraid of change that would alter the ‘tools’ of their hero Frederick the Great (or as in 1854 Wellington). This in either case did not make the respective army a bad one, nor did it ensure defeat. Under a good general with an effective plan things could perhaps have done well enough. Sadly at that time the Prussian Army was divided into three armies each under a very individualistic commander. Who don’t seem to have got on too well together! The result was general indecision, a prolonged period of debate and the loss of the initiative, as Napoleon himself once remarked: ‘better one bad General in command of an army then two good ones’. Three would have been presumably worse. I am not saying that the Prussian Army were ‘lions’ led by donkeys’ but rather that its commanders had not grasped the new essentials of Napoleonic warfare that they were about to encounter. This called for decisiveness and speed, particularly in the area of strategy where one mind would probably have been better than the council of war that seemed to get no where. The actual commanders of the Prussian Army in 1806 were in order of importance, Duke Charles of Brunswick, a 71-year-old veteran of the Seven Years War who is perhaps best remembered for his defeat at the cannonade of Valmy in 1793. That action could hardly be called a battle. Now, however, Brunswick was called upon to command the principle army of Prussia, six mixed divisions based in Brandenburg. Next we have Prince Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, a Wurttemberger who had made a name for himself in the 1792-93 campaigns against revolutionary, France and what is more, had had the chance to study French military developments when he had visited his estates in Franconia in late 1805. [2]
Indeed, he had been on intimate terms with the French General Gudin, one of Marechal Davout’s famous triumvirate of divisional commanders. Prince Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen commanded the secondary army of four mixed divisions based in Silesia; later two divisions of Saxons were incorporated into this force when Prussia ‘persuaded’ them to join their cause. The final commander, General Ernst Philip von Ruechel, was the archetypal Prussian. Confident in the abilities of the Prussian Army to inflict great harm upon the French, he was none the
less well read and knew his trade thoroughly well. He fought bravely at Jena and later in Poland in 1807. His command consisted of three mixed divisions based in the Prussian western provinces at Mulhausen and Gottingen.
Jena Auerstadt: A Day of Lost Opportunities Introduction
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