"…Leading the Grande Armee's retreat from Leipzig's lost battle, MacDonald's and Victor's battered corps, possible 7,000 weary soldiers, have come out into open country to find Wrede's 43,000 Bavarians, Austrians and Cossacks across their road. Under heavy attack, the French are forced back into the woods where they barely hold their ground in desperate fighting.'
'But moving up behind them comes Napoleon with the cavalry and artillery of his Guard and his Old Guard infantry.'
'While Drouot of the artillery scouts out a side road that will bring his firty-eight 12-pounders-Napoleon's 'pretty girls'-into a position from which he can rake Wrede's lines, the Emperor sends in two battalions of Guard chasseurs a pied to clear the way for him. They surge forward, light infantry style at the run in open order, loading their muskets as they came, each man seeking to be the first to get his bayonet into a Bavarian.'
'To Wrede, the sight of their bearskin caps is a nerve-wrenching omen of defeat. He had thought Napoleon had taken a road farther north, that he had only demoralized figitives to deal with-and here, suddenly, is the dread 'Alte Kaisergarde,' which means that its terrible Emperor now confronts him!'
'Drouot's guns open fire, sweeping the field. Wrede throws the mass of his cavalry against them, but canister fire from that line of 12-pounders smashes his charge. The few troopers that survive to get among them are bayoneted by tough Old Guard cannoneers or sabred by the Guard which then rides Wrede's center under. Drouot then shifts his guns to support the Frnech left flank, which still is under attack. There there two battalions of Guard grenadiers, literally shaking with impatience, finally hear the order:
'Grenadiers, forward!'
'An officer who had fought for hours on the extreme left of the French line, sees them come: '…their line swept down the slope in perfect order, but headlong and terrible for these men were furious. I see them yet…grinding their teeth, hissing like serpents, shaking their…terrible bayonets. In an instant everything before them was knocked over, run through, swept into the Kinzig [River], where seven to eight hundred bodies piled up.-a frightful spectacle for a human being, a superb one for a soldier.''
'Wrede's little army tumbles back in rout; the road to France stretches free.'
'Behind this battle, Provost General Radet has circled the army's trains, which include more than 200 spare cannon. For escort, he has two battalions of Guard infantry and its gendarmerie d'elite. Thinking him an easy target, a horde of Cossacks pours out of the woods-into a thunderstorm of artillery fire that literally blows them away. Radet has put every cannon into his perimeter defense. Gendarmerie d'elite ride out in pursuit, picking up prisoners and putting crippled horses out of their agony…"
From the Introduction to the 1997 edition of The Anatomy of Glory by Henry Lachouque, translated by Anne Brown, x. The Introuction was written by John Elting for the new edition. The quotation regarding the attack by the Old Guard grenadiers a pied is from Lefebvre de Behaine, Napoleon et Les Allies sur le Rhin, Paris 1913, 384.
Amicalement
Armand
returns to Flintloque to paint an Ogre.
