Russia Against Napoleon_ The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace - Dominic Lieven [194]
The allies’ initial target was Ney’s isolated corps deployed near the villages of Grossgörschen and Starsiedel. It helped Wittgenstein that Ney had dispersed the five divisions of his corps and failed to take proper precautions. The initial attack by Blücher’s Prussians took the enemy by surprise. The allied high command found itself equally surprised, however, by the fact that Marmont’s corps was positioned in support of Ney and by the nature of the ground over which the battle was fought. This suggests that, despite their superiority in cavalry, allied reconnaissance was less than perfect. George Cathcart, the son of the British ambassador to Russia, was with Wittgenstein’s headquarters. He commented that because of the undulating, cultivated terrain it was impossible to see from allied headquarters what lay beyond the first high ground where the enemy was positioned. The initial Prussian attack on Grossgörschen succeeded ‘but Grossgörschen is only one of a cluster of nearly contiguous villages, interspersed with tanks, mill ponds, gardens etc., which furnished strong holding ground’. The villages on the battlefield were of ‘stone houses with narrow, cobbled lanes and stone-walled gardens’.53
For the first time the allied troops encountered a fundamental difference between Saxon and Russian battlefields. On the latter, wooden villages offered no help to defenders. Solid Saxon stone walls and buildings were a very different matter and could sometimes be turned into small fortresses. Ney’s troops were inexperienced but they were courageous and, in the nature of such soldiers, they drew strength from being able in part to fight behind fixed, stone defences. The Prussian infantry also showed extraordinary courage, urged on by officers desperate to wipe away the shame of Jena. The result was a ferocious battle that swung from side to side as villages were lost and then regained by fresh, well-ordered reserves whose swift counter-attacks caught the enemy before it had regained its breath and organized itself to defend its recent gains. The brunt of the fighting was borne by the Prussian infantry, with the Russians only entering the battle in their support well into the afternoon. From this moment Eugen of Württemberg’s corps in particular was heavily engaged and suffered many casualties first in recapturing the villages and subsequently in holding off the growing threat to the allies’ right flank.
The key to the battle was, however, that Ney’s and Marmont’s men were just able to hold the allied attacks long enough for first Napoleon himself and then other corps to arrive on the battlefield. It did not help the allied cause that faulty planning and reconnaissance meant that Miloradovich’s corps remained inactive only a few kilometres from the battle. Even had Miloradovich’s men been present, however, it would not have altered the outcome. Given the greatly superior French numbers of infantry and Napoleon’s skill in using them, once the whole French army was concentrated on the battlefield victory was certain. By the late afternoon, with MacDonald threatening to turn the allies’ right and Bertrand their left, Wittgenstein was being forced to commit his reserves at a time when Napoleon would soon have many fresh troops to hand.
Clausewitz argued that Lutzen was more a drawn battle than an allied defeat. At the end of the day the allies still stood on the battlefield and had inflicted more casualties than they had suffered. Their retreat was forced, not by defeat, but by the presence of overwhelming enemy numbers. According to Clausewitz, had they not fought at Lutzen this numerical inferiority would have forced the allies to retreat anyway without even slowing down the French advance to the degree achieved by the battle of Lutzen. There is something in this argument but also