Russia Against Napoleon_ The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace - Dominic Lieven [249]
Eugen decided that the allies’ best chance was for his Second Corps and Helfreich’s division to make a diversionary attack towards Krieschwitz and the Kohlberg heights, in other words in the direction of Königstein. He hoped that this would draw Vandamme’s attention and his reserves northwards and allow the Guards to retreat safely through the Giesshübel and Hennersdorf defiles. The Guards would leave rearguards at both these danger-spots to cover the retreat of Eugen’s men and, if necessary, to extract them from the clutches of the pursuing French. The plan went better than anyone had a right to expect. Eugen himself led the attack on Krieschwitz, while Ermolov attacked the Kohlberg heights with a force that included some of Eugen’s regiments of the line and the Guards Jaegers. The Russians attacked with great determination. The Kohlberg heights, for example, changed hands three times before finally being stormed by the Guards Jaegers. Helfreich’s 14th Division first lost and then recaptured Cotta. The French threw in reserves in the north but they did nothing to reinforce the small detachments they had sent to ambush the Russians at the Giesshübel and Hennersdorf defiles. The Preobrazhenskys broke through without too much difficulty at Giesshübel and the Semenovskys drove Vandamme’s men off the road at Hennersdorf.
Disengaging Second Corps and Helfreich’s men from the battle in the north and getting them down the highway was bound to be very difficult, but in the main the Russians succeeded even here, though at quite heavy cost. The Estland Regiment, part of Helfreich’s division, lost 6 officers and 260 men, in other words one-third of its entire strength, in the battles on the Kohlberg and at the Giesshübel defile. Helfreich got his men back through Giesshübel safely but it took a counter-attack led by Eugen himself to disentangle one of Prince Shakhovskoy’s brigades from the pursuing French. Four of Eugen’s infantry regiments, commanded by Major-General Pyshnitsky, had been heavily engaged at Krieschwitz at the northern end of Eugen’s line and were in fact cut off on the highway but they succeeded in taking to a side lane, evaded the French, and rejoined Second Corps on the evening of 29 August, in time for the second day of the battle of Kulm.71
By the evening of 28 August the whole of Eugen and Ermolov’s force, with the exception of Pyshnitsky’s regiments, had reached Peterswalde. This was an enormous village strung out for 3 or more kilometres along the main road. Eugen’s men held the village and formed the army’s rearguard while the Guards marched back into the Teplitz valley and took up a holding position at Nollendorf, on which Eugen’s men could retreat in safety the next day. This plan was almost wrecked early in the morning of 29 August. Orders from Ostermann-Tolstoy seem to have persuaded Prince Shakhovskoy’s rearguard to hang on in front of Peterswalde much longer than Eugen intended. When they finally did begin to retreat through the village at dawn on 29 August they were caught by French units attacking not just along the highway but also infiltrating into Peterswalde down side lanes. Amidst the dense early morning mist a panic ensued in the village streets among some of Shakhovskoy’s regiments. Fortunately, enough Russian infantrymen remained steady to put up a fight in Peterswalde and delay the French pursuit. When the numerous but disorganized French units did begin to advance out of Peterswalde towards the Teplitz valley they were charged by Eugen’s cavalry, headed by Leopold of Saxe-Coburg’s cuirassiers. This bought Eugen sufficient time to restore order, reorganize a rearguard, and set off on a steady retreat to Nollendorf and the cover provided by the Guards.72
At Nollendorf Eugen found not just two regiments of Guards but also four regiments of Shakhovskoy’s division which had got out of Peterswalde by side roads and made their own way back to allied lines. In his memoirs