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the 4th Jaegers, with the rest of both regiments just behind the village in support. Eugen expected these men to delay a French attack, not to defeat it. They were ordered to fall back to the right and left of the village. French infantry advancing out of Priesten would face the fire of two of Eugen’s batteries deployed a few hundred metres behind the village. Just behind the batteries were Shakhovskoy’s infantry. To his left were Helfreich’s battalions. The former were low on ammunition, the latter had almost none left. To a great extent they would be forced to rely on their bayonets.

On Helfreich’s left were the three Guards regiments, the Semenovskys and Izmailovskys in the first line, with the Preobrazhenskys behind and the two Guards artillery batteries deployed just in front of the columns of infantry. Initially the only cavalry on the Russian centre and left were the Guards Hussars, which Ermolov placed behind his infantry. When the battle began the Russians had only parts of four regular cavalry and one Cossack regiment to hold their right flank between Priesten and Karwitz, but this was not to matter since the French cavalry made little serious effort to challenge them and Vandamme concentrated all his infantry on Straden and Priesten with the aim of breaking through by the quickest route to Teplitz. Astride the highway were Lieutenant-Colonel Bistrom’s twelve guns of the First Guards Horse Artillery Battery. When the battle began the Russians had roughly 14,700 men to hand.

Vandamme underestimated his enemy. He was an arrogant man and he was also in a hurry. The prospect of a marshal’s baton had been dangled in front of him if his advance into Bohemia succeeded. On the previous evening he had reported to Marshal Berthier that ‘the enemy has fought in vain against our brave troops: he has been defeated on all occasions and is in a state of complete rout’. The moment his advance guard, the brigade of Prince Reuss, was ready Vandamme ordered it to attack the Russian left at Straden. The Guards Jaegers and the Murom Regiment resisted stoutly and when the Semenovskys came up in support Reuss’s men were forced to withdraw. The attack was swiftly renewed, however, when three regiments of Mouton-Duvernet’s division arrived on the scene and advanced towards the space between Straden and Priesten. Helfreich’s battalions moved up to meet them, supported by the Tobolsk and Chernigov regiments from Shakhovskoy’s division. Still further pressure built up after two o’clock when four regiments of General Philippon’s division arrived on the battlefield. One headed for Straden and the other three attacked Priesten.

Straden, by now in flames, was abandoned by the Russians, who fell back on the sawmill (Eggenmühle) and the ‘Leather Chapel’. Around these two points a ferocious hand-to-hand battle developed. Ermolov sent in two battalions of the Preobrazhenskys to support the Semenovskys, who were fighting there alongside Helfreich’s and Shakhovskoy’s men. Meanwhile Philippon’s regiments burst into Priesten but were met by murderous canister fire when they tried to break out of the village. When Philippon’s men retreated Eugen brought forward two of his batteries to the left of Priesten and directed their fire into the flank and the rear of the French troops who were fighting near the chapel and the sawmill. This forced a further French assault on the village in order to silence the batteries.

Eugen’s exhausted battalions were all now committed and he appealed to Ermolov to release the Izmailovsky Guards to drive the French back. Ermolov refused and a ferocious argument ensued. According to Eugen’s aide-de-camp, Ermolov shouted, ‘the Prince is a German and doesn’t give a damn whether the Russian Guards survive or not: but my duty is to save at least something of his Guard for the emperor’. In this moment some of the underlying strains in the Russian high command came out, but Ermolov’s refusal was by no means just xenophobic and irrational: the Izmailovskys comprised two of the only three battalions he still held in reserve. Eugen