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By Root 3895 0

allied force in their path was the Russian Guards Dragoon and Guards Lancer regiments. To their great credit, most of Eugen’s shrunken infantry battalions formed so-called ‘masses’ against the cavalry and, with the soldiers standing back to back, retreated in good order, his right wing falling back into the village of Gossa itself. The Russian Guards light cavalry was caught before it had deployed, possibly because its commander, General Shevich, was killed by a cannon ball just as the action was about to start. In any case, two regiments could never have held back the equivalent of an entire cavalry corps. The lancers were pushed aside to the south-west, the dragoons directly southwards. The French cavalry overran part of the allied artillery, advanced past Gossa and came within a very few hundred metres of the hill on which the allied monarchs were watching events.

At this point the horsemen were brought to a halt by what Cathcart describes as

a small brook or drain [which] ran from Gossa towards the Pleisse…Its banks happened to be swampy and could only be passed with difficulty, and by a leap across a wide drain, unless by causeways made in two or three places by the farmers, for agricultural purposes. This obstacle was only partial, and a few hundred yards to the right, nearer Gossa, it ceased to be an impediment…But the enemy…were unexpectedly checked by this unforeseen obstacle; their crowding and confusion increased; and at that moment the Russian regiment of hussars of the guard, which Wittgenstein had sent…appeared in their rear. This caused a panic. The unwieldy mass became noisy, and attempted to retire; the Russian light cavalry instantly followed them. The Emperor Alexander, who stood on the hill above, seized the opportunity to send off his own escort of Cossacks of the guard, amounting to several squadrons, under Count Orlov Denisov, who passed the stream at a favourable spot near Gossa, and took the retiring mass in flank. This completed the panic, which then became a flight, and the fugitives did not draw their bridles till they had regained the protection of their infantry.31

Cathcart does not mention the intervention of two Prussian cavalry regiments to which most German-language sources assign a role in the defeat of the French attack. Though he praises the Russian Guards cavalry, the main point of his narrative is the incompetence with which the attack was mounted. The French cavalry seemed to advance closely bunched together in columns and ‘certainly in one body only, that is, with no sort of second line or reserve’. Inadequate discipline and leadership allowed them to be thrown into confusion ‘by an insignificant obstacle’ and then to be ‘seized by a panic’ and ‘fly before a force of light cavalry, which altogether could not have amounted to 2000 men’. The fact that most of the French horsemen were heavy cavalry made their defeat by Cossacks, lancers and hussars all the more remarkable. Above all, Cathcart put down the rout to ‘want of a second line on which to rally, and from which to take a fresh departure – a precaution without which no cavalry attack ought ever to be made’.32

A true ‘cavalry patriot’, in one respect Cathcart is clearly a little biased in his account of what he calls ‘this remarkable cavalry affair’. He forgets the contribution of the Russian artillery. As the French cavalry approached his hill, Alexander turned to the commander of his artillery, Major-General Ivan Sukhozanet, and said: ‘Look: whichever side gets its forces here first will win. Is your reserve artillery far away?’ Only 25, Sukhozanet was another good example of how promotion on merit during the wars of 1805–13 had brought a number of excellent young officers into key positions. The son of a Polish officer, and himself without wealth or connections, Sukhozanet had done well in 1806–7 and thereby secured the notice of his superiors and transfer to the Guards artillery. For his performance under Wittgenstein in 1812 and then at Bautzen in 1813, he had won the St George’s Cross and two promotions. Wittgenstein