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Ferdinand Winzengerode was ordered off in pursuit of Napoleon with 8,000 cavalry. He was told to try to hoodwink the emperor into believing that the whole allied army was pursuing him and to keep allied headquarters well informed as to enemy movements. Meanwhile the two allied armies began their march towards Paris early in the morning of 25 March. The bulk of the main army marched down the road which led from Vitry through Fère-Champenoise to Sézanne, with the cavalry of Peter Pahlen and Prince Adam of Württemberg as its advance guard.

A few kilometres to the south Barclay and the army’s reserve units marched in parallel along side roads and across country. To the north of the main army, Langeron’s and Sacken’s troops advanced down the road from Châlons to Bergères. Ahead of them rode the cavalry divisions of Baron Korff and Ilarion Vasilchikov. The scent of victory had led to the semi-recovery of Blücher. He travelled with his troops in a carriage, visible to all, wearing a lady’s green silk hat with a very broad brim to shade his eyes. The weather had turned fine and the allied troops at last felt that they were moving forward under confident and united leadership. Morale soared.

Shortly after eight in the morning of 25 March Pahlen and Prince Adam bumped into Marshal Marmont’s corps drawn up across the road to Fère-Champenoise, near the village of Soudé Sainte-Croix. Nearby was Marshal Mortier’s corps. Together the two marshals commanded 12,300 infantry, 4,350 cavalry and 68 guns. Even counting Cossacks, this well outnumbered the 5,700 horsemen and 36 guns of Pahlen and Prince Adam, but the French marshals could see large enemy forces in the distance and began to retreat. Even after the arrival of 2,500 Austrian cuirassiers the French infantry squares were still safe enough, though their cavalry was driven off and two light infantry regiments were cut off in Soudé Sainte-Croix and forced to surrender.

Things began to look ominous only around two in the afternoon, when the Russian heavy cavalry arrived on the scene. The Chevaliers Gardes and Horse Guards had not seen serious action since Borodino and their commanding general, Nikolai Preradovich, begged Barclay to allow the 1st Cuirassier Division to take part in the battle. Their appearance more or less coincided with the onset of a violent rain and hailstorm, which blew directly in the faces of the French infantry as they were trying to pass through the deep gully near Conantray. With their muskets useless and under accurate fire from the Guards horse artillery two French squares collapsed and were ridden down by the Russian cuirassiers and the Württemberg cavalry. Panic ensued among much of the rest of the French infantry, many of whom took to their heels. In the end Marmont and Mortier escaped but they lost one-third of their men and most of their guns to an enemy which they always outnumbered and which did not include any infantry.26

Part of the reason they escaped at all was that towards five in the afternoon heavy gunfire was heard in the rear of the allied cavalry. For a time there was uncertainty on all sides as to which troops were in sight and what the gunfire meant. In fact this was two small French divisions, mostly of National Guardsmen, escorting a vast artillery and supply train, and pursued by Korff’s and Vasilchikov’s cavalry from the Army of Silesia. The French column, commanded by generals Pacthod and Amey, was roughly 5,000 strong. It initially encountered Korff’s cavalry at about eleven in the morning on the road from Châlons. Baron Korff had begun the 1812 campaign on the heavy side. By 1814 he was very large and becoming rather lazy. Disliking bivouacs, he had retired on the previous night to the nearby chateau of Sillery, accompanied by his subordinate generals. Meanwhile his Cossacks had uncovered a store of 60,000 bottles of wine into which all of Korff’s cavalry dived with joy. Not surprisingly, they got off to a rather slow start the next morning.27

By midday,