Chapter 330: Successive Breakthroughs on the Main Front
The Prussian cavalry, seeing the French artillerymen attempting a desperate stand from afar, all wore mocking expressions and began to slowly accelerate from 50 to 60 meters away.
"Stay calm! Don't shoot..." Napoleon hadn't finished his sentence when a nervous soldier pulled the trigger. They were all artillerymen, skilled in firing cannons, but utterly inexperienced in engaging the enemy within 150 meters.
Others, influenced by his action, also sporadically fired their precious bullets. The scattered shots, combined with the excessive distance, failed to inflict any damage on the Prussians.
Napoleon felt a pang of bitterness but still loudly encouraged his men:
"Don't be afraid! Grip your rifles, point your bayonets at the men, not the horses!"
The Prussian cavalry swept forward to about 30 meters away. Upon seeing the glinting bayonet formation, they expertly veered to the sides, galloping past the artillerymen's defensive line.
They didn't need to engage these "infantrymen" in a desperate fight. All they had to do was use their speed to feint and circle a few times, and the French formation would break, allowing them to hunt them down like rabbits.
Napoleon frowned and ordered them to turn, but with cavalry on both flanks, there was no way to defend against all of them.
His mind went blank. As an artillery officer, he was truly not adept at this kind of combat.
'He could surrender!'
Just as he was torn by indecision, the Prussian cavalry charged forward in formation.
Napoleon reflexively raised his saber to strike the leading cavalryman, but then he heard a volley of gunshots from behind the Prussian cavalry, followed by a flurry of hoofbeats.
The Prussians were clearly startled too. They quickly abandoned the unthreatening artillerymen, circled to the left, and re-formed their ranks in the open ground.
Moments later, over a hundred richly dressed cavalrymen on tall steeds appeared not far away. They discarded their short-barreled carbines, drew their sabers, and charged towards them.
"It's reinforcements!" the Guards Corps artillerymen exclaimed excitedly:
"We're saved!"
"Haha, we won't die now! Let's go, give those Prussian scum a good beating!"
"Thank God, you truly heard my prayers!"
Napoleon, however, watched the cavalry troop with a touch of surprise. He remembered his battalion commander mentioning that the Guards Corps cavalry was deployed on the eastern flank to guard against Prussian cavalry. How could they have arrived so swiftly to rescue them?
The unprepared Prussian cavalry, before they could even get ready, were scattered by the suddenly appearing troop and had no choice but to flee in disarray.
Napoleon's soldiers grew even more excited, urgently shouting for their own cavalry to pursue and press their advantage.
However, the cavalry troop soon turned back. When Napoleon saw the face of the leading officer, it startled him—it was Clauzel, the commander of the Crown Prince's personal guard, whom he had met during his last audience.
'Why would he come to save me?'
Clauzel reined in his horse not far from the artillery Captain, dismounted, and beckoned:
"Good thing we made it in time, are you alright?"
Napoleon froze for a moment, only then realizing the question was directed at him. He hastily saluted with his hat:
"Ah, I'm fine! Thank you so much! But, aren't you supposed to be guarding His Royal Highness, the Crown Prince?"
Clauzel said irritably:
"It's all because of your artillery company. His Highness was worried that such a small number of men, far from the main force, would be in danger, so he sent me to reinforce you."
He had actually been reluctant to come and save Napoleon, as his duty was to protect the Crown Prince. However, His Royal Highness had declared that if Clauzel didn't go, he would ride out himself to rescue Captain Napoleon.
With no other choice, he had led the personal guard to reinforce this small artillery detachment.
Napoleon listened to the cheers of "Long live His Royal Highness, the Crown Prince!" from the surrounding artillerymen and seriously saluted Clauzel once more:
"Thank His Royal Highness, the Crown Prince. He saved our lives."
"You can tell him yourself," Clauzel said, gesturing towards the French rear. "Now I need to escort you back first."
...
When Blücher noticed the conspicuous gap in his infantry line formation, he instantly broke out in a cold sweat. The main forces of both armies were practically right on top of them; if the French attacked there now, his right flank would be gone.
He frantically dispatched four companies of Dragoons to plug the gap. While Dragoons had an impressive name, they were essentially infantrymen who rode horses. They could use their mounts to quickly reach their destination, then dismount and form ranks. In an emergency, they could also be used to mend gaps in the line formation.
However, no sooner had they reached their own infantry line formation than Blücher's greatest fear came to pass.
The French assault columns had smashed directly into the line formation, clearly targeting that very gap!
Forming up an infantry line was a very tedious task. While even children knew how to stand in a line, forming a straight horizontal line several kilometers long required constant coordination from numerous officers and took a significant amount of time to accomplish.
And the Prussian infantry's level of training was clearly insufficient to quickly mend a gap in the line formation.
Five companies of the Guards Corps advanced almost unopposed. The Prussian soldiers who should have been in front of them had drifted towards the small thickets at the edge of the battlefield and had no time to return.
Thus, the five columns, without changing their formation, pierced the Prussian infantry line.
The latter immediately descended into chaos.
Most of the soldiers continued forward at their previous battle pace, while those near the gap frantically raised their rifles and fired at the French soldiers beside them, causing the entire line formation to gradually transform into a diagonal line.
A few minutes later, the drumbeats of the Guards Corps were heard about 35 meters away.
With thousands of Percussion Cap Muskets unleashing a coordinated volley, seventy to eighty men in the Prussian infantry line immediately fell. When the disorganized Prussians began to return fire, less than a third of their soldiers participated in the volley—the others were either fighting the assaulting French or were too far away to be within effective range.
The Guards Corps soldiers quickly reloaded. After advancing another 7 or 8 meters, they unleashed their second volley.
Berthier, observing from a distance that the enemy's right flank had collapsed and their protruding left flank was being relentlessly pushed back by the Guards Corps, decisively ordered a full-scale bayonet charge across the entire army.
Short bugle calls sounded thrice, and the drummers immediately changed their rhythm, beating their drums at the fastest possible tempo.
Under the command of their officers, the Guards Corps soldiers held their rifles at waist height, bayonets pointed directly forward.
A few minutes later, the elongated infantry line charged towards the Prussians with shouts. The latter, already utterly disorganized by the previous volleys, had no intention of engaging now, with officers leading the retreat to the rear.
With overwhelming momentum, the Guards Corps directly overran the Prussian infantry line, leaving behind a field strewn with corpses and trembling prisoners kneeling on the ground.
Blücher's order for the second infantry line to prepare for the enemy had not yet been relayed when the French columns, which had first pierced the gap, rushed without the slightest pause to the front of the Prussian's second defensive line and deployed into a horizontal line with incredible speed.
They then unleashed a volley at the still bewildered Prussian soldiers.
Although they numbered only 500, the Prussian soldiers heard earth-shattering shouts from the front and vaguely heard their officers say that the line formation ahead had been breached. They assumed this was the main French force charging their front.
Fear amplified the casualties infinitely, and as the 500 Guards Corps soldiers unleashed their second volley, the right flank of the Prussian infantry line, which hadn't suffered many casualties, collapsed anyway.
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