At once Bluecher charged, only to be driven back with severe loss.  Again he came on, this time supported by infantry and cannon:  again he was repulsed; for Davoust, aided by the fog, had seized the neighbouring heights which commanded the high road, and held them with firm grip.  Determined to brush aside or crush this stubborn foe, the Duke of Brunswick now led heavy masses along the narrow defile; but the steady fire of the French laid him low, with most of the officers; and as the Prussians fell back, Davoust swung forward his men to threaten their flanks.  The King was dismayed at these repeated checks, and though the Prussian reserves under Kalckreuth could have been called up to overwhelm the hard-pressed French by the weight of numbers, yet he judged it better to draw off his men and fall back on Hohenlohe for support.

But what a support!  Instead of an army, it was a terrified mob flying before Murat’s sabres, that met them halfway between Auerstaedt and Weimar.  Threatened also by Bernadotte’s corps on their left flank, the two Prussian armies now melted away in one indistinguishable torrent, that was stemmed only by the sheltering walls of Erfurt, Magdeburg, and of fortresses yet more remote.

Of the twin battles of Jena and Auerstaedt, the latter was unquestionably the more glorious for the French arms.  That Napoleon should have beaten an army of little more than half his numbers is in no way remarkable.  What is strange is that so consummate a leader should have been entirely ignorant of the distribution of the enemy’s forces, and should have left Davoust with only 27,000 men exposed to the attack of Brunswick with nearly 40,000.[110] In his bulletins, as in the “Relation Officielle,” the Emperor sought to gloze over his error by magnifying Hohenlohe’s corps into a great army and attenuating Davoust’s splendid exploit, which in his private letters he warmly praised.  The fact is, he had made all his dispositions in the belief that he had the main body of the Prussians before him at Jena.

That is why, on the afternoon of the 13th, he hastily sent to recall Murat’s horse and Bernadotte’s corps from Naumburg and its vicinity; and in consequence Bernadotte took no very active part in the fighting.  For this he has been bitterly blamed, on the strength of an assertion that Napoleon during the night of the 13th-14th sent him an order to support Davoust.  This order has never been produced, and it finds no place in the latest and fullest collection of French official despatches, which, however, contains some that fully exonerate Bernadotte.[111] Unfortunately for Bernadotte’s fame, the tattle of memoir writers is more attractive and gains more currency than the prosaic facts of despatches.