He was then at Gera, pushing forward his corps towards Naumburg so as to cut off the Prussians from Saxony and the Elbe.  Great as was his superiority, these movements occasioned such a dispersion of his forces as to invite attack from enterprising foes; but he despised the Prussian generals as imbeciles, and endeavoured to unsteady their rank and file by seizing and burning their military stores at the latter town.  He certainly believed that they were all in retreat northwards, and great was his surprise when he heard from Lannes early on October 13th that his scouts, after scaling the hills behind Jena in a dense mist, had come upon the Prussian army.  The news was only partly correct.  It was only Hohenlohe’s corps:  for the bulk of that army, under Brunswick, was retreating northwards, and nearly stumbled upon the corps of Davoust and Bernadotte behind Naumburg.

Lannes also was in danger on the Landgrafenberg.  This is a lofty hill which towers above the town of Jena and the narrow winding vale of the Saale; while its other slopes, to the north and west, rise above and dominate the broken and irregular plateau on which Hohenlohe’s force was encamped.  Had the Prussians attacked his weary regiments in force, they might easily have hurled them into the Saale.  But Hohenlohe had received orders to retire northwards in the rear of Brunswick, as soon as he had rallied the detachment of Ruechel near Weimar, and was therefore indisposed to venture on the bold offensive which now was his only means of safety.  The respite thus granted was used by the French to hurry every available regiment up the slopes north and west of Jena.  Late in the afternoon, Napoleon himself ascended the Landgrafenberg to survey the plateau; while a pastor of the town was compelled to show a path further north which leads to the same plateau through a gulley called the Rau-thal.[105]

[Illustration:  BATTLE OF JENA]

On the south the heights sink away into a wider valley, the Muehl-thal, along which runs the road to Weimar; and on this side too their wooded brows are broken by gulleys, up one of which runs a winding track known as the Schnecke or Snail.  Villages and woods diversified the plateau and hindered the free use of that extended line formation on which the Prussians relied, while favouring the operations of dense columns preceded by clouds of skirmishers by which Napoleon so often hewed his way to victory.  His greatest advantage, however, lay in the ignorance of his foes.  Hohenlohe, believing that he was confronted only by Lannes’ corps, took little thought about what was going on in his front, and judging the Muehl-thal approach alone to be accessible, posted his chief force on this side.  So insufficient a guard was therefore kept on the side of the Landgrafenberg that the French, under cover of the darkness, not only crowned the summit densely with troops, but dragged up whole batteries of cannon.