Napoleon had bidden Oudinot, with his own corps and those of Reynier and Bertrand, in all about 70,000 men, to fight his way to Berlin, disperse the Landwehr and the “mad rabble” there, and, if the city resisted, set it in flames by the fire of fifty howitzers.  That Marshal found that a tough resistance awaited him, although the allied commander-in-chief, Bernadotte, moved with the utmost caution, as if he were bent on justifying Napoleon’s recent sneer that he would “only make a show” (piaffer).  It is true that the position of the Swedish Prince, with Davoust threatening his rear, was far from safe; but he earned the dislike of the Prussians by playing the grand seigneur.[351] Meanwhile most of the defence was carried out by the Prussians, who flooded the flat marshy land, thus delaying Oudinot’s advance and compelling him to divide his corps.  Nevertheless, it seemed that Bernadotte was about to evacuate Berlin.

At this there was general indignation, which found vent in the retort of the Prussian General, von Buelow:  “Our bones shall bleach in front of Berlin, not behind it.”  Seeing an opportune moment while Oudinot’s other corps were as yet far off, Buelow sharply attacked Reynier’s corps of Saxons at Grossbeeren, and gained a brilliant success, taking 1,700 prisoners with 26 guns, and thus compelling Oudinot’s scattered array to fall back in confusion on Wittenberg (August 23rd).[352] Thither the Crown Prince cautiously followed him.  Four days later, a Prussian column of Landwehr fought a desperate fight at Hagelberg with Girard’s conscripts, finally rushing on them with wolf-like fury, stabbing and clubbing them, till the foss and the lanes of the town were piled high with dead and wounded.  Scarce 1,700 out of Girard’s 9,000 made good their flight to Magdeburg.  The failures at Grossbeeren and Hagelberg reacted unfavourably on Davoust.  That leader, advancing into Mecklenburg, had skirmished with Walmoden’s corps of Hanoverians, British, and Hanseatics; but, hearing of the failure of the other attempts on Berlin, he fell back and confined himself mainly to a defensive which had never entered into the Emperor’s designs on that side, or indeed on any side.

Even when Napoleon left Macdonald facing Bluecher in Silesia, his orders were, not merely to keep the allies in check:  if possible Macdonald was to attack him and drive him beyond the town of Jauer.[353] This was what the French Marshal attempted to do on the 26th of August.  The conditions seemed favourable to a surprise.  Bluecher’s army was stationed amidst hilly country deeply furrowed by the valleys of the Katzbach and the “raging Neisse."[354] Less than half of the allied army of 95,000 men was composed of Prussians:  the Russians naturally obeyed his orders with some reluctance, and even his own countryman, Yorck, grudgingly followed the behests of the “hussar general.”