Prologue
Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Bülow was watching the battle unfolding under his eyes with what came close to utter satisfaction. In the privacy of his own mind and only there, he admitted that, although a dedicated army reformer, he had been deathly afraid of moving away from the glorious legacy of König Friedrich der Große, had even doubted whether Prussian troops could fight as well as the French and best them at their own tactics. But then, he reflected, while mercilessly pushing under the traitorous thoughts, he had seen first-hand the consequences of what backwards thinking in the army had produced even under such luminaries as Generalfeldmarschall Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Fürst von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel and General Der Infanterie Friedrich Ludwig Fürst zu Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen. At least the former had received some small mercy from a mortal wound to prevent him seeing the kingdom being shaken to the core. The latter had not been so lucky: from what the Freiherr had heard, he was still in retirement, mourning for his fatherland. No, Friedrich von Bülow decided, the nightmare that had begun at Jena and Auerstaedt, prolonged by the headlong flight north to Berlin, the abject surrenders and the humiliating retreat into Poland which he had joined in the futile hope of deliverance coming from the Russians, that nightmare was coming to a close on that day. How fitting it should be that it would happen within Berlin’s sight and that a former marshal of the Ogre, that Corsican parvenu, was in command against his own countrymen!
At that, von Bülow could not repress a sneer, which his chief of staff General Hermann von Boyen must have noticed but was tactful enough not to remark on. So much for this blather of the irresistible ideal of the nation en armes! A lawyer’s son had deserted his jumped-up master at the first sign of the Swedes dangling a crown in front of him. Another parvenu, for whom war was not the moral obligation to which every honorable Junker submitted but just another opportunity of slaking his bloodthirstiness. The Prussian officer had heard rumors that Bernadotte, or Karl Johan as he was calling himself these days, wanted to be compensated for his participation in the coalition by Norway, to be prised away from Denmark. As well he might, the general considered: what that pestiferous Riksdag had done it could undo and Bernadotte’s claim to the Swedish throne was perhaps even more threadbare than the monster Buonaparte’s to his gilded seat in the Tuileries. If Bernadotte could not make good the loss of Finland, what was the point of keeping him as heir? The estates’ mobs would turn on him as quickly as they had on their legitimate sovereign, Gustav IV, and a proper successor would be designated for Karl XIII. Maybe the true monarch would even be restored. He could not suppress entirely a snarl towards his nominal commander. The French turncoat had yet to commit his Swedish troops. Estafette after estafette had been dispatched and returned with the same maddening answer: the dawn assault from the French beasts had taken the Swedes unaware and they were still busy reforming their lines and moving in proper formation.
With a slight movemement of his shoulders, Generalleutnant Friedrich von Bülow forced himself to focus back on the battle. He should not have let his mind wander away from it. Political considerations were well and good but, for that day, all hinged on the heroic resistance his soldiers were putting up. A good general had to remain aware of any opportunity that might present itself. Anytime now, a gap might open between the French regiments in the center and he, Friedrich von Bülow, would not fail to drive a wedge through it. He could sense it coming as sure as he could feel what the coda of a concerto or a fugue would sound like from the first notes of the exposition, whether it was by his beloved Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach whose recitals in Berlin he had attended when he was young, long before he was a soldier, or by Prinzessin Amalie von Preußen, whom he had heard play the flute while he was teaching war to her young nephew Prinz Friedrich Ludwig Christian von Preußen. He sighed deeply. The death of his young impetuous pupil in a futile charge against the French back in the dreadful year was a burden he would have to bear for the rest of his life. At least here he was doing his very best to avenge the dashing young man he had grown to love in an almost fatherly way. So soon after the death of his two sons! Too soon for him and much too soon for Prussia.
Then, what Freiherr von Bülow had been hoping for all morning finally happened. The French were giving way. He quickly scanned the battle lines with his spyglass. The retreat was occuring over the whole of the battlefield. From left to right, Oudinot himself, Reynier and Bertrand were pulling back their corps. Oudinot must have had enough for the day, the Prussian general decided, and was ordering a withdrawal to save his army for a latter fight. Here and there, stubborn squads of French offered a spirited resistance, but it availed them little: even the greenest and lowest of the Landwehr regiments could beat Buonaparte’s most hardened veterans if the former took the latter in the flank.
This looked to be a victory in the making. Not the greatest he could have hoped for, if Oudinot escaped with the bulk of his troops still in fighting shape and used Arrighi’s cavalry to screen his retreat, but one to give heart to Prussia’s soldiers and convince them once and for all that they had become a match for the dreaded French. It would make them see that the victories at Möckern or at Luckau against the very same Oudinot, nearly three months ago had not been flukes. He confered briefly with General Herman von Boyen and ordered a careful pause across the line. His troops had been brave and had stood the test of valour, but they must have been tired after more than four hours of combat. There would be no mad dash forward, no glorious cavalry charge which would break itself on squares of infantry. No, Friedrich von Bülow had forever abandoned whatever delusions about war he might have held after the debacle of 1806. He would go at the French marshal carefully while never letting him outside of his sight, never letting him escape to safety. Unfortunately, his freshest troops were the Landwehr from the detached corps which he had mostly kept in reserve to secure his line of retreat because he was not sure they could hold their own in a straight line firefight. Now though, they might achieve something. It was obvious the French were not routing but their morale had had to have been hit badly. The Generalleutnant issued some more orders for his light cavalry to prepare to harrass the stragglers who could not keep pace with the fast-timed withdrawal of the French corps.
Bernadotte had at least been useful for something, Friedrich von Bülow ruefully acknowledged. The plan he had expounded at Trachenberg to avoid Buonaparte and go at his vulnerable marshals while they were tramping all over the sacred German soil was beginning to show real benefits. Oudinot in particular was a dreadful army commander. Six days ago, he had barely managed to prevent Reynier to go headlong at the Prussians without waiting for reinforcements on his flanks. The Prussian Junker had almost despaired, for he was sure he could have crushed that isolated corps like a grape. Since then, Oudinot had only dithered hither and yon, sending some scouting parties on the Army of the North’s flanks and refusing to engage the Prussians and Russians every day they demonstrated in force. There had been a few desultory exchanges of fire from cannons while Oudinot camped in front of Ahrensdorf, the Genshagen wood and Blankenfelde, even as the Prussians fortified Gütergotz, Ruhlsdorf, Großbeeren and Mahlow. Bernadotte had had the barest of courtesies to inform him his Swedes had gotten into a few cavalry scraps with the French. Still, that had prevented the Prussians from doing much scouting and very few peasants had left the area to inform them of what was going on. And now, Oudinot had given him something even better than destroying a single corps: from now on, the Prussians would drive the demoralized enemy from their soil, confident in their strength, knowing that they had had no need of their so-called Swedish allies.
Half an hour later, an orderly advance was beginning for the Third Corps, imitated by the Fourth Corps on the left, led by his counterpart Generalleutnant Bogislav Graf Tauentzien, and the smaller Russian Corps under Feldmarschall-Leutnant Ferdinand Freiher von Witzingerode. The wounded who couldn’t walk had been carried to the rear, to rest in the half-smashed houses of Großbeeren before medical carts could transport them back to better billets in the capital city. The somewhat ragged and tired regular regiments had had the time to drink their fill of water or alcohol and eat part of their rations. They had gone at it with a will, the early morning attack having prevented them from breaking their fast. Friedrich von Bülow would not begrudge them this indulgence. They had shown their mettle and he needed rested soldiers to manage the pursuit. The Landwehr were filling the gaps left by the dead and dying or taking positions in a third or fourth line, spreading out like Jägers. The French still had not gone very far. If anything, they must have been more exhausted than his men: they had surely woken long before dawn, their last meal was a distant memory, and there was no time for them to recuperate from the exertion of the fight.
The Generalleutnant was distracted from his observations by his chief of staff who was pointing at something in the rear. And wasn’t that just gilding the lily! Bernadotte’s Swedes, who should have been racing to the front from their position on the right, were standing well in the rearguard of the Prussian corps where they would be absolutely useless. Bernadotte had only been accepted with reluctance as nominal commander of the Army of the North because he had not taken part in either Jena or Auerstaedt but, to Friedrich von Bülow, that spoke more of the man’s incompetence than of any feeling of friendship for the Prussians. What had ever possessed the never-sufficiently-damned Corsican to make that man a marshal? Apart from a few orders that morning, all of them sluggish and meaningless, nothing had come forward from his headquarters! From what the Freiherr on his right and the Graf on his left were sending him, Friedriech von Bülow had the distinct feeling that all three Corps had fought separate battles with no coordination whatsoever.
Fuming, the general led on with his staff, joining some of his men, doling out compliments to some captains or lieutenants who had distinguished themselves. Since his commander didn’t want to inveigle himself in this battle, he intended to make sure the pursuit was well and properly led. Short and sharp barks from sergeants and obersts alike echoed all through the battlefield as the lines made their ponderous advance forward.
Before long, nearly five hundred French soldiers had been rounded up and taken to the rear to waste away in a camp until their usurping master would be felled. The lines were beginning to shift into column formation for as quick a march as could be managed. The cavalry was leaving trails of dust half a league forward, probably taking some units in the rear and scattering them.
Then Friedrich von Bülow reined in his horse so hard the animal whinied in pain. The French – The French weren’t leaving! They were redeploying in lines in a slight crescent from well north of Löwenbruck to the heights above Jühnsdorf! What could they be thinking? Soldiers who had been beaten wouldn’t fight again for the day except in holding actions, all officers knew so. Oudinot could not be so stupid, could he? And this was no mere rearguard skirmish! The whole army had turned and seemed ready to engage once again. Well, if the fools wanted to die, he would gladly oblige them. He turned to his ordinances and began calling out for them to issue his orders to resume the march and take the fight to the French. The enemy had no real artillery anymore: a lot of guns had been left behind in their retreat. So had the Prussian guns which were long to move to the front and seemed stuck in the center of the moving columns but that didn’t matter much. The infantry with the most fight left in them would thrash the other. And that infantry was his, the Generalleutnant knew without a doubt.
A quarter of an hour later, with noon fast approaching, the Prussians had redressed their ranks and were closing in. Freiherr von Bülow was following them closely. He didn’t want to have to wait. In his estimation, the French would snap like a twig in under an hour and he would have a full late August afternoon to chase after them. He beamed at his staff: ‘Well, gentlemen, it is said that, at Friedland, the usurper Buonaparte declared that you could not catch the enemy twice making so big a mistake and we all know what happened. Should we teach those French ragamuffins the same lesson here and now?’ A cheer went up among the officers, picked up by the regiments closest to him which soon morphed into that new and powerful song, ‘Der Vaterlandlied’. The voices rose as they intoned the first stanza: ‘The god who made iron grow/Did not want slaves;/ Therefore he gave saber, and spear/ To man in his right hand’. Let the godless French swine shake in their boots at that. Such glorious victories should always go with music.
An ensign from the cavalry was trying to make his way to him, Friedrich von Bülow noticed. The hapless horseman was impeded by the cheering and singing throngs of infantrymen. He made another few attempts at getting through before he resorted to shouting his message over the noise at the top of his lungs.
‘Herr General! The French have hidden batteries behind the villages and the woods! They’re coming up and have badly hammered the Queen’s dragoons and the Pomeranian regiment! There are at least ten thousand Frenchmen in reserve moving fast from the Nudow road, ready to take us in the right flank ! Those who are facing you are dug in. We don’t know how they managed, but they have trenches and those looked deep! Sir! General von Oppen asks what you want him to do, sir! He says at least one hussar brigade have passed by the Russians and dispersed all eight of his Landwehr squadrons!’
The shouts of elation were silenced as fast as they had risen up. Even soldiers without a formal military education would know what those few words meant. What had seemed the last push towards glory but a moment before now turned to the grisly prospect of hand-to-hand fighting against an enemy with adequate defenses. Who knew for how long Oudinot had had those trenches prepared? And what was the meaning of this maneuver? Had the French marshal deliberately thrown his men into the fray to tire Prussian soldiers before launching an expertly hidden reserve? What if all this had been a trap?
For a few seconds, the general’s mind whirled around without managing to find a course of action. But Friedriech Freiherr von Bülow had always been a decisive man. To fight the French was dangerous, no doubt about it. But to retreat without a contest would break the morale of his men, a morale it had taken years to husband and rebuild carefully and that the early hours of the day had greatly improved. So close to Berlin, this could turn a careful retreat into a rout just like after Jena and Auerstaedt. It was a risk he could not take. That left only the way forward.
‘At them, soldiers of Prussia!’ he shouted, drawing his sword and waving it about. At them sons of Germany! Do those piddly and cowardly French believe a few trenches will stop you heroes? Let’s show them how wrong they are!’
The cheering was more ragged than it had been, but it was a cheer nonetheless. The Generalleutnant risked a look to the north-west in his rear and saw metal gleaming from marching ranks. The Swedes were coming at last! And, by the look of it, they were bringing forth a mighty battery of artillery that he would sorely need before the day was over. Too bad they didn’t have many howitzers to lob shells into the French defensive works, but that would have to do.
He spurred his horse onwards. His Corps would need all the help it could get and that meant he would have to be seen to lead from the front. He ordered his chief of staff to handle the tactics until he came back and not to give up an inch of ground. All of a sudden, he felt like a second lieutenant again in one of Friedrich der Große’s campaigns. The drummers and fifers picked up the pace as orders were sent all up and down the line.
‘I know not one fearful man among you!’ he bellowed. ‘Let all brave Prussians follow me!’
There was but a short distance to go before closing with the French. He gave his steed a bit more of his spurs, urging it to a fast trot. Behind him, the regiments were marching at the prescribed one hundred and eight paces a minute. Good men. Stalwart men. Far more men than there would remain when the sun would set. One more sin to put on the shoulders of the Corsican.
The first volley of the French tore into the line, but Friedrich von Bülow knew without looking back that every man that fell was immediately replaced. He had already decided he would give just one volley with the brigade that was following him before rushing in with bayonets. If at least part of the trenches could be seized before the French reserves arrived, that would greatly alleviate the pain his men would have to endure.
The second volley came close to the first one, less than fifteen seconds distant. One bullet grazed the Generalleutnant’s sleeve but a lot of them shredded his horse’s chest. He had been ready for it and jumped nimbly off of his dead steed like a much younger man. An aide came up to him with another horse at the ready and he jumped into the saddle. He had not even lost his grip on his sword and waved it encouragingly to the troops.
‘The French bullet that will kill me has not yet been cast!’ he screamed. ‘Fifty paces more, lads, and we’ll show them what a real volley looks like!’
That meant probably another two volleys from the enemy, maybe three to press the charge home. No matter. Steel would win the day, not lead. A familiar sound came from the back, a deep and throaty roar. Guns were at last coming to his help. If he had to guess, he would have said it was those of the Swedes. They had all fired in unison, and the Prussians guns were much too jumbled up in the rear to be able to act as a grand battery, with even his able Oberstleutnant Karl von Holtzendorff having trouble getting them in position.
To his slight surprise, he saw only a single cannonball careen in front of him and ricochet into the trench, slaying a French soldier. What were those Swedes good for, really? Couldn’t they even aim the blasted things properly?
Another fifteen seconds and another volley. This one passed him by without so much as giving him a scratch. Such was the fortune of war, but it could prove fickle. The trenches were now less than thirty paces away, almost completely obscured by white and grey smoke. Time to order the men to shoot at last. He tried to, but the next volley covered his voice. He raised his sword to give a signal and the roar of cannons made itself heard once more. All of a sudden, the Generalleutnant felt himself falling. His horse had obviously been shot. But where had the bullet come from? The French were still busy reloading… The utter surprise made him miss his dismount and he felt his right leg crushed by one thousand pounds of a dead warhorse.
‘Save the General!’ he heard from behind.
‘No, damn you! Onwards, onwards, men, storm those trenches!’
It was no use. The closest squad rushed to him and lifted the horse from him. They picked him up by his armpits and bodily dragged him back to the very relative safety of the line. That was when Friedriech Freiher von Bülow, Generalleutnant of the Royal Prussian Army saw.
His horse, the poor creature which had carried him for less than a minute, had not been killed by a bullet. Its hindquarters had just been smashed into a pulp by a cannonball. A cannonball that could only have been fired from behind. Another roar confirmed the chilling realization that was dawning upon him. No single shell landed in front of him. That first cannonball had been an overshot.
‘The Swedes!’ he tried to cry to his soldiers. ‘The Swedes are shooting at us! Treason!’
They ogled him as if he had suddenly started speaking in tongues. The weight of his words could not make its way to their minds. But despite the agony below his right knee, the Junker now saw what had happened this day. The French had baited him into a trap and the Swedes had pretended to mill aimlessly about, never intending to join him in the fight. Instead, that two-faced Bernadotte had positioned them behind his army, waiting for it to be engaged to turn on him and his men were caught in an implacable vise. Fresh troops coming up from front and rear with artillery set up in batteries. His cavalry beaten back and unable to make a way out for his main forces to run the gauntlet either to the west or the east. Jena, Auerstaedt, all of this was going to pale in comparison of the slaughter that would happen this day.
‘Back, back! Don’t bother with the French! Go at the Swedes, we need to protect Berlin! At the Swedes, I say!’
But Friedrich von Bülow knew all too well that so far in front he could at best control a brigade. Herman von Boyen may not yet be aware of the disaster upon them and he had given him overall command and the strict order to push forward. Marching back risked opening a hole in the Prussian line, a hole the French would pour through to rip his corps apart even more, taking his corps in enfilade from both sides.
All those thoughts were for nought. From the second and third line where most of them had been kept, the Landswehr men were stampeding forward. But there was no cohesion or order to their frantic movement. Indeed, most of them were throwing their flintlock muskets down as they ran. The fresh and well-trained Swedes must have thrown themselves headlong into those soldiers who ranked barely above a militia, triggering a mass panic. Even the regulars were beginning to waver, pressed by the rushing mob in one direction or another.
Canister and grapeshot began to fly from the heights above the French trenches, opening bloody alleys among the ranks, tearing at the soldiers’ flesh. ‘Enough’, he wanted to say, ‘enough.’ But not even a whisper came out of his throat. The proud Prussian had wished never to utter those words again and he couldn’t bring himself to break his vow, even standing amidst the unfolding disaster. Thankfully, the pain soon made him pass out.
He woke up with two faces bent over him. One was familiar – the archtraitor Bernadotte. The other was not, but the man wore a marshal baton in his right hand. His left arm was in a sling. That must have been Oudinot, who was downright infamous for getting wounded at nearly every engagement he took part in.
‘You’re awake’, the French marshal drawled in passable German. We need you to sign an instrument of surrender for your army and the city.’
‘Remove that damn beast from my presence!’ the Generalleutnant growled while weakly pointing at Bernadotte. ‘I’ll do nothing while he’s here!’
The wretched and damnable man shrugged as if he did not care a whit for what Friedrich von Bülow had to say and left without a word.
‘Now would you sign, Herr General?’ Oudinot repeated. ‘Our armies are rounding up the last of your regiments. The way to Berlin is open to us. Once more, I could point out, if I was not feeling charitable. We don’t wish to have to smash our way in. You are the highest officer in command not dead or drugged inconscious with laudanum. Your chief of staff was unfortunately killed when he tried to rally your line. As for General Tauentzien, he is still on the surgeon’s table, I’m afraid, and I can’t say for certain whether he will survive the amputation of his arm. The bullet that smashed his elbow did much damage, and he had already taken a saber wound across the chest. You’re the senior German in charge.’
‘I want my men to be paroled. Sent back to their homes unharmed.’
‘Alas, that shan’t be possible. Your king went over to the Russians and is still at large in Austria in defiance of the treaty he signed with the Emperor. Your troops will be disarmed and sent to Schleswig or Denmark for internment. I assure you on my honour as an officer that they won’t be mistreated. I have had my medical staff tend to their wounds as well as those we incurred.’
‘There is one thing I must know’, the defeated man mumbled. ‘How long has that beast been playing us for fools? How long has he been in your pay to entrap us so?’
‘If you’re referring to Marshal Bernadotte, not as long as you might think. He seems quite dedicated to his new kingdom. But the Emperor prevailed upon him in the end. He only sent us his approval for our plan an hour after midnight. Reynier had been champing at the bit for a week, it was all I could do to keep him from hurling himself at you. Only my personal orders from the Emperor could keep him back until today. I myself did not know I could have an ally in the Marshal until a week ago.’
Generalleutnant Friedrich Freiherr von Bülow had never felt so exhausted in his life. Could the Ogre really peer so far into the souls of men and fashion them into whatever he pleased? Was it why he had kept all of Europe under his despotic thumb for nearly a decade? Oudinot was extending a quill dripping ink and a piece of paper towards him, having let go of his baton. Friedrich closed his eyes and thought of Sanssouci, of Berlin’s salons, of the ballrooms and of the churches where exquisite hymns were sung going up into flames if the French decided to sack the city. When he opened his eyes again, he saw that he had picked up the quill and scribbled his name at the bottom of the page. The agony that went through him no longer had anything to do with his wound. His entire soul felt like it was screaming, screaming and screaming in a wordless wail that would never end.