The Battle
The French emperor began the clash by pinning the enemy down while he organised a flanking attack. General Grouchy's cavalry and horse artillery kept the Prussians occupied as marshals Ney (with the Imperial Young Guard Corps) and Victor (commanding French II Corps) secured both the town of Brienne and its chateau. About dusk, the chateau was captured by the French, when Blucher thought the battle was nearly over, and was preparing for dinner. Blucher and his second-in-command General von Gneisenau only just managed to elude capture. During the heavy fighting Napoleon was almost taken prisoner by Russian Cossacks. The battle ended about midnight when the allies retreated. Blucher left behind some 4000 casualties to France's 3000.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Brienne
Famous quotes containing the word battle:
“There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers’ battle with the heavens that cover them. Snow, rain, and mist highlight, drench, or conceal the vast towers, but those towers, hostile to mystery and blind to any sort of play, shear off the rain’s tresses and shine their three thousand swords through the soft swan of the fog.”
—Federico García Lorca (1898–1936)
“Forty years after a battle it is easy for a noncombatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to have to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)