ore 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.

Fortune plays an immense part in warfare; and never did she favour the
Emperor more than on October the 14th, 1806. Fortune and the skill and
bravery of Davoust and his corps turned what might have been an almost
doubtful conflict into an overwhelming victory. Though Napoleon was as
ignorant of the movements of Brunswick as he was of the flank march of
Bluecher at Waterloo, yet the enterprise and tenacity of Davoust and
Lannes yielded him, on the Thuringian heights, a triumph scarcely
paralleled in the annals of war. It is difficult to overpraise those
Marshals for the energy with which they clung to the foe and brought
on a battle under conditions highly favourable to the French: without
their efforts, the Prussian army could never have been shattered on a
single day.

The flood of invasion now roared down the Thuringian valleys and
deluged the plains of Saxony and Brandenburg. Rivers and ramparts were
alike helpless to stay that all-devouring tide. On October the 16th,
16,000 men surrendered at Erfurt to Murat: then, spurring eastward,
_le beau sabreur_ rushed on the wreck of Hohenlohe'