STUDIES IN THE NAPOLEONIC WARS 097
A Disaster on the Battlefield
12. A Disaster on the Battlefield (5)
In the Prussian campaign of 1806, which followed so closely on the Austrian War of 1805, we find all the dragoons mounted on regularly trained cavalry horses, save four battalions formed of squadrons not yet mounted, which followed in the rear of the army, and were ere long provided with horses from the spoils of the Prussians captured at Jena or in the retreat from that field. It is perhaps what might have been expected after Bonaparte’s late experiment: but the next note that we find upon the dragoons is that they are accused of having been so much impregnated with infantry notions, that they could not always act satisfactorily as cavalry. Though they did some very distinguished service both in the Jena fighting and in the pursuit of Hohenlohe’s army which followed, we have a strong protest against their inefficiency in the February which followed, from General Milhaud, who commanded a six-regiment division of dragoons in the Eylau campaign.
The occasion was the combat of Burkersdorf on February 14, 1807: Milhaud and his division had been executing a reconnaissance in force towards Friedland, and were retiring, followed by an enemy of very inferior strength. He was falling back in echelon of brigades at his leisure, keeping off with ease a small observing force of Cossacks, when he was suddenly attacked in flank by a single regiment of Russian hussars, which emerged unexpectedly from a village and rode in upon him. Milhaud gave orders for the nearest brigade to form front to flank, but it failed to do so in time to meet the Russian onset, and was charged and broken long before it was ready. Thereupon the other two brigades, still in process of formation and clubbed by unsteady manoeuvring, rode off the field before they had been attacked at all. They then started galloping, and could not be rallied till they had gone three miles to the rear.
Milhaud wrote in fury to Murat that evening that he had tried not to survive such a disgraceful rout of his division, by riding straight at the front of the enemy, with only four men behind him, but by some miracle had been neither killed nor taken. He then asked to be relieved of his command “je ne veux pas commander de pareilles troupes”—they could not be trusted to make a simple change of formation in a hurry, and had gone off the field in disorder when they found themselves caught in a disadvantageous position even by a very inferior number. The explanation given was that many of the men had actually been trained only to infantry drill, and had only received horses after reaching the front in Poland. They got flurried, and fell into hopeless disorder, when suddenly attacked in flank, because of their consciousness that they were not capable of executing any movement in haste. The last campaign had proved the danger of a half-cavalry training to troops acting as infantry—this one proved the danger of a half-infantry training to troops acting as cavalry.
Speaking generally, it may be said that after 1807 Napoleon gave up entirely any notion of using dragoons as mounted infantry—for the future they may be considered in his army as merely one of the five sorts of cavalry. They even ceased to be distinguished from the others by their having a musket, for in 1811 the Emperor ordered the cuirassiers to be furnished with a carbine or “musketoon”, and the chasseurs had already been provided with it. Of all the French cavalry in Napoleon’s last three years of reign, 1812–13–14, only the newly created lancers had not got it, and the Emperor had issued orders, just before the Russian War of 1812 broke out, that experiments should be made to see whether the carbine could not be carried along with the lance—though this combination was never actually made, the addition turning out to be too cumbersome.
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