Life of Being a Crown Prince in France

The Prussian Cavalry, from a distance, saw the French Artillery attempting to make a desperate stand and couldn't help but show a mocking sneer as they began to accelerate steadily from seventy to eighty paces away.

"Stay calm! Don't fire..."

Napoleon had not finished speaking when one of the soldiers, tense, pulled the trigger—their expertise was in operating cannons, but they had no experience engaging the enemy within 200 paces.

Influenced by this, the others also haphazardly fired off their precious bullets. The disorganized shooting, coupled with the distance being too great, failed to cause any harm to the Prussians.

Napoleon felt bitterness in his heart but still loudly encouraged his men:

"Do not fear, grip your guns tightly, point your bayonets at the men, not at the horses!"

The Prussian Cavalry charged up to about forty paces away with a loud clamor and, facing the gleaming bayonets, skillfully veered off to the sides, swiftly sweeping past the artillery defensive line.

They did not need to fight these "infantry" to the death. By leveraging their speed to pull away a few times, the formation of the French would break, and then they could chase them down as easily as hunting rabbits.

Napoleon frowned and ordered a turn, but with cavalry on both sides, there was no way to protect against all of them.

His mind went blank; as an artillery officer, he was indeed not adept at this.

"Engage at will!" he waved his sword, ready to grapple with a Prussian cavalryman when he suddenly remembered—as a Corsican, there was absolutely no need to fight to the death over a war between France and Prussia!

He could surrender!

As he was struggling internally, the Prussian Cavalry had already formed up and charged.

Napoleon, on reflex, raised his sword to strike the leading cavalryman but heard gunfire from behind the Prussian line, followed by the dense sound of galloping hooves.

The Prussians were clearly startled as well; they hurriedly abandoned the harmless artillerymen and took a left turn, regrouping in the open space.

Then, not far away, a hundred or so lavishly dressed cavalrymen on tall horses discarded their short barrel guns, drew their sabers, and charged at them.

"It's reinforcements!" the Gunners of the Guard Corps shouted excitedly:

"We are saved!"

"Ha-ha, we don't have to die now! Charge, let's properly teach those Prussian bastards a lesson!"

"Thank God, You really heard my prayers!"

Napoleon, observing the cavalry, was astounded; he had heard from the camp commander that the Cavalry of the Guard Corps was all positioned on the eastern side to guard against the Prussian Cavalry—how had they managed to arrive so quickly to their rescue?

The unprepared Prussian Cavalry hadn't even gotten ready before they were scattered by the suddenly appearing cavalry and had to flee haphazardly in all directions.

Napoleon's soldiers were even more excited, loudly urging their own cavalry to give chase and expand their victory.

However, the cavalry quickly turned back around. When Napoleon saw the face of the leading officer, he was taken aback—that was the Captain of the Crown Prince's Imperial Guard, whom he had seen during a previous audience.

Why would he come to save him?

Kesode pulled up on his horse not far from the artillery captain, dismounted, and waved him over:

"Just in time, are you all right?"

Napoleon, taken aback, realized the question was directed at him, and hastily raised his hat in salute:

"Ah, I'm fine! I really can't thank you enough, but weren't you supposed to be guarding His Royal Highness the Crown Prince?"

Kesode replied annoyance:

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"It's because of your artillery company. His Highness was worried that your small unit might be in danger so far from the main force, so he sent me as reinforcements."

In fact, he was reluctant to come to Napoleon's rescue before, as his duty was to protect the Crown Prince. However, the Crown Prince himself said that if he didn't go, he would ride out to save Captain Buonaparte on his own."

Having no choice, he had to lead the Imperial Guard to reinforce this small artillery unit.

Napoleon listened as the cries of "Long live the Crown Prince!" rose from the artillerymen around him and once again saluted Kesode earnestly:

"I thank His Highness, the Crown Prince, for he has saved our lives."

"You can tell him yourself," Kesode gestured toward the rear of the French Army, "but now I have to escort you back first."

…

When Blucher noticed the conspicuous gap in his infantry line, he broke out in a cold sweat. The main forces of the two armies were now at close quarters, and if the French attacked that spot, it meant his right wing would be gone.

He hastily dispatched four squadrons of dragoons to plug the gap—the dragoons may have an impressive name, but they were actually mounted infantry. They could use their horses to quickly reach their destination, then dismount to form lines. In a pinch, they could also be used to patch gaps in line formations.

However, just as they approached their own infantry line, the very thing Blucher feared most happened.

The attacking columns of the French hit the line formation head-on, clearly aiming for that gap!

Forming an entire infantry line was an extremely cumbersome task. Although standing in line is something even a child can do, to form a straight horizontal line several kilometers long required a great deal of coordination by the many officers and took a considerable amount of time to complete.

Clearly, the training of the Prussian Infantry was not sufficient to rapidly fill the gaps in the line formation.

The five battalions of the Guard Corps encountered almost no resistance—those Prussian Soldiers who were supposed to be in front of them had moved towards the small grove at the edge of the battlefield and had no time to return.

Thus, the five columns plunged into the Prussian infantry line without even rearranging their formation.

Immediately after, the latter descended into chaos.

Most of the soldiers continued to advance in the decisive battle pace they had been trained for, while those near the gap frantically raised their guns to fire sideways at the French, gradually turning the whole line formation into a slanting line.

A few minutes later, the drumbeat of the Guard Corps was already audible from 50 steps away.

As thousands of caplock guns erupted in a volley, the Prussian infantry line instantly fell, seventy or eighty men down. When the disheveled Prussians began to return fire, less than a third of the soldiers joined the volley—others were either grappling with the charging French or too far away to be within effective range.

The Infantry of the Guard Corps quickly reloaded and advanced another 10 steps before launching a second volley.

From a distance, Bertier saw that the enemy's right wing had collapsed and the protruding left wing was being relentlessly pushed back by the Guard Corps. He immediately ordered a decisive bayonet charge for the whole army.

After the brief sound of the signal call had repeated three times, the drummers immediately changed their rhythm, playing the military drum at the fastest pace.

Under the command of the officers, the soldiers of the Guard Corps raised their guns to waist height, bayonets pointing straight ahead.

A few minutes later, the narrow line of infantry shouted as they charged the Prussians, who, already disordered by the previous volleys, had no intention of engaging in combat and began to flee towards the rear, led by their officers.

With their morale soaring through the skies, the Guard Corps swept over the Prussian infantry line, leaving behind only a landscape of bodies and trembling captives kneeling on the ground.

Before Blucher's command to prepare the second infantry line to meet the enemy could be passed down, the first French column that had penetrated the gap charged unstoppably toward the Prussian's second line of defense and rapidly deployed into a horizontal formation.

They then launched a volley at the still bewildered Prussian Soldiers.

Though they were only 500 men, the Prussian Soldiers heard the thunderous war cries from ahead and vaguely heard the officers say that the front line had been breached, assuming this was the main French force before them.

The feeling of fear magnified the perception of the casualties, and when the 500 men of the Guard Corps fired their second volley, the right wing of the Prussian infantry line, which hadn't suffered many losses, actually collapsed.
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