Campaign Battles of Charlottenburg and Buchholz

 After the fall of Berlin on 23 November Napoleon assumed that the Prussian army, having been beaten, would disperse.  In that he was mistaken, for although the city had been taken the army had not been smashed.  

The following morning the Prussians were back.  Both armies had scattered overnight to rest their tired troops, so the day started very tentatively.  Rüchel's column formed the centre of the advance, marching on Berlin from the north-west, past the Tegelsee and through the village of Tegel.  To his right was Prince Hohenlohe, coming east from Spandau.  The left flank was held by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, supported by Klingspor's Swedes.  This perhaps gives an exaggerated impression of the Prussian strength, for at dawn each of these was represented by only a single division on the field.  Most of the commands named, as well as Kalkreuth's reserve, were still on the way.

Mid-morning, after a little rationalisation.

The French were in no better position. One army division held Berlin itself.  Two more were on the road between there and Charlottenburg, and two divisions of dragoons up to the north, behind the Pankow-Oranienburg road.

With no clear advantage, both sides were hesitant to engage.  The onus was on the Prussians, for they had initiated an attack on a position that the French were quite happy with.  At the same time, Berlin itself was on the field, so the French did need to win in order to maintain their hold on the city.

As the morning passed the Prussian army did not attack, but stayed carefully out of cannon-shot while dressing their ranks and bringing up more men.  There were also movements of troops off-table to the north-east, just to give the French something to worry about on their northern flank.

As the Prussians stiffened their line the French followed suit.  Drawing in their left they formed a line running from the north-western corner of Berlin, just before the Sans-Souci palace, out to the to the north-east, past the villages of Pankow and Nieder Schönhausen.  The cavalry formed up on the right, facing the off-table threat, while other divisions moved north off-table to counter it also.  The Frrench artillery filtered through their fellows to form what amounted to a two-mile-long grand battery in the centre - too big and unwieldy to be turned on any single target, but making a killing ground of the mile or so between the two armies.

Mid-afternoon - reinforcements for both sides have been pouring onto the field for hours.

Yes, that front line of the French army is entirely composed of artillery.

Most of the day thus passed peacefully - a cannon-shot from either side in the early afternoon, to no effect, was the only disturbance.  

At 3:00pm, with just two hours of daylight left, this all changed.  On the far right, off-table, four French divisions pushed forward to neutralise the flanking threat.  This turned out to be just two brigades of Swedes, who were driven off.  With their flank secured the cavalry, both dragoons and cuirassiers, made a great charge against the relatively few enemy troops who had made it onto the northern corner of the table.  A Swedish battery was overrun, but Lassalle's light cavalry and Lahoussaye's heavies were broken, and the attack pushed back in disarray.  

Normally that would have been the end of that attempt, but the Emperor and his key marshals had moved to that part of the field in anticipation of the cavalry needing some help.  With their urging the shaken columns were turned around and able to change again an hour later.  This time the charge was more successful, smashing the Coalition line and breaking several brigades just before darkness fell.

This would have been a substantial, although not crushing, French victory, but for what was happening elsewhere on the field.  In the centre the French had also opened an attack at 3:00, this time with the artillery.  While the Prussians had taken care all day to stay out of cannon-shot of the French line, at this hour the French line moved forward, with hundreds of guns to the fore.  These commenced a great bombardment, concentrating on counter-battery fire against the Prussian artillery.  

The French infantry, who had marched up behind the guns at 3:00pm, moved through them to the assault at 4:00.  On a front a mile and a half long, two army corps hit the Prussian line... and were halted, despite the silencing of the Prussian guns.  The Prussians then had their turn to advance, and their counter-attack was devastating.  What French cuirassiers were doing to the Prussians and Swedes on the right, Prussian cuirassiers were doing to the French in the centre.  By sunset, twenty-one brigades had been broken in a furious two hours (eighteen of them in the last hour alone!).

This was not enough, though, to break either army.  With the light fading the disappointed Prussians again abandoned the field.

<Somehow, in the excitement, I completely failed to get any photos of those last furious two hours>

The following morning saw the armies still separated by only a mile or two.  With the bulk of the Prussian army having been drawn on to the field the Emperor saw an opportunity to threaten the fortress of Spandau, and with luck even take it by surprise.  GdD Dupont was sent to see to this, but the attack went badly awry.  Dupont's division was ambushed by the Swedish division that had been formed from the garrison of the island of Rügen.  Badly outnumbered, despite the moral support of the Grande Armée just behind them, all of Dupont's infantry were routed from the field.  The artillery made a more orderly retreat, but dared not stay any longer to fight lest it be lost as well.

The Prussians, meanwhile, were concentrating on re-ordering their forces for a resumption of the previous day's attack.  As Dupont's artillery fell back to join the extreme left of the French line north of Berlin they were horrified to see hardly a mile away no less than six Prussian divisions, already deployed for battle and marching south.  

The situation at midday, as the battle starts.  Troops below the blue line are French, and those above Prussians, stealing a march on the French during the morning while their attention was elsewhere.  The French unit in the extreme bottom-left is Dupont's artillery, falling back from the disastrous attack toward Spandau.

The French scrambled to consolidate their line, doing so with such aplomb that the Prussians were caught entirely flat-footed for the first hour (French control of the turn clock allowed them to prevent the Prussians, who were trying to co-ordinate the actions of the six divisions, from moving at all).  On turn two the Prussians pushed boldly forward, though.  Placing himself at the head of Wartensleben's 2nd division, General von Möllendorf attacked GdD Drouet's division, exposed at the left of the line.  He led with Quintow's brigade of cuirassiers, who managed to ride down both Frère's infantry brigade and the divisional artillery before being stopped. 

Aftermath of the initial Prussian attack.  Werle's surviving brigade of Drouet's division (just behind Marshal Soult centre-left) is in a precarious position, but in the foreground Marshal Bessières is bringing up the Guard infantry to the rescue (the last base, incorrectly labelled as "Labassee", is actually a brigade of dismounted dragoons, temporarily attached to the Guard).  At top-left, Quintzow's cuirassiers are badly blown, but they have already done fine work!

Fearing that the entire line might be rolled up, the emperor ordered the newly-arrived Imperial Guard infantry to back what was left of Drouet's division, and the Guard cavalry to enter the field on the enemy's carelessly exposed flank.  The danger was thus averted on turn three, and a Prussian brigade (Reynouard's) broken in the process.  On turn four both sides drew back, but the advantage was now to the Prussians, and they began to form a defensive line, falling back to the line of a minor stream that runs from the swampy lake that bisects the field down to the Tegelsee.  During the final turn of light the French began to advance, but the army was still scattered, and there was no time for an attack before dark.

Prussians falling back to form a line between the two lakes, with reinforcements streaming down  the road behind.

The following morning the French advanced resumed.  In order to win the battle they needed to break more Prussian brigades than they lost themselves, and Michael as the Prussian commander was not about to give them the opportunity.  As the French crept forward, not wanting to out-distance their supporting artillery, the Prussians fell slowly back, always just out of cannon-shot, feeding reinforcements into the line and interspersing infantry with guns.  Cavalry formed a second line, ready for a counter-attack.

The Prussian line, late morning of day two, with both flanks anchored on lakes.  The French have a good line, too, now, but it is not quite solid enough, nor close enough, to attack with confidence.

The speed of the accompanying guns limited the ability of the French to crowd the Prussians as they wished, and by the time they got to within striking distance, as midday approached, the Prussian defences were well and truly formed.  It was clear that bringing more men, hours later, would not greatly increase the chance of a victory, but the attempt had to be made.  Friant's division, of III Corps, and Legrand's of V, were flung against the centre of the Prussian line, backed by the Guard cavalry.  Prussian volleys stopped them cold, though, and Levasseur's brigade was actually broken.  

The ensuing Prussian counterattack did not manage to break any further brigades, but it no longer mattered.  It had become clear that the French would not be able to overcome the solid Prussian defensive line, and at midday they threw in the towel.

The final French attack goes in.

After four days of continuous combat both armies were incapable of further serious fighting.  The French withdrew behind the line of the Spree, leaving only a light rearguard on the northern bank, although this did include the Imperial Guard infantry in Berlin itself.  

They were not enough, though, to resist a final coda to the Prussian victory.  At dawn on 27 November the Duke of Orange led his column of exhausted men into the city, and the French grenadiers, surprised and outnumbered by the enemy, withdrew to the south bank.  Given the Emperor's displeasure at their performance, it may be that they will be back before long...