Qualla: Battle of Prenzlau

Battle of Prenzlau: Introduction

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit François Gérard, Public domain. Joachim Murat had cavalry, twelve guns and no army behind him. He told Prince Frederick Louis of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen that a hundred thousand Frenchmen had closed around him, and he gave his word of honour on it. It was untrue in every particular. Apart from a single brigade of infantry, the only French troops within reach of Prenzlau that morning were horsemen, and at the moment of the parley perhaps four or five thousand of them stood between the Prussians and open road. Hohenlohe surrendered his entire corps. Two weeks after Jena-Auerstedt, the Prussian army was being dismantled not by battle but by conversation.

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Image: François Gérard | Public domain

Battle of Prenzlau: A Column That Had Not Eaten

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carle Vernet, Public domain. The retreat had been going badly for a fortnight. After the double disaster at Jena and Auerstedt on 14 October, the Prussian armies ran north for the Elbe, crossed it near Magdeburg, and turned northeast hoping to get behind the Oder before the French caught them. Hohenlohe left...

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Image: Carle Vernet | Public domain

Battle of Prenzlau: Eight Kilometres and Three Wasted Hours

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ernst Gebauer, Public domain. At four in the morning on 28 October the head of the column reached Schönermark, eight kilometres short of Prenzlau. Hohenlohe called a council of war, and his officers argued: east into Prenzlau, or north to Pasewalk? A cavalry patrol reported at six that Prenzlau was clear of F...

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Image: Ernst Gebauer | Public domain

Battle of Prenzlau: The Town Between Two Gates

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unidentified painter, Public domain. Prenzlau sits with the long Unteruckersee at its back and the Uecker running north along its western side. Two roads approach from the west across marshland, raised on causeways through a kilometre of suburbs, entering the town by gates about five hundred metres apart. It is not ...

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Image: Unidentified painter | Public domain

Battle of Prenzlau: A Wonderful Tissue of Lies

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The deception had begun earlier that morning, when a French officer named Captain Hugues rode out of the mist under a flag of truce and was taken to Hohenlohe. Hugues claimed Murat had thirty thousand men to hand and that Marshal Lannes waited on the Stettin road with sixty thous...

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Image: Public domain

Battle of Prenzlau: The Surrenders That Followed

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Francis Loraine Petre (1852-1925), Public domain. The terms were hard: officers and the Royal Guards released on parole, the rank and file made prisoners. Digby Smith counted 10,000 men, 1,800 cavalry horses and 64 guns taken; Francis Loraine Petre put total Prussian losses near 12,000, and reckoned the three days from Zehdenick...

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Image: Francis Loraine Petre (1852-1925) | Public domain