five volleys of rifle fire on them, along with two dozen shrapnel shots. When the French dragoons managed to land a volley of their own, they were already broken. Only a thousand arrived at the defensive lines, and they were quickly turned back by stubborn resistance and hastily made Prussian squares. Lieutenant Ouvrard himself was killed in the fighting, shot by a Prussian soldier as he attempted to rally his troops.

Only five hundred dragoons returned to the French lines. The two dragoon regiments suffered over two thousand deaths, with almost all the survivors injured in some form. They were no longer an effective fighting force and would sit out the remainder of the war, trying to recuperate their losses.

The “Charge of the Iron Dragoons” would change the tone of the battlefield. Nearby French units that witnessed the ill-fated charge halted their advance completely, watching in horror as the Prussians tore the vaunted French cavalry units to pieces. Even Suchet was in total shock when he received the news, and it took several minutes for him to snap out of his stunned stupor. By the time he relayed new orders to the remaining French cavalry (which were held back in reserve), the majority of the Coalition forces managed to reform their ranks outside artillery range and retreated in good order. Even Wrangel and most of his men escaped, though the cannons were left behind to lighten their load.

Half an hour after the orders for the remaining cavalry to take the shattered First and Second Dragoons’ place, Suchet received information about Spiegel and his men tearing up sections of the railroad in Dortmund near the Ruhr River. The report stated that the rail bridges over the Ruhr were blown, and Spiegel was bolting north toward the bridges on the Weser while destroying tracks methodically. The National Guard units in the area had been taken by surprise and could not follow the exhausted yet determined and highly mobile forces under Spiegel’s wing. He also received word that Gerard and his army group were stuck in a battle against Brigadier Bandiera near Ansbach and unable to move north to chase down the fleeing Coalition army. Suchet usually held some cavalry units as reserves for emergencies. Unfortunately, after the First and Second Dragoons were annihilated, the remaining cavalry was sent out to harass the retreating enemy. By the time two of his cavalry regiments received his urgent message, two hours had passed, and their horses were far too exhausted to leave in pursuit of Spiegel immediately.

Later, Suchet discovered that the Duke of Teschen also committed a significant amount of cavalry to mirror Spiegel’s movement. The Austrian marshal was unwilling to sit back and wait for Clausewitz and Spiegel to seize all the glory and sent out his own men to terrorize the French. After drawing the French defenders in the north away by moving his troops toward Stendal, a small Austrian cavalry unit charged straight toward Hanover. While this attack failed to destroy any tracks, it killed hundreds of rail workers and National Guards laying tracks just south of Hanover. The fact that nearly three thousand Austrians were killed or captured in this bold attack was little comfort for the French marshal..

In the end, the surviving troops under Clausewitz escaped to Prague and survived to fight on another day. On paper, the Battle of Bamberg was an overwhelming French victory. The Coalition suffered more than thirty-five thousand casualties, with an additional seven thousand captured. This was over two-fifths of the total Coalition forces committed to the battle. It would take months for Clausewitz to regain enough strength to directly rechallenge Suchet (though that would be the decisive battle that would decide the Third Coalition War, the Battle of Erfurt). This figure does not include the twenty thousand Austrians and Prussians captured or killed in their efforts to sabotage the French rail line. Meanwhile, the French had suffered under thirty thousand casualties, a fifth of the total French forces in the battle.

Within a week, it was clear that the winner of the strategic aims of the battle was the Coalition. Spiegel managed to destroy the Ruhr bridges before his unit was surrounded. Though the Prussians were freezing and suffering from frostbite and chills, they had carried out their duties faithfully until the very end (Spiegel was captured instead of killed, much to the dismay of the French). With much of the expensive and labor-intensive rail and rail bridges in ruins, the French were thrown back to the beginning of the invasion. What was once heralded as an impressive engineering feat was now seen as their greatest folly. Winter had arrived, yet the answer to their logistical woes was now in pieces..

A few French shells overshot their mark during the battle and landed within Bamberg, which caused significant damage to buildings and the civilian population. These shells destroyed the Bamberg Cathedral, where the great Holy Roman Emperor Henry II was interred. Perhaps it was fitting that the Third Coalition War would be the war to force Germany to centralize and unite like never before in its history, just like Emperor Henry II’s efforts to unite the Holy Roman Empire..

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AN: And with that, only one more chapter remains for Third Coalition War! That chapter will come after I refresh myself with a few chapters about the rebuilding in America and possibly elsewhere.

Stay tuned for the next update, this time from a POV of an average American citizen witnessing Nathaniel’s inauguration!

[1]: The cannon is a combination of the Canon de Montagne de 4 modèle 1859 Le Pétulant and the Armstrong gun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Treuille_de_Beaulieu

[2]: This is based on the French Chassepot rifle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chassepot.

[3]: Based on the Fusil Gras. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusil_Gras_mle_1874