The Radiant Republic

The Swedish envoy was convinced that at least eighty percent of what Commander André had just said was true. Quite apart from the inescapable blood ties between the Commander himself and the Swedish royal house, the complementarity of the two economies, iron ore going one way and textiles the other, together with their shared hostility toward Russia, made them natural allies who could rely upon one another.

Vicomte de Mörner knew that André’s anti-Russian stance did not arise merely from Sweden. It was also part of the long-standing French habit of acting as Poland’s natural ally. Added to that was André’s own obvious private ambition, his desire to place another of his sons in the position of heir to the Polish throne. Yet in truth none of those reasons was the principal one. They were simply part of the outward explanation André offered. He never forgot that in the other timeline the two greatest forces behind Napoleon’s defeat had been Britain and Russia. Those same two powers would also be André’s principal adversaries.

The struggle with Britain would be, more precisely, a full-spectrum economic contest, a great-power rivalry born of the Industrial Revolution. In André’s plan, beginning in 1793, France would accelerate its effort to surpass the British Empire in three major sectors: steel, textiles, and steam-engine manufacturing. Only when, by 1799, the industrial level and productive scale of all France had gained an overwhelming advantage over Britain would the time come for the final great counteroffensive against the British Isles. By then, ironclad warships would crowd the entire English Channel.

Apart from this constant bloodless “industrial war,” Reims, meaning Andréan France, would consider openly breaking with London only if the British actually landed troops in northern France, Belgium, the Netherlands, or the Jutland Peninsula, that is, Denmark, Schleswig, and Holstein. Since André still needed the British Empire in many respects, he preferred to move only in response. So long as the British did not cross the red lines both sides had tacitly set, André, no matter how often he was driven into a fury by London’s diplomats, dared do no more than vent his anger on British bone china.

With Britain it was one thing. With the Russian bear, André’s consistent position was altogether different: grand strategic containment. Though he had no intention of starting a war with Saint Petersburg, he meant to organize a vast anti-Russian alliance in three directions at once, the Baltic, through Sweden and Poland, the Black Sea, through Ottoman Turkey, and the Caspian, through Persia.

At the heart of all this stood the effort to save Poland, which was on the verge of destruction. This was, of course, Poland as André imagined it: a free Poland led by the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie, without serfs, rather than a Poland ruled by great nobles and great landowners, steeped in decay and bound in chains.

His handling of Upper Silesia showed that thinking very clearly. Not only did he reject the Austrians’ offer to purchase it with gold, he also drove out the envoy sent by the Polish parliament from the Command Headquarters base, because the Polish envoy had the audacity to demand from the dictator the right to govern Upper Silesia. In the future, Upper Silesia would become the main base of the free Polish army, while the French and Saxon coalition would guarantee its security.

In addition, after discussions with Moncey and the others, André decided that the Elbe Army Group would remain stationed in the Elbe basin for the long term. The Army Group would consist of one French field army, Macdonald’s Second Army, one Saxon corps, and one Polish corps, with total strength maintained between one hundred thousand and one hundred and twenty thousand men.

...

Now let us turn our eyes back to the south of Berlin, to the north bank of the Spree. Shortly after twelve o’clock at noon, Colonel Morand and his eight hundred French warriors crossed the river by way of a temporary pontoon bridge. One kilometer away, an equal number of Prussian infantrymen had long been waiting for them, each man standing motionless and erect like a spear. At least in posture, bearing, and appearance, the Prussian army made a better impression than the seemingly loose French formation. From atop the walls, countless Berliners cheered on their own sons in uniform.

“Ha! I can actually see the French still eating!” the British ambassador cried in exaggerated astonishment. Through his spyglass he could see French soldiers calmly feeding themselves raisins, one after another.

“A disgraceful lack of discipline. It is hard to imagine that this is the same army that pinned the brave Prussians to the ground and thrashed them twice over,” Alexander muttered, while Marquis de Ivanov beside him gave a faint shake of the head.

The “Fat Giant,” surrounded by a host of old generals, was laughing heartily as well. Wilhelm II was convinced that the brave and invincible Prussian soldier would unquestionably win this battle, or rather, at least the duel being fought below the walls.

Hearing the king’s laughter above him, the Prussian colonel in command finally felt at ease. He turned at once and ordered the regimental band to play Hymn to Frederick the Great, whereupon the eight hundred Prussian officers and men sang in one voice:

Frederick, my Emperor, my Prince!

He has called up the soldiers of the realm,

Two hundred battalions and thousands of squadrons;

Each soldier is issued sixty rounds of ammunition...

Across the field, in the French line, Colonel Morand was not to be outdone. He called over one of the “Italians” and ordered the lead singer, with the band accompanying him, to lead the regiment in singing Salute to the Great Commander.

That name was no accident. Ever since Masséna had regained his post through sheer skill in flattery, every lead singer of military songs in the French army had been nicknamed “the Italian.” Fortunately, Masséna was broad and rough in temperament and did not care much for his reputation. He did not mind even becoming the butt of good-natured jokes. In truth, the old veteran was shrewder than anyone. He knew perfectly well that the more it was so, the more likely he was to win André’s favor. Even the fact that he had repeatedly violated military regulations and yet escaped punishment, and on Christmas Day of 1792 had been promoted to Brigadier General, all stemmed from that.

Before long, General Masséna had taken Farewell to the Women of France and rewritten its words, turning it into what was now Salute to the Great Commander. The Italian might have been shameless, but no one denied the brilliance of his gift for flattery. By 1793, Salute to the Great Commander had become the most widely sung battle song of the Second Franco-Prussian War. By a happy coincidence, it now stood head-to-head against that old Prussian army song from the Seven Years’ War.

This song fills our hearts with fire,

We remember when invaders pressed the border,

Soldiers left their homes and leapt into the saddle,

This song went with them across the Rhine.

In ninety-two we sang it to defend Reims,

In ninety-three we sang it to come to Berlin,

The warriors of the Great Commander, united as one,

For how many years through wind and snow, through hardship and trial.

If one day the enemy comes again,

Then for Commander André

We shall rise and enter the holy war — war!

...

In melody, in force of language, and in sheer grandeur of spirit, Salute to the Great Commander completely overwhelmed Hymn to Frederick the Great. More than that, the French song possessed a powerful sense of imagery and fit the present war perfectly, especially those lines: “In ninety-two we sang it to defend Reims; in ninety-three we sang it to come to Berlin.”

All of this naturally left King Wilhelm II and the Prussian generals around him clenching their fists, faces dark and rigid, yet unable to say a word, because every line was an undeniable fact. The diplomats of the various nations only exchanged glances in mute disbelief. André himself, of course, was thoroughly pleased. He listened with evident satisfaction to Metternich’s embarrassingly effusive compliments. Yet when he turned away, the man at the summit remarked to Vicomte Mörner, “Metternich is the least trustworthy of all.”

The first round of the duel belonged to the French. They had already beaten the Prussians in song. Furious and humiliated, Colonel Hans of the Prussian side quickly sent a messenger to inform the French commander that the duel should begin in ten minutes rather than after the full half hour originally agreed upon. Colonel Morand readily assented.

The Prussian rifle regiment facing the French had formerly been the First Royal Grenadier Regiment, formed from the elite companies of the line infantry and stationed under two generations of Prussian kings at Sanssouci. After the disastrous defeat in the 1792 war against France, the then Commander-in-Chief of the Prussian army, Duc de Brunswick, decided, with the help of the British ambassador, to imitate the French and use the new “Baker rifle,” developed by the London Arsenal in imitation of French models, to create an elite rifle regiment. Thus the First Royal Grenadier Regiment became the First Rifle Regiment of the Prussian army.

Originally, Wilhelm II and his marshal general had intended to create five rifle regiments and equip four thousand five hundred elite infantrymen. But the London Arsenal had only just begun to increase production and would not have been able to issue them on a large scale until March. Instead, Wilhelm II, burning for revenge, let the Second Franco-Prussian War break out ahead of time.

The Prussian First Rifle Regiment had copied the green jackets of French riflemen, except that it replaced green with blue. By this point, however, the French Guard Division had also changed into uniforms of solid dark blue. From a distance, any outsider might have thought the two armies were one and the same. Fortunately, the French soldiers still wore the revolutionary tricolor cockade, and the shoulder insignia of the two armies remained quite different, so diplomats with even a modest knowledge of military dress could still tell them apart.

Besides the Baker-type rifle, the Prussians carried British-standard equipment: packs, blankets, and light blue wooden canteens. The large black leather box beneath the cross-belt was the cartridge case, containing complete cartridges wrapped in oiled paper, each with one ball and one charge of powder. Unlike ordinary ammunition, the projectile for the British Baker rifle was not merely cast in a carefully made mold, but polished afterward as well.

Having already lost the first contest in military song, the Prussians now roared like fierce beasts. Urged on by their officers, the soldiers shouted that they would teach the cowardly French a lesson with the “iron fist of justice,” and that every invader who had dared to enter Prussia ought to lie dead in heaps beneath Berlin, with blood running like a river.

The First Infantry Regiment of the French Guard Division had existed for less than three months, but every man in it was a veteran with more than two years of service. Most had fought in the war of national defense in 1792, and more than half of the non-commissioned officers came from the now disbanded rifle brigade, so its combat experience was extensive and its morale very high. The soldiers had already spent two months using the latest Reims No. 1 Rifle with copper-based mercury-fulminate percussion caps, and each man had fired at least six hundred live rounds of Minié ammunition. That was equivalent to ten years of training for a Prussian grenadier.

As a result, both officers and men in the French army were thoroughly familiar with the fighting methods of rifle regiments. From the moment the duel was announced, the French remained extraordinarily calm, as though it were no different from any earlier battle. In truth, every man was inwardly eager for the fight. No officer needed to press them. They used every spare moment to make one final check and cleaning of their weapons before action, each of them wanting the battle to begin at once.

A historian once described the conduct of the French and Prussian armies on the battlefields of the Seven Years’ War with the phrase: “The Prussians were gentlemanly in their rigidity, and the French were gentlemanly even in their romanticism.”

But war was still war. It was not a stage play of flowers and moonlight, nor the sort of thing court poets might call “as romantic as attending a ball,” because in the end the soldiers of both sides still went, one after another and rank after rank, to meet God. In order that future military commentators may clearly understand the “gentlemen’s battle” about to unfold, it is necessary to compare once more a few of the key figures on both sides.

In terms of strength, the two sides were roughly equal. The Prussian army’s First Rifle Regiment had a total of eight hundred and thirty-five officers and men under Colonel Hans, formerly commander of the Royal Grenadier Regiment. The French Guard Division’s First Infantry Regiment had a total of eight hundred and twenty-nine officers and men under Colonel Morand, formerly assistant commander of Davout’s rifle regiment.

In quality, the Prussian army seemed at first glance to have the edge. Its men were all elite veterans with at least six years of service, and all were Prussians rather than mercenaries, while nearly forty percent of the ordinary Prussian army consisted of mercenaries. The French, by contrast, were veterans with over two years of service, mostly northern Frenchmen, nearly half of them from the provinces of Marne and Ardennes.

As for reinforcements, cavalry, and artillery committed by either side: none. In truth, this made the contest unfairly favorable to Prussia. The reason was simple. The André artillery had burst onto the scene with such terrifying renown that it was already celebrated as “the god of war,” while the declining Prussian cavalry had become almost useless, having shown nothing noteworthy in either of the two wars.

The firearms in use were as follows. The Prussians carried British-made Baker rifles, usually capable of one shot per minute, with an effective range of 200 to 300 meters. The French carried the Reims No. 1 Rifle, capable of 3 to 4 shots per minute, with an effective range of 500 to 600 meters. Under intense conditions, in rapid fire without cleaning the barrel, the French rifle could reach as high as 6 to 8 shots in a single minute, though its effective range then fell by half to less than 300 meters. It was, quite plainly, the French bullying the rustic Prussians.

The battlefield itself lay at the southern end of Berlin, on the plain north of the Spree. It was roughly 1,500 meters long and 1,200 meters wide. The ground was open, nearly flat, and clear to the eye in every direction except for dead winter grass. There could be no ambushes there, no flanking maneuvers, nothing of the kind.

At one o’clock in the afternoon on February twenty-third, 1793, the French and Prussian forces had completed their deployment on the north bank of the Spree and formed their ranks. Since it had been agreed in advance that neither cavalry nor artillery would take part, and that there would be no reinforcements, both commanders, without exception, dispensed with left wing, right wing, and reserve. Tactically, both sides adopted the classic eighteenth-century Seven Years’ War formation of a double-rank line in front, intending to deliver the greatest and strongest firepower possible in a given span of time.

Because the battlefield was broad enough, both regiments had thrown all their strength into the front line, forming what looked like a magnificent long single line. Whether Prussian or French, all three battalions stood in a straight line, divided into left, center, and right columns. Within each column, the soldiers held their rifled muskets and stood shoulder to shoulder in close-packed ranks. The intervals between columns were 20 to 30 meters, and the overall front stretched roughly 350 to 400 meters.

“Colonel, it may begin,” the adjutant said, taking out his watch to confirm the time.

Colonel Morand drew his saber at once and gave the order in a loud voice. “Battalion, forward with me!”

As soon as the colonel himself took the first step, his major followed close behind. The regimental colors in the standard-bearer’s hands dipped forward as he moved after the two officers. Next came the military band of drums and fifes, and soon the light, lively, strongly rhythmic Grenadiers’ March rang out across the empty grassland. Behind them came the more than eight hundred officers and men of the regiment, stepping in perfect order like an advancing wall no one could stop as they moved toward the center of the field.

The reason they had adopted a British march was simple enough. The old French Grenadiers’ March belonged to the Bourbon monarchy and had been banned by order of the National Convention after October 1792, while André himself had forgotten to instruct the musicians to compose a new march for the French army.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Damn them! The French have stolen our marching tune!” the British ambassador in Berlin snapped angrily, lowering his spyglass. He cursed the shameless French and swore, “After the war, I shall submit a formal protest to the Commander-in-Chief of the French army!” In truth, that was merely his way of expressing support for the Prussian king. In wartime, no one cared about musical copyright.

“Shall we begin now?” Colonel Hans asked the assistant beside him, a British captain in Prussian uniform who served as instructor to the rifle regiment.

“Wait a little longer. On land or at sea, the French always look as though they are in a hurry. According to the rules of war from the Seven Years’ War, the side that arrives later on the field has the right to fire first. That is, if the French are still gentlemen,” the disguised British captain replied with a smile.

The British, naturally, had guessed wrong. Under André’s long influence, the French army facing them had very little of the gentleman left in it. And at that very moment, behind the French Commander, General Senarmont’s artillery regiment had already hurriedly emplaced fifty 12-pound André artillery pieces. With solid shot, they could cover the whole battlefield. On the two flanks, several light cavalry regiments and Guard Division troops had also been drawn up. Should the Prussians attempt anything unexpected, French artillery, cavalry, and further forces were ready at any moment to intervene.

Better to prepare for the one chance in ten thousand than regret it afterward. That had long been one of André’s fixed military beliefs. You may be a defeated gentleman if you like; I would rather be a victorious scoundrel, because the victor is never condemned.

The afternoon ought to have been the loveliest hour of a Berlin winter day. The warm sunlight fell across the face like the gentle hands of a lover, full of tenderness. But on the battlefield no one cared for such things. Death itself seemed crouched in the sky, watching with hungry eyes the merciless slaughter about to begin.

Once the French had marched 300 meters, about three minutes, the Prussians finally began to move. To the sound of stately military music, Colonel Hans gave the order, and his soldiers advanced in a dense formation more solemn and more orderly than that of the French. Silent, they followed their commander closely, followed the black eagle-and-crown banner of the royal house, and walked step by step toward the battlefield before them, and toward hell.

“Stupid Prussians. They always think they are cleverer than everyone else,” André mocked without restraint from the opposite bank.

The battle had not yet truly begun, but the immense disparity in weapon performance had already sealed the miserable fate of this Prussian rifle regiment. Once a rifle’s effective range exceeds 500 meters and its rate of fire holds at 3 to 4 rounds per minute, a slow-moving, tightly packed double line becomes nothing more than an elaborate method of self-destruction.

From the time the Guard Division was created, that elite formation had constantly been testing and mastering its new weapons. It was nothing like the Prussians drilling tediously in formation with what amounted to little more than firewood in their hands. The Guard trained with allied troops in live-fire field exercises. Throughout the process, only the bullets themselves were omitted. The mercury-fulminate caps and powder charges were all used exactly as in combat, so much so that in the course of these maneuvers there had already been a few accidents in which soldiers mistakenly rammed their rods clear through and injured their own comrades.

Generally speaking, the soldiers of the Guard Division were far better prepared for combat than those of other formations. One month earlier, in a field exercise against General Augereau’s West German corps, Colonel Morand’s infantry regiment, armed with the Reims No. 1 Rifle, had held its ground against repeated attacks by five smoothbore regiments and one light cavalry regiment, maintaining the position until they ran out of ammunition. In the end, the Guard regiment had even broken collectively through two blocking lines set up by the West German corps in a bayonet assault. Colonel Morand then led most of his men safely into the area designated by the umpires.

What André did not know was this: the stern-faced, tall, handsome, powerfully built Colonel Morand was, in the other timeline, the bravest divisional commander under Marshal Davout. At Jena-Auerstedt, where Prussia was swept aside, Morand’s division, supported by two artillery batteries, had smashed a Prussian force four times its own size, the Prussian soldiers falling before its position like wheat before the farmer’s scythe. When the battle ended, Morand, still mounted, had the upward-curving black whiskers on his face touched red by the setting sun of the battlefield. From that moment on, “Redbeard” became his nickname.

When the French reached a point 300 meters from the center of the ground designated by both sides, Colonel Morand suddenly drew his saber. The major at his side understood at once. Without a word, he ran some twenty meters forward, turned, bit down on his lower lip, and blew a shrill whistle toward the men behind him.

Immediately after that, one hundred and twenty soldiers who had long been waiting stepped out from the ranks. Gathering on either side of the major, they formed a skirmish line, each man at least 2 to 3 meters from the next. These were the regiment’s best marksmen, capable of hitting a target at 500 or even 600 meters. At the same time, the main body under Colonel Morand slowed its advance. The pace was cut by half, becoming a slow creeping movement forward. Nor did the men remain packed shoulder to shoulder any longer. As they moved, the intervals between them gradually widened.

“Pass the word to left and right. Run forward. Objective: 200 meters straight ahead!” the French major’s order was quickly relayed and carried out. The skirmishers took their rifles from their shoulders, gripped them in both hands, and dashed forward.

The sudden deployment of that skirmish line was plain enough to Colonel Hans and the British captain beside him. The method itself had originally been invented by the French, but the number of skirmishers seemed excessive. Under ordinary reasoning, they should not have exceeded five percent of the regiment’s strength, fewer than forty-five men. Yet the French rifle regiment had sent out more than twice that number.

The British instructor had been about to ask Colonel Hans whether they too should detach a body of skirmishers to make a probing exchange of fire before the main formations closed, but he immediately dismissed the idea as ridiculous. To send out a large number of skirmishers for long-range sniping when the enemy was still at least 800 yards away was the sort of foolish thing only hot-blooded, impatient Frenchmen would do.

Then another of Britain’s mortal enemies came to his mind, the shameless rebels of North America. Suddenly, an uneasy feeling rose within him. Decades earlier, an uncle from his own family, an officer in the British army, had been killed in North America. One rebel from the colonies, a Kentucky rifleman, had shot him dead at 500 yards with cold precision.

Could these French skirmishers be imitating those shameless Americans?

For the first time, the British instructor began to lose his composure.

In the center of the field, one hundred and twenty French soldiers stood spread across a front 500 meters wide, rifles held ready in silence. According to the strict regulations of the Guard regiment, no bayonet was to be fixed without permission from the officer commanding on the field. Once the rifle bore the heavy bayonet, its shooting performance beyond 100 meters suffered badly.

The French major commanding the marksmen, together with several messengers, moved back and forth over the grass behind the line. While estimating the distance between his men and the approaching Prussians, the major shouted his orders, which the messengers immediately passed along.

“Enemy at 600 meters. Keep steady. Await my command!”

The marksmen bit lightly on their lower lips and stared at the Prussians coming toward them from afar, each moving body already a target in their eyes.

“Enemy at 550 meters. Set your sights for 500!”

The soldiers raised the rifles they had already run clean through the barrel that morning and pushed the rear sights precisely into the fifth notch.

“Enemy at 500 meters. Raise. Aim. Fire!”

In accordance with the major’s prior instructions, the Prussian officers and the drummers and bandsmen were not to be the target in the opening volleys. This was not some pose of gentlemanly conduct in battle. The reason was practical. If the enemy officers were shot down at once, the Prussian soldiers might panic and lose control, turning from a neat dense formation into scattered skirmishers, which would reduce the effect of the next French volley. As for the military musicians, they were unarmed non-combatants. Unless cannonballs or bullets found them by chance, very few men would deliberately shoot those brave musicians of the battlefield.

After the first volley, one hundred and twenty conical bullets burst from the barrels at an initial speed of 290 meters per second and flew hissing toward the enemy five hundred meters away, crashing into that wall of blue. Men in the Prussian line were hit one after another, wounded and falling heavily to the ground. One soldier beside Colonel Hans had his neck artery severed by a spinning conical bullet. Hot blood burst outward like a small volcanic eruption and splashed across the commander’s left cheek.

Even while comrades kept dropping around them, the Prussians continued to advance steadily and bravely. There was something formidable in their bearing. They ignored the summons of death coming wave after wave, disdained to stoop or bow as though admitting submission, and would not even raise a hand to shield their eyes from the bullets shrieking through the air.

This Prussian grenadier formation had been founded by Frederick the Great himself. Its tradition, like its earlier battles, had always been to stand in the foremost place, to be the first to face the enemy’s storm of bullets and the crashing torrent of artillery fire. The Prussians were long familiar with death, and therefore saw little reason to fear it. At most, now and then, they might offer a quick prayer to God that the damned bullet would bend in flight and spare them.

Whenever one unlucky man fell, the comrades still alive beside him had no time for grief or thought. They merely hopped quickly past the dead or wounded body, closed ranks again, and continued forward shoulder to shoulder. Experienced veterans were not fools. Until the officers gave the order, they had no intention of imitating recruits by firing useless shots into the air from beyond effective range just to hide their terror.

“Well done, boys. Reload and punish these witless geese all the harder!” The French major smiled in evident satisfaction. In the first volley, the one hundred and twenty mobile skirmishers had inflicted about twenty-one casualties on the Prussians at the extraordinary range of 500 meters, roughly one casualty for every six bullets fired.

That was a result unimaginable with the old smoothbores or even with the Baker rifle. Statistical records from the Seven Years’ War had shown that something close to 300 bullets were needed to inflict one casualty on the enemy. Such an excellent result came not only from the high-performance rifles and ammunition in the French soldiers’ hands, but from the quality of the skirmishers themselves. They had been carefully chosen, all of them first-rate marksmen.

After firing, the skirmishers did not so much as glance at the effect of their shots. Each man bent slightly and reloaded with practiced speed. From the small black leather case hanging at the right side of the belt, each took a measured cartridge packet, bit it open, and held the conical bullet in his mouth. He then poured the entire powder charge down the rifled barrel, pushed the bullet and the empty cartridge packet, made of cotton fiber and serving both as wadding and as an aid to combustion, into the muzzle, and rammed them home with the rod.

Once the bullet and powder were seated in the barrel, the soldiers took a mercury-fulminate cap from the black case and set it firmly upon the nipple at the rear of the lock.

Fifteen seconds passed. The second round was ready. The soldiers raised their rifles and sought their individual targets among the moving human shapes.

“Fire at will!” the French major ordered again.

Over the roughly two minutes during which the Prussians advanced from 500 meters to 300 meters, their dense line endured eight volleys from the French skirmishers. At first the casualties were only around twenty men. Later they rose into the hundreds. By the time the Prussian army had closed to 300 meters from the French, the last volley alone had inflicted the terrifying figure of seventy-eight casualties in the Prussian front ranks. Across those eight volleys, the French had already destroyed almost a quarter of the enemy force.

“Those despicable French swine! Where did they get rifles like that? Not only can they shoot at incredible range, they reload no slower than smoothbores!” Both Colonel Hans and the British instructor beside him felt as though their hearts were bleeding. In the space of two minutes, nearly two hundred of the Prussian veterans behind them had gone down. It was the worst loss this elite regiment had suffered since its creation. Most especially, the standard-bearers, who had drawn the special attention of the French marksmen, were already on the fourth man.

“Stand fast! Dress out! Drummers to the rear!” At 300 meters, Colonel Hans, acting on the British instructor’s advice, finally abandoned the dense line formation. The Prussians, relieved beyond measure, immediately obeyed the order and spread out into the French-style skirmish line they had specifically trained to use.

“Main body forward. Marksmen, fire!” On Colonel Hans’s command, dozens of Prussian marksmen at the front raised their rifles, took aim, and prepared to answer the French provocation.

But by then the French skirmishers had already slipped away under orders. The moment the Prussians began changing formation, the French major decisively ordered the whole skirmish line to withdraw at the double, falling back together to the two rear flanks of the main body 200 meters behind them.

Now Colonel Morand’s regiment had formed its firing line. The front rank knelt on one knee, lowering itself, while the rear rank remained standing with rifles raised. No longer packed shoulder to shoulder, the French soldiers now stood about 1 meter apart from one another. The military band remained 100 meters away from the main body, sitting idle on the grass and watching the battle in silence. The hundred-odd skirmishers who had withdrawn continued to move along the two rear flanks of the regiment, no longer bound to a single command. They could shoot down enemy officers and front-rank sergeants almost at leisure.

Faced with those terrible rows of level French muzzles 500 meters away, all the Prussian soldiers shouted without meaning to, “Quick! Run! Get to the French! Do not stand here and wait to die!”

After suffering that brutal and bloody baptism under French skirmisher fire, the Prussian soldiers, usually so brave, so composed, so obedient, now broke the iron discipline Frederick the Great had laid down. Clutching their rifles, they gathered their courage and rushed forward in one great effort. Very soon the view in French eyes became clearer and clearer, and they could make out the blue shapes in the distance moving fast.

As they ran harder and faster in order to escape or reduce the hail of bullets coming at them, the Prussian soldiers did make accurate shooting more difficult for the French. Yet without the direct command of officers and without a unifying order, the running soldiers had in fact become nothing more than a scattered mob, left to be shot down one by one by the disciplined French between 500 and 300 meters.

The sustained violence of the firing quickly filled the battlefield with smoke rising from the barrels. As the Prussians drew nearer and nearer, and finally reached 200 meters from the French, they discovered in horror that only about one-third of the comrades who had started beside them were still there, and of the officers leading them, only a pitiful few remained alive.

“All men! Raise! Fire!” Colonel Hans cried out in grief and desperation.

The British instructor was already dead by then. At 200 yards, a French skirmisher had hit him square in the forehead. The conical Minié bullet entered through the front of the skull and burst out through the back, leaving an exit wound wide enough to pour out blood and brain matter in a gush. He was dead almost the moment he hit the ground.

That was the Prussians’ first volley, and the only one they would ever fire in ordered unison.

In the French counterfire that followed, Colonel Hans and the three remaining officers all fell in pools of blood. Deprived of officers, discipline, and control, the surviving Prussian soldiers were left staring blankly, terrified beyond reason, and then they broke. They fled the front in groups, running for their lives in utter disorder. To get away from the field more quickly, some threw aside their rifles, bayonets, belts, caps, wooden canteens, and every other burden they carried.

Thus the French, with the newest weapons and a brilliantly executed defensive fire tactic, completely stripped the Prussians of their pride in being Europe’s bravest soldiers. In this battle, the Prussian First Rifle Regiment, eight hundred and thirty-five officers and men in all, suffered losses of seven hundred, with more than five hundred killed or grievously wounded. As for the officers, not one escaped. Every one of them was either killed on the spot or left severely wounded. On the French side, by contrast, only twelve men were lost to action and three badly wounded, and not a single man was killed.

Colonel Morand quietly turned and said to the messenger beside him, “Pass the order. The whole regiment is to leave the field at once, cross back over the river, and return to camp. Also inform the Prussians’ medical parties that they may now enter the battlefield.”

At that moment, the wall above fell into complete silence. The townspeople who had earlier been noisy and excited now stood staring, stunned beyond belief. The men clutched desperately at their collars, as though some terrible force had seized them by the throat and would not let them breathe. The women, without exception, lowered their heads and began to weep softly. Very soon that weeping joined into the funeral music of all Berlin. Everyone knew that on this day Prussia had finally lost, once and for all, the glory and greatness of the age of Frederick.

“Damn it, that was slaughter,” the British ambassador kept repeating after the firing stopped.

“And very efficient slaughter,” the Russian ambassador beside him murmured in reply.

Marquis Ivanov looked once more at the heaps of Prussian dead below the wall. He knew he would have to stay up through the night yet again, because he must write a secret dispatch to the Tsarina in Saint Petersburg, reporting this “just and equitable great massacre.” The ambassador in Berlin hoped that until the Russian army found a way to suppress the endless stream of brutal new French weapons, it would not lightly cross the Neman River to seek battle with the French by choice.

Beside him, the Russian Crown Prince was equally transfixed. He murmured to himself, “Incredible. Russia can no longer go on learning from the defeated. The French are our true teachers.”

As for Wilhelm II and his Prussian generals, they had long since gone pale as ashes. In every heart there was nothing but despair. They trembled so badly that not one of them could speak. Plainly, what the Prussians had lost in the massacre beneath the walls was not merely one grenadier regiment, but the fate of the state itself and the martial prestige of its army.

At some point, Comte de Talleyrand had appeared uninvited. He was striking the stones of the wall with his gold cane again and again, producing a dull, irritating sound. When the others turned toward him as one, the private envoy of the French Commander, his expression full of hauteur, swept his gaze over everyone present and proclaimed in a loud voice:

“By order of the great Commander André, I hereby issue this final ultimatum to the King of Prussia and to his subjects: Berlin must surrender by six o’clock this evening. Failing that, the French army will no longer guarantee the safety of life or property within the city... As for the diplomatic envoys of the various nations, you will have four hours in which to withdraw safely from Berlin. We French have already prepared comfortable rooms, fine food, and sweet wine for our guests in the Palace of Potsdam.”