The next day, Friedrich von Kleist's Prussian corps hit Vandamme in the rear while Russian and Austrian reinforcements attacked the French front and left.

Vandamme caught up with Alexander Ivanovich Ostermann-Tolstoy's forces near the town of Kulm, eight kilometres northwest of Aussig (Ústí nad Labem, now in the Czech Republic).

The situation was very dangerous for the allies; if Vandamme won the battle, the French would take the passes in the mountains, and the retreating Coalition army could be trapped by Napoleon.

Kleist then received help from a combined Russian and Austrian attack on his front, under the command of Generals Mikhail Bogdanovich Barclay de Tolly and von Colloredo-Mansfeld.

The inexperienced French troops were unable to fend off the allies, and soon withdrew from the battlefield, with heavy losses, including Vandamme himself as a captured prisoner of war.

The other regiment of Uhlans, under the command of Count Tomasz Łubieński (generally known in English as Thomas Lubienski) successfully withdrew.