Murat then bluffed the demoralized Hohenlohe into surrendering his entire corps by claiming that the Prussians were surrounded by overwhelming forces.

Finding its way to the northeast blocked, a second corps of retreating Prussians under Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher veered northwest toward Lübeck.

His troops were massed in a batallion carré (battalion square) made up of three columns of two army corps each, plus the Imperial Guard, the Cavalry Reserve, and a Bavarian contingent.

Hohenlohe took station near Rudolstadt in the east, with General-Major Bogislav Friedrich Emanuel von Tauentzien at Hof.

In the face of this menace, Brunswick elected to march the main army north from Weimar to Merseburg, while Hohenlohe defended his flank near Jena.

The 12,000-man corps of Saxe-Weimar and Winning missed Jena-Auerstedt and remained intact, heading north through Bad Langensalza.

[14] Filling the command void were Hohenlohe, General of Infantry Friedrich Adolf, Count von Kalckreuth, and Blücher, who each led sizable bodies of Prussians from Nordhausen through the Harz Mountains to Halberstadt and Quedlinburg.

These columns were energetically pursued by Marshal Nicolas Soult's IV Corps with General of Division Louis Michel Antoine Sahuc's dragoons attached.

[17] Davout seized Wittenberg on the 20th, with the local people assisting his troops in putting out a fire and preventing a powder magazine from being blown up.

[19] Leaving Marshal Michel Ney's VI Corps to begin the Siege of Magdeburg, Napoleon ordered his right wing to head for Berlin.

The French emperor found time to pay a reverent visit to the tomb of Frederick the Great at Potsdam.

[21] Under orders from King Frederick William III of Prussia to march for the Oder, Hohenlohe's corps set out from Magdeburg on the morning of 21 October.

During the operation, Oberst Ludwig Yorck von Wartenburg fought a successful rear guard action at Altenzaun on the 26th.

Schimmelpfennig's task was to cover his right flank and keep the French from interfering with the main body's march to Szczecin (Stettin) on the Oder.

[35] Another authority wrote that Milhaud's brigade consisted of the 13th Chasseurs and a dragoon regiment,[36] and that 3,000 of Lannes' picked infantry were at hand.

Lasalle tried to block the Prussian approach march in the suburb, but Schwerin's cuirassiers brushed the French hussars out of the way.

Hohenlohe directed his troops to move through the city and draw rations from a wagon train parked on the other side of Prenzlau.

Hugues spun "a wonderful tissue of lies", claiming that Murat had 30,000 troops at hand and that Lannes with 60,000 more lurked on the road to Stettin.

However, he sent his chief of staff Oberst Christian Karl August Ludwig von Massenbach back with Hugues, apparently to see what he could find out.

[39] Murat then launched his attack, Lasalle's hussars leading the way, followed by Grouchy's dragoons, while Beaumont brought up the rear.

After fording a small stream west of the town, Boussart's dragoons smashed into Hohenlohe's marching column from the south.

[40] Marching to the sound of the guns, Milhaud's brigade observed the prince's capture before continuing north to Pasewalk.

[36] Grouchy's dragoons broke down the town gate and trotted through Prenzlau and out the other side to view Hohenlohe's 10,000 troops drawn up on the road to Pasewalk.

The marshal lied to Hohenlohe on his "word of honor" that he was surrounded by 100,000 French in the corps of Lannes, Soult, and Bernadotte.

[41] When a munitions wagon blew up in the distance, a quick-witted French officer explained that it was Soult's signal gun announcing that he was now blocking the Prussians' retreat route.

[37] Francis Loraine Petre noted that the Prussians' total losses were nearly 12,000, with Hohenlohe surrendering 10,000, Boussart's brigade killing or capturing 1,000, and Beaumont's division accounting for the 1,000-man rear guard.

[43] Hohenlohe's capitulation proved to be a bad precedent to a subsequent string of abject Prussian surrenders in the next few days.

Soon afterward, in the Capitulation of Stettin, Lasalle's light cavalry brigade bluffed the fortress commandant into surrendering his 5,000-man garrison.

But on 30 October, Major von Höpfner surrendered with 600 soldiers and 25 guns to some of Lannes' units at Boldekow, 14 kilometers south of Anklam.

On 31 October, General of Division Nicolas Léonard Beker forced them to withdraw to the north side of the Peene River and convinced them to capitulate the next day.