As Emperor Napoleon I of France's Grande Armée advanced north through the Franconian Forest it struck the left wing of the armies belonging to the Kingdom of Prussia and the Electorate of Saxony, which were deployed on a long front.

During the War of the Third Coalition, King Frederick William III of Prussia signed the Potsdam Accord with Tsar Alexander I of Russia, an active belligerent, on 3 November 1805.

[3] Napoleon managed to stall the Prussian ambassador Christian Graf von Haugwitz until after his great victory at the Battle of Austerlitz on 2 December 1805.

[8] In the face of these French aggressions, the pro-war faction at the Prussian court, centered around Queen Louise, soon gained the upper hand.

The pacific Haugwitz was dismissed as chief minister and on 7 August 1806 King Frederick William determined to go to war against Napoleon.

The left wing, led by General of the Infantry Frederick Louis, Prince of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen assembled near Dresden and included the Saxon contingent.

[13] The Prussian high command held several councils of war but no strategy could be agreed upon until a 5 October reconnaissance revealed Napoleon's forces were already moving north from Bayreuth toward Saxony.

Napoleon selected his invasion route in the zone where the belt of rough terrain was narrowest, the Franconian Forest to the east.

A small defending force fell back east to Gefell where it rendezvoused with General-Major Tauentzien as his division retreated north from Hof.

On 9 October, the first clash occurred between the troops of Bernadotte and Tauentzien near the Oschitz Wood, a belt of timber which lies south of Schleiz.

Bernadotte ordered General of Brigade François Werlé to clear the forest to the right as Drouet's division advanced on Schleiz.

Werlé's advance guard took possession of the woods but was prevented from continuing on by a Prussian force under General-Major Rudolf Ernst Christoph von Bila.

The Prussian division fell back to the north covered by Bila's rear guard of one infantry battalion and one and a half cavalry regiments.

North of the town, Murat charged the rear guard with the 4th Hussar Regiment, but this attack was repulsed by the Prussian horsemen.

Reinforced by the 5th Chasseurs à Cheval Regiment and with infantry support, Murat pressed back Bila's troops to the wood north of Oettersdorf.

[24][a] Earlier, Tauentzien sent an officer named Hobe with one battalion, one squadron, and two guns to Crispendorf about six kilometers west of Schleiz.

At the wood near Pörmitz, a village four kilometers north of Schleiz, the detachment found itself caught between Murat's cavalry and one of Drouet's battalions.

[27] When Hohenlohe heard about the encounter at Schleiz, he ordered the troops of his left wing to mass between Rudolstadt and Jena before moving east to the support of Tauentzien and the Saxons.

[31] Though Brunswick was nominally the Prussian commander in chief, his orders had to be confirmed by King Frederick William, while Hohenlohe and Rüchel were almost independent of him.

[32] Napoleon's strategy was simple, but the Prussian generals felt compelled to plan for every eventuality, resulting in a much wider deployment of their forces.

[33] On the evening of 9 October, between Winning's detachment in the west and Zeschwitz's Saxons in the east, the Prussian-Saxon army covered a 145 kilometer front.