Battle of Jena–Auerstedt

The twin battles of Jena and Auerstedt were fought on 14th October 1806 between the French Grande Armée and the Prussian army. At Jena, Napoleon with about ninety-six thousand men defeated a Prussian force under Hohenlohe, while a few miles away at Auerstedt, Marshal Davout with only twenty-six thousand men held and then broke a Prussian army more than twice his size under the Duke of Brunswick. Both Prussian armies disintegrated, losing tens of thousands killed, wounded and captured, along with their artillery and stores. The catastrophe destroyed Prussia as a military power in a single day. French troops entered Berlin less than two weeks later. The defeat exposed the decay of the Frederician army and forced the sweeping military reforms later associated with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Napoleon followed the victory by imposing the Continental System against Britain. The twin victory demonstrated the superiority of the French corps system, in which semi-independent army corps could march separately and fight together, over the rigid Prussian linear tactics of the previous century.