Editing Battle of Bautzen (1813) (section)

==Battle==
After an intense bombardment by the [[Grand Battery|''grande batterie'']] of Napoleon's [[artillery]] that started about noon and hours of heated fighting, the French overpowered the first defensive lines and seized the town of [[Bautzen]]. The Prusso-Russians fell back in good order. By nightfall, the French were positioning to cut the allies off from their line of retreat but the Coalition was aware of Ney's approach to their right flank. But Marshal Ney became confused, and his faulty positioning left the door open for the Allies to escape.

Fighting on the following day, 21 May, was again hard and after several hours of setbacks, renewed French attacks began to gain momentum. But these assaults were only intended to fix the allies in place so they could be cut off and enveloped. Once again, Marshal Ney became distracted and decided to seize the village of {{Interlanguage link|Preititz|de}}, and thus lost sight of the strategic importance of cutting off the allies.

The Russo-Prussian army was being pushed back and at 4:00pm, the Tsar realized the threat that Ney posed on his right and that the battle was lost and issued orders for a general retreat. Without Ney's forces to seal them in, however, they again escaped the crushing defeat Napoleon had hoped for. Losses on both sides totaled around 20,000. But some other sources (e.g. Dr Stubner) also say that the losses on French side were significantly higher because of their aggressive attack tactics which failed to cut off the allies from their lines and the allies in fact only lost 11,000–14,000. The French victory at Bautzen is therefore often called a [[Pyrrhic victory]].{{sfn|Riley|2000|p=106}} Given his numerical superiority, the outcome was a missed opportunity for Napoleon.{{sfn|Leggiere|2015|p=359}}