After exertions so severe the troops imperatively needed some rest. The instructions from the supreme Headquarter were that the operations were not to be extended beyond a certain limit; and it was possible that the services of the IInd Army might almost immediately be required on the Seine and the Loire. Prince Frederick Charles therefore determined to follow up the retreating enemy with only a small force.
On the French side, that each Corps might have a separate road for the retreat to Alençon, two Corps had necessarily to draw out westward in the first instance. On the evening of the last day's fight the XVIth Corps reached Chauffour on the Laval road, and the XVIIth Conlie on the road to Mayenne, each covered by its rear-guard. The XXIst was assembled at Ballon, on the left bank of the Sarthe. From these points all were to march in a northerly direction. General Chanzy still deluded himself with the hope of coming up by Evreux to the assistance of the besieged capital. He would have had thus to make a wide circuit--an arc by moving on the chord of which the Germans could easily have anticipated him; and in a country where all arms were available, his army, in the condition to which it was now reduced, must have inevitably been destroyed. Ultimately the defeated French army retired in the direction to the westward of the Sarthe.
After the distribution of rations and forage, General von Schmidt set forth at mid-day on the 13th with four battalions, eleven squadrons, and ten guns, and reached Chauffour after some skirmishing. The XIIIth Corps advanced to the Sarthe, the 17th Division sending its outposts across the river at Neuville, and the 22nd drove the French out of Ballon, whence they retired in full flight to Beaumont. The XXIst French Corps had taken up quarters this day at Sillé. The National Guards of Brittany fled wildly to Coron, and thence made homeward toward their own province. They were joined by the troops left in camp at Conlie, after the camp there had been plundered. The XVIIth Corps also went off, without halting by the Vègre as it had been ordered to do, but retreating direct on Ste. Suzanne. The XVIth withdrew on Laval, leaving Barry's Division at Chassillé as rear-guard. Numbers of abandoned waggons and cast-away arms, everywhere testified to the demoralization of the defeated forces.