A Bit o' History, Part 3

Maréchal Ney à Eylau
Richard Caton Woodville Jr. (PD)

Notwithstanding the occasional minor setback during the 1805 and 1806 campaigns, Napoléon and his Grande Armée were on a streak of success. The old order fell away wherever the Emperor and his army attacked.

Austria had capitulated, the Holy Roman Empire,¹ had ceased to be, replaced by the Confederation of the Rhine, a collection of minor German states allied to the French. Prussia was essentially defeated, but hadn't quit just yet, after all the Russians were advancing into East Prussia to save them. Also, it was winter, certainly the French would go into winter quarters², wouldn't they?

Nope. There were still minor Prussian forces in the field and a Russian army was on the loose, moving to the support of the remaining Prussians. Napoléon resolved to cut the Russians off and finish the War of the Fourth Coalition.

(Source)

Did I mention that it was winter? February to be precise by the time the French caught up to the Russians who had decided to make a stand at the East Prussian town of Preußisch-Eylau.³ Without going into great detail, suffice to say it was a frozen nightmare. The French attacked in the mid-afternoon on the 7th of February. Initially repulsed, the French kept receiving reinforcements, the Russians in the town were a rear guard, fighting for time to let their artillery fall back to the main Russian positions outside of the town.

The fighting was bitter and continued into the night and all of the next day before the Russians finally fell back and left the field to the French. The fighting took place over 14 hours in bitter cold, those wounded on the first day froze to death if they weren't collected. A massive cavalry charge into a snow squall turned the tide for the French. Ten thousand cavalrymen assaulted the Russian lines, counter-charges by Russian horse were to no avail. The fighting was over.

Nearly 30,000 Frenchmen and upwards of 26,000 Russians and Prussians fell. A single corps of the seemingly defeated Prussian army showed up and nearly turned the tide in the Russians' favor, but French troops kept showing up as well.

Both sides called a halt to fighting for the remainder of the winter after this bloodbath.

(Source)

Eylau had been indecisive, though the French held the field of combat, the Russian Army was still in the field and a major threat. So ...

The engagement at Friedland was a strategic necessity after the Battle of Eylau earlier in 1807 had failed to yield a decisive verdict for either side. The battle began when Bennigsen noticed the seemingly isolated reserve corps of Marshal Lannes at the town of Friedland. Bennigsen, who planned only to secure his march northward to Wehlau and never intended to risk an engagement against Napoleon's numerically-superior forces, thought he had a good chance of destroying these isolated French units before Napoleon could save them, and ordered his entire army over the Alle River. Lannes skillfully held his ground against determined Russian attacks until Napoleon could bring additional forces onto the field. Bennigsen could have recalled the Russian forces, numbering about 50,000–60,000 men on the opposite bank of the river, and retreated across the river before the arrival of Napoleon's entire army but, being in poor health, decided to stay at Friedland and took no measures to protect his exposed and exhausted army. By late afternoon, the French had amassed a force of 80,000 troops close to the battlefield. Relying on superior numbers and the vulnerability of the Russians with their backs to the river, Napoleon concluded that the moment had come and ordered a massive assault against the Russian left flank. The sustained French attack pushed back the Russian army and pressed them against the river behind. Unable to withstand the pressure, the Russians broke and started escaping across the Alle, where an unknown number of them died from drowning. The Russian army suffered horrific casualties at Friedland–losing over 40% of its soldiers on the battlefield. (Source)

The defeat at Friedland convinced the Czar to seek an armistice. The two Emperors met on a raft in the Vistula River to negotiate terms. Though few knew it at the time, Napoléon's star had reached its apogee. There would be more victories, but nothing like those of 1805 and 1806.

It's one thing to forge an empire, quite another to maintain it, and the British were by no means content with the new status quo.

My time is at a premium this week, offerings might be a bit slim. I plan on posting but mostly random musing and maybe a rant, I dunno. Stay tuned. The rest of the Napoleonic Wars overview will be forthcoming, but it gets more and more complicated from this point on.

Think Spain and Russia. If you don't know what I mean, you'll learn. Both were disasters and led to the downfall of the First French Empire and its creator.

¹ Which wasn't Holy, wasn't Roman, and certainly wasn't an Empire - to paraphrase Voltaire.

² Traditionally armies would go into winter quarters as sustaining men in the field was costly and winter was a brutal season to campaign in.

³ Prussian Eylau, which is now the town of Bagrationovsk in the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia. An area taken from Germany in 1945, East Prussia was essentially split in two, the southern half going to Poland, the northern half going to the Soviet Union. When the USSR fell, the Kaliningrad Oblast was left on its own, a Russian island wedged between Lithuania and Poland. It's eastern border 315 miles from the nearest border with Russia proper.