1807 Battle during the War of the Fourth Coalition
 War of the Fourth Coalition
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The Battle of Eylau, or Battle of Preussisch-Eylau, was a bloody and strategically inconclusive battle on 7 and 8 February 1807 between Napoleon's and the Imperial Russian Army under the command of General Levin August von Bennigsen near the town of Preussisch Eylau in East Prussia. Late in the battle, the Russians received timely reinforcements from a Prussian division of von L'Estocq. After 1945, the town was renamed Bagrationovsk as part of Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia. The engagement was fought during the War of the Fourth Coalition, part of the Napoleonic Wars.
Napoleon's armies had smashed the army of the Austrian Empire in the Ulm Campaign and the combined Austrian and Russian armies at the Battle of Austerlitz on 2 December 1805. On 14 October 1806, Napoleon crushed the armies of the Kingdom of Prussia at the Battle of Jena–Auerstedt and hunted down the scattered Prussians at Prenzlau, Lübeck, Erfurt, Pasewalk, Stettin, Magdeburg and Hamelin.
In late January, Bennigsen's Russian army went on the offensive in East Prussia, pushing far to the west. Napoleon reacted by mounting a counteroffensive to the north, hoping to prevent their retreat to the east. After his Cossacks had captured a copy of Napoleon's orders, Bennigsen rapidly withdrew to the northeast to avoid being cut off. The French pursued for several days and found the Russians drawn up for battle at Eylau.
In a vicious evening clash, the French captured the village, with heavy losses on both sides. The following day brought even more serious fighting. Early in the battle, a frontal attack by Napoleon failed, with catastrophic losses. To reverse the situation, he launched a massed cavalry charge against the Russians. That bought enough time for the French right wing to throw its weight into the contest. The Russian left wing was soon bent back at an acute angle, and Bennigsen's army was in danger of collapse. A Prussian corps belatedly arrived and saved the day by pushing back the French right. As darkness fell, a French corps tardily appeared on the French left. That night, Bennigsen decided to retreat, leaving Napoleon in possession of a snowy battlefield covered with thousands of dead and wounded. 
Eylau was the first serious check to the , and the myth of Napoleon's invincibility was badly shaken. The French went on to decisively defeat Bennigsen's army at the Battle of Friedland, four months later.
Background.
With the Prussian army routed at Jena-Auerstedt, Napoleon occupied the major cities of Germany and marched east in pursuit of the remaining forces opposed to him. These were largely Russians under the command of the frail 68-year-old Field Marshal Count Mikhail Kamensky. The old marshal was unwilling to risk battle and continued to retreat, leaving the free to enter Poland almost unopposed. Nevertheless, as the French pressed aggressively eastward across the Vistula, they found the Russians defending the line of the Wkra River. The French seized a crossing over the Wkra on 23 December at the Battle of Czarnowo. Russian resistance soon stiffened, and on 26 December, the two armies clashed at the Battles of Pułtusk and of Gołymin. After the fierce engagements, Napoleon's troops took up winter quarters in Poland to recuperate after a victorious but exhausting campaign.
In January 1807, the new Russian army commander, Levin August von Bennigsen, attempted to surprise the French left wing by shifting the bulk of his army north from Nowogród to East Prussia. Incorporating a Prussian corps on his right, he first bumped into elements of the VI Corps of Marshal Michel Ney, who had disobeyed his emperor's orders and advanced far north of his assigned winter cantonments. Having cleared Ney's troops out of the way, the Russians rolled down on the isolated French I Corps under Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte. Tough fighting at the Battle of Mohrungen allowed Bernadotte's corps to escape serious damage and pull back to the southwest. With his customary inventiveness, Napoleon saw an opportunity to turn the situation to his own advantage. He instructed Bernadotte to withdraw before Bennigsen's forces and ordered the balance of the to strike northward. That maneuver might envelop the Russian army's left flank and cut off its retreat to the east. By a stroke of luck, a band of Cossacks captured a messenger carrying Napoleon's plans to Bernadotte and quickly forwarded the information to General Pyotr Bagration. Bernadotte was left unaware, and a forewarned Bennigsen immediately ordered a retreat east to Jonkowo to avoid the trap.
As Bennigsen hurriedly assembled his army at Jonkowo, elements of Marshal Nicolas Soult's IV Corps reached a position on his left rear on 3 February. That day, General of Division Jean François Leval clashed with Lieutenant-General Nikolay Kamensky's 14th Division at Bergfried (Berkweda) on the Alle (Łyna) River, which flows roughly northward in the area. The French reported 306 casualties but claimed to have inflicted 1,100 on their adversaries. After seizing Allenstein (Olsztyn), Soult moved north on the east bank of the Alle. Meanwhile, Napoleon threatened Bennigsen from the south with Marshal Pierre Augereau's VII Corps and Ney's forces. Kamensky held the west bank with four Russian battalions and three Prussian artillery batteries. After an initial attack on Bergfried had been driven back, the French captured the village and bridge. A Russian counterattack briefly recaptured the bridge. That night, the French remained in possession of the field, and Soult claimed that he had found 800 Russian dead there. Marching at night, Bennigsen retreated directly north to Wolfsdorf (Wilczowo) on the 4th. The next day, he fell back to the northeast, reaching Burgerswalde on the road to Landsberg (Górowo Iławeckie).
By early February, the Russian army was in full retreat and was relentlessly pursued by the French. After several aborted attempts to stand and fight, Bennigsen resolved to retreat to the town of Preussisch-Eylau and there make a stand. During the pursuit, perhaps influenced by the dreadful state of the Polish roads, the savage winter weather and the relative ease with which his forces had dealt with Prussia, Napoleon had allowed the to become more spread out than was his custom. In contrast, Bennigsen's forces were already concentrated.
Battle.
First day.
Marshal Soult's IV Corps and Marshal Murat's cavalry were the first French formations to reach the plateau before Eylau at about 14:00 on the 7th. The Russian rearguard under Bagration occupied positions on the plateau about a mile in front of Eylau. The French promptly assaulted the positions and were repulsed. Bagration's orders were to offer stiff resistance to gain time for Bennigsen's heavy artillery to pass through Eylau and to join the Russian army in its position beyond Eylau. During the afternoon, the French were reinforced by Marshal Augereau's corps and the Imperial Guard, giving him a force of about 45,000 soldiers in all. Under pressure of greatly superior forces, Bagration conducted an orderly retreat to join the main army. It was covered by another rearguard detachment in Eylau that was led by Barclay de Tolly.
The rearguard action continued when French forces advanced to assault Barclay's forces in the town of Eylau. Historians differ on the reasons. Napoleon later claimed that was on his orders and that the advance had the dual aims of pinning the Russian force to prevent it from retreating yet again and of providing his soldiers with at least some shelter against the terrible cold. Other surviving evidence, however, strongly suggests that the advance was unplanned and occurred as the result of an undisciplined skirmish, which Marshals Soult and Murat should have acted to quell but failed to do so. Whether or not Napoleon and his generals had considered securing the town to provide the soldiers with shelter for the freezing night, the soldiers may have taken action on their own initiative to secure such a shelter. According to Captain Marbot, the Emperor had told Marshal Augereau that he disliked night fighting, that he wanted to wait until the morning so that he could count on Davout's Corps to come up on the right wing and Ney's on the left and that the high ground before Eylau was a good easily defensible position on which to wait for reinforcements.
Whatever the cause of the fight for the town, it rapidly escalated into a large and bitterly fought engagement, continuing well after night had fallen and resulting in about 4,000 casualties to each side, including Barclay, who was shot in the arm and forced to leave the battlefield. Among other officers, French Brig. Gen. Pierre-Charles Lochet was shot and killed. At 22:00 Bennigsen ordered the Russians to retreat a short distance, leaving the town to the French. He later claimed he abandoned the town to lure the French into attacking his center the next day. Despite their possession of the town, most of the French spent the night in the open, as did all of the Russians. Both sides did without food—the Russians because of their habitual disorganization, the French because of problems with the roads, the weather and the crush of troops hurrying towards the battle.
During the night, Bennigsen withdrew some of his troops from the front line to strengthen his reserve. That resulted in the shortening of his right wing.
Second day.
Bennigsen had 67,000 Russian troops and 400 guns already assembled, but the French had only 49,000 troops and 300 guns. The Russians could expect to be reinforced by Von L'Estocq's detachment of 9,000 Prussians, the French by Marshal Davout's depleted III Corps (proud victors of Auerstedt but now only 15,000 strong) and Marshal Ney's 14,000-strong VI Corps (for a total of 74,000 men), which was shadowing the Prussians. Bernadotte's I Corps was too far distant to take part.
Dawn brought light but little warmth and no great improvement in visibility since the heavy snowstorms continued throughout the day. The opposing forces occupied two parallel ridges. The French were active early on probing the Russian position, particularly on the Russian right. Bennigsen, fearing that the French would discover that he had shortened his right, opened the battle by ordering his artillery to fire on the French. They replied and the ensuing artillery duel lasted for some time, with the French having the best of it because of their more dispersed locations.
The start of the artillery duel galvanised Napoleon. Until then, he had expected the Russians to continue their retreat, but he now knew that he had a fight on his hands. Messengers hurriedly were dispatched to Ney to order him to march on Eylau and to join the French left wing.
Meanwhile, the French had occupied in force some fulling mill buildings within musket range of the Russian right wing. Russian jagers ejected them. Both sides escalated the fight, with the Russians assaulting the French left on Windmill Knoll to the left of Eylau. Napoleon interpreted the Russian efforts on his left as a prelude to an attack on Eylau from that quarter. By then, Davout's III Corps had begun to arrive on the Russian left.
To forestall the perceived Russian attack on Eylau and to pin the Russian army so that Davout's flank attack would be more successful, Napoleon launched an attack against the Russian centre and left, with Augereau's VII Corps on the left and Saint-Hilaire's Division of Soult's IV Corps on the right.
Augereau was very ill and had to be helped onto his horse. Fate intervened to turn the attack into a disaster. As soon as the French marched off a blizzard descended, causing all direction to be lost. Augereau's corps followed the slope of the land and veered off to the left, away from Saint-Hilaire. Augereau's advance struck the Russian line at the junction of its right and centre, coming under the fire of the blinded French artillery and then point-blank fire of the massive 70-gun Russian centre battery. Meanwhile, Saint-Hilaire's division, advancing alone in the proper direction, was unable to have much effect against the Russian left.
Augereau's corps was thrown into great confusion with heavy losses, gives Augereau's official tally of 929 killed and 4,271 wounded. One regiment, the 14th Ligne, was unable to retreat and fought to the last man, refusing to surrender; its eagle was carried off by Captain Marbot. Its position would be marked by a square of corpses. Bennigsen