Crisis in the snows: Russia confronts Napoleon - the Eylau campaign 1806-1807

by James R. Arnold

The autumn of 1806 witnessed one of history's foremost military geniuses, Napoleon Bonaparte, at the apogee of his power. After easily defeating the vaunted Prussian army, the Emperor Napoleon occupied Berlin. The scale of his victories stunned Europe. He and his veteran warriors appeared invincible.

Undaunted, the young Tsar Alexander sent his armies westward to confront the French. The ensuing collisions took place in Poland, one of Europe's poorest, most barren regions. Terrain, weather, and luck played critical roles. Then came a seemingly implausible reversal of fortune when an inexperienced Russian army, riven by command dissension, inflicted a pair of severe checks at Pultusk and Golymin. Napoleon's opponents rejoiced to see the 'Corsican Ogre' falter as he retired to winter quarters to lick his wounds. The Russian armies were not done. Flush with his success at Pultusk, Russian General Leontii Bennigsen assumed overall command of the Tsar's forces and launched a surprise offensive. It compelled Napoleon to abandon winter quarters and begin a grueling campaign. Napoleon's brilliantly conceived strategic envelopment miscarried.

A five-day all-out pursuit finally brought the Russians to bay on the snow covered ground of Eylau. Here over 140,000 French and Russian soldiers fought a terrible battle. They displayed surpassing courage and moments of inspired leadership, and committed costly blunders as victory trembled in the balance. The battle inflicted nearly 60,000 casualties, leaving thousands of dead and wounded littering the exposed slopes as frozen darkness descended. Then and thereafter, both sides claimed victory, but what was absolutely clear was that for the first time in his career Napoleon had met a foe capable of resisting his sweeping strategic thrusts and tactical flourishes.

2007, hard bound in dust jacket, 6 1/4 x 9 1/4, xvi, 470 pages, 53 illustrations and 37 situation maps, 8 appendices with orders of battle, bibliog, index.

Genres: History, Military History

470 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2007

Reviews

['Aussie Rick']

Crisis In The Snows: Russia Confronts Napoleon - The Eylau Campaign 1806-1807 is the newest book by James Arnold in the field of Napoleonic warfare. His previous books, Marengo and Hohenlinden, Napoleon Conquers Austria and Crisis on the Danube have all been well received and are recognised as some of the best books covering a number of Napoleon's battles. Having read all three of the authors previous titles I was delighted to find this new book on the market and as soon as I received it I read it cover to cover in a matter of days.

The book was a delight to read, well researched and nicely written. The author goes into enough depth to satisfy the hard-core Napoleonic buff but writes so well that the account never bogs down or losses the readers attention. There are just under 40 maps provided throughout the text, allowing the reader to follow the action, blow-by-blow. There are also numerous Appendixes covering a large range of subjects, Order-of-Battles, Army compositions and organisation, etc.

The actual account of the events, skirmishes and minor battles leading up to the dramatic confrontation at Eylau is one of the best I have read for some time. Currently there are very few decent accounts available to the reader covering Napoleon's campaign in Poland. The best to date has been Francis Loraine Petre's: Napoleon's Campaign in Poland, 1806-1807 which was first published in 1901. Most recently the has been a slim title by Christopher Summerville; Napoleon's Polish Gamble (2005), Petre's is the better of the two.

So to see this new in-depth account covering this famous engagement and to learn that the author is soon to release another book to complete the story of Napoleon's Polish campaign; Napoleon's Triumph: The Friedland Campaign 1807 has brought tears to my wife's eyes! (Any bibliophile will know what I mean).

Overall this is an excellent book, over 400 pages that was well presented, well researched, easy to read and has a decent Bibliography for those who wish to follow up with their own research or book buying (I did). I would recommend this title to any person who has a fascination for the Napoleonic period or who enjoys reading a great book or story covering military history.

[Heinz Reinhardt]

James R. Arnold's books are amongst the very best scholarship coming from the English speaking world on the Napoleonic epoch. If for nothing else than that Arnold looks at the events of Central and Eastern Europe, tales that don't normally get retold by English speaking scholars. 

The Polish Campaign, waged from the winter of 1806/07 to the early summer of 1807 is one of the least studied aspects of the Napoleonic Wars, and Arnold, in this the first of two brilliant volumes studying this oft unexplored campaign, presents the entirety of The Polish Campaign of 1807 in all it's dramatic, tragic, glory. 


*****


Following his dramatic, crushing triumph at Austerlitz in Bohemia (modern day Czech Republic), Napoleon set about reordering European order. The Holy Roman Empire, extant for a millennia was undone by Imperial decree, replaced by the Confederation of the Rhine. The Hapsburg Empire is humbled, and forced to recognize French hegemony over Germany, a long standing French grand strategic aim stretching back well into the Bourbon period. Soon afterwards, Prussia is forced into an uneasy alliance with the French, in the guise of the North German Union. 

And Russia, having borne the brunt of the fighting, and the subsequent disaster, at Austerlitz, refuses to give in. 

Defiant, Emperor Alexander withdraws his battered, but not entirely broken, army into Poland, and prepares for the day when active operations can be resumed against the French. 

Despite offering Alexander the olive branch of peace after Austerlitz, and noting the silent Russian refusal, Napoleon quarters and cantons his La Grande Armée in southern Germany, in preparation for another first strike operation into Poland should the Russians show signs of preparing for yet future aggressive movements upon the French positions. All the while, Napoleon, with his customary energy and extraordinary attention to even the most esoteric of details, carries apace his strategic restructuring of Central Europe. 

And here the seeds of the Polish Campaign are sown. 

As Arnold points out, briefly, in an introductory chapter, tensions between Paris and Berlin revolving around French hegemony over the German speaking world leads to Prussia seeking war with the French. 

Napoleon, utterly exasperated with the Prussians by this point, with a building grudge against them having grown since earlier in 1805 due to their Kaiser's hemming and hawing over which side to join in the current conflict (Napoleon was so disgusted with the Prussians as a result that he developed a severe Prussophobia he carried with him the rest of his days.), vowed to crush them once and for all. 

Prussia made three supreme mistakes which lead to their near total annihilation. The first was resting upon the laurels won by the generation of Frederich Der Große. The Prussian Army of 1806 was an outdated anachronism, even if Napoleon himself greatly respected it initially. The second was in making obvious their intentions to strike southwards against the French, even going so far as to deliver to the Emperor himself a set of demands, essentially declaring war (which Napoleon ignored). The last was in jumping the gun and refusing to wait for Russian assistance. 

In a few short weeks in October, La Grande Armée picked the Prussians apart, and shot them to pieces upon the fields of Jena and Auerstädt, and then launched the most devastating pursuit operation in military history which essentially destroyed the Prussian Army in a single blow. 

Watching from afar, the Russians were entirely aghast, and hastened their still uncompleted preparations for the renewal of hostilities with the French. The swiftness of the victory over Prussia surprised even Napoleon, who expected a much tougher, longer fight of it, and so the Emperor, now in Berlin, merely turned La Grande Armée on it's heels, pivoted to the east, and lunged into Poland to meet the Russians before they could finalize their preparations, or attack him first. 

While Arnold doesn't belabor the point, or go into incredible detail on the situation, Napoleon was in part, at least, influenced by the large Polish emigré population in Paris. Polish elites and intellectuals rapidly affixed their stars to Napoleon's in the hopes that the Emperor might restore the Polish Kingdom in payment for their loyalty and allegiance. 

For his part, however, Napoleon was not even remotely interested in restoring the totality of the Polish Kingdom.  Though he was interested in forming some form of Polish state, which would be semi-independent, to act as a buffer state between his own, and Russia's empires. 

Already hundreds, and soon to be many thousands, of Poles were serving in La Grande Armée, and the French were generally welcomed enthusiastically by the Polish populace, who would never accept being absorbed by the Russian Empire, but who were hopeful that Napoleon might bring back some form of Polish sovereignty, limited though he intended it to be. 

For their part, the Russians were not taken by surprise by Napoleon's lunge into Poland in late October, early November 1807. As Arnold details, the Russian preparations weren't as yet fully completed, and the Russian commander, Levin Bennigsen (a Hanoverian, whose Germanic ethnicity would cause some turmoil within the command hierarchy of the Russian Imperial Army, despite the fact that Bennigsen was a favorite of Alexander's), was a calculating enough fellow to comprehend Napoleon's intentions, and to counter them effectually. 

Bennigsen read the situation perfectly. He knew that Napoleon was gambling upon a swift, late autumn campaign, which he hoped to wind up before winter. This meant forcing the Russians to battle somewhere, hopefully, before La Grande Armée was sucked too deeply eastwards into the Polish interior. 

As Bennigsen understood all too well, and as Arnold analyzes and showcases, the Polish interior degraded in terms of its infrastructure the further eastwards one marched. 

Western Poland, much of it controlled by the Prussians since the Partitions, had decent road networks, and was well stocked with provender and necessities for an army on the move. However, the further eastwards one went into the Russian controlled region of Poland, the more abhorrent, and in cases simply non-existent, the infrastructure became. 

Bennigsen chose to stage a series of fighting withdrawals, drawing the French ever eastwards, deep into the Polish interior, all the while bleeding them in tough, sometimes desperately, and savagely, fought battles. These battles, most often bloody tactical draws, further eroded the French spearheads, already beginning to be thinned by the atrocious state of internal Poland. 

Cold, freezing, wet, tired, hungry, forlorn, and with discipline beginning to break down, a frustrated Napoleon called a halt to active operations sometime in December, and attempted to build cantonments for the rest of the winter. 

French occupation of Warsaw, while a slight political coup for Napoleon was militarily pointless, as Bennigsen and the Russian Army had escaped intact (mostly, they were equally as battered, cold, freezing, wet, tired, hungry, forlorn, and on the verge of cracking discipline as the French) to the northeast of Poland, across from the Baltic States and the Courland region. 

For some weeks both sides licked their wounds, and rebuilt for yet another renewal of active operations in the spring. For his part, Napoleon found the romantic attentions of Countess Maria Walewska a delightful enough diversion, and bantered back and forth with Polish elites, desperately trying to sell a skeptical Emperor on the merits of a restored Polish Kingdom. 

It seemed as though the rest of the winter would be spent in relative ease, with both sides repairing and reinforcing from the surprising toll taken in the late autumn. Bennigsen, however, had other designs in mind. 

Seeing a chance to isolate the Corps of Marshal Michel Ney, Bennigsen and the Russian Army lunged forward in a surprise offensive of their own. Ney was forced to fight for his, and his Corps', life as the Russians came within an ace of cutting him off and destroying him. 

Ney, however, escaped the trap, albeit barely, and not without being badly mauled in the process. Seeing this, and noting that the Emperor was rapidly concentrating La Grande Armée to strike him a major blow, Bennigsen again waged a brilliantly conducted fighting withdrawal. 

Despite the skill he showcased in his fighting withdrawal, Napoleon was pursuing hotly, and pressuring the Russians to stand and fight so heavily, that Bennigsen, in early February, felt he had no choice but to stand and resist in main force the might of La Grande Armée. 

The ensuing Battle of Eylau on the 8th of February stands as one of the bloodiest single days of combat in military history. 

Taking a stand on the Eylau plateau, outside the small East Prussian town of Preussich-Eylau (modern day Bagrationovsk Kaliningrad Oblast) the Russian rearguard fought a bloody prelude on the 7th in the streets, and cemetery, of the town of Eylau itself, while Bennigsen deployed his main force along the breadth of the high ground to the east of the town. 

The French were not fully concentrated when the battle was forced upon them, but the Emperor was determined to accept batte now that Bennigsen had, finally, offered it, and was determined to end the War here. Despite the fact that Davout's Corps, his best Divisions, were still some hours march away, Napoleon risked an open assault on the Russian positions. The French immediately in the morning of the 8th pitched heading into the Russian forward positions, and rapidly drove them back. 

The initial Russian line cracked and was broken backwards, but at that moment a blizzard-like snow squall enveloped the field, and the two French Corps pressing upon the Russian center, with aims to break it and split Bennigsen's Army in twain, became separated. 

Marshal Augerau's Corps, veering to the north, utterly blinded by the driving snow, and sensory deprived by the muffling effect of the heavy snow cover and fall, failed to notice that they were marching into the teeth of the Russian main artillery batteries. 

Emerging from the snowy mist, the French in their blue uniforms and grey overcoats were perfectly silhouetted against the white covering the ground, and were immersed into the very vortex of hell, as the Russian artillery roared, thundered, and bucked backwards in recoil. 

Shot, shell, and copious amounts of canister ripped into the French infantry and slaughtered them. In mere minutes, most of an entire French infantry Corps, some of the best infantry in the world, were blown to bloody tatters, and the Russian infantry, rallied, and led by the Russian Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard, swept them from the field in a trotting bayonet charge. 

This was the crisis of the Battle for Napoleon. Turning to his brother in law, the garish, splendid meat head, Marshal Joachim Murat, (for what faults he had, he was the greatest cavalryman of the age), Napoleon asked if Murat could stem the tide. 

Putting spurs to flank, Murat rode off to conduct one of the truly great cavalry charges in history. 

Arnold's depiction of the tactical narrative of the Battle of Eylau is simply outstanding. His retelling of the death of Augerau's Corp, the Russian infantry charge, and then Murat's epic cavalry charge, makes for some of the most exciting reading anyone will ever find in the field of military history scholarship. 

Murat, amassing the heavy cavalry of the Lancer de Francais, Chasseurs-à-Cheval, and the iron men of the Cuirassiers, as well as the Imperial Guard horse under Marshal Bessierès, slammed into the Russian infantry like a flesh and steel sledgehammer, and trampled them into the bloody, slushy, muck, before spurring on to pierce the Russian center. 

Hacking, slashing, stabbing, and grinding men into the ground as they swept onwards, the 10,000 French horse rescued the situation, and turned the tide of battle. Piercing the Russian center, they swept onwards until they were forced to pause, deep in the Russian rear, to reform ranks, and to allow men and mounts to catch their breath. 

Despite the horrendous beating just delivered by the French cavalry, the Russians were already rallying, and Murat could see that Bennigsen was beginning to surround his force to entrap it in the Russian rear. Seeing nothing to be done for it, the ever boyishly glorious Marshal merely ordered his cavalry to charge back to their own lines. 

The poor, certainly traumatized survivors of the initial, apocalyptic French mounted avalanche, had to have felt a certain sense of dread as the sounds of trumpets, and the hammering of thousands of iron shod hooves shaking the frozen ground beneath them, assaulted their harried senses yet again. 

Just as they trampled, and cut their way in, the French trampled, and cut their way right back out again. 

With his cavalry reforming behind his own rallied infantry lines, Napoleon was now far more confident, especially as Davout's Corps began to arrive, and pitched into Bennigsen's left flank off the route of march. The Russians, however, began to seriously consider the possibility of defeat. 

Running low on ammunition, and with his center having been crushed not once, but twice, by one of history's great mounted actions, Bennigsen had all he could handle with trying to hold off Davout's magnificent veterans who began to crush the Russian left flank, rolling it up, and threatening to sever their retreat routes back eastwards towards the Nieman River. 

As though the script was written by a film producer, Von Lestocq's Division of the Prussian Army, one of the few surviving Divisions of the shattered Prussian Army, arrived in the nick of time to restore Bennigsen's left flank, and to hold off Davout's Corps. The Russians rallied all along the line, and all across the gory battlespace, the Russians stood fast and withstood the final French assaults as darkness finally ended the bloodshed. 

Both sides would bring between 75-80,000 men to the field (counting the Prussians), and both sides would lose between 25-30,000 men in one of the worst days to be a soldier in the 19th, or any, century. 

The Battle ended as a draw, and would be the first major check in Napoleon's military career since St. Jean d'Acre in Palestine back in 1799. Both sides would be forced to go into winter encampments to weather the remaining weeks of winter, and to attempt to recover from the horrors of Eylau. 

Arnold's first volume on the Polish Campaign is one of the very best Napoleonic campaign studies ever written, and is a model of the art of military history scholarship, analysis, and narrative. 

Cannot recommend this one highly enough. 

[Miszor]

dobre, ale denerwuje mnie charakterystyczne dla anglosaskiej historiografii lekceważenie niuansu

[Milton Soong]

One of the best book on Eylau I have ever read. Plus all the detailed battle account for all the action leading up to it. Must read for serious student of Napoleonic warfare.