Battle of Prussian Eylau
| date | 7 / 8. February 1807 |
|---|---|
| place | Prussian Eylau |
| output | draw |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
| Troop strength | |
| 75,000 French | 67,000 Russians 9,000 Prussians |
| losses | |
|
10,000 to 25,000 dead and wounded |
15,000 dead and wounded |
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Schleiz - Saalfeld - Jena and Auerstedt - Lübeck - Greater Poland - Czarnowo - Golymin - Pułtusk - Dirschau - Prussian Eylau - Ostrolenka - Stolp - Danzig - Kolberg - Guttstadt - Heilsberg - Friedland
The Battle of Preussisch Eylau was a military conflict between the Russian Army under the command of Levin von Bennigsen and the French Grande Armée under the command of Napoléon Bonaparte in 1807. It lasted from February 7th to 9th and brought on heavy losses no clear result on either side.
Starting position
March
After the elimination of the Prussian army in the campaign of 1806, Napoleon planned to put the bulk of the still intact Russian armed forces in a decisive battle. General Bennigsen commanded the majority of the Russian troops on the Polish front. After a short skirmish with Russian forces advancing westwards at the end of January 1807, whose strength Marshal Bernadotte estimated at 70,000 men, Napoleon saw this opportunity and planned to fall into the flank of the apparently advancing enemy formations and cut them off their way back.
The French armed forces in the Duchy of Poland were on the march to crush the Russian army in the area around Olsztyn . The corresponding marching orders and plans, however, came into Bennigsen's hands, who immediately stopped the advance and withdrew his troops. The French troops therefore marched into the void and found Allenstein unoccupied on February 2nd. Napoleon immediately ordered his Marshals Soult and Murat with their divisions to continue to Guttstadt , flanked by Marshal Ney's troops. A short time later, however, on February 3rd, French troops who advanced a few miles outside of Allenstein encountered a Russian rearguard. Napoleon revised his plan again, combined the five local divisions under Marshal Murat's command in order to take action against the recognized enemy and hold his army in place, while Soult and his divisions attack the flank of the enemy and his retreat towards Königsberg should cut off by occupying an important bridge at Bergfriede . Both attacks achieved their goals, but had only limited success because the early darkness made it difficult to get an overview of the situation. When the attack on the Russian flank was due to take place that morning, the enemy had already withdrawn.
Lineup
On February 5, there was another encounter between a Russian rear guard and the pursuing French troops at Hoof . After a short but difficult battle, in which both sides lost around 2,000 men, the Russian troops moved away in the direction of Eylau.
Bennigsen set up his around 67,000 soldiers and 460 cannons north and east of the village in order to block the road coming from Eylau towards Königsberg . Eylau itself initially remained vacant.
The Russian army was commanded by the following commanders:
- Generals Fabian Sacken (3rd Division) and Pjotr Essen (8th Division), troops in the Russian center, on a flat ridge, 600 meters from the outskirts
- General Tutschkow , (5th Division) right flank, north of Eylau
- General Alexander Ostermann-Tolstoy , (2nd Division) left flank, southeast of Eylau
- General Dmitri Dochturow , (4th, 7th and 14th Divisions) as reserve
- General Dmitri Golitsyn , cavalry
- Cossack Corps Platow, ataman of the Don Cossacks Matwei Platow
Penetrating French troops under Soult and Murat reached the area on February 7 at 2:00 p.m. They were followed by Marshal Augereau's troops and the Imperial Guard until evening . On the evening of the same day Napoleon had gathered around 45,000 soldiers and 200 cannons near Eylau, another 15,100 men under Davout were on the march, and Marshal Ney stood with almost 14,000 soldiers just a few miles north, around the rushing Prussian troops, about 9,000 men under L ' Estocq , to keep an eye on.
Battle of Prussian Eylau
opening
According to witnesses, Napoleon did not want to involve the Russian forces in fighting on the 7th, as he himself was still heavily outnumbered, but held the better defensive position on the ridge west of the city. A confusing and uncontrollable night battle had to be avoided and the reinforcements had to be awaited before they could attack the next morning.
However, a group of French supply carriages, loaded with parts of Napoleon's luggage, got into the city of Eylau on February 7th out of ignorance of the location of the French headquarters, and the soldiers began to unload their wagons. Advanced Russian units then infiltrated the city from the outskirts and attacked the French in the afternoon. The noise of the battle then prompted Marshal Soults French units to advance from the other edge of the village, so that fighting developed in Eylau. On the Russian side it was assumed that the French wanted to occupy the place, and pushed more troops to prevent this, so that the battle developed from the skirmish.
At around 10 p.m. Bennigsen ordered his troops to evacuate the place. Both sides had lost 4,000 men in the heavy fighting. With the exception of the French troops in Eylau and smaller towns in the area, all soldiers had to spend the night outdoors, while heavy snowfalls made their situation even more difficult.
February 8
On the morning of February 8th, the bulk of the French reinforcements had arrived or were on the march, so that Napoleon now commanded about 75,000 men, while the Russian troops with the approaching Prussian allies were about as strong.
The French plan envisaged the attack of three divisions under Soult on both flanks, with the aim of tying up the Russian forces there until Davout's deploying divisions could strengthen the attack on the French right wing. At the right moment Augereau and Murat from the center should also move against the Russian left flank in order to overrun it from two sides. In the center, behind and south of Eylau, Napoleon set up his guard to deter the Russian commanders from attacking his weak positions there.
The battle on the 8th began with an artillery duel in the center, in which Russian gunners finally set fire to several houses in Eylau. On the Russian right flank, the French troops began a mock attack, which provoked the hoped-for Russian counterattack and diverted it from the Russian left wing, Napoleon's main target. The counterattack, however, threw Soult's forces back to Eylau, and Marshal Ney was not yet close enough to relieve the French left wing. Napoleon ordered a relief attack on his right flank, where Marshal Augereau and General Saint-Hilaire were supposed to divert the attention of the Russian commander-in-chief from the now dangerously weak left wing.
Augereau advanced with 9,000 men in a thick snowstorm, but his troops lost their orientation and slowly turned to the left towards the Russian center as they advanced. They marched directly in front of the muzzle of 70 Russian cannons that shot the two divisions together. The survivors tried to regroup, but were attacked by the Russian reserve under Dochturow and pushed back to Eylau. Only the 14th line regiment with 2,000 men held out and threatened to be encircled by the advancing Russian reserves. Augereau sent one reporter after the other to give the regiment the order to withdraw, but none of them reached the force. It was only Captain Marbot who got into the regiment, whose position could no longer be maintained after heavy losses and under constant attacks by enemy infantry and cavalry.
He later reported how the soldiers handed him the regimental standard and told him:
«Retournez vers l'Empereur, faites-lui les adieux du 14e de ligne qui a fidèlement exécuté ses ordres, et portez-lui l'aigle qu'il nous avait donnée et que nous ne pouvons plus défendre, il serait trop pénible en mourant de la voir tomber aux mains des ennemis. »
“Return to the emperor and say goodbye to the 14th regiment of the line, which has faithfully carried out its orders, and bring him the eagle that he has entrusted to us, but which we can no longer protect, it would be too painful to die and to see him fall into the hands of the enemy. "
Several thousand Russian soldiers arrived in the city where Napoleon was watching the battle from the church tower. Only the intervention of his bodyguards and the guards enabled him to escape.
Cavalry attack
The only forces that could still prevent the collapse of the French center were the reserves. 10,700 cavalrymen under Murat were ordered to attack the advancing Russians. The following attack is considered to be one of the greatest cavalry attacks in history. The French horsemen broke through the advancing Russian formations, freed the advanced units of General Saint-Hilaires and Augereau from their predicament, broke through the Russian center in two places, formed a single column behind the Russian lines, turned and broke through the Russian center again and returned to their own lines. General d'Hautpoul , who commanded a cuirassier division, was fatally wounded in the attacks .
The losses of the cavalry were heavy, but the French center was saved, and relief for the French troops was also noticeable on the flanks, as Bennigsen now had to hastily reorganize his center.
A French attack, which would have taken advantage of the momentary advantage, failed to materialize because Napoleon feared that L'Estocq and his Prussian troops could reach the battlefield in time to thwart the attack.
The battle for the left flank
Following the original plan, Napoleon concentrated on the Russian left flank and ordered his divisions to attack at 1:00 p.m. Davout's troops pushed the Russian line back further and further until, shortly before their collapse, at around 2:00 p.m. L'Estocq stabilized the Russian line with its 9,000 men by attacking Davout's open flank.
The French troops, which were now retreating, were only reinforced towards evening by the late arrival of Marshal Ney. Napoleon's 14,000 men were immediately sent against the Russian right wing, which ended the Russian offensive on the left wing and led to a stalemate .
End of battle
On the night of February 9, Bennigsen decided that he could have no further argument with his troops and ordered the retreat, which began around midnight. The French troops, too exhausted to pursue, did not pursue them.
losses
The losses on both sides were heavy, but can no longer be precisely reconstructed. Napoleon had 1,900 dead and 5,700 wounded reported as casualties, but this counts as propaganda. Losses between 10,000 and 25,000 French soldiers are assumed to be realistic. The losses of the coalition forces are given as around 15,000. After the Battle of Chandler, Marshal Ney was presented with “ Quel massacre! Et sans result. »(German:" What a massacre! And without result. ") Quoted. Napoleon is said to have reacted to the losses with the sentence attributed to him and quoted again and again: « Une nuit de Paris réparera tout ça. »(German:“ One night in Paris will make up for everything. ”) After this battle, Russia and Prussia decided in the Bartenstein Treaty of April 26, 1807 to continue to fight together against Napoleon.
memory
In the vicinity of the Berlin general train , an “Eylauer Straße” has been a reminder of the battle since 1901.
See also
Evidence and references
Individual evidence
- ^ David G. Chandler: The Campaings of Napoleon , p. 518
- ^ "Marbot - La fin du 14e de ligne" on histoire-empire.org, viewed on September 30th
- ^ David G. Chandler: The Campaings of Napoleon , p. 548
- ^ David G. Chandler: The Campaings of Napoleon , p. 555
- ↑ Eylauer Strasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near Kaupert )
literature
- David G. Chandler: The Campaings of Napoleon , Scribner, 1966, ISBN 0-02-523660-1 (English)
- Frank Bauer: Preussisch-Eylau 7./8. February 1807. Napoleon's Pyrrhic victory in wintry East Prussia (Small series History of the Wars of Liberation 1813–1815, no. 17), Potsdam 2007, DNB 1009878735
- Ludwig von Baczko : incidents of the captain von Falkenhayn in the days of the battle of Pr. Eylau . In: Contributions to the Prussian customer , Volume 2, Königsberg 1819, pp. 177–193, books.google.de
