Battle of Czarnowo, 1806: Napoleon's night crossing of the Wkra

Czarnowo was a battle for a river crossing, fought in the dark, in mud and marsh, just north of Warsaw. It was not large, but Napoleon planned it himself from the roof of a cottage, and it opened the week of fighting that ended at Pułtusk and Gołymin. Polish accounts count it among the few night battles of the Napoleonic era.²

Background: into Poland

After crushing Prussia at Jena and Auerstedt in October 1806, Napoleon pushed east into Poland. He reached Poznań at the end of November, and the Russians, who had come forward to the Vistula, left Warsaw and fell back across the river.³ › Jena-Auerstedt, 1806

Napoleon himself entered Warsaw on 19 December, according to the Fondation Napoléon and the Polish Napoleonic Society; the Pomiechówek local history gives the 20th. Poles greeted the French as liberators, and Polish historians call the campaign that followed the first Polish war.⁴

The Russian commander was the old Field Marshal Mikhail Kamensky, who joined his armies at Pułtusk around 20 or 21 December. Petre and Rickard both describe him as aged and failing. Under him, the Russian forces in Poland were led by Bennigsen and Buxhoeveden.⁵

Two rivers and an island

North of Warsaw the Vistula is joined by the river that the sources of 1806 call the Bug; on today's maps the river here is the Narew, which the Bug joins farther upstream. A few miles upstream, the small Wkra (the Ukra in the older books) flows into it from the north. Davout's corps had crossed the Bug and built a bridge of boats and an entrenched bridgehead at Okunin, just below the mouth of the Wkra.⁶

At its mouth the Wkra splits into two branches around a wooded, triangular island, cut in two by a marshy channel. The French held part of it. Davout's report and Petre say his men seized the rest on the night of 20 December, driving out the Russian posts; the Fondation Napoléon, following the Grande Armée's bulletin, dates the capture of the island to the 18th. Only one branch of the river now lay between the French and the Russians.⁷

Armies and commanders

Across that branch stood General Alexander Ostermann-Tolstoy with the 2nd Division of Bennigsen's army, which held the line of the Wkra from Borkowo down to the river's mouth. A bank of higher ground ran from Czarnowo, on the main river, west to the Wkra opposite the village of Pomiechowo, and overlooked the low, swampy and partly wooded ground in front. The Russians held this bank with their guns behind earthworks and their right flank covered by redoubts facing Pomiechowo.⁸

How strong they were depends on whom you read. Davout's report speaks of 15,000 men; Petre counts nine battalions, two squadrons and a Cossack regiment. Both give the Russians about 20 guns. A Russian account translated by the Pomiechówek local historians says only seven battalions faced Napoleon.⁹

Davout had three divisions on the spot: Morand's, to lead the attack from the island; Friant's, near Pomiechowo; and Gudin's at the bridgehead, part of which was to attack under General Petit. Petre calls the III Corps perhaps the best in the army.¹⁰

Napoleon on the roof

Napoleon rode out from Warsaw on the morning of 23 December and reached the camp at Okunin. He studied the ground from every side and, to see over the far bank, climbed a ladder onto the roof of a house on the island. Then he dictated the orders for the attack on the spot.¹¹

His plan was a night attack. Morand's men would form three columns on the island, out of musket range. Under cover of guns firing canister across the river and voltigeurs firing from the hedges, boats would carry the first troops over and bridges would be thrown across behind them. At the same time Petit, with a detachment of Gudin's division, was to cross and push up the far bank against the Russian redoubts opposite Pomiechowo, while six guns at Pomiechowo raked them from the flank.¹²

There was a trick as well. Along the bank near Pomiechowo the French lit large heaps of damp straw to make a thick smoke and persuade the Russians that the crossing would come there, upstream, rather than at the island.¹³

The battle in phases

The crossing. Davout's report and Petre put the start of the attack at about seven in the evening; the Russian account on the Pomiechówek site has a cannonade beginning in the late afternoon, its signal a fire lit by the French at Pomiechowo. Voltigeurs crossed the last branch of the Wkra in boats and a ferry, drove off the Russian outposts and covered the engineers while they bridged the river. Cavalry and guns followed.¹⁴

The first attack on Czarnowo. The 17th Regiment pushed on too fast. It broke into the batteries in front of the village, but the Russians rallied, struck it in the flank and threw it back to the edge of the woods. Petre calls the attack more brave than wise.¹⁵

The village falls. Morand brought up the rest of his division and attacked again in echelons, in the dark. One battalion of the 30th Regiment turned Czarnowo by a ravine, another struck it in front, and a third column worked through the pine woods on its flank. After long and bitter fighting the Russians were driven out of the village and the French formed on the plateau beyond.¹⁶

Petit's fight on the right. At the other end of the line, Petit had only 400 men of the 12th Regiment and a detachment of about fifty under Davout's aide-de-camp Perrin. Helped by the guns firing across the river, they rushed the redoubts so fast that the Russians only just saved their guns, pulling them back toward Czarnowo. The Russians then came back again and again. A column of cavalry tried to break through; Petit's men held their fire until it was close and drove it off with one volley. Every infantry attack was thrown back, and Davout fed in reinforcements as the night went on.¹⁷

Turning point: the retreat before dawn

With Czarnowo lost and the French growing stronger every hour, Ostermann-Tolstoy decided to go. Petre and the Russian account put his order to retreat at about four in the morning; the Nasielsk library's account has the fighting end around midnight. Either way, the Russian division withdrew in good order along the road to Nasielsk.¹⁸

In his report Davout wrote that in this night fight his men maneuvered as if it were broad daylight, with as much order and precision as daring. Petre thought the decision to cross by night remarkable and unusual for Napoleon: in daylight the bridges would have had to be built under the Russian guns. It worked, in his view, only because Davout's men carried out the orders exactly.¹⁹

Aftermath: the road to Pułtusk

Losses. Davout reported 807 killed and wounded, 67 of them officers; Petre thought the figure too low because it seems to leave out Petit's detachment, and the Polish Napoleonic Society gives about 700. For the Russians the numbers range widely. Ostermann-Tolstoy reported only 500, Petre cites the Prussian historian Hoepfner for 1,392, the Fondation Napoléon gives 1,600 and the Polish Napoleonic Society about 1,700. Petre and the Russian account agree that three Russian generals were wounded.²⁰

The pursuit. Friant's division had marched at four in the morning and reached the battlefield at daybreak. Napoleon let Morand's exhausted men rest and sent Friant after the Russians. Near Nasielsk, on 24 December, his voltigeurs worked round the Russian flank and took three guns, but the Russians held the woods until dark before falling back again.²¹

The week that followed. The crossing broke the Russian line on the Wkra, and Kamensky ordered a retreat northeast toward Ostrołęka. Napoleon set his whole army after them. On 26 December two battles were fought on the same day, at Pułtusk and at Gołymin, in snow and deep mud, and neither gave him the decisive victory he wanted.²² › Battle of Pułtusk, 1806

The worn-out army then went into winter quarters around Warsaw. The fighting resumed early in 1807 and led to the bloody Battle of Eylau in February.²³ › Battle of Friedland, 1807

Legacy and memory

For Davout's corps the night at Czarnowo stood beside its great day at Auerstedt. The conclusion of his report on the campaign names the victories won by the III Corps as Auerstedt and Czarnowo.²⁴

For the people along the Wkra the war meant something else. The parish priest of Nasielsk wrote in his register that the baptism and marriage records had been lost in the war, and that on a single day, 24 December 1806, the parish's crops, livestock and buildings and the churchyard fence were destroyed. Both the Nasielsk library and the Pomiechówek local historians quote the entry.²⁵

Czarnowo today is a village in the commune of Pomiechówek, near the confluence of the Wkra and the Narew and close to the later fortress of Modlin. The Pomiechówek local history site devotes a series of articles to the night battle, including the Russian side of the story.²⁶ › Napoleon Bonaparte