Battle of Friedland, 1807: the victory that brought Russia to Tilsit

Friedland ended a campaign that had gone badly for Napoleon. After crushing Prussia at Jena and Auerstedt in October 1806, he pushed into Poland and East Prussia, where the Russian army stood between him and the Prussian base at Königsberg. The winter brought only hard fights such as Pułtusk and the bloody battle at Eylau on 7 and 8 February 1807, after which both armies went into winter quarters along the rivers Passarge and Alle.²

A Russian chance

In spring Napoleon rebuilt his army and, according to Petre, planned to resume the offensive on 10 June, but the Russian commander, General Levin August von Bennigsen, struck first on 5 June against Marshal Ney's isolated corps. Ney escaped, and the French followed the Russians north along the Alle. On 10 June Bennigsen repulsed costly French attacks on his fortified camp at Heilsberg, then fell back again.³

Napoleon now misjudged where his enemy was going. Expecting Bennigsen to make for Königsberg, he sent a large part of his army north under Murat, Soult and Davout and ordered Marshal Lannes toward Friedland. On 13 June Lannes's cavalry reached the town first, but the larger Russian advance guard drove it out after a cavalry fight and occupied Friedland. Bennigsen saw a chance to destroy an isolated French corps and began passing his army over the river to the west bank.⁴

Lannes holds the plain

It was a dangerous place to fight. The Alle loops around Friedland on the south and east, a millstream with steep banks splits the plain in front of the town, and every Russian bridge, the permanent one and the pontoons, led back into the town itself. Fighting began in the small hours of 14 June. By 9 a.m., according to F. Loraine Petre's 1901 history of the campaign, Lannes had 9,000 infantry and 8,000 cavalry on the field, while Bennigsen had passed 46,000 men across the river. Lannes spread an unusually dense screen of skirmishers through the tall crops and moved his units about to look stronger than he was.⁵

Bennigsen did not press the attack while he had the advantage. Mortier's corps arrived during the morning, and by 10 a.m., Petre reckons, the French had 40,000 men on the field. Napoleon reached it around noon. He saw that the Russian army stood with its back to the river and was cut in two by the millstream, and by 2 p.m. his orders for the attack had been issued. It was 14 June, the anniversary of Marengo, and Petre quotes the emperor telling his staff at Domnau, on his way to the field: "The enemy appears to wish to give battle to-day; so much the better, it is the anniversary of Marengo."⁶ › Napoleon Bonaparte

The evening attack

At 5 p.m., by Petre's account (5:30 according to the British officer Robert Wilson, whom he cites), three salvoes of 20 guns signaled the attack. Ney's corps came out of the Sortlack Wood and drove the Russian left back into the narrowing loop of the Alle. A Russian cavalry counterattack threw Ney's men into disorder, but Dupont's division of General Victor's corps came up in support.⁷

Then came the most famous episode of the day. Victor's artillery commander, General Sénarmont, asked leave to mass his guns for a decisive blow and drove them forward. Petre, following Victor's report, gives 38 guns, opening fire first at 600 paces, then at 300, at 150 and finally at 60, where they fired nothing but grapeshot into the packed Russians. The Russian cavalry that tried to stop them was cut down. The Russian left fell back into Friedland, which caught fire when Russian guns across the river set the houses near the bridges ablaze. The flames spread to the bridges, and many Russians drowned trying to swim the river. North of the millstream Gorchakov's divisions were held by Lannes and Mortier and pinned against the water. A deep ford found late in the evening downstream saved part of the army and many of its guns, and the fighting died down around 11 p.m.⁸

Counting the cost

The figures depend on who is counting. Petre, comparing the authorities in 1901, put French losses at about 7,000 or 8,000; for the Russians he cites Plotho's 18,000 to 20,000 and notes a French claim of 25,000. The Fondation Napoléon gives more than 20,000 Russian casualties. Napoleon claimed much more. That evening he wrote to Joséphine that his "children" had worthily celebrated the anniversary of Marengo and that the Russians had lost 80 cannon and 30,000 men dead or captured.⁹

From Friedland to Tilsit

The French crossed the Alle on 15 June, and Königsberg surrendered to Soult on 16 June. On 19 June Bennigsen, on orders from the allied sovereigns, asked for an armistice, which was signed on 21 June. On 25 June the two emperors met on a pavilion floated in the middle of the Niemen at Tilsit, as an eyewitness in the town described it. The peace treaties signed there on 7 and 9 July ended the war. In Petre's summary, Prussia lost its lands west of the Elbe to the new kingdom of Westphalia, its Polish lands became the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, and Prussia and Russia were bound to aid Napoleon's campaign against British commerce. Napoleon's grasp on continental Europe, Petre concludes, was now assured.¹⁰ › Copenhagen, 1807