When and where was the Battle of Pułtusk?

On 26 December 1806, at Pułtusk on the Narew River, north of Warsaw.

Who fought at Pułtusk?

Marshal Jean Lannes's V Corps, joined in the afternoon by a division of Davout's corps under General d'Aultanne, against a Russian army under General Levin August von Bennigsen.

Who won the Battle of Pułtusk?

It was inconclusive. Bennigsen threw back the French attacks and claimed a victory, but he retreated toward Ostrołęka that night, so Lannes claimed one too. Most historians call it a draw.

Was Napoleon at Pułtusk?

No. The battle was fought by Lannes. Bennigsen is said to have claimed he faced 60,000 men under Napoleon himself, and some 19th-century prints still show Napoleon on the field.

How many men were lost at Pułtusk?

The figures are uncertain. F. Loraine Petre and John Rickard put the French loss at about 7,000 and the Russian at about 5,000; the French official reports admitted far fewer.

What saved Lannes at Pułtusk?

A division of Davout's corps under General d'Aultanne, about 7,000 men, which heard the guns, marched to the battlefield on its own initiative and attacked the Russian right in the afternoon.

Why did Bennigsen retreat after Pułtusk?

Although he had repulsed Lannes, he feared that the rest of Napoleon's army would cut his line of retreat, and his own report also blamed a lack of provisions. He crossed the Narew in the night and fell back to Ostrołęka.

Battle of Pułtusk, 1806: Lannes against Bennigsen in the snow

A. Champion, “Battle of Pułtusk (1806)”, 19th-century print, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain. The artist puts Napoleon on the field, though he was not at Pułtusk.

Quick answer

What happened at the Battle of Pułtusk?

On 26 December 1806, in mud and driving snow, Marshal Jean Lannes attacked a Russian army under General Levin von Bennigsen at Pułtusk on the Narew, north of Warsaw. The Russians outnumbered him about two to one and threw back his attacks, and a French division that arrived in the afternoon saved him from defeat. That night Bennigsen retreated, and both sides claimed the victory.¹

Pułtusk was one of two battles fought on the same day in December 1806, the other at Gołymin, and neither gave Napoleon what he wanted. John Rickard of HistoryOfWar.org calls it a draw and one of the first hints that the Russians might be a difficult opponent; the British officer Robert Wilson, who served with the Russian army, went further and called it the first check Napoleon had suffered on the Continent.²

Dark locator map of central Poland showing the rivers Vistula, Bug and Narew, with a gold star in a glowing circle on the Narew north of the bend where the rivers meet, and a small world map inset with the area boxed — Pułtusk lies on the Narew north of Warsaw, close to where the Narew joins the Bug on its way to the Vistula. Drawn for this article from Natural Earth data, with no modern borders. Location map: © Echoes of Battle (data: Natural Earth, public domain)

Background: the race to catch the Russians

After crushing Prussia at Jena in October 1806, Napoleon turned east against Prussia's Russian allies and marched into Poland. Bennigsen gave up Warsaw without a fight at the end of November, and the French occupied the city. To the Polish deputations who came to him Napoleon gave encouraging words, that France had never recognized the partitions of Poland, but no promise of a restored kingdom.³

Napoleon himself reached Warsaw in the middle of December. The Russian army of the elderly Field Marshal Mikhail Kamensky stood behind the Wkra and the Narew, and on 23 December Davout's corps forced a crossing of the Wkra at Czarnowo. Kamensky ordered a general retreat, and Napoleon set his whole army in motion to trap the Russians before they could escape.⁴ › Battle of Czarnowo, 1806

The Russian command was divided. Kamensky was old and, in Petre's words, broken in body and mind; he left the army for Grodno the morning of the battle. His two chief subordinates, Bennigsen and Buxhoeveden, were rivals. Bennigsen decided to ignore the order to retreat and make a stand at Pułtusk; Wilson, writing from the Russian side, says Bennigsen considered himself free to use his own discretion and hoped Buxhoeveden would come to his support.⁵

Armies and commanders

Bennigsen was a Hanoverian who had joined the Russian army in 1773, fought the Turks, the Poles and the Persians, and had a part in the plot that killed Czar Paul I in 1801. Now he commanded the main Russian army in Poland.⁶

Sepia ink and wash drawing of an elderly general in a dark coat covered with orders, white breeches and tall boots, leaning against a stone pillar with a field telescope in his hand and a battle in the background — General Levin August von Bennigsen, the Hanoverian in Russian service who chose to stand and fight at Pułtusk against his commander's orders. Jean-François Bozio, *Portrait of Count Levin August von Bennigsen*, drawing, early 19th century, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Lannes had risen from humble origins through the wars of the Revolution to become one of Napoleon's first marshals in 1804. He had fought at Austerlitz and Jena, and his V Corps, with the divisions of Suchet and Gazan, was ordered to take the bridge over the Narew at Pułtusk. Napoleon believed there was no strong Russian force there.⁷

He was wrong. Lannes had about 20,000 men; Bennigsen had between 40,000 and 45,000 by Petre's reckoning, around 40,000 by Rickard's, with more than 120 guns. Either way the French were badly outnumbered.⁸

Bennigsen drew up his army in three lines along the road from Pułtusk to Gołymin, with his left on the town and his right in the woods near the village of Mosin, now Moszyn. Barclay de Tolly held the woods on the right; General Baggovut held the left and covered the bridge. A long screen of cavalry and Cossacks stood out in front, and behind it, on lower ground, the main lines and most of the guns were hidden.⁹

Hand-drawn French map of 1806 in brown ink showing the walled town of Pultusk in a loop of the Narew river on the right, the village of Moszyn on the road at upper left, woods drawn as small trees, and small rectangles marking the battalions and squadrons of both armies between them — A French manuscript map of the battle: Pułtusk and the Narew on the right, Moszyn (Mosin) on the Golymin road at upper left, and between them the battalions and squadrons of both armies drawn as small blocks, along the road and on the ridge south of the town. *Positions des troupes russes et françaises avant et pendant la bataille de Pultusk, le 26 décembre 1806*, manuscript map, 1806, Bibliothèque nationale de France (detail). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The battle in phases

Mud and snow. For days the weather had been freezing and thawing, and on 26 December it was thawing. Lannes's corps set out at seven in the morning from Zbroski, only five miles from the town, and the march took hours. The roads had turned into deep mud, and the guns could hardly be dragged forward. Riding ahead, Lannes could see the Russian wings and the cavalry, but not the main army behind the ridge.¹⁰

The French right. The attack began at about eleven. On the right, Claparède's 17th Light Infantry drove off Baggovut's cavalry and Cossacks and pushed back a regiment of jägers. The French center under Wedell swung right to take Baggovut in the flank, and in a blinding snowstorm Russian cavalry fell on its own exposed flank and cut into the leading battalions, until a battalion of the 88th Line came up and the fight ended in a hand-to-hand struggle. When the French light cavalry reached the top of the ridge, the Russian horsemen in front of it wheeled aside and unmasked a battery that tore it apart.¹¹

The woods of Mosin. On the left Lannes and Suchet led the 34th Line into the woods held by Barclay de Tolly. The French drove the jägers back and took a Russian battery, but Barclay's reserves retook the guns and pushed the 34th back into the wood, where the fight went on at close quarters. By about two in the afternoon the French had made little progress anywhere, and their second line, now standing on the ridge, was under the fire of the Russian main batteries. Lannes's corps seemed likely to be driven into a disastrous retreat.¹²

Full-length portrait of a French marshal in a red hussar uniform heavy with gold braid and a fur-trimmed pelisse, holding a curved saber in one hand and a map in the other, with cavalry fighting in the smoky valley behind him — Marshal Jean Lannes, who led the French attack at Pułtusk, in the hussar uniform he favored. He was mortally wounded at Aspern-Essling in 1809. Jean-Charles Nicaise Perrin, *Jean Lannes, duc de Montebello, Marshal of France*, between 1805 and 1810. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Turning point: a division out of the snow

Help came from a direction nobody had planned. A division of Davout's corps under his chief of staff, General d'Aultanne, had been sent to keep a Russian column away from Lannes's flank. It was about to bivouac when it heard the heavy cannonade from Pułtusk, and d'Aultanne marched to the sound of the guns on his own initiative. He brought nine battalions, about 7,000 men, with a single gun dragged up by a double team, and attacked the Russian right near Mosin between two and three in the afternoon.¹³

Bennigsen swung the right half of his line round to face the new threat, which took much of the weight of his artillery off Lannes's center. Barclay, reinforced by two infantry regiments and twenty squadrons, drove the 34th Line out of the woods and sent his cavalry into the gap that opened between Lannes and d'Aultanne. The 85th Line formed squares and beat off charge after charge, the last at about eight in the evening, long after dark and in another snowstorm.¹⁴

On the other wing the French briefly overran Baggovut and took his guns, but Ostermann-Tolstoy brought up fresh battalions and a battery, and Baggovut drove the French back across the ravine and recovered his guns. Exhausted, the French fell back in good order to the positions they had held in the morning.¹⁵

Aftermath: who won?

The losses are uncertain. Petre and Rickard both put the French loss at about 7,000 killed, wounded and captured, and the Russian at about 5,000; Wilson gave 8,000 French at the least and fewer than 5,000 Russians. The French official accounts admitted only 600 or 700 killed and 1,500 wounded.¹⁶

Both sides claimed the day. Bennigsen had repulsed the attack and held the field, and he reported a victory to the Czar. Petre and Rickard write that he claimed to have faced 60,000 men under Napoleon in person, though Napoleon was not there; the despatch printed by Wilson speaks of 50,000 men under Murat, Davout and Lannes, a figure Bennigsen said came from prisoners. Either way the French had been far fewer. During the night he crossed the Narew and retreated by Różan toward Ostrołęka, which he reached on 28 December, less because of Lannes than for fear that the rest of Napoleon's army would cut him off. His own report blamed a lack of provisions and forage.¹⁷

Historians have weighed the two commanders differently. Petre judged that Bennigsen, with twice Lannes's numbers, could have destroyed him had he put his infantry and guns forward instead of hiding them behind a curtain of cavalry, and that Lannes made the best of an unpleasant position into which Napoleon's faulty intelligence had put him. Even Britannica tells the battle both ways: its article on Lannes says he defeated a much larger Russian force, while its article on Bennigsen says Bennigsen successfully defended Pułtusk.¹⁸

On the same day, to the northwest, Davout and Augereau fought a Russian force at Gołymin that held out until dark and slipped away. With the roads impassable, Napoleon gave up the pursuit at the end of December and sent his army into winter quarters.¹⁹

Legacy and memory

For Bennigsen, Pułtusk was the making of his reputation. Kamensky was gone, and by January 1807 Bennigsen was in command of the Russian army and taking the offensive against the French left. Six weeks after Pułtusk he fought Napoleon to a bloody draw at Eylau, before being decisively beaten at Friedland in June 1807.²⁰ › Battle of Friedland, 1807

Lannes went on to fight at Friedland and was made duke of Montebello. In May 1809 a cannonball shattered his legs at Aspern-Essling, and he died nine days later.²¹ › Napoleon Bonaparte

Pułtusk also showed what kind of war the French had walked into in Poland. Petre and Rickard both describe roads turned to deep mud that held up men and guns, and a French army that, after the walkover against Prussia, met an enemy capable of stubborn resistance. The village of Mosin that anchored the Russian right still stands as Moszyn, on the road northwest of the town.²²