On 25 January 1807, at Mohrungen in East Prussia, today Morąg in northern Poland, Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte's French corps drove back the Russian advance guard of General Markov. Behind his back, Russian cavalry broke into the town and plundered the French baggage. The clash was part of the Russian winter offensive that ended at Eylau two weeks later.
A winter offensive
After the battles of Pułtusk and Gołymin on 26 December 1806, in which the Russians slipped away from Napoleon, the Grande Armée went into winter quarters in Poland. The Russian army under General Levin August von Bennigsen did not wait for spring. In January 1807 it marched west through East Prussia, aiming to cut off the French left wing, which was held by Marshal Bernadotte's I Corps.1
Warned of the Russian advance, Bernadotte ordered his scattered divisions, under Generals Drouet and Dupont, to concentrate on Mohrungen. On 25 January the advance guard under General Markov ran into his corps there.2
The fight for the village
Bernadotte had only part of his corps at hand and was outnumbered, but he did not wait for Dupont: he attacked the Russians, who held a village north of the town. The village was fought over hard, and in the fighting a French regiment lost its eagle and won it back. When Dupont came up he struck the Russian flank while Bernadotte attacked in front, and the Russians were driven off. Napoleon's bulletin called the enemy beaten and routed.3
Among the Russian dead was General Reinhold von Anrep. The historian Dunbar Plunket Barton judged the fight at Mohrungen Bernadotte's best achievement as a marshal of the Empire.4
A raid in the rear
While Bernadotte was fighting outside the town, Russian cavalry broke into Mohrungen behind him and plundered the French baggage, the marshal's own included. Among the booty, the Russians said, was silver plate bearing the arms of small German states; it became the ground for a charge that Bernadotte had looted, which his servants denied.5
Losses on both sides were considerable, and the figures differ. The Fondation Napoléon chronology gives about 1,000 French and 1,500 Russian losses; the military historian F. Loraine Petre put them at about 2,000 on each side.6
Road to Eylau
Bernadotte then fell back south toward Löbau and Strasburg (today Lubawa and Brodnica), and Bennigsen halted at Mohrungen to rest his tired army. Days later Cossacks captured a young French officer carrying Napoleon's orders to Bernadotte, which laid out the whole plan for a counterstroke against the Russians. Warned, Bennigsen pulled his army back. Bernadotte, who never received the orders, was still far away when the armies fought the bloody Battle of Eylau on 7 and 8 February 1807. For the wider campaign, see our guide to the greatest Napoleonic battles and our profile of Napoleon Bonaparte.7
