CHAPTER XXVI
THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM: FRIEDLAND
"I know full well that London is a corner of the world, and that
Paris is its centre."—Letter of Napoleon, August 18th, 1806.
On the 21st of November, 1806, Napoleon issued at Berlin the decree which proclaimed open and unrelenting war on English industry and commerce, a war that was to embroil the whole civilized world and cease only with his overthrow. After reciting his complaints against the English maritime code, he declared the British Isles to be in a state of blockade, interdicted all commerce with them, threatened seizure and imprisonment to English goods and subjects wherever found by French or allied troops, forbade all trade in English and colonial wares, and excluded from French and allied ports any ship that had touched at those of Great Britain; while any ship that connived at the infraction of the present decree was to be held a good prize of war.[113] This ukase, which was binding for France, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, and the Rhenish Confederation, formed the foundation of the Continental System, a term applicable to the sum total of the measures that aimed at ruining England by excluding her goods from the Continent.
The plan of strangling Britain by her own wealth was not peculiar to Napoleon. In common with much of his political stock-in-trade he had it from the Jacobins, who stoutly maintained that England's wealth was fictitious and would collapse as soon as her commerce was attacked in the Indies and excluded from the Rhine and Elbe. At first the fulminations of Parisian legislators fell idly on the stately pile of British industry; but when the young Bonaparte appeared on the scene, the commercial warfare became serious. As soon as his victories in Italy widened the sphere of French influence, the Directory banned the entry of all our products, counting all cotton and woollen goods as English unless the contrary could be proved by certificates of origin.[114] Public opinion in France, which, unless held in by an intelligent monarch, has always swung towards protection or prohibition, welcomed that vigorous measure; and great was the outcry of manufacturers when it was rumoured in 1802 that Napoleon was about to make a commercial treaty with the national enemy. Tradition and custom, therefore, were all on his side, when, after Trafalgar, he concentrated all his energy on his "coast-system."[115]
Ostensibly the Berlin Decree was a retort to our Order in Council of May 16th, 1806, which declared all the coast between Brest and the Elbe in a state of blockade; and French historians have defended it on this ground, asserting that it was a necessary reply to England's aggressive action.[116] But this plea can scarcely be maintained. The aggressor, surely, was the man who forced Prussia to close the neutral North German coast to British goods (February, 1806). Besides, there is indirect proof that Napoleon looked on our blockade of the northern coasts as not unreasonable. In his subsequent negotiations with us, he raised no protest against it, and made no difficulty about our maritime code: if we would let him seize Sicily, we might, it seems, have re-enacted that code in all its earlier stringency. Far from doing so, Fox and his successors relaxed the blockade of North Germany; and by an order dated September 25th, the coast between the Elbe and the Ems was declared free.
Napoleon's grievance against us was thereby materially lessened, and his protest against fictitious blockades in the preamble of the Berlin Decree really applied only to our action on the coast between the Helder and Brest, where our cruisers were watching the naval preparations still going on. His retort in the interests of outraged law was certainly curious; he declared our 3,000 miles of coast in a state of blockade—a mere brutum fulmen in point of fact, but designed to give a show of legality to his Continental System. Yet, apart from this thin pretext, he troubled very little about law. Indeed, blockade is an act of war; and its application to this or that part or coast depends on the will and power of the belligerents. Napoleon frankly recognized that fact; and, however much his preambles appealed to law, his conduct was decided solely by expediency. When he wanted peace (along with Sicily) he said nothing about our maritime claims: when the war went on, he used them as a pretext for an action that was ten times as stringent.
The gauntlet thrown down by him at Berlin was promptly taken up by Great Britain. An Order in Council of January 7th, 1807, forbade neutrals to trade between the ports of France and her allies, or between ports that observed the Berlin Decree, under pain of seizure and confiscation of the ship and cargo. In return Napoleon issued from Warsaw (January 27th) a decree, ordering the seizure in the Hanse Towns of all English goods and colonial produce. By way of reprisal England reimposed a strict blockade on the North German coast (March 11th); and after the Peace of Tilsit laid the Continent at the feet of Napoleon, he frankly told the diplomatic circle at Fontainebleau that he would no longer allow any commercial or political relations between the Continent and England. "The sea must be subdued by the land." In these words Napoleon pithily summed up his enterprise; and whatever may be thought of the means which he adopted, the design is not without grandeur. Granted that Britannia ruled the waves, yet he ruled the land; and the land, as the active fruitful element, must overpower the barren sea. Such was the notion: it was fallacious, as will appear later on; but it appealed strongly to the French imagination as providing an infallible means of humbling the traditional foe. Furthermore, it placed in Napoleon's hands a potent engine of government, not only for assuring his position in France, but for extending his sway over North Germany and all coasts that seemed needful to the success of the experiment.
Indirectly also it seems to have fed, without satisfying, his ever-growing love of power. Here we touch on the difficult question of motive; and it is perhaps impossible, except for dogmatists, to determine whether the enterprises that led to his ruin—the partition of Portugal, which slid easily into the occupation of Spain, together with his Moscow adventure—were prompted by ambition or by a semi-fatalistic feeling that they were necessary to the complete triumph of his Continental System. He himself, with a flash of almost uncanny insight, once remarked to Roederer that his ambition was different from that of other men: for they were slaves to it, whereas it was so interwoven with the whole texture of his being as to interfere with no single process of thought and will. Whether that is possible is a question for psychologists and casuists; but every open-minded student of Napoleon's career must at times pause in utter doubt, whether this or that act was prompted by mad ambition, or followed naturally, perhaps inevitably, from that world-embracing postulate, the Continental System.
England also derived some secondary advantages from this war of the elements. In order to stalemate her mighty foe, she pushed on her colonial conquests so as to control the resources of the tropics, and thus prevent that deadly tilting of the balance landwards which Napoleon strove to effect. And fate decreed that the conquests of English seamen and settlers were to be more enduring than those of Napoleon's legions. While the French were gaining barren victories beyond the Vistula and Ebro, our seamen seized French and Dutch colonies and our pioneers opened up the interior of Australia and South Africa.
We also used our maritime monopoly to depress neutral commerce. We have not space to discuss the complex question of the rights of neutrals in time of war, which would involve an examination of the "rule of 1756" and the compromises arrived at after the two Armed Neutrality Leagues. Suffice it to say that our merchants had recently been indignant at the comparative immunity enjoyed by neutral ships, and had pressed for more vigorous action against such as traded to French ports.[117] Yet the statement that our Orders in Council were determined by the clamour of the mercantile class is an exaggeration: they were reprisals against Napoleon's acts, following them in almost geometrical gradations. To his domination over the industrial resources of the Continent we had nothing to oppose but our manufacturing skill, our supremacy in the tropics, and our control of the sea. The methods used on both sides were alike brutal, and, when carried to their logical conclusion at the close of the year, crushed the neutrals between the upper and the nether millstone. But it is difficult to see what other alternative was open to an insular State that was all-powerful at sea and weak on land. Our very existence was bound up with maritime commerce; and an abandonment of the carrying trade to neutrals would have been the tamest of surrenders, at a time when surrender meant political extinction.
We turn now to follow the chief steps in Napoleon's onward march, which enabled him to impose his system on nearly the whole of the Continent. While encamped in the Prussian capital he decreed the deposition of the Elector of Hesse-Cassel, and French and Dutch troops forthwith occupied that Electorate. Towards Saxony he acted with politic clemency; and on December 11th, 1806, the Elector accepted the French alliance, entered the Confederation of the Rhine, and received the title of King.[118]
Meanwhile Frederick William, accompanied by his grief-stricken consort, was striving to draw together an army in his eastern provinces. Some overtures with a view to peace had been made after Jena; but Napoleon finally refused to relax his pursuit unless the Prussians retired beyond the Vistula, and yielded up to him all the western parts of the kingdom, with their fortresses. Besides, he let it be known that Prussia must join him in a close alliance against Russia, with a view to checking her ambitious projects against Turkey; for the Czar, resenting the Sultan's deposition of the hospodars of the Danubian Principalities, an act suggested by the French, had sent an army across the River Pruth, even when the Porte timidly revoked its objectionable firman.[119] The Eastern Question having been thus reopened, Napoleon suggested a Franco-Prussian alliance so as to avert a Russian conquest of the Balkan Peninsula. But now, as ever, his terms to Prussia were too exacting. The King deigned not to stoop to such humiliation, but resolved to stake his all on the courage of his troops and the fidelity of the Czar.
The Russians, though delayed by their distrust of Haugwitz, and by their insensate war with Turkey, were now marching, 73,000 strong, into Prussian Poland, but were too late to save the Silesian fortresses, most of which surrendered to the French. The fighting in the open also went against the allies, though at Pultusk, a town north of Warsaw, the Russians claimed that the contest had been drawn in their favour.
At the close of the year the armies went into winter-quarters. It was high time. The French were ill supplied for a winter campaign amid the desolate wastes of Poland. Snow and rain, frosts and thaws had turned the wretched tracks into muddy swamps, where men sank to their knees, horses to their bellies, and carriages beyond their axles. The carriage conveying Talleyrand was a whole night stuck fast, in spite of the efforts of ten horses to drag it out. The opinion of the soldiery on Poland and the Poles is well expressed by that prince of raconteurs, Marbot: "Weather frightful, victuals very scarce, no wine, beer detestable, water muddy, no bread, lodgings shared with cows and pigs. 'And they call this their country,' said our soldiers."
Yet Polish patriotism had been a mighty power in the world; and Napoleon, ever on the watch for the weak places of his foes, saw how effective a lever it might be. This had been his constant practice: he had pitted Italians against Austrians, Copts against Mamelukes, Druses against Turks, Irish against English, South Germans against the Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns, and for the most part with success. But, except in the case of the Italian people and the South German princes, he rarely, if ever, bestowed boons proportionate to the services rendered. It is very questionable whether he felt more warmly for Irish nationalists than for Copts and Druses.[120] Except in regard to his Italian kindred, none of the nationalist aspirations that were to mould the history of the century touched a responsive chord in his nature. In this, as in other affairs of state, he held "true policy" to be "nothing else than the calculation of combinations and chances."
It was in this spirit that he surveyed the Polish Question. Arising out of the partitions of that unhappy land by Russia, Austria, and Prussia, it had distracted the repose of Europe scarcely less than the French Revolution; and now the heir to the Revolution, after hewing his way through the weak monarchies of Central Europe, was about to probe this ulcer of Christendom. As usual, nothing had been done to forestall him. Czartoryski had begged Alexander to declare Russian Poland an autonomous kingdom united with Russia only by the golden link of the crown, but this timely proposal was rejected;[121] and the Czar displayed the weakness of his judgment and the strength of his vanity by plunging into war with Turkey and Persia, at a time when Poland was opening her arms to the victor of a hundred fights. It was, therefore, easy for Napoleon to surround Russia with foes; and, as will shortly appear, he took steps to invigorate even the remote Persian Empire.
But, above all, he spurred on the Poles to take up arms. His encouragements were discreetly vague. True, he countenanced Polish proclamations, which spoke grandiloquently of national liberty; but proclamations he ever viewed as the ballons d'essai of politics. He also warned Murat not to promise the Poles too much: "My greatness does not depend on the aid of a few thousand Poles. Let them show a firm resolve to be independent: let them pledge themselves to support the King that will be given to them, and then I will see what is to be done."
There were two reasons for this caution. His Marshals found no very general disposition among the Poles to take up arms for France; and he desired not to offend Austria by revolutionizing Galicia and her districts south and east of Warsaw. Already the Hapsburgs were nervously mustering their troops, and Napoleon had no wish to tempt fortune by warring against three Powers a thousand miles away from his own frontiers. He therefore calmed the Court of Vienna by promising that he would discourage any rising in Austrian Poland, and he held forth the prospect of regaining Silesia. This tempting offer was made secretly and conditionally; and evoked no expression of thanks, but rather a redoubling of precautions. Yet, despite the efforts of England and Russia, the Hapsburg ruler refused to join the allies: he preferred to play the waiting game which had ruined Prussia.[122]
The campaign was reopened amidst terrible weather by a daring move of Bennigsen's Russians westwards, in the hope of saving Danzig and Graudenz from the French. At first a screen of forests well concealed his advance. But, falling in with Bernadotte near the River Passarge, his progress was checked and his design revealed. At once Napoleon prepared to march northwards and throw the Russians into the sea, a plan which in its turn was foiled by the seizure of a French despatch by Cossacks. Bennigsen, now aware of his danger, at once retreated towards Königsberg, but at Eylau turned on his pursuers and fought the bloodiest battle fought in Europe since Malplaquet. The numbers on both sides were probably about equal, numbering some 75,000 men, the Russians having a slight superiority in men and still more in artillery. Driven from Eylau on the night of February 7th after confused fighting, the Muscovite withdrew to a strong position formed by an irregular line of hills, which he crowned with cannon.
As the dawn peered through the snow-laden clouds, guns began to deal death amongst the hostile masses, and heavy columns moved forward. Davoust, on the French right, began to push back the Russians on that side, whereupon Napoleon ordered Augereau's corps to complete the advantage by driving in the enemy's centre. Gallantly the French advanced. Their leading regiment, the 14th, had seized a hillock which commanded the enemy's lines,[123] when, amidst a whirlwind of snow that beat in their faces, a deadly storm of grape and canister almost annihilated the corps. Its shattered lines fell back, leaving the 14th to its fate. But a cloud of Cossacks now swept on the retiring companies, stabbing with their long spears; and it was a scanty band that found safety in their former position. Russian cannon and cavalry also stopped the advance of Davoust, and the fighting for a time resolved itself into confused but murderous charges at close quarters. As if to increase the horrors of the scene, snowstorms again swept over the field, dazing the French and shrouding with friendly wings the fierce charges of Cossacks. Yet the Grand Army fought on with devoted heroism; and the chief, determined to snatch at victory, launched eighty squadrons of horse against the Russian centre. Sweeping aside the Cossacks, and defying the cannon that riddled their files, they poured upon the first line of Russian infantry: for a time they were stemmed, but, finding some weaker places, the cuirassiers burst through, only to be thrown back by the second line; and, when furiously charged by Cossacks, they fell back in disorder. "These Russians fight like bulls," said the French. The simile was just. Even while Murat was hacking at their centre a column of 4,000 Russian grenadiers, detaching itself from their mangled line, marched straight forward on the village of Eylau. With the same blind courage that nerved Solmes' division at Steinkirk, they beat aside the French light horse and foot, and were now threatening the cemetery where Napoleon and his staff were standing.
"I never was so much struck with anything in my life," said General Bertrand at St. Helena, "as by the Emperor at Eylau when he was almost trodden under foot by the Russian column. He kept his ground as the Russians advanced, saying frequently, 'What boldness.'"
But, when all around him trembled, and Berthier ordered up the horses as if for retreat, he himself quietly signalled for his Guards. These sturdy troops, long fuming at their inaction, marched forward with a stern joy. As at Steinkirk the French Household Brigade disdained to fire on the bull-dogs, so now the Guards rushed on the Muscovites with the cold steel. The shock was terrible; but the pent-up fury of the French carried all before it, and the grenadiers were wellnigh destroyed. The battle might still have ended in a French victory; for Davoust was obstinately holding the village which he had seized in the morning, and even threatened the rear of Bennigsen's centre. But when both sides were wellnigh exhausted, the Prussian General Lestocq with 8,000 men, urged on by the counsels of Scharnhorst, hurried up from the side of Königsberg, marched straight on Davoust, and checked his forward movements. Ney followed Lestocq, but at so great a distance that his arrival at nightfall served only to secure the French left.
Thus darkness closed over some 100,000 men, who wearily clung to their posts, and over snowy wastes where half that number lay dead, dying, or disabled. Well might Ney exclaim: "What a massacre, and without any issue!" Each side claimed the victory, and, as is usual in such cases, began industriously to minimize its own and to magnify the enemy's losses. The truth seems to be that both sides had about 25,000 men hors de combat; but, as Bennigsen lacked tents, supplies, and above all, the dauntless courage of Napoleon, he speedily fell back, and this enabled the Emperor to claim a decisive victory.[124]
Exhausted by this terrific strife, the combatants now relaxed their efforts for a brief space; but while Napoleon used the time of respite in hurrying up troops from all parts of his vast dominions, the allies did little to improve their advantage. This inertness is all the more strange as Prussia and Russia came to closer accord in the Treaty of Bartenstein (April 26th, 1807).[125]
The two monarchs now recur to the generous scheme of a European peace, for which the Czar and William Pitt had vainly struggled two years before. The present war is to be fought out to the end, not so as to humble France and interfere in her internal concerns, but in order to assure to Europe the blessings of a solid peace based on the claims of justice and of national independence. France must be satisfied with reasonable boundaries, and Prussia be restored to the limits of 1805 or their equivalent. Germany is to be freed from the dictation of the French, and become a "constitutional federation," with a boundary "parallel to the Rhine." Austria is to be asked to join the present league, regaining Tyrol and the Mincio frontier. England and Sweden must be rallied to the common cause. The allies will also take steps to cause Denmark to join the league. For the rest, the integrity of Turkey is to be maintained, and the future of Italy decided in concert with Austria and England, the Kings of Sardinia and Naples being restored. Even should Austria, England, and Sweden not join them, yet Russia and Prussia will continue the struggle and not lay down their arms save by mutual consent.
Had all the Powers threatened by Napoleon at once come forward and acted with vigour, these ends might, even now, have been attained. But Austria merely renewed her offers of mediation, a well-meaning but hopeless proposal. England, a prey to official incapacity, joined the league, promised help in men and money, and did little or nothing except send fruitless expeditions to Alexandria and the Dardanelles with the aim of forcing the Turks to a peace with Russia. In Sicily we held our own against Joseph's generals, but had no men to spare for a diversion against Marmont's forces in Dalmatia, which Alexander urged. Still less could we send from our own shores any force for the effective aid of Prussia. Though we had made peace with that Power, and ordinary prudence might have dictated the taking of steps to save the coast fortresses, Danzig and Colberg, from the French besiegers, yet our efforts were limited to the despatch of a few cruisers to the former stronghold. Even more urgent was the need of rescuing Stralsund, the chief fortress of Swedish Pomerania. Such an expedition clearly offered great possibilities with the minimum of risk. From the Isle of Rügen Mortier's corps could be attacked; and when Stralsund was freed, a dash on Stettin, then weakly held by the French, promised an easy success that would raise the whole of North Germany in Napoleon's rear.[126]
But arguments were thrown away upon the Grenville Ministry, which clung to its old plan of doing nothing and of doing it expensively. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Howick, replied that the allies must not expect any considerable aid from our land forces. Considering that the Income or War Tax of 2s. in the £ had yielded close on £20,000,000, and that the army numbered 192,000 men (exclusive of those in India), this declaration did not shed lustre on the Ministry of all the Talents. That bankrupt Cabinet, however, was dismissed by George III. in March, 1807, because it declined to waive the question of Catholic Emancipation, and its place was filled by the Duke of Portland, with Canning as Foreign Minister. Soon it was seen that Pitt's cloak had fallen on worthy shoulders, and a new vigour began to inspirit our foreign policy. Yet the bad results of frittering away our forces on distant expeditions could not be wiped out at once. In fact, our military expert, Lord Cathcart, reported that only some 12,000 men could at present be spared for service in the Baltic; and, as it would be beneath our dignity to send so small a force, it would be better to keep it at home ready to menace any part of the French coast. As to Stralsund, he thought that plan was more feasible, but that, even there, the allies would not make head against Mortier's corps.[127]
This is a specimen of the reasoning that was fast rendering Britain contemptible alike to friends and foes. It is not surprising that such timorous selfishness should have at last moved the Czar to say to our envoy: "Act where you please, provided that you act at all."[128] In the end the new Ministry did venture to act: it engaged to send 20,000 men to the succour of Stralsund; but, with the fatality that then dogged our steps, that decision was formed on June the 17th, three days after the Coalition was shattered by the mighty blow of Friedland.
In striking contrast to the faint-hearted measures of the allies was the timely energy of Napoleon in bringing up reinforcements. These were drawn partly from Mortier's corps in Pomerania, now engaged in watching the Swedes, who made a truce; partly from the Bavarians and Saxons; but mostly from French troops already in Central Germany, their places being taken by Italians, Spaniards, Swiss, and Dutch. In France a new levy of conscripts was ordered—the third since the outbreak of war with Prussia. The Turks were encouraged to press on the war against Russia and England; and a mission was sent to the Shah of Persia to strengthen his arms against the Czar. To this last we will now advert.
For some time past Napoleon had been coquetting with Persia, and an embassy from the Shah now came to the castle of Finkenstein, a beautiful seat not far from the Vistula, where the Emperor spent the months of spring. A treaty was drawn up, and General Gardane was deputed to draw closer the bonds of friendship with the Court of Teheran. The instructions secretly issued to this officer are of great interest. He is ordered to proceed to Persia by way of Constantinople, to concert an alliance between Sultan and Shah, to redouble Persia's efforts against her "natural enemy," Russia, and to examine the means of invading India. For this purpose a number of officers are sent with him to examine the routes from Egypt or Syria to Delhi, as also to report on the harbours in Persia with a view to a maritime expedition, either by way of Suez or the Cape of Good Hope. The Shah is to be induced to form a corps of 12,000 men, drilled on the European model and armed with weapons sold by France. This force will attack the Russians in Georgia and serve later in an expedition to India. With a view to the sending of 20,000 French troops to India, Gardane is to communicate with the Mahratta princes and prepare for this enterprise by every possible means.
We may note here that Gardane proceeded to Persia and was urging on the Shah to more active measures against Russia when the news of the Treaty of Tilsit diverted his efforts towards the east. At the close of the year, he reported to Napoleon that, for the march overland from Syria to the Ganges, Cyprus was an indispensable base of supplies: he recommended the route Bir, Mardin, Teheran, Herat, Cabul, and Peshawur: forty to fifty thousand French troops would be needed, and thirty or forty thousand Persians should also be taken up. Nothing came of these plans; but it is clear that, even when Napoleon was face to face with formidable foes on the Vistula, his thoughts still turned longingly to the banks of the Ganges.[129]
The result of Napoleon's activity and the supineness of his foes were soon apparent. Danzig surrendered to the French on May the 24th, and Neisse in Silesia a little later; and it was not till the besiegers of these fortresses came up to swell the French host that Bennigsen opened the campaign. He was soon to rue the delay. His efforts to drive the foe from the River Passarge were promptly foiled, and he retired in haste to his intrenched camp at Heilsberg. There, on June the 10th, he turned fiercely at bay and dealt heavy losses to the French vanguard. In vain did Soult's corps struggle up towards the intrenchments; his men were mown down by grapeshot and musketry: in vain did Napoleon, who hurried up in the afternoon, launch the fusiliers of the Guard and a division of Lannes' corps. The Muscovites held firm, and the day closed ominously for the French. It was Eylau over again on a small scale.
But Bennigsen was one of those commanders who, after fighting with great spirit, suffer a relapse. Despite the entreaties of his generals, he had retreated after Eylau; and now, after a day of inaction, his columns filed off towards Königsberg under cover of the darkness. In excuse for this action it has been urged that he had but two days' supply of bread in the camp, and that a forward move of Davoust's corps round his right flank threatened to cut him off from his base of supplies, Königsberg.[130]
The first excuse only exposes him to greater censure. The Russian habit at that time usually was to live almost from hand to mouth; but that a carefully-prepared position like that of Heilsberg should be left without adequate supplies is unpardonable. On the two next days the rival hosts marched northward, the one to seize, the other to save, Königsberg. They were separated by the winding vale of the Alle. But the course of this river favoured Napoleon as much as it hindered Bennigsen. The Alle below Heilsberg makes a deep bend towards the north-east, then northwards again towards Friedland, where it comes within forty miles of Königsberg, but in its lower course flows north-east until it joins the Pregel.
An army marching from Heilsberg to the old Prussian capital by the right bank would therefore easily be outstripped by one that could follow the chord of the arc instead of the irregular arc itself. Napoleon was in this fortunate position, while the Russians plodded amid heavy rains over the semicircular route further to the east. Their mistake in abandoning Heilsberg was now obvious. The Emperor halted at Eylau on the 13th for news of the Prussians in front and of Bennigsen on his right flank. Against the former he hurled his chief masses under the lead of Murat in the hope of seizing Königsberg at one blow.[131] But, foreseeing that the Russians would probably pass over the Alle at Friedland he despatched Lannes to Domnau to see whether they had already crossed in force. Clearly, then, Napoleon did not foresee what the morrow had in store for him: his aim was to drive a solid wedge between Bennigsen and the defenders of Königsberg, to storm that city first, and then to turn on Bennigsen. The claim of some of Napoleon's admirers that he laid a trap for the Russians at Friedland, as he had done at Austerlitz, is therefore refuted by the Emperor's own orders.
None the less did Bennigsen walk into a trap, and one of his own choosing. Anxious to thrust himself between Napoleon and the old Prussian capital, he crossed the river at Friedland and sought to strengthen his position on the left bank by driving Lannes' vanguard back on Domnau, by throwing three bridges over the stream, and by crowning the hills on the right bank with a formidable artillery. But he had to deal with a tough and daring opponent. Throughout the winter Lannes had been a prey to ill-health and resentment at his chief's real or fancied injustice: but the heats of summer re-awakened his thirst for glory and restored him to his wonted vigour. Calling up the Saxon horse, Grouchy's dragoons, and Oudinot's grenadiers, he held his ground through the brief hours of darkness. Before dawn he posted his 10,000 troops among the woods and on the plateau of Posthenen that lies to the west of Friedland and strove to stop the march of 40,000 Russians. After four hours of fighting, his men were about to be thrust back, when the divisions of Verdier and Dupas—the latter from Mortier's corps—shared the burden of the fight until the sun was at its zenith. When once more the fight was doubtful, the dense columns of Ney and Victor were to be seen, and by desperate efforts the French vanguard held its ground until this welcome aid arrived.
Napoleon, having received Lannes' urgent appeals for help, now rode up in hot haste, and in response to the cheers of his weary troops repeatedly exclaimed: "Today is a lucky day, the anniversary of Marengo." Their ardour was excited to the highest pitch, Oudinot saluting his chief with the words: "Quick, sire! my grenadiers can hold no longer: but give me reinforcements and I'll pitch the Russians into the river."[132] The Emperor cautiously gave them pause: the fresh troops marched to the front and formed the first line, those who had fought for nine hours now forming the supports. Ney held the post of honour in the woods on the right flank, nearly above Friedland; behind him was the corps of Bernadotte, which, since the disabling of that Marshal by a wound had been led by General Victor: there too were the dragoons of Latour-Maubourg, and the imposing masses of the Guard. In the centre, but bending in towards the rear, stood the remnant of Lannes' indomitable corps, now condemned for a time to comparative inactivity; and defensive tactics were also enjoined on Mortier and Grouchy on the left wing, until Ney and Victor should decide the fortunes of the second fight. The Russians, as if bent on favouring Napoleon's design, continued to deploy in front of Friedland, keeping up the while a desultory fight; and Bennigsen, anxious now about his communications with Königsberg, detached 6,000 men down the right bank of the river towards Wehlau. Only 46,000 men were thus left to defend Friedland against a force that now numbered 80,000: yet no works were thrown up to guard the bridges—and this after the arrival of Napoleon with strong reinforcements was known by the excitement along the enemy's front.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF FRIEDLAND]
Nevertheless, as late as 3 p.m., Napoleon was in doubt whether he should not await the arrival of Murat. At his instructions, Berthier ordered that Marshal to leave Soult at Königsberg and hurry back with Davoust and the cavalry towards Friedland: "If I perceive at the beginning of this fight that the enemy is in too great force, I might be content with cannonading to-day and awaiting your arrival." But a little later the Emperor decides for instant attack. The omens are all favourable. If driven back the Russians will fight with their backs to a deep river. Besides, their position is cut in twain by a mill-stream which flows in a gulley, and near the town is dammed up so as to form a small lake. Below this lies Friedland in a deep bend of the river itself. Into this cul-de-sac he will drive the Russian left, and fling their broken lines into the lake and river.
At five o'clock a salvo of twenty guns opened the second and greater battle of Friedland. To rush on the Muscovite van and clear it from the wood of Sortlack was for Ney's leading division the work of a moment; but on reaching the open ground their ranks were ploughed by the shot of the Russian guns ranged on the hills beyond the river. Staggered by this fire, the division was wavering, when the Russian Guards and their choicest squadrons of horse charged home with deadly effect. But Ney's second division, led by the gallant Dupont, hurried up to restore the balance, while Latour-Maubourg's dragoons fell on the enemy's horsemen and drove them pell-mell towards Friedland.
The Russian artillery fared little better: Napoleon directed Sénarmont with thirty-six guns to take it in flank and it was soon overpowered. Freed now from the Russian grapeshot and sabres, Ney held on his course like a torrent that masters a dam, reached the upper part of the lake, and threw the bewildered foe into its waters or into the town. Friedland was now a death-trap: huddled together, plied by shell, shot and bayonet, the Russians fought from street to street with the energy of despair, but little by little were driven back on the bridges. No help was to be found there; for Sénarmont, bringing up his guns, swept the bridges with a terrific fire: when part of the Russian left and centre had fled across, they burst into flames, a signal that warned their comrades further north of their coming doom. On that side, too, a general advance of the French drove the enemy back towards the steep banks of the river. But on those open plains the devotion and prowess of the Muscovite cavalry bore ampler fruit: charging the foe while in the full swing of victory, these gallant riders gave time for the infantry to attempt the dangers of a deep ford: hundreds were drowned, but others, along with most of the guns, stole away in the darkness down the left bank of the river.
On the morrow Bennigsen's army was a mass of fugitives straggling towards the Pregel and fighting with one another for a chance to cross its long narrow bridge. Even on the other side they halted not, but wandered on towards the Niemen, no longer an army but an armed mob. On its banks they were joined by the defenders of Königsberg, who after a stout stand cut their way through Soult's lines and made for Tilsit. There, behind the broad stream of the Niemen, the fugitives found rest.
It will always be a mystery why Bennigsen held on to Friedland after French reinforcements arrived; and the feeling of wonder and exasperation finds expression in the report of our envoy, Lord Hutchinson, founded on the information of two British officers who were at the Russian headquarters:
"Many of the circumstances attending the Battle of Friedland are unexampled in the annals of war. We crossed the River Alle, not knowing whether we had to contend with a corps or the whole French army. From the commencement of the battle it was manifest that we had a great deal to lose and probably little to gain: … General Bennigsen would, I believe, have retired early in the day from ground which he ought never to have occupied; but the corps in our front made so vigorous a resistance that, though occasionally we gained a little ground, yet we were never able to drive them from the woods or the village of Heinrichsdorf."[133]
This evidence shows the transcendent services of Lannes, Oudinot, and Grouchy in the early part of the day; and it is clear that, as at Jena, no great battle would have been fought at all but for the valour and tenacity with which Lannes clung to the foe until Napoleon came up.
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