After the bloody struggle of Eylau, in which thirty thousand men were placed hors de combat, the Russians seemed desirous of avoiding a conflict until they had received large reinforcements. In the mean time, Napoleon collected about two hundred thousand men between the Vistula, and the Memel, besieged and captured Dantzic, and was again in a condition to strike a tremendous blow at the inferior forces of the enemy. Early in June, 1807, the Russian general, Bennigsen, made the first offensive movement. The division of Marshal Ney, stationed at Gustadt, was attacked by a superior force, and that intrepid officer retreated, fighting, as far as Deppen. But on the 8th of June, Napoleon moved forward to extricate his lieutenant, and the Russians then fell back upon Heilsberg. There a desperate action occurred, in which both armies suffered terribly. The Russians were compelled to retreat, but they retired unmolested. On the 13th, Bennigsen approached the town of Friedland, situated on the west bank of the Alle, communicating with the eastern bank by long wooden bridges. Here the decisive battle of the next day was fought.
The course of the Alle, near the spot where the two armies were about to meet, exhibits numerous windings. The French came up by the woody hills, beyond which the ground gradually sinks to the banks of the Alle. The ground at this season was covered with rye of great height. To the right of the French, the river was seen pursuing its way through the plain, then turning round Friedland, coming to the left, thus forming an elbow. At daybreak on the morning of the 14th, Lannes, who commanded the advanced division of the French army, reached Posthenen, whence he could see the Russians marching across the bridges to deploy into the plain, and drawing up in a line of battle facing the heights. A rivulet, called the Mill Stream, there formed a small pond, after dividing the plain into two unequal halves. Bennigsen imagined that he had to contend with but one division of the French army, and, for the time, he had this advantage. But the whole force under Napoleon’s immediate command was coming up to support the gallant Lannes, and by crossing the bridges, the Russian general fairly placed himself in the power of the Emperor. For this Napoleon had manœuvred several days, and he now saw that the victory would be one of that complete, decisive kind he loved.
Marshal Lannes, in his haste to march, had brought with him only Oudinot’s voltigeurs and grenadiers, the 9th hussars, Grouchy’s dragoons, and two regiments of Saxon cavalry. He could not oppose more than ten thousand men to the enemy’s advanced guard, which, successively reinforced, was treble that number, and was soon to be followed by the whole Russian army. Fortunately for the French, the soil afforded numerous resources to the skill and courage of their illustrious marshal. In the centre of the position which it was necessary to occupy, in order to bar the way against the Russians, was a village, that of Posthenen, through which ran the Mill Stream to pursue its course to Friedland. Somewhat in rear rose a plateau, from which the plain of the Alle might be battered. Lannes placed his artillery there, and several battalions of grenadiers to protect it. On the right, a thick wood, that of Sortlack, protruded in a salient, and divided into two the space comprised between the village of Posthenen and the banks of the Alle. There Lannes posted two battalions of voltigeurs, which, dispersed as tirailleurs, would be able to stop for a long time troops not numerous and not very resolute. The 9th hussars, Grouchy’s dragoons, the Saxon cavalry, amounted to three thousand horse, ready to fall upon any column which should attempt to penetrate that curtain of tirailleurs. On the left of Posthenen, the line of woody heights extended, gradually lowering in the village of Heinrichsdorf, through which ran the high road from Friedland to Konigsberg. This point was of great importance, for the Russians, desirous to reach Konigsberg, would, of course, obstinately dispute the road thither. Besides, this part of the field of battle being more open, was naturally more difficult to defend. Lannes, who had not yet troops sufficient to establish himself there, had placed on his left, taking advantage of the woods and heights, the rest of his battalions, thus approaching the houses of Heinrichsdorf without being able to occupy them.
The fire, commenced at three in the morning, became all at once extremely brisk. The artillery, placed on the plateau of Posthenen, under the protection of Oudinot’s grenadiers, kept the Russians at a distance, and made considerable havoc among them. On the right, the voltigeurs, scattered on the skirt of the wood of Sortlack, stopped their infantry by an incessant tirailleur fire, and the Saxon horse, directed by General Grouchy, had made several unsuccessful charges against their cavalry. The Russians having become threatening towards Heinrichsdorf, General Grouchy, moving from the right to the left, galloped thither, to dispute with them the Konigsberg road, the important point for the possession of which torrents of blood were about to be spilt.
Though, in these first moments, Marshal Lannes had but ten thousand men to oppose twenty-five or thirty thousand, he maintained his ground, thanks to great skill and energy, and also to the able concurrence of General Oudinot, commanding the grenadiers, and of General Grouchy, commanding the cavalry. But the enemy reinforced himself from hour to hour, and General Bennigsen, on arriving at Friedland, had suddenly formed the resolution to give battle—a very rash resolution, for it would have been much wiser for him to have continued to descend the Alle to the junction of that river with the Pregel, and to take a position behind the latter, with his left to Wehlau, his right to Konigsberg[Konigsberg]. It would have taken him, it is true, another day to reach Konigsberg; but he would not have risked a battle against an army superior in number, in quality, better officered, and in a very unfavorable situation for him, since he had a river at his back, and he was very likely to be pushed into the elbow of the Alle, with all that vigor of impulsion of which the French army was capable.
He lost no time in having three bridges thrown over the Alle, one above and two below Friedland, in order to accelerate the passage of his troops, and also to furnish them with means of retreat. He lined with artillery the right bank, by which he arrived, and which commanded the left bank. Then, nearly his whole army having debouched, he disposed it in the following manner:—In the plain around Heinrichsdorf, on the right for him, on the left for the French, he placed four divisions of infantry, under Lieutenant-General Gortschakoff, and the better part of the cavalry under General Ouwarroff. The infantry was formed in two lines. In the first were two battalions of each regiment deployed, and a third drawn up in close column behind the two others, closing the interval which separated them. In the second, the field of battle gradually narrowing the further it extended into the angle of the Alle, a single battalion was deployed and two were formed in close column. The cavalry, ranged on the side and a little in advance, flanked the infantry. On the left (the right of the French,) two Russian divisions, of which the imperial guard formed part, increased by all the detachments of chasseurs, occupied the portion of the ground comprised between the Mill Stream and the Alle. They were drawn up in two lines, but very near each other, on account of the want of room. Prince Bagration commanded them. The cavalry of the guard was there, under General Kollogribow. Four flying bridges had been thrown across the Mill Stream, that it might interrupt the communications between the two wings as little as possible. The fourth Russian division had been left on the other side of the Alle, on the ground commanding the left bank, to collect the army in case of disaster or to come and decide the victory, if it obtained any commencement of success. The Russians had more than two hundred pieces of cannon upon their front, besides those which were either in reserve or in battery on the right bank. Their army, reduced to eighty or eighty-two thousand men after Heilsberg, separated at this time from Kamenski’s corps and from some detachments sent to Wehlau to guard the bridges of the Alle, still amounted to seventy-two or seventy-five thousand men. General Bennigsen caused the mass of the Russian army to be moved forward in the order just described, so that, on getting out of the elbow of the Alle, it might deploy, extend its fires, and avail itself of the advantages of number which it possessed at the beginning of the battle.
The situation of Lannes was perilous, for he had the whole Russian army upon his hands. Fortunately, the time which had elapsed had procured him some reinforcements. General Nansouty’s division of heavy cavalry, composed of three thousand five hundred cuirassiers and carbineers, Dupas’s division, which was the first of Mortier’s corps, and numbered six thousand foot soldiers, lastly, Verdier’s division, which contained seven thousand, and was the second of Lannes’s corps, marched off successively, had come with all possible expedition. It was a force of twenty-six or twenty-seven thousand men, to fight seventy-five thousand. It was seven in the morning, and the Russians, preceded by a swarm of Cossacks, advanced towards Heinrichsdorf, where they already had infantry and cannon. Lannes, appreciating the importance of that post, sent thither the brigade of Albert’s grenadiers, and ordered General Grouchy to secure possession of it at any cost. General Grouchy, who had been reinforced by the cuirassiers, proceeded immediately to the village. Without stopping to consider the difficulty, he dispatched the brigade of Milet’s dragoons to attack Heinrichsdorf, while Carrie’s brigade turned the village, and the cuirassiers marched to support this movement. Milet’s brigade passed through Heinrichsdorf at a gallop, drove out the Russian foot-soldiers at the point of the sword, while Carrie’s brigade, going round it, took or dispersed those who had saved themselves by flight. Four pieces of cannon were taken. At this moment, the enemy’s cavalry, coming to the assistance of the infantry, expelled from Heinrichsdorf, rushed upon the dragoons and drove them back. But Nansouty’s cuirassiers charged it in their turn, and threw it upon the Russian infantry, which in this fray was obliged to withhold its fire.
During these occurrences, Dupas’s division entered into line. Marshal Mortier, whose horse was killed by a cannon-ball, the moment he appeared on the field of battle, placed that division between Heinrichsdorf and Posthenen, and opened on the Russians a fire of artillery which, poured upon deep masses, made prodigious havoc in their ranks. The arrival of Dupas’s division rendered disposable those battalions of grenadiers which had at first been drawn up to the left of Posthenen. Lannes drew them nearer to him, and could oppose their closer ranks to the attacks of the Russians, either before Posthenen or before the wood of Sortlack. General Oudinot, who commanded them, taking advantage of all the accidents of ground, sometimes from clumps of wood scattered here and there, sometimes from pools of water, produced by the rains of the preceding days, sometimes from above the corn, disputed the ground with equal skill and energy. By turns he hid or exhibited his soldiers, dispersed them as tirailleurs, or exposed them in a mass, bristling with bayonets, to all the efforts of the Russians. Those brave grenadiers, notwithstanding their inferiority in number, kept up the fight, supported by their general, when, luckily for them, Verdier’s division arrived. Marshal Lannes divided it into two movable columns, to be sent alternately to the right, to the centre, to the left, wherever the danger was most pressing. It was the skirt of the wood of Sortlack and the village of the same name, situated on the Alle, that were the most furiously disputed. In the end, the French remained masters of the village, the Russians of the skirts of the wood.
Lannes was enabled to prolong till noon this conflict of twenty-six thousand men against seventy-five thousand. But it was high time for Napoleon to arrive with the rest of his army. Lannes, anxious to apprize him of what was passing, had sent to him almost all his aides-de-camp, one after another, ordering them to get back to him without loss of time, if they killed their horses. They found him coming at a gallop to Friedland, and full of a joy that was expressed in his countenance. “This is the 14th of June,” he repeated to those whom he met; “it is the anniversary of Marengo; it is a lucky day for us!” Napoleon, outstripping his troops through the speed of his horse, had successively passed the long files of the guard, of Ney’s corps, of Bernadotte’s corps, all marching for Posthenen. He had saluted in passing, Dupont’s fine division, which from Ulm to Braunsberg, had never ceased to distinguish itself, though never in his presence, and he had declared that it would give him great pleasure to see it fight for once.