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He himself prescribed, at least so they say, for he misrepresented at Saint Helena, the methods used at Wagram, at Eylau, at Waterloo, and engaged enormous masses of infantry which did not give material effect. But it involved a frightful loss of men and a disorder that, after they had once been unleashed, did not permit of the rallying and reemployment that day of the troops engaged.
Eight thousand Prussians, escaped from pursuit by Marshal Ney, and arriving at Althoff, tried to mount a new attack by advancing, one does not quite know why, on Kuschitten instead of Eylau, but Davout drove them off, and the arrival of Ney's corps at Schmoditten towards the end of the day, made Benningsen fear that his line of communication would be cut, and so he ordered a retreat in the direction of Konigsberg, leaving the French masters of the horrible battlefield covered with dead and dying.
Napoleon then advanced into Poland to meet the Russian armies, and at Eylau, on the 8th of February, 1807, was fought a bloody battle, in which fifty thousand men perished. It was indecisive, but had the effect of checking the progress of the French armies.
Seeing the war-clouds gather in the north of Europe, he thought that the coalition of the powers against the tyrant was the presage of his downfall, and he now hastened to send an emissary to England. The war-clouds burst, and from amid the thunder and smoke of battle at Jena, Eylau, and Friedland, the victor's figure arose more imperious than ever.
At Eylau provisions failed; for a week, the bread supply being exhausted, the soldiers fed themselves as they could.
The sight which he had just witnessed had made him heartbroken, and yet without a line on his brow that man had been through the battles of Aboukir, Eylau, and Moscow! After dinner, Murat went into his room again, gave his various letters to General Nunziante, and begged to be left alone. The general went away.
From Eylau, through Osterode, the main international line runs through Allenstein, and so on eastward, while a branch from this goes through Passenheim to the junction at Ortelsberg. Here, then, you have a quadrilateral of railways about fifty miles in length.
From the town of Mlawa, just within Russian Poland, beyond the frontier, runs, coming up from Warsaw, a railway to Soldau, just upon the Prussian side of the frontier. At Soldau three railways converge one from the east, one going west to Niedenberg and the junction of Ortelsberg, a third coming in from the north-east and Eylau.
Benningsen completed his sixty-second year two days after the Battle of Eylau. He was employed in 1812, '13, '14, but not in the first line, and his name is not of much mention in the histories of those eventful years.
Bernadotte at length arrived, but too late. He met the enemy, who were retreating without the fear of being molested towards Konigsberg, the only capital remaining to Prussia. The King of Prussia was then at Memel, a small port on the Baltic, thirty leagues from Konigsberg. After the battle of Eylau both sides remained stationary, and several days elapsed without anything remarkable taking place.
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