Desired scans : Rank and File supplements Harpoon 3 & 4 supplements Force on Force supplements Hind Commander At Close Quarters War and Conquest Modern Spearhead The Face Of Battle General d'Armee (TFL version) Swordpoint
Dominic Young
7th February in military history:
1074 – Pandulf IV of Benevento is killed battling the invading Normans at the Battle of Montesarchio. 1783 – American Revolutionary War: French and Spanish forces lift the Great Siege of Gibraltar. 1807 – Napoleonic Wars: Napoleon finds Bennigsen's Russian forces taking a stand at Eylau. After bitter fighting, the French take the town, but the Russians resume the battle the next day. 1813 – In the action of 7 February 1813 near the Îles de Los, the frigates Aréthuse and Amelia batter each other, but neither can gain the upper hand. 1842 – Battle of Debre Tabor: Ras Ali Alula, Regent of the Emperor of Ethiopia defeats warlord Wube Haile Maryam of Semien. 1900 – Second Boer War: British troops fail in their third attempt to lift the Siege of Ladysmith. 1943 – World War II: Imperial Japanese Navy forces complete the evacuation of Imperial Japanese Army troops from Guadalcanal during Operation Ke, ending Japanese attempts to retake the island from Allied forces in the Guadalcanal Campaign. 1944 – World War II: In Anzio, Italy, German forces launch a counteroffensive during the Allied Operation Shingle. 1990 – Dissolution of the Soviet Union: The Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party agrees to give up its monopoly on power. 1991 – The Troubles: The Provisional IRA launched a mortar attack on 10 Downing Street in London, the headquarters of the British government.
Levi Jenkins
It is 211 years since the Battle of Eylau, a bloody and inconclusive clash between Napoléon's Grande Armée and a Russian Empire army under Levin August, Count von Bennigsen near the town of Preußisch Eylau in East Prussia. Late in the battle, the Russians received a timely reinforcement from a Prussian division. The town is now called Bagrationovsk and it is a part of Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia. The engagement was fought during the War of the Fourth Coalition, part of the Napoleonic Wars. Of all Napoleonic battles, this is considered to be the most uncertain and mysterious for several reasons — mainly the strength of Murat's reserve cavalry.
Napoleon's armies previously smashed the army of the Austrian Empire in the Ulm Campaign and the combined Austrian and Russian armies at the Battle of Austerlitz on 2 December 1805. Austerlitz forced the Austrians to sue for peace and their Russian allies to withdraw from the conflict. On 14 October 1806, Napoleon crushed the armies of the Kingdom of Prussia at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt. After a rapid pursuit, the broken pieces of the Prussian army were destroyed at the Battles of Prenzlau and Lübeck and in a series of capitulations at Erfurt, Pasewalk, Stettin, Magdeburg, and Hamelin. Eylau was the first serious check to the Grande Armée and the myth of Napoleon's invincibility was badly shaken. However, the French would end up defeating the Russians later in the year at the Battle of Friedland.
In late January, Bennigsen's Russian army went on the offensive in East Prussia, pushing far to the west. Napoleon reacted by mounting a counteroffensive to the north, hoping to prevent their retreat to the east. After his cossacks captured a copy of Napoleon's orders, Bennigsen rapidly withdrew to the northeast to avoid being cut off. The French pursued for several days and found the Russians drawn up for battle at Eylau.
Benjamin Morris
Entering the fight with 45,000 men to Bennigsen's 67,000, Napoleon was awaiting the arrival of Marshal Louis Nicolas Davout and Marshal Michel Ney with their corps.
Late in the day on the 7th, French troops began pushing into Eylau, opening a bitter struggle for the village that lasted well into the night. Costing each side around 4,000 casualties, sources are divided as to whether Napoleon ordered the attack or if French forces moved of their own accord with the goal of securing shelter from the winter weather. Bennigsen later claimed he abandoned the town to lure the French into attacking his centre the next day. Despite their possession of the town most of the French spent the night in the open, as did all of the Russians. Both sides did without food — the Russians because of their habitual disorganization, the French because of problems with the roads, the weather, and the crush of troops hurrying towards the battle.With darkness covering the field, both sides broke off the battle.
Fighting resumed after dawn on February 8, with a large-scale artillery duel as heavy snow storms swept across the battlefield. Awaiting the arrival of reinforcements, Napoleon ordered Soult's IV Corps to attack the Russian lines with the goal of fixing them in place.
Moving forward, Soult was beaten back as Bennigsen ordered an attack on the French left as well as sent cavalry against the head of Davout's corps which was arriving on the right. With the battle turning in the Russians' favor, Napoleon ordered Augereau to attack the Russian left with his VII Corps to relieve pressure on the right.
Ill with fever, Augereau had to be helped onto his horse. As the VII Corps advanced it became lost in the blowing snow. Wandering off course, Augereau's men arrived at the center of the Russian lines instead of the left. Hit with fire from a 70-gun Russian battery, as well as the blinded French artillery, the VII Corps was badly decimated with Augereau falling wounded.
Easton Morales
Retreating back on Eylau with 3,000-4,000 survivors, the remnants of the VII Corps were soon attacked by Bennigsen's reserve infantry. Fighting a desperate battle, in which Napoleon was nearly captured, the center of the French line began to waver. Though reinforced by brigades from the Imperial Guard, Napoleon ordered Murat to charge forward with his 11,000-man-strong cavalry force to save the center.
Riding out in one of the grandest charges of the war, Murat's men split into two wings with one turning to rescue Saint-Hilaire's men and the other charging into the Russians attacking Eylau. Rarely had French cavalry played such a pivotal part in a battle. In part this was because, for the first time, Murat's men were now mounted on the best cavalry horses in Europe, freshly requisitioned in the aftermath of the conquest of Prussia.
Rejoining, Murat charged into the center of the Russian lines, destroying the batteries that had devastated the VII Corps. Retiring back to the French lines, Murat's horsemen had rescued the situation and allowed Davout's corps to deploy and join the battle. Though the Russian center was in shambles, Napoleon opted not to send the Imperial Guard forward as it was known that a 9,000-man Prussian force under General Anton Wilhelm von L'Estocq was in the area.
Instead, he advanced Davout's corps with assistance from Saint-Hilaire. As the afternoon wore on, they were able to push back the Russian left. Around 3:30, with the Russian line about to break, L'Estocq appeared and struck at Davout's exposed flank, forcing the French to fall back to their original positions. With the arrival of evening, Ney's corps marched onto the field around 7:00. Immediately deploying, they pressed an attack into the Russian right which lasted until 10:00. An hour later, Bennigsen ordered the army to quietly withdraw from the field. The exhausted French did not realize that the Russians had departed until around 3:00 AM on February 9.
Christopher Morris
A stalemate, the Battle of Eylau was the first major setback encountered by Napoleon and the Grande Armée. In two days fighting, the Russians suffered around 15,000 casualties. For the French, the battle cost between 10,000-15,000. Some estimates suggest that both armies incurred around 25,000. It was left to Marshal Ney to sum up. Riding over the fields of Eylau the following morning, Ney said, Quel massacre! Et sans résultat ("What a massacre! And without result").
The Battle of Eylau led to a continuation of the fighting which did not end until the Battle of Friedland in June. Decisively defeating the Russians, Napoleon's victory at Friedland effectively ended the War of the Fourth Coalition.
This is encounter that can truly be called epic and a definite must-fight for the Napoleonic gamer. The two most significant elements are the snowstorm and the effect it had on the battle, as well as Murat's celebrated charge.
>‘None of the great Napoleonic struggles is surrounded with more doubt and uncertainty than the battle of Eylau. Fact, myth and propaganda are almost inextricably intertwined, and different authorities give conflicting interpretations of almost every aspect and stage of the struggle'. - David Chandler
I have a quick question. Did Osprey Publishing ever print "Russian Army of the Napoleonic Wars (3): Artillery"? First was (1): Infantry, then came (2): Cavalry, but was there a (3): Artillery?
Jacob Cook
I'm afraid there is no such title, user! Sometimes they would do a third volume for some armies covering artillery, engineers and specialists, but not in this case
