8 February 1807, morning
Augereau in the snowstorm
On the morning of 8 February the armies face each other on two parallel ridges in falling snow, 67,000 Russians with 400 guns against 49,000 French with 300. Bennigsen opens with his artillery, and the French guns reply. The Russians attack the French left at the windmill knoll beside Eylau while Davout’s III Corps begins to arrive from the south against the Russian left.
Levin von Bennigsen, the Russian commander at Eylau, portrait by Peter Edward Stroehling, about 1810 to 1815Wikimedia Commons, Peter Edward Stroehling, Public domain (L.A.Bennigsen by P.E.Stroehling (c.1810-15, Royal coll.).jpg)
To pin the Russian centre and help Davout, Napoleon sends Augereau’s VII Corps and Saint-Hilaire’s division of Soult’s corps forward. Augereau is ill and has to be helped onto his horse. A blizzard blows up as they march off, Augereau’s columns lose their way and drift to the left, and they strike the Russian line in front of a battery of 70 guns, under fire from their own artillery as well. The corps loses 929 killed and 4,271 wounded, and the 14th Line, unable to retreat, fights where it stands until it is destroyed.
The Russians counterattack into the broken French centre. A column of about 5,000 Russian infantry reaches the edge of Eylau, where Napoleon is directing the battle from the church tower, and is stopped by battalions of the Guard and cavalry that fall on its rear.
Sources
- F. Loraine Petre, Napoleon’s Campaign in Poland 1806–1807 (1901).
- David G. Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon (1966).
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