La Bataille de Friedland et Danzig 1809

The Hell At Eylau Without realizing that his life was going to be even more dangerous, Marin had welcomed his much deserved reassignment to Prince Berthier’s staff in early February 1807 as an aide. He saw his promotion as a chance to lessen his daily exposure to deadly battles, while performing a valuable service for his country. However, that was not to be. Literally just a few days after joining Berthier’s staff, Marin became witness to the hell of the battle at Eylau. There he was wounded. His were minor wounds suffered compared to the carnage of 20,000 other French soldiers who either perished or were seriously injured at Eylau. The French were finally able to go into their winter quarters. However Marin, still recuperating from his wounds, would instead be sent by Prince Berthier to visit the Siege of Danzig, another Hanseatic jewel city, where Marin would spend several weeks in April and May assisting Marshal Lefebvre during that grim episode. Deprivation and desperation in Danzig had been the order of the day for both French and Coalition forces. Dealing with the rats and Gypsies was even more dangerous than clashing with the Coalition forces. Marin was only too happy to leave the newly captured French city upon its fall, and shortly after Danzig fell, Marin was only gladdened to rejoin Berthier’s staff just as the June campaign started. However, there would be no respite from the hum of activity and battle. Quickly upon his return, Marin participated in the horrible battle of Heilsberg. That was just a few days earlier. Marin counted himself fortunate not to have been one of the many French fallen at Heilsberg. So now, just three days after that battle, he was marching toward Friedland and fate, along with 66,000 other French forces. Marin’s fear should not be considered unreasonable, as Marshal Enterprises explained in a 2014 article in ATO magazine about the Friedland campaign, “The French, while virtually destroying the Prussians in the fall of 1806, had not been able to drive the Prussian ally's army, the Russians, from the field. The Russians inflicted the French with a major check--if not a full defeat-- at the Battle of Eylau in February of 1807, and the seemingly endless campaign by the French to clear out historic Poland of Russians and Prussians in February and March exhausted and discouraged the French army while dulling the fine edge Napoleon had put on his La Grande Armee'.” More importantly for Napoleon and the French, the basic realities of the war had changed. The war started with the French almost within gunshot of the French frontier, close to their rich, overflowing supply depots. The Saxon and Brandenburg countryside offered a bounty of forage for French cavalry and a wealth of rich foodstuffs to feed the hungry French. However, with the war having moved to Poland and East Prussia in 1807, the supply lines had become much more tenuous for the French; and Thorn or Modlin could hardly compare to Frankfurt or Strasberg for overflowing warehouses and wineries. Also undermining the French Army was the start of major demographic changes. As Napoleon required more troops to assist in guarding his lines of communication and to besiege fortresses like Danzig, the French proportion of the overall army declined. Again from the ATO article of 2014, “Napoleon brought more soldiers to the theatre, and significant to these new levees was the increasing proportion of non- French soldiers being placed in La Grande Armee.

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