La Bataille de Friedland et Danzig 1809

For example, Marshal Francois Lefebvre's X Corps besieging Danzig in the spring, had only 10,000 Frenchmen out of the total of roughly 30,000 soldiers. The rest of troops were made up of diverse group of Italians; Saxons; Poles; Badeners and other German levies. While the French had assembled a large army in eastern Poland and East Prussia, some of those troops were watching the Pruss ians still in Konigsberg; they had similar numbers of troops in garrisons and watching the lines of communic ations west of La Grande Armee.” Bennigsen Never Reticent To Battle Marin’s fear, and the fear of the other French soldiers, was based upon what their experience with the Russians had been in 1807. Bennigsen could never be accused of being reticent or unwilling to challenge the fate of the Russian armies to battle. His behavior during both the January -February campaign and the early stages of the June campaign was that of an aggressive attacker, always ready to give battle. Both campaigns saw the Russians immediately go on the offensive. While Marin and the other Frenchmen suffered from the fear of Russian onslaughts , their leader had a different approach. Napoleon saw Bennigsen’s overt aggression as an opportunity to spring a trap on the wily Hanoverian. Even before the battle of Heilsberg a few days earlier, Napoleon had determined what he should do with Bennigsen. Again from the ATO article, “As the French historian Georges Blond described in La Grande Armee , Napoleon set out his maps of the area on the ground and studied them silently for more than 30 minutes. "He had just worked out his entire scheme --not just for Heilsberg, which in his mind was no more than a transient element in the plan, but as far as another town along the Allee which he had chosen for the general and decisive battle to 'finish it'--Friedland." So Napoleon, even before dealing with the messy and bloody business that was Heilsberg, was already planning and executing the moves that would lead to Friedland. Another French historian, Henri Lachouque wrote in the last century of Friedland,..."we note that, of the imperial battles, it was, perhaps the only one which by the simplicity of its plan, the speed of its development, the decisiveness of the result compares with Austerlitz. The latter is the model of defensive battles, fought on ground studied at leisure. The former is the model of the offensive battle, fought according to improvised dispositions on a battlefield chosen at a glance. Both bear the stamp of a willingness to combine, to conduct, to consummate by an artistic maneuver a single, decisive battle.”

Thus, while Marin and the rank and file fretted about their future, Napoleon had made up his mind how Friedland would play out. Bennigsen, however, while continuing to be aggressive in his thinking and behavior, was reactive and not aware of what Napoleon was doing in the preliminaries to Friedland. The base of the Russian operations was at Friedland, a good sized town nestled in a bend of the river Allee. Bennigsen’s position and his subsequent, almost trance-like behavior during the next day or so would seal the Russians’ fate. The ATO article had this comment about the Russian plan…” Bennigsen's tactical position was compromised by several items. First, there was only a

limited ability to cross the Allee with one bridge at Friedland and few pontoon bridges available. The Russians had effectively moved almost all of their army into a position out which there was no real escape. Second, the French would have higher ground and better visibility for their guns later in the battle. Finally, there was a sizable stream which effectively cut the Russian into two parts. As it turned out, the

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